East
Indies, in_ 1596.[29]

INTRODUCTION.

In the year 1596, a squadron of three ships, the Bear, Bear's Welp, and
Benjamin, was fitted out, chiefly at the charges of Sir Robert Dudley,
and the command given to Mr Benjamin Wood. The merchants employed in
this voyage were, Mr Richard Allot and Mr Thomas Bromfield, both of the
city of London. As they intended to have proceeded as far as China, they
obtained the gracious letters of Queen Elizabeth, of famous memory, to
the king or emperor of that country, recommending these two merchants,
or factors, to his protection.

[Footnote 29: Purchas his Pilgrims, I. 110, Astl. I. 252.]

This their honourable expedition, and gracious recommendations from her
majesty for the furtherance of their mercantile affairs, had no
answerable effects, but suffered a double disaster: first, in the
miserable perishing of the squadron; and next, in losing the history, or
relation, of that tragedy. Some broken plank, however, as after a
shipwreck have yet been encountered from the West Indies, which gives us
some notice of this East-Indian misadventure. Having the following
intelligence by the intercepted letters of the licentiate _Alcasar de
Villa Senor_, auditor in the royal audience of St Domingo, judge of the
commission in Porto Rico, and captain-general of the province of New
Andalusia, written to the King of Spain and his royal council of the
Indies; an extract of which, so far as concerns this business, here
follows; wherein let not the imputation of robbery and piracy trouble
the minds of the reader, being the words of a Spaniard concerning the
deeds of Englishmen, done in the time of war between us and them.

So far we have exactly followed the introductory remarks of Purchas. In
the sequel, however, we have thought it better to give only an
abridgement of the letter from Alcasar de Villa Senor, which Purchas
informs us, in a side note, he had found among the papers of Mr Richard
Hakluyt. In this we have followed the example of the editor of Astley's
Collection, because the extract given by Purchas is very tedious, and
often hardly intelligible. This letter, dated from Porto Rico, 2d
October, 1601, gives no light whatever into the voyage itself, nor by
what accident the ships, which had set out for the East Indies, had come
into the West Indies; neither what became of the ships, nor the nature
of the sickness which had reduced their men to four, but wholly refers
to what passed aft