Rather than their maps and the instructions of their sponsors, the English trusted Sebastian Cabot’s famous advice – “If a native may be made drunk with your beer or wine you shall know the secrets of his heart”. Cabot’s influence was felt from Hudson Bay to the East Indies, and many lasting friendships between captains and chieftains were struck up over the local palm spirit. According to one source, Manhattan acquired its name from the American Indian word manahactanienk, meaning “the island of general intoxication”.For the crews, such a policy was merely a continuation of procedure aboard ship. The British Empire’s great secret was always its impotence, and never was it more impotent than in its infancy. A single ship out of a flotilla might survive to make landfall, battered and leaking and with its crew reduced by sickness, only to be met by 1,000 Dutchman in rude health and in no mood for sharing. They had no alternative but to win the war of the hearts and minds. Friendship between the Bandanese and the English was oiled by the one pastime they enjoyed in common.

Its reputation was restored by the conduct of the Dutch traders, who acted more like an army of occupation.Though some adventurers could never decide whether they were explorers, traders or conquerors and, presumably out of confusion, fulfilled all three remits just to make sure, Michelborne was an exception among the English. The English, on the other hand, did not have to show they were made of sterner stuff. Their relationship with the natives was a convivial one, aside from the murderous tenure of one Sir Edward Michelborne, a haughty gentleman-villain in the Hollywood style But his misdeeds did not blacken the English name for long. For the gentleman adventurers who led them, there was all the fame the age could accord. Giles Milton’s book is a gripping Boy’s Own record of them all.In 1511, the Portuguese became the first Europeans to set foot in the Banda Islands, and in 1529 troops were landed on Run to build and garrison a castle. A few arrows from the natives were enough to send them “scurrying back to their ships”.

Ten pounds of nutmeg costing less than one English penny in the Banda Islands would fetch pounds 2.10s in London. For the average sea-dog, one filched sack could mean gabled houses and servants back home. The text of the 1616 surrender proclaimed: “And whereas King James by the grace of God is King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, is also now by the mercy of God King of Ai and Run.” On reading these lines, one member of Courthope’s crew remarked that these two islands would prove a great deal more profitable than Scotland ever had It was certainly more profitable for the crewmen. Nutmeg was then the most coveted luxury in Europe, worth more than gold and regarded as the only cure for the plague. Seeking its origins in the mythical East, thousands would risk, and many lose, their lives to acquire it.Today, Run is not even recorded in the Times Atlas of the World. But under the Treaty of Breda in 1667, it was exchanged for Manhattan. To Nathaniel Courthope, the English captain who received the surrender, it was his country’s only opportunity to thwart the master plan of the common enemy, a scheme worthy of a 17th- century Bond villain: to “control the world’s entire supply of nutmeg”.