A few ships, by
sailing around Ireland, escaped to tell the terrible story of
defeat. The others perished and lie at the bottom of the North
Sea.
Turn about is fair play. The British nod the Dutch Prot-
estants now carried the war into the territory of the enemy.
Before the end of the century, Houtman, with the help of a
booklet written by Linschoten (a Hollander who had been in
the Portuguese service), had at last discovered the route to
the Indies. As a result the great Dutch East India Company
was founded and a systematic war upon the Portuguese and
Spanish colonies in Asia and Africa was begun in all seriousness.
It was during this early era of colonial conquest that a
curious lawsuit was fought out in the Dutch courts. Early in
the seventeenth century a Dutch Captain by the name of van
Heemskerk, a man who had made himself famous as the head
of an expedition which had tried to discover the North Eastern
Passage to the Indies and who had spent a winter on the frozen
shores of the island of Nova Zembla, had captured a Portuguese
ship in the straits of Malacca. You will remember that
the Pope had divided the world into two equal shares, one of
which had been given to the Spaniards and the other to the
Portuguese. The Portuguese quite naturally regarded the
water which surrounded their Indian islands as part of their
own property and since, for the moment, they were not at war
with the United Seven Netherlands, they claimed that the
captain of a private Dutch trading company had no right to
enter their private domain and steal their ships.
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