Born, according to his own account, on the banks of the Medway, between Rochester and Chatham, Adams, at the age of twelve, had commenced a seafaring life, apprentice to Master Nicholas Diggins, of Limehouse, near London, whom he served for twelve years. He acted afterward as master and pilot in her Majesty’s (Queen Elizabeth’s) ships. Then for eleven or twelve years he was employed by the worshipful company of the Barbary merchants. The Dutch traffic with India beginning, desirous, as he tells us, “to make a little experience of the small knowledge which God had given him,” he was induced to enter that service. Mahay’s squadron, in which Adams sailed as chief pilot, consisted of the “Hope,” of two hundred and fifty tons and one hundred and thirty men, the “Faith,” of one hundred and fifty tons and one hundred and nine men, the “Charity,” of one hundred and sixty tons and one hundred and ten men, the “Fidelity,” of one hundred tons and eighty-six men, and the “Good News,” of seventy-five tons and fifty-six men; but these names of good omen did not save these small and overcrowded vessels from a succession of disasters, too common in the maritime enterprises of those days. They left the Texel the 24th of June, and on the 21st of August reached the Cape Verde Islands, where they remained twenty-one days to refresh the men, of whom many were sick with scurvy, including Mahay, their chief commander, who died soon after they had recommenced their voyage. Encountering contrary winds and heavy rains, they were forced to the coast of Guinea, and landed on Cape Gonsalves, just south of the line. The sick were set on shore, and soon after a French sailor came aboard, who promised to do them all favor with the negro king. The country could furnish very few supplies; and as the sick recovered from the scurvy, those hitherto well began to suffer from fever. In this state of distress they set sail for the coast of Brazil; but falling in soon after with the island of Annabon, in the Gulf of Guinea, they landed, took the town, which contained eighty houses, and obtained a supply of oxen, and of oranges and other fruits; but still the men continued to die, of whom they buried more than thirty on this island. Two months were thus spent on the African coast. The ships, setting sail again about the middle of November, were greatly delayed by one of the vessels losing her mainmast, and it was five months before they reached the Straits of Magellan, the crews during most of that time on short allowance, and driven to such extremity as to eat the calf-skins with which the ropes were covered.