perhaps, a not unsuitable ending to one of the most extraordinary episodes in which an English ship was ever involved in Eastern seas.
A somewhat Cadmean victory was that which Michelborne had won in this encounter. The enemy had been annihilated, but at the cost of a number of the crew and with the loss, in Davis, of the one indispensable man on the ship. After a period of indecision, in which he met the Dutch fleet of five ships, under Admiral Warwyck, which was then on a voyage eastward, he elected to abandon his expedition to China and return immediately home. He eventually reached England towards the close of 1606, a disappointed and discredited man. History has no further concern with his career beyond the evil influences created by his voyage. These were serious in their effect, not merely as they operated on trade, but by the unpleasant impression they gave to the people of the Middle East of the English character. It is doubtful whether for a generation the disagreeable idea that the English were a nation who made free with other people's property at sea was removed. Indeed, more than anything else the piratical raids of Michelborne tended to the discomfiture of the English in their earliest efforts to make their footing good in the spice region.
