In September the ships again weighed anchor, crossed the Equator for the third time, and reached Table Bay for Christmas. A message scratched on a rock informed them that the Consent was already six months ahead of them. With no hope of effecting a rendezvous, the Third Voyage continued its leisurely progress calling at Madagascar, where one of the Hector’s men had the misfortune of ‘being shrewdly bitten with an aligarta’, and then attempting a landing at Zanzibar. It was late April, more than a year since leaving England, when they finally sighted Socotra off the horn of Africa.
Here, in an island setting of date palms and desert that might have been designed for The Tempest, the Red Dragon’s Shakespearian enthusiasts perversely rehearsed for Richard II. Meanwhile Keeling quizzed the skipper of a Gujarati vessel for navigational tips. His informant spoke highly of Aden’s trade but, as the English ships discovered on an abortive excursion to the west, the winds were now unfavourable.
Socotra itself, apart from its strategic position as a safe haven at the mouth of the Red Sea, was popular with shipping because it produced large quantities of the ‘nauseous, bitter purgative’ known as aloes. According to the dictionary this substance is produced ‘from the inspissated juice of the agalloch plant’. Socotra was covered with the prickly agalloch and annually inspissated ‘more than Christianity can spende’. But aloes enjoyed a good demand throughout the constipated East and Keeling bought nearly a ton of the stuff. Subsequent visitors to the island would not fail to follow his example although the Socotrans, marooned on their burning rocks amidst a boiling sea, would never discover a use for English woollens.
With plans for Aden aborted, Keeling now wrote off the Arabian Sea and shaped his course direct for Bantam, leaving Hawkins in the Hector to investigate Surat’s potential. On 28 August 1608, the latter became the first commander of an East India Company vessel to set foot on Indian soil. Muddy tidal creeks and low-lying mangrove make Gujarat’s coast one of India’s less inviting. Surat owed its considerable importance simply to its being the principal port of the as yet mainly land-locked Moghul empire. From the account of Will Finch, Hawkins’s companion, it appears that the city lined the banks of the Tapti river some twenty miles upstream from its mouth and the inevitable ‘bar’ beyond which lay the Hector. (Because of estuarine silting it is now rather less accessible from the sea.) ‘Many faire merchants houses’ fronted the river and flanked the castle and maidan ‘which is a pleasant greene in the midst wherof is a maypole’. Beside it stood the custom-house, scene of many all too taxing encounters. Here Hawkins’s trunks were ‘searched and tumbled to our great dislike’. Doubtless their owners, like later factors, were also frisked. ‘They very familiarlye searched all of us to the bottome of our pocketts and nearer too (in modestie to speak of yt [i.e. to put it modestly]).’
Hawkins’s journal is silent on these details. He fails even to marvel at the city’s busy streets ‘humming like bees in swarmes with multitudes of people in white coates’. In truth he was far too worried for such trivial observations. For within days of landing he had crossed swords with the two parties who for the next ten years would make it their business to frustrate English endeavours. On the one hand there was the man whom Hawkins usually called ‘that dogge Mocreb-chan’, otherwise Mukarrab Khan, the Moghul official in charge of the Gujarat ports; his would be the happy task of impounding the Company’s goods, extracting what he pleased, and referring all complaints and requests to his emperor seven hundred miles away at Agra. And on the other hand there were Mukarrab Khan’s accomplices and agents provocateurs, the Portuguese.
For over a century the Portuguese had policed the maritime trade of the Arabian Sea and, although their power might be declining further east, they still had formidable influence at the Moghul court and at every port between Goa and their Persian base at Hormuz. England and Spain (and hence Portugal) were now at peace, a point which Hawkins ingenuously pressed as reason enough for the Portuguese in India not to molest Englishmen. Empowered by the usual royal commission to deliver James I’s letter of introduction to the Emperor Akbar (now, incidentally, dead) Hawkins made no bones about calling himself ‘the King of England’s Embassadour’. And in this capacity he protested vigorously when two of the Hector’s boats were taken by ‘Portingalls’ in the Tapti river.
But the Portuguese had no intention of surrendering any part of the lucrative Moghul trade to newcomers, friend or foe. Their commander at Surat, ‘a proud rascall’ and ‘base villain’ according to Hawkins, rejected the latter’s complaint in language distinctly combative. England he called ‘an island of no import’, King James was ‘a king of fishermen’ and subject to Portugal, and the English were really Hollanders and so traitors; as for Hawkins, ‘a fart for his commission’. It was too much. Exploding with rage, Hawkins challenged the man to a duel. ‘Perceaving I was moved’ the Portuguese commander withdrew and promptly sent his English prisoners off to Goa. Soon after the Hector too left for Bantam. Trade at Surat was obviously going to be long term. Only Hawkins and Finch remained behind. They would seek redress, sell their merchandise, and petition the Emperor for a factory.
Posterity, and especially the chroniclers of British India, have been hard on Hawkins. They criticize his willingness to play the oriental courtier, condemn his moral laxity, and complain that during three years in India he achieved nothing. Whether or not he was the William Hawkins, from the third generation of the Tudors’ most distinguished naval family, who had sailed round the world with Drake is uncertain. But he was undoubtedly a colourful and rumbustious figure. With or without a ship, Finch always calls him ‘The Captain’. He was no stripling and in both conduct and character he seems to belong among the adventurers of Elizabeth’s reign.
Combining vigilance with a ready resort to the sword, he survived two Portuguese attempts on his life before, in February 1609, departing from Surat on the long overland journey to the Moghul court at Agra. (Finch, who had been suffering from dysentery, was left behind at Surat ‘with all things touching the trade of merchandise in his power’.) The journey took ten weeks. Hawkins had a guard of faithful Pathans and was mostly well received. But unlike Saris on his way to Yedo, he scarcely noticed the countryside and was not easily impressed even by Agra, ‘one of the biggest cities in the world’. Although he was an employee of the Company his circumstances were really more analogous to those of Will Adams than of Saris. He too was alone, without a ship, with little to sell, and utterly dependent on an emperor’s favour. Like Adams he would quickly attain a position of considerable influence at an oriental court. And like Adams, there would be some uncertainty as to where his real loyalties lay.
Initially Jehangir, who had succeeded the illustrious Akbar on the Moghul throne in 1603, probably saw the ‘embassadour’ from King James as an acceptable adornment to his circle of courtiers. But this relationship seems to have developed into something much closer. Hawkins was elevated to a pride of place in the imperial entourage which none of his successors would achieve. He was bidden to remain indefinitely at the Emperor’s side and by way of inducement was offered a salary equivalent to £3200 per annum, the rank of ‘khan’