The Paradoxal Compass by Horatio Morpurgo

Author:Horatio Morpurgo [Horatio Morpurgo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910749524
Publisher: Notting Hill Editions
Published: 2017-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

NIGHT FALLS, QUICKLY

The travel narratives of the early explorers are riddled with memory-holes and evasions: dates that don’t agree, glaring omissions, the merest glimpses of what we should now like to know so much more about. I’m drawn to these muddles that get hushed up and played down and rubbed out. What did those islanders in Cornwall, or the Eskimos on the other side, make of Davis mapping their world? Drake might be in favour of the dignity of all human beings by the time he and Diego met, but he had commanded slave ships only a few years earlier. Even if Diego was paid the same as European crew-members, how did he fit in socially? What did he think of the West Country or London once he got there? What did they think of him?

Gappiness of this kind is as endemic to historical as to personal memory. The voyage on which Diego eventually died, namely Drake’s circumnavigation of 1577–80, is as gappy as any of them. It isn’t only ‘operational details’ that the chroniclers kept so close to their chests. There was, for example, a traumatic episode where the thinness of detail strongly suggests more than the protection of technical data.

Thomas Doughty’s execution at Port St Julian is an enduring riddle. There are whole online forums devoted to the subject. I’ll summarise briefly. Doughty was a lawyer by training, one of the ‘gentleman adventurers’ on board. An investor in the voyage, he seems also to have had inside knowledge of its purposes and was made commander of a Portuguese prize taken off the Cape Verde Islands. A chest on board was broken open without the General’s authorisation and looted. Amidst the accusations and counter-accusations, Doughty claimed magical powers and sounded out some of his crew as allies in a plot to seize command of the expedition.

The whole affair is very obscure and Doughty’s motives are baffling. Class conflict, clash of temperament, political and/or sexual intrigue have all been suggested. The argument had simmered for months by the time they reached Port St Julian, in what is now Argentina. Drake formally charged him as a sorcerer and a traitor, and with attempts at ‘hindrance and overthrow’ of the voyage. After a trial of dubious legality, Doughty was beheaded.

Every detail of every narrative has been exhaustively picked over. Two centuries later, Dr Johnson confessed himself mystified and two centuries on from Dr Johnson nobody is any the wiser. But another episode, similarly opaque, has received much less attention. It obviously mattered at least as much to those who were there. It is the only event, from the Indonesian section of the journey, on which all accounts are agreed about the date.

After calling at one of the Spice Islands, the Golden Hinde had already for some weeks been trying to reach the Indian Ocean. The ship needed to travel west but the prevailing wind and the lie of the land forced it to travel south instead, along rugged coasts and now through uncharted waters off Celebes.

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