tornadoes, with such thunder, lightening and raine that we could not keep our men drie three houres together which was an occasion of the infection among them.' With provisions running low, the ships followed the trade winds to Brazil before turning in the direction of the Cape of Good Hope.
The crew had by now been at sea for more than three months without eating any fresh fruit. Stuck in the doldrums and with nothing but 'salt victuals' and biscuits on board, they began to fall sick. Failure of strength and persistent breathlessness were the first signs that the body was beginning to weaken and many could no longer climb the rigging. Next, their skin turned sallow, their gums tender and their breath rank and offensive. 'The disease that hath consumed our men hath bene the skurvie,' wrote Edmund Barker, one of the on-board chroniclers of the expedition. 'Our soldiers, which have not been used to the sea, have best held out, but our mariners dropt away; which (in my judgement) proceedeth of their evil way of living at home.'
Most of Lancaster's men were soon suffering from these early signs of the sickness and it was not long before the scurvy took on a more dramatic form. Their teeth dropped out and purple blotches sprouted all over their bodies. Eating salted meat did nothing to assuage their condition;
indeed, it only seemed to make matters worse. As their muscles swelled and their joints stiffened, thin streams of blood began to trickle from their eyes and noses. By the time the ships staggered towards the Cape of Good Hope many were also suffering from acute diarrhoea, as well as from lung and kidney troubles.
The usual port of call for ships rounding the Cape was Table Bay, a sheltered watering place first discovered by the Portuguese in 1503. Here the English ships dropped anchor and sent an advance party ashore where they were met by 'certaine blacke savages, very brutish, which would not stay'. This first meeting between Lancaster's Elizabethan hosed and doubleted seamen and the natives of southern Africa must have made for a strange sight. Never had the English crew seen such a primitive and barbarous people and they watched the savages with a mixture of awe and disgust. 'They wear only a short cloake of sheepe or seale skinnes to their middle, the hairie side inward, and a kind of rat's skinne about their privities.' So wrote Patrick Copland, the priest on a later voyage who was unamused by the titillating behaviour of their womenfolk. 'They would lift up their rat skinnes and shew their privities.' Mealtimes were an occasion for even greater disgust. One Englishman watched in horror as a band of natives ravenously munched through a pile of stinking fish entrails that had lain for more than two weeks in the tropical heat. As the 'savages' smacked their lips and sucked their fingers he concluded that 'the world doth not yield a more heathenish people and more beastly', adding that their meals smelt so foul 'that no Christian could abide to come within a myle of it'. The jewellery worn by the women was equally offensive: 'Their neckes were adorned with greasie tripes which sometimes they would pull off and eat raw.
When we threw away their beasts' entrails, they would eat them half raw, the blood lothsomely slavering.'
For three weeks Lancaster's crew were disappointed in their search for fresh fruit. They managed to shoot geese and cranes with their muskets, and gathered mussels on the foreshore, but found it difficult to acquire food in sufficient quantities to feed all their company. But eventually they had some luck. After capturing a native and explaining in sign language their need for meat and fruit, he set off up country and returned eight days later with forty bullocks and oxen, as well as several dozen sheep. The men could not believe how cheap these animals were. One knife bought a bullock, two secured an ox, and a broken blade was all that was needed to buy a sheep. While the crew bartered on the
The crew had by now been at sea for more than three months without eating any fresh fruit. Stuck in the doldrums and with nothing but 'salt victuals' and biscuits on board, they began to fall sick. Failure of strength and persistent breathlessness were the first signs that the body was beginning to weaken and many could no longer climb the rigging. Next, their skin turned sallow, their gums tender and their breath rank and offensive. 'The disease that hath consumed our men hath bene the skurvie,' wrote Edmund Barker, one of the on-board chroniclers of the expedition. 'Our soldiers, which have not been used to the sea, have best held out, but our mariners dropt away; which (in my judgement) proceedeth of their evil way of living at home.'
Most of Lancaster's men were soon suffering from these early signs of the sickness and it was not long before the scurvy took on a more dramatic form. Their teeth dropped out and purple blotches sprouted all over their bodies. Eating salted meat did nothing to assuage their condition;
indeed, it only seemed to make matters worse. As their muscles swelled and their joints stiffened, thin streams of blood began to trickle from their eyes and noses. By the time the ships staggered towards the Cape of Good Hope many were also suffering from acute diarrhoea, as well as from lung and kidney troubles.
The usual port of call for ships rounding the Cape was Table Bay, a sheltered watering place first discovered by the Portuguese in 1503. Here the English ships dropped anchor and sent an advance party ashore where they were met by 'certaine blacke savages, very brutish, which would not stay'. This first meeting between Lancaster's Elizabethan hosed and doubleted seamen and the natives of southern Africa must have made for a strange sight. Never had the English crew seen such a primitive and barbarous people and they watched the savages with a mixture of awe and disgust. 'They wear only a short cloake of sheepe or seale skinnes to their middle, the hairie side inward, and a kind of rat's skinne about their privities.' So wrote Patrick Copland, the priest on a later voyage who was unamused by the titillating behaviour of their womenfolk. 'They would lift up their rat skinnes and shew their privities.' Mealtimes were an occasion for even greater disgust. One Englishman watched in horror as a band of natives ravenously munched through a pile of stinking fish entrails that had lain for more than two weeks in the tropical heat. As the 'savages' smacked their lips and sucked their fingers he concluded that 'the world doth not yield a more heathenish people and more beastly', adding that their meals smelt so foul 'that no Christian could abide to come within a myle of it'. The jewellery worn by the women was equally offensive: 'Their neckes were adorned with greasie tripes which sometimes they would pull off and eat raw.
When we threw away their beasts' entrails, they would eat them half raw, the blood lothsomely slavering.'
For three weeks Lancaster's crew were disappointed in their search for fresh fruit. They managed to shoot geese and cranes with their muskets, and gathered mussels on the foreshore, but found it difficult to acquire food in sufficient quantities to feed all their company. But eventually they had some luck. After capturing a native and explaining in sign language their need for meat and fruit, he set off up country and returned eight days later with forty bullocks and oxen, as well as several dozen sheep. The men could not believe how cheap these animals were. One knife bought a bullock, two secured an ox, and a broken blade was all that was needed to buy a sheep. While the crew bartered on the
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