For five years in Virginia he exhibited a certain stern efficiency which was perhaps the best support and medicine that could have been devised.

At the end of that time, leaving Virginia, he did not return to the Dutch service, but became Admiral of the fleet of the English East India Company, thus passing from one huge historic mercantile company to another.

With six ships he sailed for India.

Near Java, the English and the Dutch having chosen to quarrel, he had with a Dutch fleet "a cruel, bloody fight." Later, when peace was restored, the East India Company would have given him command of an allied fleet of English and Dutch ships, the objective being trade along the coast of Malabar and an attempt to open commerce with the Chinese.

But Sir Thomas Dale was opening commerce with a vaster, hidden land, for at Masulipatam he died.