Every year around late October the doldrums set in to the Banda sea of Indonesia and, because we are cowards, we charter a very large, luxurious boat to take a group of 16 adventurers; amateur historians; lovers of free booze, tropical islands and snorkelling . . . to tackle the calm seas to the home of Nutmeg . . . The Banda Islands.

To be fair, the concept of free booze and tropical islands is probably the big selling point for any voyage to the Banda Islands but as you get ready for your next office meeting, scan your share portfolio and curse the existence of spreadsheets . . . blame nutmeg, the real reason your job exists.

Intriguing, n'est pas?

That's what we thought and after reading Nathaniel's Nutmeg we have been coming back to these forgotten tropical jewels every year.

So let's bring you up to speed by going back in time . . . this might come in handy for trivia night.

It's the early 1500s and Venice controls the spice trade basically because all the spices and silk came overland along the Silk Road to port cities in the Levant (let's just say Arabia) and shipped to Venice which then marked everything up and sent it onward to Europe.

Europe back in those times was famous for bland food, syphilus and the plague. All of which could be fixed with spices such as pepper, cloves and . . . wait for it . . . nutmeg.

Nutmeg was thought to prevent the plague if you wore it as a potpourri (you know those plague doctor masks that look like beaks? Nutmeg and other herbs were often placed in those as people back then believed the plague was transmitted in the air via miasma). . . and with millions dying from the plague, the price of nutmeg soared, plus it made eggnog taste great.

At one stage it is stated that gold was worth its weight in nutmeg.

So, just as everyone hated Pfizer during the Covid crisis, people really hated Venice for having a monopoly over the spice trade. The spices came overland from Asia but the profits stopped in Venice.

Trust me, I'm getting to your job and your superannuation but just wanted to set the scene.

Enter the Portuguese, who basically looked at a map, squinted at Africa, and said, “What if we just… go the long way?” Armed with a few astrolabes, some wildly inaccurate maps, and a high tolerance for scurvy, they rounded the Cape of Good Hope and ended up off the coast of India in 1498.

Within 14 years of arriving in India and establishing forts and trade routes back home, the Portuguese found the only 5 islands in the world that grew nutmeg . . . the Banda Islands.

And the Portuguese were making fat profits from nutmeg for nearly 100 years until the Dutch and English took it away from them.

England was a small sea-faring nation with most of her profits and riches coming from piracy or the politically correct word back then - privateering. A good example was Sir Frances Drake who basically robbed Spanish gold galleons and Portuguese ships coming back from newly discovered South America and Indian trade routes.

So we're talking about a time when the aristocracy were filthy rich and most others were filthy and unemployed.

The perfect combination for the fundamental shift that created the modern world.

Let's skip dates and quite a few details now and get to the reason we live in a capitalistic society of meetings, mortgages and financial collapse.

The Portuguese were nickel and diming their profitable spice trade.

The Dutch and English soon realised that if you could raise enough money, buy a fleet of big boats and man it with the filthy and unemployed (mentioned above), you could make HUGE profits in the spice trade.

In short, you needed someone to SHARE in the risk by getting them to INVEST money into a fleet of ships. Something the Portuguese had never thought about . . . mainly because the ships were funded by the Portuguese crown who were busy putting down revolts and negotiating with the people for which half of the globe they could control (another story).

But selling SHARES basically gave you access to as much money as you needed because you could have hundreds of people invest instead of relying on one or two in-bred royals.

And that was the nail in the coffin of the Portuguese control of the spice trade.

The Dutch VOC financed large fleets, armed with large cannons, to sail to remote spice islands and dominate the trade.

As they bought their spices, for pennies, and sailed back towards home, the value of the "shares" in these ventures would rise hundreds of percent because of the astronomical prices the spices would fetch once the boat finally docked.

The English East India Company was originally called: "The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies" . . . with the East Indies referring to everything to the east of the cape of good hope - eventually it would become the East India company once they gave up the spice trade to the Dutch (mainly because they found a way to grow the spices elsewhere, but I've jumped ahead of myself) and focus on India.

And this leads us to modern finance . . .

The Dutch VOC and the East India Company needed people to manage the finances, stock control, inventory, debts, accounting, wages, sales, payments, receivables and H.R. (which involved rum and floggings, times sure have changed, not necessarily for the better) . . . you get the idea.

This meant people had to be taught how to read, do math and become clerks . . . and attend meetings.

By people I mean men . . . the world was about to change but not for women. Men wore the pants and the wigs.

With a new and proven way of raising capital it was easy for people (men) to raise money for ideas and expand their ideas . . . so if you're inventing a steam engine and need some money to develop or expand, there was now a vehicle for you to do that which bypassed going to an aristocrat or royal family and possible contracting syphillus in doing so.

The rest, as they say, is history . . .

But let's end this with Nathaniel's Nutmeg.

There were only 5 islands, about 10kms apart, in the Banda sea that grew nutmeg and despite that short distance between them, the Dutch controlled three islands and the English held two.

The English feared they would lose their two tiny specs to the huge Dutch fleet just 10kms away need a guy with a huge pair of balls to basically stare down the Dutch navy and hold on to the islands of Run and Ai.

Thankfully they approached Nathaniel Coulthope who said, "hold my beer" jumped in a boat and sailed to Run island and there he convinced the local ruler to pledge allegiance to the King of England and for 5 years held this tropical paradise that basically grew fruits of gold.

I mentioned Ai (Pulo-Ay on the map above) . . . that was English controlled as well but fell to the Dutch and the Dutch horrifically tortured the English soldiers on the island to the point that once word got out it was set to re-ignite another Anglo/Dutch war.

To avoid this, a meeting was held and it was agreed the island of Run would be swapped for a tiny island in Hudson River of America called Manhattan and the Dutch could own the nutmeg trade (at least that's what the Dutch thought at the time).

Kind of fitting really, that the spices that created modern capitalism ended in a swap for an island that basically is creating even more modern capitalism.

Poor old Nathaniel Coulthope died in the Banda islands attempting to sail supplies to his small speck of an island . . . some say he was shot by the Dutch or just drowned.

So what happened to the Dutch empire?

As our Dutch waiter used to say: If you're not Dutch, you're not much. But somehow the Dutch empire faded and the English built an empire where the sun never set.

Remember the tongue twister . . . Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers?

Turns out there was a Frenchman called Pierre Poivre . . . effectively Peter Pepper (piper is the latin for pepper) who, when Peter wasn't picking pecks of pickled pepper, managed to smuggle some seedlings of nutmeg to Maritius and managed to grow the trees there.

The English also did the same.

In fact the Dutch had tried to grow seedlings in other places but couldn't get them to grow so just stuck to torturing and dominating anyone who challenged the local trade.

So with nutmeg no longer under sole control of the Dutch, their dominance of the spice trade waned.

But still, if you walk along the canals of Amsterdam and marvel at the old mansions you can see the result of the spice trade. In fact just a few pounds of nutmeg in the 17th century was enough to buy a townhouse in Amsterdam.

Today the Banda islands still grow nutmeg and the streets and plantations are full of aging cannons, crumbling mansions, old churches and decaying forts. Combine that with an active volcano in the harbour and some of the most stunning coral reefs, these islands are a must-visit.

With a narrow weather window of a few months each year where the seas are calm, there's nothing more satisfying than sailing down to the Banda Islands on a beautiful wooden boat with a group of great people, aircon cabins and all the mod cons to bring this history alive.

Join us on a luxury sailing tour to the Banda Islands

Every year in October we take a group of 16 adventurers on a voyage into the Banda Sea to the Islands of Run, Ai and of course, Banda. You can find out more about these trips and check availability on our Toursmith Website.