CHAPTER IX 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 union107 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 Portuguese108 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 latter109 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 could110 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 ships111 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 the112 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 their113 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 the114 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 luxurious115 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, we116 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 little117 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 James118 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.

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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-for120 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.”

THE “SERINGAPATAM,” EAST INDIAMAN, 1,000 TONS.

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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, and121 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 proper122 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 and123 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.”