The East-India Company was no sooner founded than active steps were taken to make full use of the privileges granted by the Charter.  A fleet of 17 vessels was despatched in 1602 under Wybrand van Waerwyck.  Waerwyck visited Ceylon and most of the islands of the Malay Archipelago, established a factory at Bantam with a staff of officials for developing trade relations with the natives, and even made his way to Siam and China.  He sent back from time to time some of his vessels richly laden, and finally returned himself with the residue of his fleet after an absence of five years in June, 1607.  Another expedition of thirteen ships sailed in 1604 under Steven van der Hagen, whose operations were as widespread and as successful as those of Waerwyck.  Van der Hagen took possession of Molucca and built factories at Amboina, Tidor and other places in the spice-bearing islands.  On his way back in 1606 with his cargo of cloves, spices and other products of the far Orient, he encountered at Mauritius another westward-bound fleet of eleven ships under Cornelis Matelief.  Matelief’s first objective was the town of Malacca, held by the Portuguese and commanding the straits to which it gave its name.  Alphonso de Castro, the Viceroy of India, hastened however with a naval force far more powerful than the Dutch squadron to the relief of this important fortress; and after a hardly-fought but indecisive action Matelief raised the siege on August 17.  Returning, however, about a month later, the Dutch admiral found that De Castro had sailed away, leaving only a detachment of ten vessels before Malacca.  Matelief at once attacked this force, whose strength was about equal to his own, and with such success that he sank or burnt every single ship of the enemy with scarcely any loss, September 21, 1606.

These successful incursions into a region that the Spaniards and Portuguese had jealously regarded as peculiarly their own aroused both anger and alarm.  All available forces in the East (the Portuguese from the Mozambique and Goa, the Spaniards from the Philippines) were equipped and sent to sea with the object of expelling the hated and despised Netherlanders from East-Indian waters.  Paulus van Caerden, Matelief’s successor in command, was defeated and himself taken prisoner.  Nor were the Spaniards content with attacking the Dutch fleets in the far East.  As the weather-worn and heavily-laden Company’s vessels returned along the west coast of Africa, they had to pass within striking distance of the Spanish and Portuguese harbours and were in constant danger of being suddenly assailed by a superior force and captured.  In 1607 rumours reached Holland of the gathering of a large Spanish fleet at Gibraltar, whose destination was the East-Indies.  The directors of the Company were much alarmed, an alarm which was shared by the States-General, many of whose deputies were cargo-shareholders.  Accordingly, in April, 1607, a fleet of twenty-six vessels set sail for the