The two ships, the
Castricum under De Vries and the
Breskens under Hendrick Cornelisz Schaep left
Batavia, the capital of Dutch
Java, in February 1643. After a stop in
Ternate in the
Moluccas they continued their journey on April 4, roughly two months later. The two ships lost touch with each other in a storm six weeks later, on May 20, while off
Hachijo Shima, an island some 290 km south of
Edo. The Dutch later named the island
Ongeluckich or "Unlucky". and the
Strait of Tartary.
Breskens in Yamada The
Breskens arrived in a promising bay and was received in a friendly manner by the population of
Yamada on
Tohoku,
Japan. Six weeks later the
Breskens again sailed to Yamada, probably while they had a good time. In the evening they organized a party with a
samurai and most probably some Japanese women. (It is not known what exactly happened, because the diary got lost in 1692, after
Nicolaes Witsen received it.) The next day, July 29, ten members of the crew, including the captain were invited by the women to come to a farm where they would receive fresh vegetables and fish. The unarmed crew was offered
sake and rice, but captured, and sent to
Morioka and
Edo for
interrogation. The Japanese feared Portuguese / Spanish
Jesuits had come to land. As a result,
bakufu officials were extremely anxious about the problem of coastal defenses. However, after it was understood that the crew were Dutch
merchants and not Catholics, the problem to be solved became one of deciding by which procedure the Dutch should be released. After Jan van Elserac had arrived, the
shōgun Tokugawa Iemitsu sent them in December to
Deshima. The crew had to wait nine months for the next ship to
Taiwan while the
Breskens had left Honshu already at the end of July (without a captain) searching for the gold and silver Islands. == Castricum going north ==