After some anxious hours the ship was eventually got afloat again, but Middleton was taken prisoner by the Arabs. For a long while he was compelled to endure his captivity, but was eventually released and sailed for Surat, where he arrived with his ships on 26th September 1611, a great deal of valuable time having been lost. Here again he was unlucky, for a Portuguese squadron of seven ships was waiting outside. The Portuguese were now so indignant and jealous of the English interlopers that they were resolved to resist them to the utmost: otherwise it was obvious that the hard-won wealth of the East would before long slip right away. All the inspiration and enthusiasm of Prince Henry the Navigator, all the heroic voyages of the first Portuguese navigators to the East, all the capital which had been expended in building and fitting out their expensive caracks would assuredly be thrown into the sea unless the aggressive Englishmen, who had penetrated their secrets, were to be thwarted now with determination. The Portuguese were expecting Middleton’s arrival, for they had already heard of his being in the Red Sea, and now they were in sufficient and overwhelming strength to oppose him: for besides the big ships outside, there were nearly twice as many smaller craft waiting inside the bar. The Portuguese contention was that they alone had the right to trade with Surat: the English were not wanted and had no justification to be there at all.

Middleton’s position was that he had come out from the King of England bearing a letter and presents to the Great Mogul to put on a firm footing that trade which Englishmen had already inaugurated, and that India was open to all nations who wished to trade with her. But, of course, Middleton did not know at the time the incident which has already been mentioned in connection with Hawkins and the Great Mogul. When, however, the news presently reached him, it was to modify his plans entirely: there could be no good object attained in endeavouring to establish trade against the opposition of the Mogul and the Portuguese. The natives were clearly under the thumb of the Portuguese, and, however willing they might have been, no trade with them was possible.

So, after taking Hawkins on board, together with the Englishmen who had been left at Surat, a council was held and ultimately it was decided to return to the Red Sea so that he could there trade with the ships from India, since to deal with them in their own country was not practicable. This decision was carried out, and whether the traders liked it or not they were compelled to barter the goods which Middleton required to take farther eastwards to the Indian Archipelago as previously indicated. But meanwhile there had set out from England another expedition, consisting of the three ships Clove, Thomas and Hector, under the command of Captain Saris, bound for the Red Sea, having previously obtained a firman, or decree, from Constantinople which would grant him and his merchants kindly treatment in the neighbourhood of Mocha and Aden. But on arriving at Socotra, Saris found a letter from Middleton giving warning of the treacherous treatment to expect. In spite of this, however, Saris found that the firman was respected, but eventually deemed it prudent to make for the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, where he met Middleton and agreed with him to engage in privateering the ships of India. If you had questioned these English seamen they would have replied unhesitatingly that they were merely engaged in trade by barter, and that as they had been prevented by circumstances from carrying on this direct with the Indian continent they had no other opportunity than to do it at sea. They had been sent out by the English Company to get the cloths and calicoes to exchange farther east and they were merely fulfilling their instructions. But in plain language there was little difference between this and robbery, or, at the best, compulsory sale at the buyer’s own price.

THE HONOURABLE EAST INDIA COMPANY’S SHIP “BRIDGEWATER” ENTERING MADRAS ROADS UNDER JURY-RIG AFTER ENCOUNTERING GALES OF WIND.
(By courtesy of Messrs. T. H. Parker Brothers)

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But when all this “trading” was finished and the Trade’s Increase went to Malay Archipelago, she was to bring to a tragic end her short and adventurous career. Middleton had gone ahead in the Peppercorn, and the Trade’s Increase had been ordered to follow after. Unfortunately she needed some repairs to her hull. It was customary before an East Indiaman left the East on her homeward voyage for the sheathing outside to be attended to, in order that she might make as fast a passage home as possible. But there were no dry docks out there, and very few anywhere, even in England or Holland. The practice, which lasted well into the nineteenth century, was to careen a ship if she required any attention below the water-line—her seams caulked, or her bottom tarred. This was done in the case of the Trade’s Increase whilst she was at Bantam, where her sheathing was being seen to. But she fell over on to her side and became a total loss. One contemporary account states that whilst the repairs were being done “all her men died in the careening of her,” and that then some Javanese were hired to do the job, but five hundred of these “died in the worke before they could sheath one side: so that they could hire no more men, and therefore were inforced to leave her imperfect, where shee was sunke in the Sea, and after set on fire by the Javans.” This was towards the end of the year 1613. Another contemporary account states that she was laid up in the ooze, and was set on fire from stem to stern, having been previously fired twice, at the supposed instigation of a renegade Spaniard, “which is turned Moor.” She blazed away during the whole of one night, and her wreck was eventually sold for 1050 reales. When Sir Henry Middleton heard the news of the loss of his famous flagship, the pride of all the seas, he was so heart-broken that he died. Thus both admiral and flagship had perished: it had been a calamitous voyage.

As for Captain Saris, he had sailed to Japan in order to establish a factory. Notwithstanding the opposition of the Dutch, who were as jealous of his arrival in the Far East as the Portuguese had been in India, the Emperor received him favourably and the seeds were sown for future trade with England which, to change the metaphor, were to prepare the way for the adoption of Western ideas by the Japanese during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Strictly speaking, Japan and China have nothing to do with India. But historically, so far as our present subject is concerned, they are to an extent bound together. Not merely did these first captains of the English East India Company sail thither, but, as the reader will see further on in this volume, a great deal of trade was done with those parts by the Company’s servants: and at least one interesting engagement took place on sea near by, in which the Company’s merchant ships distinguished themselves.

Notwithstanding the sad loss of the costly Trade’s Increase, Middleton’s voyage had yielded to the Company a profit of 121 per cent. Captain Saris’s voyage had done even better still, earning 218 per cent.; but, as we have shown, this was not all earned by legitimate trade.

The journal of Captain Nicholas Downton of the homeward voyage of the Peppercorn (which you will remember had been built at the Deptford yard and went out in company with the Trade’s Increase) shows the kind of hardships which our sailors had to endure whilst earning such handsome profits for their owners. With thankful hearts this craft started back from Bantam, though it was to be no pleasant voyage. On getting under way Downton saluted the admiral by way of farewell. “I gave him 5 shot,” he writes, “having no more pieces out nor ports uncaulked”—that is to say, he had prepared his ship for sea, having run inboard most of his guns and caulked up the ports. The ship had previously had her sheathing attended to, and all the stores were aboard. The meat was kept in casks, while the bread and corn were kept in a “tight room” in order to avoid the ravages of the cacara—“a most devouring worm,” as Downton quaintly calls it, “with which this ship doth abound to our great disturbance.” The drinking-water to the extent of twenty-six tons had also been brought aboard, where it was kept in casks. But as these were decayed, weak, rotten and leaky the crew were bound to suffer before they reached home. He did his best to make her what he calls “a pridie ship”—that is, a trim ship—but though this was her first homeward voyage she leaked like a basket through the trenail holes in the stern, owing to the negligence of the wicked Deptford carpenters, who had scamped their work. The result was that there were soon twenty inches of water “on our lower orlop.” Certainly the Company’s yard had not earned much real credit for the way they had designed and built the Peppercorn and the Trade’s Increase.