The Pirates of Malabar, and an Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago

Produced by Allen Siddle and PG Distributed Proofreaders
1907
For most people, interest in the doings of our forefathers in India dates from our wars with the French in the middle of the eighteenth century. Before then their lives are generally supposed to have been spent in monotonous trade dealings in pepper and calico, from which large profits were earned for their masters in England, while their principal excitements were derived from drinking and quarrelling among themselves. Little account has been taken of the tremendous risks and difficulties under which the trade was maintained, the losses that were suffered, and the dangers that were run by the Company's servants from the moment they left the English Channel. The privations and dangers of the voyage to India were alone sufficient to deter all but the hardiest spirits, and the debt we owe to those who, by painful effort, won a footing for our Indian trade, is deserving of more recognition than it has received. Scurvy, shortness of water, and mutinous crews were to be reckoned on in every voyage; navigation was not a science but a matter of rule and thumb, and shipwreck was frequent; while every coast was inhospitable. Thus, on the 4th September, 1715, the Nathaniel , having sent a boat's crew on shore near Aden, in search of water, the men allowed themselves to be inveigled inland by treacherous natives, who fell upon them and murdered twelve out of fourteen who had landed from the ship. Such an occurrence now would be followed by a visit from a man-of-war to punish the murderers. Two hundred years ago it was only an incident to set down in the ship's log-book. But all such outrages and losses were small in comparison with those to which traders were exposed at the hands of pirates.
It is difficult to realize, in these days, what a terrible scourge piracy was to the Indian trade, two hundred years ago. From the moment of losing sight of the Lizard till the day of casting anchor in the port of destination an East India ship was never safe from attack, with the chance of slavery or a cruel death to crew and passengers, in case of capture. From Finisterre to Cape Verd the Moorish pirates made the seas unsafe, sometimes venturing into the mouth of the Channel to make a capture. Farther south, every watering-place on the African coast was infested by the English and French pirates who had their headquarters in the West Indies. From the Cape of Good Hope to the head of the Persian Gulf, from Cape Comorin to Sumatra, every coast was beset by English, French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Arab, Malay or other local pirates. In the Bay of Bengal alone, piracy on a dangerous scale was practically unknown.