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.

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-for 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.

[Larger image]

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, and 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 proper 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:—