Transcriber’s Notes:
The spelling, punctuation and hyphenation are as the original, with the
exception of apparent typographical errors which have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted _thus_.
See further note at the end of the book.
THE OLD EAST
INDIAMEN
[Illustration]
BOOKS OF TRAVEL
_Demy 8vo. Cloth Bindings. All fully Illustrated_
THROUGH UNKNOWN NIGERIA
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[Illustration: THE EAST INDIAMAN “THOMAS COUTTS,” AS SHE APPEARED IN
THE YEAR 1826.
(By courtesy of Messrs. T. H. Parker Brothers)]
THE OLD EAST INDIAMEN
BY
E. KEBLE CHATTERTON
Lieutenant R.N.V.R.
_Author of “Sailing-Ships and their Story,”
“Down Channel in the ‘Vivette,’”
“Through Holland in the ‘Vivette,’”
“Ships and Ways of Other Days,” etc._
_ILLUSTRATED_
[Illustration; Page Decoration]
LONDON
T. WERNER LAURIE LTD.
8 ESSEX STREET, STRAND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE MAGNETIC EAST 10
III. THE LURE OF NATIONS 18
IV. THE ROUTE TO THE EAST 31
V. THE FIRST EAST INDIA COMPANY 46
VI. CAPTAIN LANCASTER DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF 64
VII. THE BUILDING OF THE COMPANY’S SHIPS 77
VIII. PERILS AND ADVENTURES 91
IX. SHIPS AND TRADE 106
X. FREIGHTING THE EAST INDIAMEN 124
XI. EAST INDIAMEN AND THE ROYAL NAVY 138
XII. THE WAY THEY HAD IN THE COMPANY’S SERVICE 152
XIII. THE EAST INDIAMEN’S ENEMIES 166
XIV. SHIPS AND MEN 180
XV. AT SEA IN THE EAST INDIAMEN 198
XVI. CONDITIONS OF SERVICE 226
XVII. WAYS AND MEANS 248
XVIII. LIFE ON BOARD 265
XIX. THE COMPANY’S NAVAL SERVICE 281
XX. OFFENCE AND DEFENCE 291
XXI. THE “WARREN HASTINGS” AND THE “PIÉMONTAISE” 305
XXII. PIRATES AND FRENCH FRIGATES 316
XXIII. THE LAST OF THE OLD EAST INDIAMEN 329
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The East Indiaman _Thomas Coutts_ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The East India House 4
The Hon. East India Co.’s Ship _General Goddard_ with
H.M.S. _Sceptre_ and _Swallow_ capturing Dutch East
Indiamen off St Helena 12
The _Essex_ East Indiaman at anchor in Bombay Harbour 24
The East Indiaman _Kent_ 42
Dutch East Indiamen 54
The launch of the Hon. East India Co.’s Ship _Edinburgh_ 78
India House, the Sale Room 88
The Hon. East India Co.’s Ship _Bridgewater_ entering
Madras Roads 96
The _Halsewell_ East Indiaman 104
The _Seringapatam_ East Indiaman 120
A Barque Free-trader in the London Docks 130
The Press-Gang at Work 140
The East Indiaman _Swallow_ 182
Commodore Sir Nathaniel Dance 190
Repulse of Admiral Linois by the China Fleet under
Commodore Sir Nathaniel Dance 196
A view of the East India Docks in the early 19th Century 210
The _Thames_ East Indiaman 218
The _Windham_ East Indiaman sailing from St Helena 224
The _Jessie_ and _Eliza Jane_ in Table Bay, 1829 236
The _Alfred_ East Indiaman 242
The East Indiaman Cruiser _Panther_ in Suez Harbour 250
The East Indiaman _Triton_, rough sketch of stern 256
The East Indiaman _Earl Balcarres_ 262
Deck scene of the East Indiaman _Triton_ 266
The West Indiaman _Thetis_ 272
The _Kent_ East Indiaman on fire in the Bay of Biscay 276
The Cambria brig receiving the last boat-load from the
_Kent_ 282
The _Vernon_ East Indiaman 294
The _Sibella_ East Indiaman 306
The East Indiaman _Queen_ 318
The East Indiaman _Malabar_, built of wood in 1860 330
The _Blenheim_ East Indiaman 340
PREFACE
The author desires to acknowledge the courtesy of Messrs T. H. Parker
Brothers of Whitcomb Street, W.C., for allowing him to reproduce the
illustrations mentioned on many of the pages of this book; as also the
P. & O. Steam Navigation Company for permission to reproduce the old
painting of the _Swallow_.
Owing to the fact that the author is now away at sea serving under the
White Ensign, it is hoped that this may be deemed a sufficient apology
for any errata which may have been allowed to creep into the text.
THE OLD EAST INDIAMEN
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In this volume I have to invite the reader to consider a special
epoch of the world’s progress, in which the sailing ship not only
revolutionised British trade but laid the foundations of, and almost
completed, that imposing structure which is to-day represented by the
Indian Empire. It is a period brimful of romance, of adventures, travel
and the exciting pursuit after wealth. It is a theme which, for all
its deeply human aspect, is one for ever dominated by a grandeur and
irresistible destiny.
With all its failings, the East India Company still remains in history
as the most amazingly powerful trading concern which the world has ever
seen. Like many other big propositions it began in a small way: but
it acquired for us that vast continent which is the envy of all the
great powers of the world to-day. And it is important and necessary to
remember always that we owe this in the first place to the consummate
courage, patience, skill and long-suffering of that race of beings,
the intrepid seamen, who have never yet received their due from the
landsmen whom they have made rich and comfortable.
Among the Harleian MSS. there is a delightful phrase written by a
seventeenth-century writer, in which, treating of matters that are
not immediately concerned with the present subject, he remarks very
quaintly that “the first article of an Englishman’s Politicall Creed
must be that he believeth in ye Sea etc. Without that there needeth
no general Council to pronounce him uncapable of Salvation.” This
somewhat sweeping statement none the less aptly sums up the whole
matter of our colonisation and overseas development. The entire glamour
of the Elizabethan period, marked as it unfortunately is with many
deplorable errors, is derived from the sea. With the appreciation
of what could be attained by a combination of stout ships, sturdy
seamen, navigation, seamanship, gunnery and high hopes that refused
persistently to be daunted, the most farsighted began to see that
success was for them. Honours, wealth, the founding of families that
should treasure their names in future generations, the acquisition
of fine estates and the building of large houses with luxuries that
exceeded the Tudor pattern—these were the pictures which were conjured
up in the imaginations of those who vested their fortunes and often
their lives in these ocean voyages. The call of the sea had in England
fallen mostly on deaf ears until the late sixteenth century. It is only
because there were some who listened to it, obeyed, and presently led
others to do as they had done, that the British Empire has been built
up at all.
Our task, however, is to treat of one particular way in which that call
has influenced the minds and activities of men. We are to see how that,
if it summoned some across the Atlantic to the Spanish Main, it sent
others out to the Orient, yet always with the same object of acquiring
wealth, establishing trade with strange peoples, and incidentally
affording a fine opportunity for those of an adventurous spirit who
were unable any longer to endure the cramped and confined limitations
of the neighbourhood in which they had been born and bred. And though,
as we proceed with our story, we shall be compelled to watch the
gradual growth and the vicissitudes of the East Indian companies, yet
our object is to obtain a clear knowledge not so much of the latter
as of the ships which they employed, the manner in which they were
built, sailed, navigated and fought. When we speak of the “Old East
Indiamen” we mean of course the ships which used to carry the trade
between India and Europe. And inasmuch as this trade was, till well on
into the nineteenth century, the valuable and exclusive monopoly of
the East India Company, carefully guarded against any interlopers, our
consideration is practically that of the Company’s ships. After the
Company lost their monopoly to India, their ships still possessed the
monopoly of trading with China until the year 1833. After that date
the Company sold the last of their fleet which had made them famous as
a great commercial and political concern. In their place a number of
new private firms sprang up, who bought the old ships from the East
India Company, and even built new ones for the trade. These were very
fine craft and acted as links between England and the East for a few
years longer, reaching their greatest success between the years 1850
and 1870. But the opening of the Suez Canal and the enterprise of
steamships sealed their fate, so that instead of the wealth which was
obtained during those few years by carrying cargoes of rich merchandise
between the East and the West, and transporting army officers, troops
and private passengers, there was little or no money to be made by
going round the Cape. Thus the last of the Indiamen sailing ships
passed away—became coal-hulks, were broken up; or, changing their name
and nationality, sailed under a Scandinavian flag.
The East India Company rose from being a private venture of a few
enterprising merchants to become a gigantic corporation of immense
political power, with its own governors, its own cavalry, artillery
and infantry, its own navy, and yet with its trade-monopoly and its
unsurpassed “regular service” of merchantmen. The latter were the
largest, the best built, and the most powerfully armed vessels in
the world, with the exception only of some warships. They were, so
to speak, the crack liners of the day, but they were a great deal
more besides. Their officers were the finest navigators afloat,
their seamen were at times as able as any of the crews in the Royal
Navy, and in time of war the Government showed how much it coveted
them by impressing them into its service, to the great chagrin and
inconvenience of the East India Company, as we shall see later on in
our story.
[Illustration: THE EAST INDIA HOUSE.
(By courtesy of Messrs. T. H. Parker Brothers)]
From being at first a small trading concern with a handful of factors
and an occasional factory planted in the East in solitary places, the
Company progressed till it had its own civil service with its training
college in England for the cadets aspiring to be sent out to the East.
It is due to the Company not only that India is now under the British
flag, but that the wealth of our country has been largely increased
and a new outlet was found for our manufactures. The factors who went
out in the first Indiamen sailing ships sowed the seed which to-day we
now reap. The commanders of these vessels made their “plots” (charts)
and obtained by bitter experience the details which provided the first
sailing directions. They were at once explorers, traders, fighters,
surveyors. The conditions under which they voyaged were hard enough,
as we shall see: and the loss of human life was a high price at which
all this material trade-success was obtained. Notwithstanding all
the quarrels, the jealousies, the murders, the deceits, the misrule
and corruption, the bribery and extortion which stain the activities
of the East India Company, yet during its existence it raised the
condition of the natives from the lowest disorder and degradation: and
if the Company found it not easy to separate its commercial from its
political aspirations, yet the British Government in turn found it
very convenient on occasions when this corporation’s funds could be
squeezed, its men impressed; or even its ships employed for guarding
the coasts of England or transporting troops out to India.
It is difficult to realise all that the East India Company stood for.
It comprised under its head a large shipping line with many of the
essential attributes of a ruling nation, and its merchant ships not
only opened up to our traders India, but Japan and China as well. And
bear in mind that the old East Indiamen set forth on their voyages
not with the same light hearts that their modern successors, the
steamships of the P. & O. line, begin their journey. Before the East
India Company’s ships got to their destination, they had to sail right
away round the Cape of Good Hope and then across the Indian Ocean,
having no telegraphic communication with the world, and with none of
the comforts of a modern liner—no preserved foods, no iced drinks or
anything of that sort. Any moment they were liable to be plunged into
an engagement: if not with the French or Dutch men-of-war, then with
roving privateers or well-armed pirate ships manned by some of the
most redoubtable rascals of the time, who stopped at no slaughter or
brutality. There were the perils, too, of storms, and of other forms
of shipwreck, and the almost monotonous safety of the modern liner was
a thing that did not exist. Later on we shall see in what difficulties
some of these ships became involved. It was because they were ever
expectant of a fight that they were run practically naval fashion. They
were heavily armed with guns, they had their special code of signals
for day and night, they carried their gunners, who were well drilled
and always prepared to fight: and we shall see more than one instance
where these merchant ships were far too much for a French admiral and
his squadron.
These East Indiamen sailing ships were really wonderful for what
they did, the millions of miles over which they sailed, the millions
of pounds’ worth of goods which they carried out and home: and this
not merely for one generation, but for two and a half centuries. It
is really surprising that such a unique monopoly should have been
enjoyed for all this time, and that other ships should have been (with
the exceptions we shall presently note) kept out of this benefit.
The result was that an East Indiaman was spoken of with just as much
respect as a man-of-war. She was built regardless of cost and kept in
the best of conditions; and all the other merchantmen in the seven seas
could not rival her for strength, beauty and equipment. It was a golden
age, a glorious age: an epoch in which British seamanhood, British
shipbuilding in wood, were capable of being improved upon only by the
clipper ships that followed for a brief interval. They earned handsome
dividends for the Company, they were always full of passengers, troops
and valuable freight; and, although they were not as fine-lined as the
clipper ships, yet they made some astounding passages. They carried
crews that in number and quality would make the heart of a modern
Scandinavian skipper break with envy. The result was that they were
excellently handled and could carry on in a breeze till the last
minute, when sail could be taken in smartly with the minimum of warning.
The country fully appreciated how invaluable was this East India
service, and certainly no merchantmen were ever so regulated and
controlled by Acts of Parliament. To-day you never hear of any merchant
skipper buying or selling his command, nor retiring after a very few
voyages with a nice little fortune for the rest of his life. But these
things occurred in the old East Indiamen, when commanders received even
knighthoods and a good income settled on them, for life, as a reward
of their gallantry. Those were indeed the palmy days of the merchant
service, and many an ill-paid mercantile officer to-day, wearied of
receiving owners’ complaints and no thanks, must regret that his lot
was not to be serving with the East India Company.
When we consider the two important centuries and a half, during which
the East Indiamen ships were making history and trade for our country,
helping in the most important manner to build up our Indian Empire,
fighting the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French, privateers and
pirates, and generally opening up the countries of the East, it is
to me perfectly extraordinary that the history of these ships has
never yet been written. I have searched in vain in our great national
libraries—in the British Museum, the India Office, the Admiralty
and elsewhere—but I have not been able to find one volume dealing
exclusively with these craft. In an age that sees no end to the making
of books there is therefore need for a volume that should long since
have been written. Many of the story-books of our boyhood begin with
the hero leaving England in an East Indiaman: but they say little or
nothing as to how she was rigged, how she was manned, and what uniforms
her officers wore.
I feel, then, that I may with confidence ask the reader who loves ships
for themselves, or is fascinated by history, or is specially interested
in the rise of our Indian Empire, to follow me in the following pages
while the story of these old East Indiamen is narrated. In a little
while we shall have passed entirely from the last of all surviving
ocean-going sailing ships, but during the whole of their period none
have left their mark so significantly on past and present affairs
as the old East Indiamen. I can guarantee that while pursuing this
story the reader will find much that will interest and even surprise
him: but above all will be seen triumphant the true grit and pluck
which have ever been the attributes of our national sailormen—the
determination to carry out, in spite of all costs and hardships, the
serious task imposed on them of getting the ship safely to port with
all her valuable lives, and her rich cargoes, regardless of weather,
pirates, privateers and the enemies of the nation whose flag they
flew. And this fine spirit will be found to be confined to no special
century nor to any particular ship: but rather to pervade the whole of
the East India Company’s merchant service. The days of such a monopoly
as this corporation’s trade and shipping are much more distant even
than they seem in actual years: but happily it is our proud boast, as
year after year demonstrates, that those qualities, which composed
the magnificent seamanhood of the crews of these vessels, are no less
existent and flourishing to-day in the other ships under the British
flag that venture north, south, east and west. The only main difference
is this:—Yesterday the sailor had a hundred chances, for every one
opportunity which is afforded to-day to the sons of the sea, of showing
that the grand, undying desire to do the right thing in the time of
crisis is one of the greatest assets of our nation.