SHIPS AND TRADE
We alluded on an earlier page to what were known as “separate” voyages.
In the year 1612 the owners of the different stocks joined together
and made one common capital of £740,000. Until that year the custom
had been for a number of men to subscribe together for one particular
voyage out and home. This was found by no means satisfactory, for it
meant there was too much rivalry and no co-operation. Before one voyage
was completed another would be sent out, and it happened that out in
the East several agents in their zeal to obtain cargoes for their ships
would be found bidding against each other, to the great advantage of
the natives and the loss of the English stock-holders. Then, again,
it would also happen that the ship of one particular voyage might be
lying empty at some Indian port waiting till her factor had obtained
the spices and other goods destined for England. Meanwhile the factor
of a second voyage had _his_ goods ready but no ship in which to send
them home. Each “voyage” was thus a separate and distinct concern,
declining to have anything to do with any other “voyage,” or group of
adventurers. When, therefore, this practice came to an end, the union
made for strength and did away with the ill feeling and waste of energy
till then so noticeable. The first joint stock began in the year 1613
and ended in 1617.
During this period twenty-nine ships of the Company were employed, and
by the end of the year 1617 eight had returned with cargoes, four had
been either lost or broken up, two had fallen into the hands of the
Dutch, and fifteen were still in the East Indies. When the new stock
was undertaken, most of these ships still in India were taken over at
valuation. The biggest East Indiaman craft at this time were the _Royal
James_, of 1000 tons; the _Anne Royal_, of 900 tons; and _The New
Year’s Gift_, of 800 tons.
The Master Hippon, of whom we made mention in the last chapter, had
command of the _Globe_, which set forth from England alone and made
direct for the Coromandel coast (the south-east portion of India).
He called neither at the Red Sea, the Nicobars, nor the East Indian
Archipelago. His mission was to inaugurate a new sphere of trade, and
in so doing he was laying the foundations of those rich commercial
centres of Madras and Calcutta. His work was not easy, for the Dutch
would not allow him to operate in their neighbourhood, but he left
a little band of men near Masulipatam to found a factory, and then
went on to establish other factories in the Malay Peninsula and Siam.
In the year 1612 Captain Best had obtained from the Court of Delhi
considerable privileges, including that of establishing a factory at
Surat. This was to become the chief English station in India until
the acquisition of Bombay. In establishing these factories, the
English were but copying the example of the Portuguese and Dutch.
They were essential as depots for the goods brought from home and the
commodities which had been obtained from the natives, and were awaiting
the arrival of the Company’s ships. In charge of these factories were
the Company’s agents and their clerks. But it is well to bear in mind
that these factories and factors were destined to undergo development.
As a measure of precaution the former were in the course of time
strengthened, and at a still later stage they became even forts, so
that the agents and clerks developed into a garrison. And from a
strictly defensive policy a more aggressive influence occurred which
resulted in acquisition of territory as well as trading rights.
Captain Best had sailed from Gravesend on 1st February 1612, with
the _Red Dragon_ and the _Hoseander_, and arrived in the Swally, the
roadstead for Surat, on 5th September. Here also were the Portuguese
fleet a few weeks later ready to thwart the English, but Best was ready
for them, and eventually hostilities were inevitable. But Best had the
true English spirit in him, and besides being an excellent leader of a
trading expedition, he was also no mean tactician, taking advantage of
tide and the proximity of sandy shoals. The result was that the English
were victorious and the Portuguese admiral defeated. But this meant
something more than was immediately apparent. In a word it was to have
a considerable influence on the future Anglo-Indian trade, and so give
a still greater demand for the Indian merchant ships. In order properly
to realise the position, you have to think of a weak man over-awed by
a giant. Another giant comes along and asks the weak man for certain
favours. The latter replies that he would be willing to make the
concessions if the second giant could conquer the first, for whom the
weak man has no real love. In the present instance the first giant is
represented by the Portuguese, the weak man is the Great Mogul, and the
second giant the English. The latter had been thwarted from trading
with Surat by the Portuguese. What the Mogul had said amounted to this:
“Defeat the Portuguese and I will give you and yours every opportunity
to trade in my dominions: your merchants shall not be molested, the
customs imposed shall be as light as possible, and if there is any
delinquency by which my people shall in any way injure your men, I will
see that the matter is soon set right and redress given. Your country
shall be allowed to send its ambassador and reside at my Court—but you
must first exhibit your strength by conquering the hated Portuguese.”
So Best’s victory succeeded as only success can. The mighty power of
the Portuguese was now broken like a reed. They had been defeated on
sea who prided themselves on sea-power. They had lost their prestige
with the natives, who had had the first Europeans in awe. The whole of
the Portuguese Indian system, which had amounted to piracy, oppression
and native ruin, had been, in the words of India’s great modern
historian, Sir Wm. Wilson Hunter, “rotten to the core.” It was now
to receive its death-blow, and a new order of things was to follow.
Instead of the previous opposition, the English were now allowed to
open their trade and to start factories both at Surat and elsewhere,
and the English East India Company obtained a most firm footing—not as
interlopers doing the best they could against Portuguese vigilance,
but recognised by the Great Mogul as an important and powerful trading
corporation. It was after these concessions had been made and various
factories set up that the latter needed obvious protection both from
the Portuguese and the pirates who were greatly harassing the trading
ships. Thus on land the nucleus was formed of an Indian army: thus
afloat the nucleus also was formed of the Bombay Marine, afterwards to
be known as the Indian navy.
For the latter the Company’s Surat agent was compelled to do the
best with local material, collecting native craft called grabs and
gallivats and commanded by officers who volunteered from the Company’s
merchant ships. As these craft, like all other local craft, were the
most suitable for the conditions of the place, the Company was well
able to patrol the Gulf of Cambay and protect the vessels loaded
with merchandise. This Indian marine had come into being during the
year 1613, and two years later consisted of ten local craft. In the
same year arrived from England four of the Company’s ships, under
Captain Keeling, with Sir Thomas Roe, who had been sent by James I.
as ambassador to the Great Mogul, and the treaty with the latter was
ratified.
So the voyages continued to be made between England and the East. There
was still opposition on the part of the Dutch, who would occasionally
seize the Company’s ships, and in the year 1623 this opposition reached
its crisis in the notorious Massacre of Amboyna, when the English
Company’s agent and nine more Englishmen were executed on a trivial
charge. Nor were the Portuguese ships swept from the Eastern seas. The
sea-power was broken, but it still existed in its weakly condition, and
nothing gave the English seamen greater pleasure than to meet any of
their big caracks in the Indian Ocean or elsewhere and attack them. But
the factors who had been installed at Surat were in no way deficient
in enterprise. They were doing an excellent trade, not merely between
England and India, but between India and Bantam. This was not enough:
they were determined to open up commerce with the Persian Gulf.
Now this meant that trouble was inevitable. If the Portuguese had lost
their hold on India, they were certainly just as strong as formerly at
Ormuz and other parts of the Persian Gulf. To traffic, or to attempt
to traffic, with this part of the Orient was certain to mean further
conflict with the nation which had received so much injury from Captain
Best. For most of a hundred years the Portuguese had been enjoying
their monopoly up the Gulf. However, neither this nor the certainty
of conflict could turn aside the ambition of the English East India
Company. Their ships were sent from Surat with Indian goods, the
Portuguese vessels opposed them, the victory went to the English, and
thus once more, as it had been in the territory of the Great Mogul,
so the result was to be in regard to the Persian trade. The natives
realised that the English were worth listening to, and their prestige
was raised to the height from which the Portuguese simultaneously
dropped. Henceforth the English factors could bring from Surat their
calicoes and take back silks. A little later Ormuz was destroyed—Ormuz
which had been the seat of Portuguese supremacy in the Persian Gulf
and the centre of its wealthy trade in that region—and thus once more
the nation which had been the first of European countries to unlock the
secrets of the East was told to quit. By the year 1622—a short enough
period since the inauguration of the East India Company in London—the
Portuguese had thus been driven out from those very places in the East
which had been so dear to them and the means of so much wealth. By the
year 1654 they had been compelled to agree that the English should
have the right to reside and trade in all these Eastern possessions.
It was a terrible blow to Portuguese pride, a grievous disappointment
to a nation which had done so much for the discovery of the world, and
enough to make Prince Henry the Navigator turn in his grave. But it
was inevitable, for the reason that as the Portuguese had declined in
sea-power, so the English had been rising ever since the mid-sixteenth
century, though more especially during the latter half of Elizabeth’s
reign. The call of the sea to English ears was being listened to
more attentively than ever, and when that call summoned men to such
profitable trade it continued to be heard through the centuries. Each
success added zest and gave an increased enthusiasm. Men who wanted
to see the world, or to increase their meagre incomes, or to get away
from the narrow confines of their own town or village were eager to
take their oath to the Company and go East, where a more adventurous
life awaited them. But with the Portuguese it was not so. Most of their
Latin enthusiasm had run out: they had begun well, but they had been
unable to sustain. And the series of blows—the capture of their finest
caracks, the revelation of their East Indian secrets, the colossal
defeat of the Armada, the persistent and successful impertinence
of English interlopers in India, the glaring proof that English
seamanship, navigation, naval strategy, tactics and gunnery were as
good as their own—this succession of hard facts tended to break their
spirit, made them compelled to bow to the inevitable. _Sic transit
gloria mundi._
Between the years 1617 and 1629 the English East India Company had sent
out no fewer than 57 ships, containing 26,690 tons of merchandise. In
addition they employed eighteen pinnaces which spent their time trading
from port to port in the East Indies. We have already alluded to the
inception of the Indian navy by the Surat factory. As time went on this
flotilla of local craft was strengthened by big ships sent out from
England. But as this volume is not a history of either the East India
Company or of the development of the Indian navy, we must confine our
attention to the story of the Company’s merchant ships during the many
years in which they existed with such marvellous and unprecedented
benefit to India and the English nation. Those who are interested
merely in the rise of the Indian navy will find the account in Captain
Low’s volumes.
Now covetousness is a sin which is peculiar not merely to individuals,
but to corporations and even nations. You may be sure that all this
success on the part of the East India Company’s ships and of their
trading ashore led to no small amount of jealousy and longing at home.
It is true that the State had assisted and encouraged the Company in
every way: for it was obvious that it was for the nation’s welfare
generally, and in particular a fine support for the navy in respect
of ships, men and stores. But the time arrived when the Company began
to be pinched and squeezed by the power that hitherto had given only
assistance. Covetousness was at the bottom of it all, but the actual
opportunity had arisen over the capture of Ormuz, from which, it had
been reported, a large amount of spoil had been taken. It was easy
enough to invent some excuse, and this came in the year 1624 when the
Company, understanding that the Portuguese were preparing a fleet
against them in Indian waters, began to get ready a squadron of seven
ships to leave England. When these ships were ready to sail, the Lord
High Admiral of England, who happened to be the Duke of Buckingham,
obtained from Parliament an order to lay an embargo on these ships,
lying at Tilbury. A claim was made for a portion of the spoil supposed
to have been taken at Ormuz and elsewhere. And in spite of protests
the sum of £10,000 had to be paid before the ships were released.
About this time, also, the Company were attacked in Parliament on
three grounds: (1) For exporting the treasure of the kingdom, it
being alleged that £80,000 had been sent out yearly in money: (2) For
destroying the invaluable timber of the country by building exceedingly
great ships, the timber being wanted for the navy: (3) For causing
the supply of mariners to become injured by these voyages. The last
item was certainly unreasonable: for, as a fact, about one-third, or
sometimes one-half, of every ship’s complement consisted of landsmen,
who went on board “green” to sea life. But as happens over and over
again, even in our luxurious times, many a green-horn discovers after
a while that the life of a seaman is just what really suits him: and
it was so with these landsmen to a large extent. The service opened up
a new career for them, and these fellows were to add to rather than
diminish the country’s supply of sailors.
The ships were getting slightly more habitable and better built, though
no very great change was taking place. How unseaworthy were some of
the Company’s best vessels may be seen from a letter sent on 10th
June 1614 by Robert Larkin, who murmurs bitterly of his craft, the
_Darling_. “The _Darling_,” he writes, “complaineth sore, but I hope to
God she will carry us well to Puttam, and further tediousness I omit.
But I wish to God I were well rid of my captainship, or the _Darling_
a sounder vessel to carry me in.” So also that big East Indiaman, the
_Royal James_, during the year 1617 sprang a serious leak, and the way
in which this was stopped makes most interesting reading to all lovers
of ships. Her commander at that time, Captain Martin Pring, wrote to
the Company on the 12th of November of the year mentioned that about
a fortnight before the _Royal James_ had reached Swally—the port of
Surat—“we had a great leak broke upon us in the _James_, which in four
hours increased six foot water in hold, and after we had freed it and
made the pumps suck, it would rise thirteen inches in half-an-hour. It
was a great blessing of God that it fell out in such weather, by which
means we had the help of all the fleet, otherwise all our company had
been tired in a very short time. The 9th, we made many trials with a
bonnet stitched with oakum under the bulge of the ship, but it did
no good. The 11th, we basted our spritsail with oakum and let it
down before the stem of the ship and so brought it aft by degrees: in
which action it pleased God so to direct us that we brought the sail
right under the place where the oakum was presently sucked into the
leak: which stopped it in such sort that the ship made less water the
day following than she had done any day before from the time of our
departure out of England.”
The device here employed was well known to the old-fashioned sailor,
and designated “fothering.” Briefly the idea was as follows. In order
to stop the leak a sail was fastened at the four corners and then let
down under the ship’s bottom, a quantity of chopped rope-yarns, oakum,
cotton, wool—anything in the least serviceable for the job—being also
put in. If you were lucky you would find that after the first few
attempts the leak would have sucked up some of the oakum or whatever
was put into the sail, and so the water would not pour in as badly.
This device certainly saved Captain Cook during one of his voyages
after his ship had struck a rock and the sea poured in so quickly
that the pumps were unable to cope with it. In the description given
above by Captain Pring you will notice that he used his spritsail for
this purpose. This was a quadrilateral sail set at the end of the
bowsprit, but was abolished from East Indiamen and other ships in the
early part of the nineteenth century. At first, you will observe,
the bonnet—doubtless the bonnet of the mainsail—the use of which we
described on an earlier page, was tried and lowered under the “bulge”
(or, as we now say, the “bilge”) of the ship. “Stitched with oakum”
means that the little tufts of oakum were lightly stitched to the
canvas just to keep them in position until the suction of the leak drew
them up the hole away from the canvas. When he says he “basted” the
spritsail with oakum he means again that the latter was sewn with light
stitches. This spritsail was lowered down at the bows till it got below
the ship’s forefoot and then brought gradually aft till the position of
the leak was reached, and then the oakum was sucked up with the happy
result noted. This all reads much simpler than it was in actuality: and
you can imagine that it was no easy matter getting this sail into its
exact position while the ship was plunging and rolling in a seaway.
Eventually the _Royal James_ got over the bar at Swally, and a
consultation was then held aboard her by Captain Pring and a number
of other captains as to what had now best be done. One opinion was to
careen her so as to get at the leak and caulk it. Another opinion was
to “bring her aground for the speedy stopping of her dangerous leak.”
But these captains had before their minds the recollection that the
_Trade’s Increase_ had been lost whilst being careened, and another
ship named the _Hector_ likewise: so they unanimously agreed that the
best thing would be to put the _Royal James_ ashore, first taking out
of her the merchandise. They were more than a little nervous as to how
this big ship would take the ground, so “for a trial” they brought
ashore the _Francis_, an interloping vessel which they had captured.
When it was seen that the _Francis_ seemed to take the ground all
right and that she lay there three tides without apparent injury “and
never complained in any part,” they put the _Royal James_ ashore
also. Unluckily this was not with the same amount of success, “for she
strained very much about the midship and made her bends to droop: which
caused us to haul her off again so soon that we had not time to find
the leak. Yet (God be praised) since we came afloat her bends are much
righted and she hath remained very tight: God grant she may so long
continue.”
When Sir Thomas Roe went out from England in the year 1615 to Surat as
English Ambassador to the Great Mogul, he was accompanied by Edward
Terry, his chaplain. The latter has left behind an account of his
voyage to India, and though we cannot do much more than call attention
thereto, we may in passing note that this setting forth shows how
much valuable time was wasted in those days waiting for a fair wind.
For these seventeenth-century ships had neither the fine lines nor
the superiority of rig which was afterwards to make the East Indiamen
famous throughout the world. The Company’s seventeenth-century ships
were clumsy as to their proportions, they were built according to
rule-of-thumb, the stern was unnecessarily high, the bows unnecessarily
low. Triangular headsails had not yet been adopted, except by
comparatively small fore-and-aft-rigged craft, such as yachts and
coasters. The mizen was still of the lateen shape, but all the other
sails were quadrilateral, even to the spritsail, which was suspended
at the outer end of the bowsprit and below that spar. Above the latter
on a small mast was hoisted another small squaresail, and then at the
after end of the bowsprit (which was very long and practically a mast)
came the foremast, stepped as far forward as it could go.
With this unhandy rig, the bluff-bowed hulls with their clumsy design
and heavy tophamper could make little or no progress in a head wind.
They were all right for running before the wind, or with the wind on
the quarter: but not only could they not point close to the wind,
but even when they tried they made a terrible lot of leeway. It was
therefore hopeless to try and beat down the English Channel. Most
seamen are aware that the prevailing winds over the British Isles are
from the south-west, but that often between about February and the
end of June, more especially in the earlier part of the year, one can
expect north-east or easterly spells. The old East Indiamen therefore
availed themselves of this. For a fair wind down Channel was a thing
much to be desired, and a long time would be spent in waiting for it.
As these awkward ships had to work their tides down the River Thames,
then drop anchor for a tide, and take the next ebb down, their progress
till they got round the North Foreland was anything but fast.
Of all this Edward Terry’s account gives ample illustration. He was a
cleric and no seaman, but he had the sense of observation and recorded
what he observed. It was on the 3rd of February 1615 that the squadron,
including the flagship _Charles_—a “New-built goodly ship of a thousand
Tuns (in which I sayled) ... fell down from Graves-send into Tilbury
Hope.” Here they remained until 8th February, when they weighed anchor,
and not till 12th February had they weathered the North Foreland and
brought up in the Downs, where they remained for weeks waiting till
a fair wind should oblige them. On the 9th of March the longed-for
north-easter came, when they immediately got under way and two days
later passed the meridian of the Lizard during the night. With the wind
in such a quarter these Indiamen would bowl along just as fast as their
ill-designed hulls could be forced through the water, making a lot of
fuss and beating the waves instead of cutting through them as in the
case of the last of the East Indiamen which ever sailed.
By the 19th of May they had passed the Tropic of Capricorn and
Terry marvelled at the sight of whales, which were “of an exceeding
greatnesse” and “appear like unto great Rocks.” Sharks were seen, and
even in those days the inherent delight of the seaman for capturing and
killing his deadly enemy was very much in existence. As these cruel
fish swam about the _Charles_ the sailors would cast overboard “an iron
hook ... fastened to a roap strong like it, bayted with a piece of
beefe of five pounds weight.”
[Illustration: THE “SERINGAPATAM,” EAST INDIAMAN, 1,000 TONS.]
The squadron duly arrived in Swally Roads on the 18th of September. Sir
Thomas Roe performed his mission to the Great Mogul, and eventually
reached England again. So also Edward Terry, after having been for
some time in the East India Company’s service, was made rector of
Great Greenford, Middlesex, and in the year 1649 we find him one day
in September preaching a “sermon of thanksgiving” in the Church of St
Andrew’s, Undershaft, before the Committee of these East India Company
merchants. The occasion was the return of seven of the Company’s ships
which had arrived from the Orient together—“a great and an unexpected
mercy” after a “long, and tedious, and hazardous voyage.” Terry’s
discourse is typical of the pompous, obsequious period. We can almost
see these worthy East India merchants strolling into the church and
taking their places by no means unconscious of their self-importance,
yet not ashamed to do their duty and give thanks for the safe arrival
of ships and their rich cargoes. Many of them, if not all, had never
been out of England. Terry had been to India and back: he was therefore
no ordinary rector, and he rose to the occasion. He hurls tags of Latin
quotations at his hearers and then, after referring to the great riches
which they were obtaining from the East, reminds these merchants that
there are richer places to be found than both the East Indies and the
West, better ports than Surat or even Bantam, and so went on to speak
of the land where “nor rust, nor moth, nor fire, nor time can consume,”
where the pavement is gold and the walls are of precious stones. And
then, after this simple, direct homily, the Committee came out from
their pews and went back to their daily pursuits.
If these seventeenth-century men were crude and had lost some of the
religious zeal of the pre-Reformation sailors, they still retained as
a relic of the Puritan influence a narrow but sincere personal piety.
And this comes out in the following prayer which was wont to be used
aboard the East Indiaman ships of the late seventeenth century. It is
called “A prayer for the Honourable English Company trading to the East
Indies, to be used on board their ships,” and bears the imprimatur of
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, who append their
signatures to the statement that “we do conceive that this prayer may
be very proper to be used, for the purpose express’d in the tittle
of it.” It has none of the beautiful English of the Middle Ages, for
liturgical ability, like stained-glass window painting, was at this
time a lost art. But for its simple sincerity, its suggestive deep
realisation of the terrors of the sea, its true pathos and its plain
religious confidence, it is characteristic of the period and the minds
of the men who joined in this prayer:—
“O Almighty and most Merciful Lord God, Thou art the Soveraign
Protector of all that Trust in Thee, and the Author of all Spiritual
and Temporal Blessings. Let Thy Grace, we most humbly beseech thee, be
always Present with thy Servants the English Company Trading to the
East Indies. Compass them with thy Favour as with a shield. Prosper
them in all their Publick Undertakings, and make them Successful in all
their Affairs both by Sea and Land. Grant that they may prove a common
Blessing, by the Increase of Honour, Wealth and Power ... by promoting
the Holy Religion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Be more especially at this
time favourable to us, who are separated from all the world, and have
our sole dependance upon thee here in the great waters. Thou shewest
they wonders in the Deep, by commanding the Winds and the Seas as thou
pleasest, and thou alone canst bring us into the Haven where we would
be. To they Power and Mercy therefore we humbly fly for Refuge and
Protection from all Dangers of this long and Perilous voyage. Guard
us continually with thy good Providence in every place. Preserve our
Relations and Friends whom we have left, and at length bring us home to
them again in safety and with the desired Success. Grant that every
one of us, being always mindful of thy Fatherly Goodness, and Tender
Compassion towards us, may glorifie thy Name by a constant Profession
of the Christian Faith, and by a Sober, Just and Pious Conversation
through the remaining part of our Lives. All this we beg for the sake
of our Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom with thee and the Blessed Spirit
be ascrib’d all Honour, Praise and Dominion both now and for evermore.
Amen