The full title of this voyage in Hakluyt's Collection is thus: "A Voyage
with three tall ships, the Penelope, Admiral; the Merchant-Royal,
Vice-Admiral; and the Edward Bonadventure, Rear-Admiral, to the East
Indies, by way of the Cape of Buona Speranza, to Quitangone, near
Mozambique, to the isles of Comoro and Zanzibar, on the backside of
Africa, and beyond Cape Comorin, in India, to the isles of Nicobar, and
of Gomes Palo, within two leagues of Sumatra, to the Islands of Pulo
Pinaom, and thence to the Mainland of Malacca; begun by Mr George
Raymond in the year 1591, and performed by Mr James Lancaster, and
written from the mouth of Edmund Barker of Ipswich, his Lieutenant in
the said Voyage, by Mr Richard Hakluyt."
This voyage is chiefly remarkable as being the first ever attempted by
the English to India, though not with any view of trade, as its only
object seems to have been to commit privateering depredations upon the
Portuguese trading ships in India, or, as we would now call them, the
country ships, which were employed in trading between Goa and the
settlements to the eastwards. It is unnecessary here to point out the
entire disappointment of the adventurers, or the disastrous conclusion
of the expedition, as these are clearly related by Mr Edmund Barker.
This article is followed by a supplementary account of the same voyage,
by John May, one of the people belonging to the Edward Bonadventure, who
relates some of the occurrences rather differently from Edmund Barker,
or rather gives some information that Mr Barker seems to have wished to
conceal.
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