The Erasmus spins into the bay

April 1600. John Blackthorne, English Pilot-Major of a Dutch fleet, stands the night watch on the Erasmus, the one ship left of five that sailed from Rotterdam to raid Spanish and Portuguese possessions. Of a hundred and seven crew, twenty-eight remain and only ten can walk; scurvy has them all, and the Captain-General, Paulus Spillbergen, moans for food in the great cabin. Blackthorne kicks the merchant Maetsukker aloft, checks on the old gunner Vinck, eats a maggoty hoarded apple, and writes in his rutter: "landfall in the Japans should be soon". He remembers his apprenticeship to Alban Caradoc and the Drake voyage he was forbidden to join. The lookout screams "Rotz vooruiiiiiiiit!" A reef looms; the sleeping mate Hendrik is swept overboard and pulped on the rocks, the foremast snaps, and Blackthorne fights the wheel alone ("Turn, you whore from hell") until a mud shoal turns her head and the ship spins through the pass into the bay beyond.

A storm chapter that doubles as a résumé. Clavell uses the night watch to load Blackthorne's whole backstory before landfall makes any of it matter. The mud shoal that turns the ship's head is the first stroke of unearned luck; Toranaga will later learn to manufacture it.