CHAPTER XXIII THE LAST OF THE OLD EAST INDIAMEN

It must not be thought that even after that momentous change of 1834, when the “free traders,” as they were called, began to send their ships to India, the Company were freer of anxiety. It has already been shown that they were being badly defeated in the new competition. But this was not all. In the year 1816 the owners of thirty-four ships which had been engaged by the Company under the Act of 1799 for six voyages on a settled peace freight now complained that these rates were inadequate to meet the increased charge of outfit and repairs. For since the Treaty of Paris the cost and equipment of ships had gone up, and to an extent that could not have been expected. The long duration of the war, and the extraordinary price of articles of a ship’s inventory continued long after the cessation of hostilities: and therefore it was but natural that an improved rate should be granted for the remainder of the voyages.

And with the much larger number of men required for the bigger ships it was frequently found when lying in an Indian port that with “dead, run, or discharged” men a vessel had not the required number of crew in her that she ought to have. So now these330 East Indiamen were allowed to sail with less than their full complement. Great Britain had won her fights chiefly on the sea, yet for all that she was not abundantly blessed with seamen.

And then came the final change, which had really been foreshadowed by that event of 1814. True the East India Company had been bereft of their Indian monopoly, but China had been reserved to them. However, in 1832 the subject had to be faced again in Parliament. The mind of the public was distinctly adverse to the Company and its monopoly: too long it had been permitted to enjoy these privileges and keep back the stream of trade. Discontent increased both in vehemence and volume, and so at length the Company were powerless to hold on to their China monopoly. Private shipowners desired to trade with all parts of the Orient, and this desire had to be met. From the year 1833, then, the East India Company lost their exclusive trading privilege. And inasmuch as the free traders had done so much, and were determined to do more, it were useless for the Company to continue in commerce at all. Instead they became entirely a political body and permitted British subjects to settle in India. Actually the Company’s commercial charter came to an end in April 1834, and thereafter it proceeded to close its business as soon as possible.

THE EAST INDIAMAN “MALABAR.”

Built of wood in 1860 at Sunderland for Mr. Richard Green. Her tonnage was 1,350, her length 207.2 feet, beam 36.6 feet, depth 22.5 feet. She was copper fastened and her bottom sheathed.

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For a Company that had always relied for its success on protection from competition, paying high prices for its ships, and being squeezed very tightly by many of its servants, it could not be expected that when the free traders introduced their voyages to China and a strong, sensible spirit of competition that this ancient but decaying Company could hold331 its own. The new blood would be too vigorous, the enterprise would be irresistible, and in any case the Company would be doomed to further humility. No other course, therefore, was possible than to submit to what had come as the result of the advance of time. In a word, that East India Company which had ruled the Eastern seas for so long now resolved to get rid of the whole of their fleet. Some of these were condemned and some were bought up by those new aspirants to Eastern wealth. Some of these old “tea-waggons,” as they were nicknamed, were broken up for their valuable copper fastenings, and the rest were sold, not at once, but after they had completed their voyages to India and China.

One of the very last of the Company’s ships to make the voyage to China in the employ of this ancient corporation was the Elizabeth, which sailed from the Thames in the spring of 1833, arrived in China in January 1834 and left there in March. From there she proceeded to St Helena, where she arrived in June, and then crossed the Atlantic, arriving in Halifax the following August. Probably this was the very last of the Company’s ships to leave China. I have examined her log-book and have been able to verify the dates, but what happened after she reached Halifax I cannot find out. Probably she was sold there. But, at any rate, there is a sentimental interest attached to her voyage, and the following few abstracts from her log may form a connecting link with the last voyages of a fleet whose inception dates back to the time when Elizabeth was on the throne.

The log opens on 23rd May 1833 with the usual details of getting the ship ready for sea and taking332 aboard cargo in the Thames. It ends on 3rd September 1834, when the last of the cargo had been landed at Halifax. Her master was John Craigie, and, as was the custom at this time, the manuscript log-book is prefaced with a page of black-faced print which read as follows:—

“The Honourable Court of Directors of the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies have ordered me to send you this log book, in which pursuant to your Charter-party, you are to take care that a full, true, and exact account of the ship’s run and course, with the winds, weather and her draught of water at the time of leaving every port, and all occurrences, accidents and observations, that shall happen or be made during the voyage, from the time of the ship’s first taking in goods, until the time of her return, be duly entered every day at noon, in a fair and legible manner. And that the officer commanding the watch from eight o’clock till noon, do, before he dines, sign his name at length to every day’s log so entered....”

This vessel drew 17 feet 6 inches forward and 17 feet 4 inches aft when she left Gravesend, and after bringing up in nine fathoms off Margate rode to forty-eight fathoms of cable until she received the Company’s dispatches which she was taking out to the East. As she proceeded down Channel she was handicapped by light easterly breezes and calms, so that although she passed Beachy Head on 28th July, it was not till 2 P.M. of the following day that she was off Brighton, where she dropped her pilot. Six hours later she had passed the Owers Lightship (off Selsey Bill), and so after leaving the Wight333 made her way past Portland Bill and out into the Bay of Biscay. We need not follow her throughout her passage, but on Sunday, 6th October 1833, she was caught in very bad weather, as the following extracts show:—

“3 A.M. Hard squalls attended with most tremendous gales. In fore and mizen topsails. Reef’d fore sail and close reefed main topsail.

“5 A.M. Heavy sea running, ship labouring much. Hove to under close reefed ... topsail, reefed foresail ... staysail and fore-topmast staysail. Housed fore and mizzen topgallantmasts.

“Noon. Hard gales and a tremendous sea running. Ship labouring much.”

Two days later there is this entry:

“During the late severe gale I find from the heavy labouring of the ship many seams in the upper and lower decks much opened and the caulking worked out, and from the great quantity of water ship’d over all and the ship requiring constant pumping during the above period, I apprehend considerable damage is done to the cargo.”

However, she got safely across the ocean to China, and brought up on 28th January 1834 at her port with small bower anchor in seven fathoms, giving her thirty-five fathoms of cable to ride to. As the ship approaches her port we see interesting little details entered in the log, such as these: “Bent larboard bower cable and unstowed the anchor”; then a little later on, “bent starboard chain”; and again, “bent the sheet cable.” On the 13th of March she weighed anchor, proceeded south, crossed the Indian Ocean, as so many of the Company’s ships had done for over two centuries, rounded the334 Cape of Good Hope and dropped anchor off St Helena on 19th June 1834, eventually arriving in Halifax harbour on 18th August 1834, where she proceeded to Mr Cunard’s wharf—Mr Cunard was the East India Company’s agent, as we have mentioned—and thus brought her voyage to an end. By 3rd September the whole of her cargo was taken out of her.

But already, long before the East India Company had decided to sell their fleet, the death-knell of the steamship had been sounded in the Orient, though actually the decease was to be preceded by a wonderful rally in the famous China clippers. In the year 1822 a public meeting had been called together in London to discuss the practicability of running steamships to the East, and as a result a steam navigation company was formed. Lieutenant (afterwards Captain) J. Johnson was sent out to Calcutta to see what could be done in this respect, and the outcome was that a steamship called the Enterprize was built at Deptford and proceeded to India under the command of this Captain Johnson. She was of only 470 tons and 120 nominal horse-power. She started on 16th August 1825, and after a voyage of 113 days reached Calcutta, though ten of these days were spent in taking on board fuel. Her average speed was only a little under nine knots: but here was a precedent. She had come all the way under steam, and some day soon this speed would be improved upon. Already in that same year the Falcon, of 176 tons, had also voyaged round the Cape to Calcutta. But this vessel was an auxiliary steamship, using partly steam and partly sails; so the Enterprize was really the first Anglo-Indian335 steamship. It was not till the year 1842 that the P. & O. Company started sending their steamers to India via the Cape of Good Hope. This was another nail in the coffin of the sailing ships which had been trading to the East for so long a time. The name of the first ship was the Hindostan. She was a three-master with a long bowsprit, setting yards on her foremast for foresail, topsail and top-gallant sails, while her main and mizen were fore-and-aft-rigged: and before long other steamers followed her.

But before the Government built its transports specially for trooping the modern sailing Indiamen—that is to say, the successors of the East India Company’s ships—carried all the military to the East. Even when, in the days before the opening of the Suez Canal, the P. & O. were the only steamships voyaging to India, most of the passengers still travelled to the Orient in the East Indiamen, with the exception of the wealthy and the principal officials. Therefore, though the East India Company was dead as a commercial concern, those private firms who had bought up the Company’s ships or built new ones were doing a good business both in freights and passengers.

Before the Suez Canal was opened there were three ways of reaching India. You could go by a sailing East Indiaman round the Cape of Good Hope or in a P. & O. steamship by the same route, or you could go by P. & O. steamship to Alexandria, then overland by camels, and then by boat on the Mahmoudieh Canal to the Nile, whence passengers proceeded to Cairo by steamer. From there they went across the desert to Suez. Three thousand336 camels had to be employed for transporting a single steamer’s loading, and every package had to be subjected to no fewer than three separate transfers. The opening of the Suez Canal, therefore, in the year 1870, made all the difference in the world, and by the end of the next year scarcely any passengers went round the Cape in sailing ships, but journeyed to the East in steamships via the canal. Troops were also taken through the latter, and so the old and the new East Indiaman sailing ships passed out of existence.

After April 1834 the directors of the East India Company were not traders, but rather a council advising and assisting in the control of the political India. In 1857 occurred the Indian Mutiny. The martial races began suddenly to move, the native army of Bengal revolted, and the northern predatory races rebelled. As everyone knows, the Mutiny was eventually quelled, but for our present consideration the most important result was that it was to bring to an end the great career of the East India Company. It was deemed best that Queen Victoria should assume the direct government and rule through a Viceroy, the first of whom was Canning. On 1st November 1858 proclamation was made throughout India that the government had been transferred from the East India Company to the British Sovereign. The Board of Control was abolished and a Council of State for India instituted. Thus, having ceased to be either traders or a political power, this unique corporation came to an end. It had lost its prestige, lost its privileges and strength in India and China, sold its fleet, and at length, on 15th May 1873, came the resolution337 to dissolve the Company altogether, as from 1st June 1874. East India House, which had been built in the year 1726, enlarged in 1799, was sold with its furniture in the year 1861 and pulled down in the following year. Of course there had been a much earlier East India House in Leadenhall Street also, and the accompanying reproduction of an old print shows the house which stood from 1648 to 1726. The reader will notice on the building a picture of a seventeenth-century ship.

By many of the Indian natives the East India Company had been known as the “Honourable John Company.” The origin of this designation is not quite clear, but it was in effect a personification of the corporation taken quite seriously by the natives. John he knew as a man’s name, for was not his English master called John? Naturally enough, therefore, the Company might also be called the “John” or “Honourable John.” The idea imprinted in the native’s mind was that the Company was one mighty prince, who had to be respected.

But before we close this chapter we want to know what became of the ships and men. If the Company had come to an end the East Indiamen and those who used to work her across the ocean were not ipso facto wiped out of existence. Some of the ships fetched quite good prices, considering that the sale was virtually compulsory. The Earl of Balcarres, for instance, that big ship of which we spoke on a previous page, fetched the sum of ￡10,700, and she sailed the seas for fifty-two years before being turned into a hulk. The Lady Melville also was sold for ￡10,000; that fine, handsome ship, the Thames, of which we have given an illustration,338 obtaining ￡10,700 as her price. The Buckinghamshire fetched ￡10,550; the General Kyd, ￡9100; the Asia, ￡6500, whilst other ships fetched sums from about ￡4500 upwards. Of those sold for breaking up were the Waterloo, which fetched about ￡7200; the Atlas, ￡4100; the Canning, ￡5750; the Princess Charlotte, ￡3000; the London, ￡5900; General Harris, ￡6600; Farquharson, ￡6000. Of course, not all these were sold at the same time. In some cases, the Company having foreseen the inevitable, began to sell as far back as 1830, and they went on selling until the end of 1834. Those shipowners who were out looking for bargains knew that these vessels would not fetch the highest prices, yet they were known to be soundly put together of first-class material. The best prices were obtained by the Company, not in auction, but privately. Among the buyers one finds such well-known shipping names as Joseph Somes, Wigram & Green. The former was one of the founders of Lloyd’s Register. Robert Wigram and Richard Green built and owned some of the finest sailing ships which ever floated in the Thames, and these men, together with the Smiths of Newcastle and other shipowners, began to construct more modern frigate type of ships for the China and India trade now that all privileges had been thrown on one side. These ships used to snug down at night like their predecessors when crossing the sea. But they were run commercially on more sensible lines, and the extravagant privileges to the captains were largely curtailed.

And inasmuch as many of the captains, officers and crew who had served in the East India Com339pany’s craft were now employed in the ships of the new firms there was not such a vast change in the conditions as might have been imagined. Gone was the stately dignity, gone the semi-naval character of the East Indiamen, but in most other respects matters were much the same. Gradually as the newer types of ships began to be built, improved models were effected with finer lines, and the old kettle-bottom type of the Company’s ships gave place to that which was to become historic as the China tea-clippers of 1850 to 1870. With these, however, our present story has no concern. But it was a long time before the main traditions of the East India Company died entirely. Frigate-fashion had been the motto of the shipbuilder for too long for this to be thrown over at once. The Blenheim and the Marlborough, for instance, which came out in 1848, were constructed exactly like the contemporary naval frigates: in design and scantlings they were identical with a 40-gun ship of that class, the Government surveying them and reporting them as fit to carry armaments. These two ships had been built by Messrs T. & W. Smith of Newcastle-on-Tyne. They carried enormous jibbooms “steeved” very high. With their overhanging stern, figurehead, row of square ports, stuns’ls, and dolphin-striker they were very picturesque craft. As regards speed these were an improvement on the ships possessed by the East India Company, and represent the intermediate stage between the latter and the famous China clippers which were to come in a few years’ time. The new type of East Indiaman, frigate-built and copper fastened, cost about ￡40 a ton to build, so that a 1000-ton ship cost about340 ￡40,000. The ships of Messrs Wigram & Green were not pierced for guns, the square windows in these vessels at the poop being used for lighting the passengers’ cabins. These were ships of finer lines than the old East Indiamen or even the vessels which Smith built. Duncan Dunbar also owned a number of fine East Indiamen; in fact, he became at one time the largest shipowner in Great Britain, and many of his vessels were constructed in India, as, for instance, the Marion, of 684 tons, which was launched at Calcutta in 1834, and from that date sailed the seas until she was wrecked off Newfoundland nearly fifty years later. But even before the East India Company lost their China monopoly they possessed a very few ships whose speed was just about as good as any of the more modern successors until the coming of the first tea-clippers of about 1840 onwards. The East Indiaman Thames, of which we give an illustration, was certainly one of the fastest.

THE “BLENHEIM,” EAST INDIAMAN, 1,400 TONS.

(By courtesy of Messrs. T. H. Parker Brothers)

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At the time when the East India Company lost their China charter and sold off their fleet, the commanders and officers considered themselves very much aggrieved. It is quite true, as we have stated, that a good many of them afterwards shipped on board the modern East Indiamen, who, of course, did not fly the naval pennant which the Company’s ships had been allowed to wear. But these officers, in July 1834, banded together and sent a letter to the directors of the East India Company, in which it was pointed out that the Company’s ships and seamen—otherwise known as the Maritime Service in contrast with the Bombay Marine or East India Company’s navy—had been employed for over two341 hundred years. These ships and men had been instrumental to a great degree in securing the vast territory of British India. These commanders and officers of the present day had entered the Company’s service in the confident expectation that it was a provision for life. But now they found themselves deprived of their profession owing to the sudden ceasing of the Company’s trade. Although the commanders and officers were in the first instance recommended by the shipowners to the Company, yet the latter examined and approved them, and into the latter’s service they were sworn. They were paid, fined, suspended or dismissed by the Company—and not by the owners. They wore the Company’s uniform, enjoyed rank and command under the latter, and became eligible to offices of high honour and emolument. And the extraordinary fact was that they even took precedence of the Company’s Bombay Marine. These maritime commanders ranked with the field officers in India, were saluted with guns, and were eligible for important offices of profit in India.

The position now was therefore not one which seemed to have a bright outlook. They had served in capacities of great trust, and many of them had devoted the whole of their lives to service in the Company’s ships. But when the “free traders” now came on to the scene the latter did not care to employ captains and officers who had been accustomed to navigate only vessels of the size and expensive equipment of those of the East India Company. Only one-fifth of these men were therefore at once taken over by the shipowners, who were now buying up the Company’s ships or building new342 ones. As for the rest of these officers they had enjoyed the dignity and privileges of the Company for so long a period that they did not care to be employed in “free trade,” considering it derogatory. In any case they could not obtain, from the new owners, the same amount of remuneration as they had been accustomed to receive from the Company. For the latter’s extravagant methods were to give place to a more business-like method. In plain language, the rest of the merchant service rather fought shy of employing these former East Indiamen skippers, and the latter were not anxious to degrade themselves by signing on in these interlopers.

So the captains and officers appealed to the East India Company for compensation in the shape of pensions. The petition was received with little enthusiasm, but the directors could not deny that there was a good deal of truth in what was set forth by these men, and ultimately decided to grant compensation to all commanders and officers who had been actually employed in the Maritime Service for five years on 22nd April 1834. Thus a commander received a monetary payment of ￡1500, with lesser sums for the other officers. In addition to this, each commander received ￡4000 for three unexpired voyages, ￡3000 for two voyages and ￡2000 for one voyage which they would have made had they continued in the service. Besides these sums, commanders who had served for ten years were granted a pension for life of ￡250 a year, the chief mate receiving a pension of ￡160, and so on down to the carpenter and gunner. The condition being that these men assured the Company of their343 inability to obtain further employment, and that any income which they possessed was to be in abatement of these pensions.

Thus, at last, the historic East India Company came to an end, its ships and men scattered or employed by other owners. No company in the world, no fleet of mercantile vessels can boast of such a long and adventurous story as this: no ships of commerce were so closely and continuously concerned in establishing political power in the East. For this reason the old East Indiamen sailing ships, whether of the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, must always possess a unique interest for Britons generally, for Anglo-Indians in particular, and for all who take an interest in the world’s development. People ordinarily do not realise the full extent of their indebtedness to the ships and sailors of the past in respect of discovery, empire, power and wealth. Such men as worked the vessels which we have been considering in this volume were very far from perfect in respect of many virtues. But they are deserving of our great respect and admiration for their pluck, their endurance and their enterprise: for without them India would have been the possession of some other European nation.

The End