CHAPTER V THE FIRST EAST INDIA COMPANY

Although the expedition of those three tall ships related in the previous chapter had been commercially such a dismal failure, it had shown that James Lancaster was the kind of man to whom there should be entrusted the leadership, not only of a single ship, but of an entire expedition. With the greatest difficulty he had prevented his unruly crew from excesses, he had taken his ship most of the way round the world, he had shown that he could put up a good fight when needs be, and that he possessed a capacity for finding out information—a most valuable ability in these the first days of Indian voyaging. He had obtained information about winds, tides, currents, places, peoples and trade. He had got to know where the Portuguese ships were usually to be found, where they started from and at what times of the year. Clearly he was just the man for the big expedition which was shortly to start from England, after but a few years’ interval.

We mentioned on an earlier page the travels of Ralph Fitch to India, though even prior to his setting forth another Englishman named Thomas Stevens had been to the East. This was in the year 1579, and although he was the first of our countrymen to47 reach India, yet he went out in a Portuguese ship, and is therefore entirely indebted to the Portuguese for having reached there at all. He had first proceeded from England to Italy, and then made his way from that country to Portugal. Having arrived in Lisbon, he went aboard and started eight days later when the Portuguese East Indian fleet sailed out. This was towards the beginning of April, which was very late for their sailing, but important business had detained them. Five ships proceeded together, bound for Goa, with many mariners, soldiers, women and children, the starting off being a solemn and impressive occasion, accompanied by the blowing of trumpets and the booming of artillery. Proceeding on their way via the Canaries and Cape Verde, they rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and afterwards steered to the north-east. And then occurred just that very incident which afterwards we have seen was to happen to Lancaster. Not knowing the set of the currents they got much too far to the northward and found themselves close to Socotra (at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden), whereas they imagined they were near to India. But eventually, having sailed many miles, and noticed birds in the sky which they knew came from their desired country, and then having seen floating branches of palm-trees they realised that they were now not far from their destination, and so on 24th October they arrived at Goa.

Stevens had watched the Portuguese navigators closely, and he had marvelled that these ships could find their way over the trackless ocean. “You know,” he wrote to his father in England, telling him all about the voyage, “you know that it is hard to48 saile from East to West, or contrary, because there is no fixed point in all the skie, whereby they may direct their course, wherefore I shall tell you what helps God provide for these men. There is not a fowle that appereth or signe in the aire, or in the sea, which they have not written, which have made the voyages heretofore. Wherefore, partly by their owne experience, and pondering withall what space the ship was able to make with such a winde, and such direction, and partly by the experience of others, whose books and navigations they have, they gesse whereabouts they be, touching degrees of longitude, for of latitude they be alwayes sure.”

It was a real difficulty in those early Indian ships to ascertain their longitude with any correctness. Longitude was reckoned from the meridian of St Michael, one of the Azores, on the grounds that there was no variation of the compass there. It was not, in fact, till the chronometer was invented in the latter half of the eighteenth century that the difficulty could be overcome. But these early East Indiamen were by no means devoid of the instruments of navigation, which included an astrolabe and cross-staff, as already mentioned, a celestial globe, a terrestrial globe, a calendar, a universal horologe for finding the hour of the day in every latitude, a nocturne labe for telling the hour of the night, one or more compasses, a navigation chart corrected according to the last voyagers who had used it: and, a little later on, printed charts, as well as a general map.

But whilst Lancaster had been away from England on his voyage to the East, Englishmen at sea had fallen in with two of the Portuguese East Indian caracks—the Santa Cruz and the Madre de Dios49—homeward-bound from Goa. The former had been burnt and the latter taken into Dartmouth. When she arrived in that port her immense size and wealth made a great sensation. Even in Elizabethan money the value was assessed at ￡15,000. She was of no less than 1600 tons and chock-full of Oriental treasures, with about six or seven hundred souls aboard, and armed with thirty-two brass guns. This wonderful East Indiaman had, besides a number of precious stones, a cargo consisting of spices, drugs, silks, calicoes, quilts, carpets, canopies, pearls, ivory, Chinese ware and hides. In fact when all this cargo was taken out of her in Dartmouth and sent by sea to London, it freighted ten coasters. As you can well imagine, these west-country seamen were careful to note all her details when once they had her in port. She was completely surveyed, and found to be 165 feet long, and 46 feet 10 inches wide, and drew 26 feet, though when she left India she was drawing 31 feet. She had seven decks at the stern, the length of the keel being 100 feet, the height of the mast 121 feet, and the length of the main-yard 106 feet.

The consternation caused by the sight of the wonderful goods which eventually arrived at Leadenhall, London, fired the imaginations of the London merchants afresh. When, in September 1592, they observed the vast quantities of pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, incense, damasks, golden silks, and saw with their own eyes the very goods which had come all the way from that Eastern land of wealth, they marvelled greatly. One of the results of all this was that the Levant Company, which had been founded in 1581 to trade with Turkey and the eastern ports of the Mediterranean, now became50 expanded into a more ambitious venture. Realising full well the amazing riches of the East Indies, it succeeded in obtaining from Elizabeth, in 1593, a charter to trade now with India, but via the overland route.

In passing we may just say a word about the English trading companies, some of which were of great antiquity. The oldest was the Hamburg Company, which consisted of English merchants trading to Calais, Holland, Zealand, the Low Countries, the Baltic and the inhabitants of modern Prussia. It had been first incorporated by Edward I. in 1296, and enjoyed special privileges during successive reigns. There was also the Russian Company, which had been inaugurated at the end of the reign of Edward VI. and the beginning of the reign of Philip and Mary, though its charter was received from Queen Elizabeth. This company had arisen from the enterprise of a number of English merchants, who had sent three ships to find, if possible, a north-east passage into Asia and the East. So, also, the Turkey or Levant Company, mentioned just now, had been founded in 1581 with a view of trading to the part of the world designated. All these various companies were just so many societies of merchant-adventurers who were bound together with one common interest by the royal charter. But the greatest of all was to be the celebrated East India Company, founded in 1600, about which we shall speak presently, though we may sufficiently anticipate matters by asserting that it grew out of the Levant Company.

But England was by no means to have the whole field to herself. If the Portuguese power was in the descendant: if her precious secrets of this East51 Indian trade had been ruthlessly revealed: if her ships and her rich cargoes had been repeatedly taken with the same determination that the Armada had been defeated; yet she was still active in India, and the only European nation there established. However, not merely England, but Holland, too, had been growing strong in maritime ability. The Dutch people had always been by nature seamen for centuries, and were able to rival any English ability in the maritime arts. They were intrepid mariners, they were excellent shipbuilders, and they were careful students of all the sea-knowledge which had come forth from Portugal. The influence of Prince Henry’s cartographical school had spread northwards from Sagres, and Flemish printers had done much for map-making and thus made known this knowledge of the world far and wide. This was the final blow to the closely guarded Portuguese secrets of India. The first atlas ever printed was published by the Dutch at Leyden in the year 1585. The man to whom belongs the credit of this was named Wagenaer, and, according to the crude knowledge and the still more elementary buoyage, the Narrow Seas were well shown. The charts which Holland published were also brought out in English, together with little sketches of the various headlands, their latitude, distances, and so on, including sailing directions for entering various harbours. So also at Antwerp and at Bruges excellent schools of cartography grew up just as they had in Portugal and Spain: and fired with the amazing stories of the East, Holland was not merely anxious but well prepared for asserting herself in India and coming back with a series of rich cargoes for those prepared to venture.

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Briefly, this was brought about as follows. We mentioned on an earlier page that though the Portuguese jealously guarded the secret of the India route, they were quite willing to dispose of these Indian goods. One of these marts, to which merchants came from other countries in order to purchase, was Lisbon. The second was Antwerp, which was convenient for the merchants of Northern Europe. England, by the way, had done a good deal of overseas trade between London and Antwerp for centuries, so this additional East Indian trade made the visits of our merchantmen even more important, and thus many first realised what India meant commercially, and could mean to them. And similarly the people of the Low Countries became equally impressed with what they learned. Thus very naturally we see in 1593—the actual year in which the Levant Company had obtained their extended charter—the first of a series of efforts made by Dutchmen to reach Asia by a north-east passage. And we must not omit to mention the very great influence which Jan Huygen von Linschoten, a native of Haarlem, had. The latter was a great student of geography, at a time when all knowledge of this kind was rare. For a while he was resident in Lisbon, where he amassed a large amount of invaluable data concerning the East—its harbours, configuration, trade-winds, and so on. Lisbon, in fact, was just the place in which all the East Indian information naturally collected itself. Later on Linschoten himself proceeded to India and dwelt at Goa, in the train of the Portuguese Archbishop, but in the year 1592 he returned to Europe, and the tales which this traveller told concerning India astonished53 the slow-reasoning minds of his fellow-countrymen. In the year 1596 he published a most valuable book dealing with the East, affording charts and maps and no end of information which would be priceless to any who might venture on a voyage to India. An English translation appeared two years later, and it certainly had a great influence on the founding of our first East India Company. So important was the book, indeed, that it was also translated and published in French, in Latin and German.

As for Holland, the tangible result was that four ships were fitted out, and under Cornelis Houtman were sent in 1595 to the countries situate the other side of the Cape of Good Hope, beyond the Indian Ocean. Houtman’s voyage had been a success, for in the year 1597 he returned, bringing with him a treaty made with the King of Bantam, which was the means of opening up to Holland the Indian Archipelago. This voyage convinced even the most sceptical, and a new era had begun, in which Holland was to grow rich and powerful, a great commercial country and of considerable strength at sea. The handsome seventeenth-century buildings which you still find standing in Holland to-day, and the brilliant seventeenth-century Dutch painters of portraits and shipping scenes, are surviving evidences of a wonderful prosperity derived for the most part from the East India trade of that time.

It came about, then, that England was to find a keen rival for the possessions of the East. There was going to be a very hard struggle as to which would win the race. One voyage succeeded another, so that actually the Dutch were wanting in big craft and had to come over to England to buy up some of54 our shipping. But this was the final straw which broke the back of Englishmen’s patience. They had looked on for some time with restraint at the progressive enterprise of the Dutch, and had become very jealous of their commercial prosperity. It was a condition to which the present Anglo-German rivalry is very similar in kind. But it was clear something must be done now. The London merchants who were interested in the Levant Company had found that their charter of extension granted in 1593 for overland trading with India availed them but little. Therefore, arising out of this company it happened that a number of merchants met together in London in the year 1599 and agreed to petition Elizabeth for permission to send a number of well-found ships to the East Indies, for which they prayed a monopoly, subscribing the sum of ￡30,133 for an East Indian voyage. It was certainly high time to be moving, for the Dutch were gaining all the foreign freight—they were nicknamed the “waggoners of the sea”—whilst English ships were rotting away in port, or doing little more than mere coasting.

DUTCH EAST INDIAMAN.

The vessel on the right shows the type of craft in the employment of the Dutch East India Company of about 1647.

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This petition was not approved by the Privy Council, but in the year 1609, and on the last day in that year, it received the Queen’s assent. More capital had been obtained, the exclusive privilege of this Indian trade had been granted for fifteen years, so there was nothing to do but obtain the necessary ships and men and hurry on the fitting-out. The Company was managed by twenty-four directors, under the governorship of Alderman James Smith, who was subsequently knighted, but altogether there were two hundred and eighteen of these merchants, aldermen,55 knights and esquires, who were made up by the title of “The Governors and Company of the Merchants trading unto the East Indies.” The countries prescribed by this charter showed a rather extended area, embracing all ports, islands and places in Asia, Africa, America, between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan. The Company were promised that neither the Queen nor her heirs would grant trading-licences within these limits to any person without the consent of the Company: and the Company was furthermore granted the privilege of making the first four voyages without export duty, and the permission was further granted to export annually the sum of ￡30,000 in bullion or coin.

This “privilege for fifteen yeeres” “to certaine Adventurers for the discoverie of the Trade for the East-Indies” was to be a spirited reply to the action of the Dutch, and marks the beginning of that series of English East India companies which were in effect the means of acquiring India for the British crown after the Indian Mutiny in the nineteenth century. From now onwards the East Indiamen ships have a standing and importance which were not previously possessed, and we shall find this culminating in the amazingly dignified manner of the Indian merchantmen in the early part of the nineteenth century.

Among those who had agreed together for this expedition “at their owne adventures, costs and charges as well for the honour of this Our Realme of England, as for the increase of Our Navigation, and advancement of trade,” was the Earl of Cumberland. He was one of those Elizabethan gentlemen56 who were wont to fit out a small squadron of ships for roving the seas and attacking the well-laden ships of the Spanish and Portuguese. It was a fine, adventurous game and there was a good chance of coming home with a fortune. Of those ships which the noble earl owned for this purpose one was a craft named the Red Dragon, and as she was built for fighting and ocean cruising she was just the ship for the first voyage of the East India Company, being of 600 tons. She was therefore purchased from her owner by this Company for the sum of ￡3700. Her name at one time had been the Mare Scourge (perhaps to suggest the terror of the sea which was thus exhibited), but at any rate in the year 1586 she was known as the Red Dragon.

Under their charter the Company were allowed to send “sixe good ships and sixe good pynnaces” and “five hundred Mariners, English-men, to guide and sayle.” But not more than four ships were sent actually, for it was a costly venture. These London merchants had “joyned together and made a stocke of seventie two thousand pounds, to bee employed in ships and merchandizes”; but the purchase of four ships, the expense of fitting them out, furnishing them with men, victuals and munitions for a period of twenty months had eaten up the sum of ￡45,000. This left ￡27,000, which amount was taken out in the ships, partly in merchandise (with which to trade in Asia) and partly in Spanish money, with which the natives would be familiar. Advance wages were paid to the crew before setting forth.

The “Generall of the Fleet” was that same James Lancaster whom we considered just now, and his flagship was to be the Red Dragon. There was57 no better leader for the job, and the reader will shortly see how well he conducted himself in conditions that were not less trying than in his previous voyage to the East. To him Elizabeth entrusted letters of commendation addressed to “divers Princes of India,” the vice-admiral being John Middleton; and the celebrated John Davis, of Arctic fame, was to go as pilot-major, or navigating expert—another excellent man for the undertaking. After a busy winter the four ships were ready and fitted out, so that on 13th February 1601 they were able to leave Woolwich, their crews amounting to 480. In addition to the Red Dragon there were the Hector, of 300 tons and 108 men; the Ascension, 260 tons and 82 men; the Susan (which had been bought from a London alderman for ￡1600), 240 tons and 88 men; and in addition they took a victualling ship called variously the Guift or Guest. The latter was a ship of 130 tons, but had cost only ￡300.

In their holds these ships carried such English products as were likely to be appreciated in the East. Such commodities were taken as iron, lead, tin, cloth; while the presents to be given to the Indian princes comprised a girdle, a case of pistols, plumes, looking-glasses, platters, spoons, glass toys, spectacles, drinking-glasses and a plain silver ewer. But the progress of this squadron was distinctly slow. From the Thames they had dropped down to the mouth and anchored in the Downs. Here they waited so long for a fair wind that already it was Easter Day before they reached Dartmouth, where they “spent five or sixe dayes in taking in their bread and certaine other provisions,” as one of the58 letters received by the East India Company has it. Leaving Dartmouth they “hoysed their anchors” and sped across the Bay of Biscay, and continued to the south. Off the coast of Guinea they fell in with a Portuguese vessel, which they captured, and from her they took much wine, oil and meal for the good of the squadron.

During the month of June they crossed the Equator, and in the following month discharged the Guest victualler—that is to say, they took out of her the masts, sails and yards and whatever else was worth keeping, and then broke down her “higher buildings for firewood, and so left her floting in the sea.” And now scurvy attacked many of the squadron’s crew, so that there were hardly men enough to handle the sails. Even the “merchants tooke their turnes at the Helme: and went into the top to take in the top-sayles, as the common Mariners did.” However, on the 9th of September 1601 they arrived at Saldanha (Table Bay), where they anchored and “hoysed out their boats.” (There were of course no such things as boat davits in those days, the boats being lifted out from the waist of the ship by blocks and ropes.) But so weak were the crews of three of the ships that Lancaster’s crew had to go aboard the other craft and do the work of getting these boats into the sea.

How was it, then, that the flagship’s crew had kept so free from scurvy and were in better health than the other men? The answer is that Lancaster had learnt a lesson from the terrible death-roll which this disease had caused in his previous voyage already noted. “The reason,” runs the document, “why the Generals men stood better in health then the men59 of other Ships was this: he brought to sea with him certaine Bottles of the Juice of Limons, which hee gave to each one, as long as it would last, three spoonfuls every morning fasting: not suffering them to eate any thing after it till noone. This Juice worketh much better, if the partie keepe a short Dyet, and wholly refrains salt meate, which salt meate, and long being at the sea is the only cause of the breeding of this Disease. By this meanes the Generall cured many of his men, and preserved the rest.” Considering this practical proof of the value of lime juice as an anti-scorbutic, it is surprising that it was not till many years later lime juice was, as it is to-day, always carried in English ships and given out to the men, especially in wind-jammers.

After allowing the men shore leave and laying in very necessary provisions, the squadron got under way and left again on 29th October, doubling the Cape of Good Hope on the 1st of November, “having the wind West North-west a great gale.” Madagascar was reached on 17th December, and they remained there until 6th March. Actually they did not even sight India, but held on across the Indian Ocean until they reached those Nicobar Islands visited in the previous voyage. A short stay was made and then they pushed on to the southward till they came to Acheen, which is at the north-west extremity of Sumatra, arriving there on the 5th of June 1602. Here Lancaster was entertained hospitably by some of the Dutch factors who had already established themselves, and also obtained a concession from the King of Acheen granting freedom of trade and immunity from paying customs. Thus a beginning was made, if not actually with India,60 at any rate with a part of the East Indies. Trade between England and the Orient was established, only to be developed in the years that were to follow.

In order to proceed with their trade, Lancaster put ashore two of the factors who had come out with him from England, these employing their time now in getting together a cargo of pepper against the date of Lancaster’s return. Meanwhile the squadron sailed from Acheen on 11th September 1602, and then engaged in that favourite occupation of roving about till some well-filled merchantman fell into his hands, relieving her then of her valuable cargo. Strictly speaking, as the reader is aware, this expedition to the East Indies had been fitted out for the purpose of opening up trade. But no Elizabethan sailor could content himself with such lawful limits. Privateering was in his blood: he was always spoiling for a fight at sea, especially against any Spanish or Portuguese ship. It was a much quicker way of winning wealth and, incidentally, of paying back old scores to the people who had tried to keep Englishmen out of the strange seas of the world. And Lancaster was a sufficiently good strategist to know that if he selected some pivot of a busy trade-route, such as some narrow straits, all that he had to do was to hang about there long enough and it was only a question of time as to whether a big haul would be made. He could rely implicitly on his own men and their gunnery, even against superior strength. It only wanted the opportunity, and that, again, demanded merely a little patience.

So whilst his factors were busy at Acheen buying a cargo, he betook himself to the Straits of Malacca, the gateway for the shipping which voyaged between61 the Pacific and the Indian Ocean; and before long he had descried a fine Portuguese craft of 900 tons called the St Thomé. It was a little unfortunate that the day was nearly spent, as that meant that the enemy might possibly escape under cover of darkness. “And being toward night,” wrote one who was there at the time, “a present direction was given that we should all spread our selves a mile and a halfe one from another, that she might not passe us in the night.” So the four English ships did as the admiral wished them. The Hector shot two or three “peeces of ordnance,” and this warned the other three ships, who now closed in and surrounded the Portuguese carack on all sides. Then the Red Dragon began to fire at her from the bow guns, with the satisfactory result that the carack’s main-yard came tumbling down.

That was deemed enough for the present: it would be better to wait till the night had passed, thought Lancaster, for he feared “least some unfortunate shot might light betweene wind and water, and so sinke her,” which would mean that her valuable cargo would be for ever lost. He therefore stayed his hand for a little while: but next morning at daybreak he again attacked and this time took the prize. Only four of Lancaster’s men were placed on board, “for feare of rifling and pillaging the good things that were within her ... and their charge was, if any thing should be missing, to answer the same out of their wages and shares.” For he knew full well that when once a band of these rough seamen were aboard they would stop at nothing, and no threats could prevent them from helping themselves to the rare cargo in the holds.

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So full was this St Thomé of Eastern goods that it took six days to unload her of her 950 packs of calicoes, etc. And then, as a storm came up, she had to be left behind, so Lancaster returned to Acheen, and took in his cargo of pepper, cinnamon and spices, together with a letter and presents from the King of Acheen to Elizabeth. He then set sail for Bantam, in the Island of Java, on the 9th of November, and soon after sent home to England the Ascension and the Susan, which had completed their cargoes. In the meantime Lancaster continued his cruise with the Dragon and Hector, and arrived at Bantam, “in the island of Java major,” which he reached on the 16th of December. Here, as was the routine of the venture, he put his merchants ashore with their goods and began trade with the natives. And although the English reckoned the Javanese “among the greatest pickers and theeves of the world,” yet our merchants were able to do some very good business; and so again the ships were laden with cargoes of pepper, and a regular factory was here established for further trade between England and the East. Lancaster had as fine an ability for trading enterprise as he had for capturing a Portuguese ship, and he obtained a 40-ton pinnace laden with merchandise, which was sent to the Moluccas to trade and establish a factory there, in charge of Master William Starkey. When the next English ships should come out they would thus find immediate opportunity for getting rid of their lead, iron, tin, cloth, and another cargo waiting to be taken on board.

Such, then, was the completion of the business in the Orient. The first voyage under the East India63 Company had done its work in the East Indies. It had got there in safety, it had established factories, it had disposed of its freights and obtained very valuable goods to take home. It had certainly been fortunate, the only real calamity being the sickness and death of Captain John Middleton of the Hector. It was a long period since they had set out from the Thames, and the time had now arrived when they must weigh their anchors and start back to England: so early in the new year they took on board stores and made their final preparations for the long voyage back over lonely seas.