These East Indiamen sailing ships were really wonderful for what they did, the millions of miles over which they sailed, the millions of pounds’ worth of goods which they carried out and home: and this not merely for one generation, but for two and a half centuries. It is really surprising that such a unique monopoly should have been enjoyed for all this time, and that other ships should have been (with the exceptions we shall presently note) kept out of this benefit. The result was that an East Indiaman was spoken of with just as much respect as a man-of-war. She was built regardless of cost and kept in the best of conditions; and all the other merchantmen in the seven seas could not rival her for strength, beauty and equipment. It was a golden age, a glorious age: an epoch in which British seamanhood, British shipbuilding in wood, were capable of being improved upon only by the clipper ships that followed for a brief interval. They earned handsome dividends for the Company, they were always full of passengers, troops and valuable freight; and, although they were not as fine-lined as the clipper ships, yet they made some astounding passages. They carried crews that in number and quality would make the heart of a modern Scandinavian skipper break with envy. The result was that they were excellently handled and could carry on in a breeze till the last minute, when sail could be taken in smartly with the minimum of warning.
The country fully appreciated how invaluable was this East India service, and certainly no merchantmen were ever so regulated and controlled by Acts of Parliament. To-day you never hear of any merchant skipper buying or selling his command, nor retiring after a very few voyages with a nice little fortune for the rest of his life. But these things occurred in the old East Indiamen, when commanders received even knighthoods and a good income settled on them, for life, as a reward of their gallantry. Those were indeed the palmy days of the merchant service, and many an ill-paid mercantile officer to-day, wearied of receiving owners’ complaints and no thanks, must regret that his lot was not to be serving with the East India Company.
When we consider the two important centuries and a half, during which the East Indiamen ships were making history and trade for our country, helping in the most important manner to build up our Indian Empire, fighting the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French, privateers and pirates, and generally opening up the countries of the East, it is to me perfectly extraordinary that the history of these ships has never yet been written. I have searched in vain in our great national libraries—in the British Museum, the India Office, the Admiralty and elsewhere—but I have not been able to find one volume dealing exclusively with these craft. In an age that sees no end to the making of books there is therefore need for a volume that should long since have been written. Many of the story-books of our boyhood begin with the hero leaving England in an East Indiaman: but they say little or nothing as to how she was rigged, how she was manned, and what uniforms her officers wore.
I feel, then, that I may with confidence ask the reader who loves ships for themselves, or is fascinated by history, or is specially interested in the rise of our Indian Empire, to follow me in the following pages while the story of these old East Indiamen is narrated. In a little while we shall have passed entirely from the last of all surviving ocean-going sailing ships, but during the whole of their period none have left their mark so significantly on past and present affairs as the old East Indiamen. I can guarantee that while pursuing this story the reader will find much that will interest and even surprise him: but above all will be seen triumphant the true grit and pluck which have ever been the attributes of our national sailormen—the determination to carry out, in spite of all costs and hardships, the serious task imposed on them of getting the ship safely to port with all her valuable lives, and her rich cargoes, regardless of weather, pirates, privateers and the enemies of the nation whose flag they flew. And this fine spirit will be found to be confined to no special century nor to any particular ship: but rather to pervade the whole of the East India Company’s merchant service. The days of such a monopoly as this corporation’s trade and shipping are much more distant even than they seem in actual years: but happily it is our proud boast, as year after year demonstrates, that those qualities, which composed the magnificent seamanhood of the crews of these vessels, are no less existent and flourishing to-day in the other ships under the British flag that venture north, south, east and west. The only main difference is this:—Yesterday the sailor had a hundred chances, for every one opportunity which is afforded to-day to the sons of the sea, of showing that the grand, undying desire to do the right thing in the time of crisis is one of the greatest assets of our nation.
CHAPTER II
THE MAGNETIC EAST
Within human experience it is a safe maxim, that if you keep on continuously thinking and longing for a certain object you are almost sure, eventually, to obtain that which you desire.
There is scarcely any better instance of this on a large scale than the longing to find a route to India by sea, and the attainment of this only after long years and years. As a study of perseverance it is remarkable: but the inspiration of the whole project was to get at the world’s great treasure-house, to find the way thereto and then unlock its doors. For centuries there had been trade routes between Europe and India overland. But the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century placed a barrier across these routes. This suggested that there might possibly be—there was most probably—a route via the sea, and this would have the advantage of an easier method of transportation. It is very curious how throughout the ages a vague tradition survives and lingers on from century to century, finally to decide men’s minds on some momentous matter. It is not quite a literal inspiration, for often enough these ancient traditions had a modicum of truth therein contained.