Christopher and Cosmas

Christopher and Cosmas were two Japanese men, only known by their Christian names, who are recorded to have travelled across the Pacific on a Spanish galleon in 1587, and were later forced to accompany the English navigator Thomas Cavendish to England, Brazil and the Southern Atlantic, where they disappeared with the sinking of his ship in 1592.

They are first mentioned by the navigator Francis Pretty, in Richard Hakluyt's account of the travels of Cavendish. He writes that on 4 November 1587 the 32-year-old Cavendish, with two ships the Desire (120 tons) and the Content (60 tons) intercepted a Spanish ship, a Manila galleon named Santa Ana, off the coast of Baja California (at Bernabe Bay, some 20 miles east of Cabo San Lucas). Cavendish disembarked the crew onshore, took the rich cargo, and put the ship on fire. But he also chose to keep with him several of the crew in view of his future voyages. In particular he selected two young Japanese men:

On the 6 day of November following, we went into a harbour which is called by the Spaniards, Puerto Seguro. Here the whole company of the Spaniards, to the number of 190 persons were set on shore ... But before his departure, he took out of this great ship two young lads born in Japan, which could both write and read their own language.

The oldest one was about 20 years old, and named Christopher (He is so named in English sources, but his original (Christian) name must have been Cristóbal or Cristóvão). The younger one was named Cosmas (probably Cosme or Gusmão), and was 16. Both of them were said to be very capable. They had converted to Catholicism back in Japan, where Iberian missions were flourishing since the 1540s, and they were probably fluent to some degree in Portuguese or Castilian (at that time, the whole Iberian Peninsula was part of the Crown of Spain, under Philip II).

Among the Spanish crew which was put ashore was the explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno, who would later play an important role in the development of relations between New Spain and Japan.

Cavendish continued across the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean back to England. The two Japanese accompanied him all along, and probably stayed in England for about 3 years, since they are subsequently mentioned during the next mission of Cavendish to the Southern Atlantic, not in Hakluyt's Voyages, but in the writings of Samuel Purchas ("The admirable adventures and strange fortunes of Master Antonie Knivet, which went with Master Thomas Candish in his second voyage to the South Sea. 1591").

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