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 to 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 to 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 Dios—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 became 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 East 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.