Now, it happened that at that time a number of merchants in Amsterdam were working for the same purpose. They, too, wanted to sail to the Moluccas by way of the Strait of Magellan. For the sake of greater safety the two companies decided to travel together. In June of the year 1597 their fleet, composed of four ships, was ready for the voyage. Van Noort was to command the biggest vessel, the _Mauritius_, while the commander of the Amsterdam company was to be vice-admiral of the fleet on board the _Henrick Frederick_. The name of the vice-admiral was Jacob Claesz. We know nothing about his early career, but we know all the details of his tragic end. There were two other small ships. There was a yacht called the _Eendracht_, and there was a merchantman called the _Hope_. The tonnage of the ships is not mentioned, but since there were only two hundred and forty-eight men on the four ships, they must have been small even for that time. In a general way our meager information about the invested capital, the strange stories of the early lives of the commanders, and the very rough character of the crew show that we have to do with one of the many mushroom companies, an enterprise which was not based upon very sound principles, but was of a purely speculative nature. During the earliest days of Indian trading, however, all good merchants were in such a hurry to make money to get to Java long before anybody else and to reach home ahead of all competitors that there was no time for the promoting of absolutely sound companies. On the other hand, the men who commanded those first expeditions had all been schooled in the noble art of self-reliance during the first twenty terrible years of the war against Spain. They were brave, they were resourceful, they succeeded where others, more careful, would have failed. On the twenty-eighth of June of the year 1597 Van Noort left Rotterdam to await his companions from Amsterdam in the Downs, England. He waited for several weeks, but the ships did not appear, so he went back to Holland to find out what might have become of them. He found them lying at anchor in one of the Zeeland streams. Evidently there had been a misunderstanding as to the exact meeting-place of the two squadrons. Together they then began the voyage for a second time. They had lost a month and a half in waiting for each other, but at that date forty-five days more or less did not matter. The trip was to take a couple of years, anyway. [Illustration] First of all Van Noort went to Plymouth, where he had arranged to meet a British sailor, commonly referred to as "Captain Melis," a man who had been around the world with Captain Cavendish in 1588, and who was familiar with the stormy regions around the southern part of the American continent. In exchange for one Englishman, Van Noort lost several good Dutchmen. Six of his sailors deserted, and could not be found again.