The Admiral's death was to be the first of many. His own doctor died from a similar fever soon after his most senior patient, as did the flagship's chief merchant. Scurvy was taking hold on board every ship. On Het Geloof over seventy sick men were confined below decks with no sign of recovery. Even with a favourable wind the fleet and its reserves of food were in no state to cross the Atlantic. Mahu had been right. They had no choice but to continue down the West African coast in the hope of finding fresh food and somewhere for the crews to recover.

The plan was to head for a volcanic island in the Gulf of Guinea called Annobon [or Anno Buena] which was well known for its fruit and livestock. However, navigating errors caused the fleet to overshoot the island by some 100 miles. To make matters worse, a caravel they had stolen from the Portuguese carrying their entire supply of corn had disappeared with its crew somewhere along the coast – a mystery never resolved.

On 6 November, anchored in the mouth of a small river north of Cape Lopez, the weary sailors could well have turned their thoughts to travellers’ tales about the exotic women of this Cape. The English adventurer William Teverson had found it difficult to hide his fascination. ‘They have exceedingly long breasts,’ he wrote. ‘Some of them will lay the same upon the ground and lie downby them.He reported that the women ‘were given to lust and uncleanness’and enjoyed enticing mariners back to their thatched huts. To Teverson's surprise perhaps, these ladies ‘esteemed it to be good fortune to have carnall copulation with a Netherlander’ and were seen to ‘bragg and boast among themselves’.

For this fleet of Netherlanders, it was not to be. The next few weeks were spent searching the coastline for an opening that would enable them to venture inland. There had been occasional sightings of natives on the beaches and one encounter with a friendly chieftain yielded some supplies…two goats, some poultry and rather a lot of bananas. On this occasion a bottle of the fleet's Spanish wine had lubricated and temporarily suspended the bartering. The chieftain had downed it himself, fallen sound asleep and no-one had dared wake him.