After April 1834 the directors of the East India Company were not traders, but rather a council advising and assisting in the control of the political India. In 1857 occurred the Indian Mutiny. The martial races began suddenly to move, the native army of Bengal revolted, and the northern predatory races rebelled. As everyone knows, the Mutiny was eventually quelled, but for our present consideration the most important result was that it was to bring to an end the great career of the East India Company. It was deemed best that Queen Victoria should assume the direct government and rule through a Viceroy, the first of whom was Canning. On 1st November 1858 proclamation was made throughout India that the government had been transferred from the East India Company to the British Sovereign. The Board of Control was abolished and a Council of State for India instituted. Thus, having ceased to be either traders or a political power, this unique corporation came to an end. It had lost its prestige, lost its privileges and strength in India and China, sold its fleet, and at length, on 15th May 1873, came the resolution to dissolve the Company altogether, as from 1st June 1874. East India House, which had been built in the year 1726, enlarged in 1799, was sold with its furniture in the year 1861 and pulled down in the following year. Of course there had been a much earlier East India House in Leadenhall Street also, and the accompanying reproduction of an old print shows the house which stood from 1648 to 1726. The reader will notice on the building a picture of a seventeenth-century ship.

By many of the Indian natives the East India Company had been known as the “Honourable John Company.” The origin of this designation is not quite clear, but it was in effect a personification of the corporation taken quite seriously by the natives. John he knew as a man’s name, for was not his English master called John? Naturally enough, therefore, the Company might also be called the “John” or “Honourable John.” The idea imprinted in the native’s mind was that the Company was one mighty prince, who had to be respected.

But before we close this chapter we want to know what became of the ships and men. If the Company had come to an end the East Indiamen and those who used to work her across the ocean were not ipso facto wiped out of existence. Some of the ships fetched quite good prices, considering that the sale was virtually compulsory. The Earl of Balcarres, for instance, that big ship of which we spoke on a previous page, fetched the sum of £10,700, and she sailed the seas for fifty-two years before being turned into a hulk. The Lady Melville also was sold for £10,000; that fine, handsome ship, the Thames, of which we have given an illustration, obtaining £10,700 as her price. The Buckinghamshire fetched £10,550; the General Kyd, £9100; the Asia, £6500, whilst other ships fetched sums from about £4500 upwards. Of those sold for breaking up were the Waterloo, which fetched about £7200; the Atlas, £4100; the Canning, £5750; the Princess Charlotte, £3000; the London, £5900; General Harris, £6600; Farquharson, £6000. Of course, not all these were sold at the same time. In some cases, the Company having foreseen the inevitable, began to sell as far back as 1830, and they went on selling until the end of 1834. Those shipowners who were out looking for bargains knew that these vessels would not fetch the highest prices, yet they were known to be soundly put together of first-class material. The best prices were obtained by the Company, not in auction, but privately. Among the buyers one finds such well-known shipping names as Joseph Somes, Wigram & Green. The former was one of the founders of Lloyd’s Register. Robert Wigram and Richard Green built and owned some of the finest sailing ships which ever floated in the Thames, and these men, together with the Smiths of Newcastle and other shipowners, began to construct more modern frigate type of ships for the China and India trade now that all privileges had been thrown on one side. These ships used to snug down at night like their predecessors when crossing the sea. But they were run commercially on more sensible lines, and the extravagant privileges to the captains were largely curtailed.

And inasmuch as many of the captains, officers and crew who had served in the East India Company’s craft were now employed in the ships of the new firms there was not such a vast change in the conditions as might have been imagined. Gone was the stately dignity, gone the semi-naval character of the East Indiamen, but in most other respects matters were much the same. Gradually as the newer types of ships began to be built, improved models were effected with finer lines, and the old kettle-bottom type of the Company’s ships gave place to that which was to become historic as the China tea-clippers of 1850 to 1870. With these, however, our present story has no concern. But it was a long time before the main traditions of the East India Company died entirely. Frigate-fashion had been the motto of the shipbuilder for too long for this to be thrown over at once. The Blenheim and the Marlborough, for instance, which came out in 1848, were constructed exactly like the contemporary naval frigates: in design and scantlings they were identical with a 40-gun ship of that class, the Government surveying them and reporting them as fit to carry armaments. These two ships had been built by Messrs T. & W. Smith of Newcastle-on-Tyne. They carried enormous jibbooms “steeved” very high. With their overhanging stern, figurehead, row of square ports, stuns’ls, and dolphin-striker they were very picturesque craft. As regards speed these were an improvement on the ships possessed by the East India Company, and represent the intermediate stage between the latter and the famous China clippers which were to come in a few years’ time. The new type of East Indiaman, frigate-built and copper fastened, cost about £40 a ton to build, so that a 1000-ton ship cost about £40,000. The ships of Messrs Wigram & Green were not pierced for guns, the square windows in these vessels at the poop being used for lighting the passengers’ cabins. These were ships of finer lines than the old East Indiamen or even the vessels which Smith built. Duncan Dunbar also owned a number of fine East Indiamen; in fact, he became at one time the largest shipowner in Great Britain, and many of his vessels were constructed in India, as, for instance, the Marion, of 684 tons, which was launched at Calcutta in 1834, and from that date sailed the seas until she was wrecked off Newfoundland nearly fifty years later. But even before the East India Company lost their China monopoly they possessed a very few ships whose speed was just about as good as any of the more modern successors until the coming of the first tea-clippers of about 1840 onwards. The East Indiaman Thames, of which we give an illustration, was certainly one of the fastest.

THE “BLENHEIM,” EAST INDIAMAN, 1,400 TONS.
(By courtesy of Messrs. T. H. Parker Brothers)

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At the time when the East India Company lost their China charter and sold off their fleet, the commanders and officers considered themselves very much aggrieved. It is quite true, as we have stated, that a good many of them afterwards shipped on board the modern East Indiamen, who, of course, did not fly the naval pennant which the Company’s ships had been allowed to wear. But these officers, in July 1834, banded together and sent a letter to the directors of the East India Company, in which it was pointed out that the Company’s ships and seamen—otherwise known as the Maritime Service in contrast with the Bombay Marine or East India Company’s navy—had been employed for over two hundred years. These ships and men had been instrumental to a great degree in securing the vast territory of British India. These commanders and officers of the present day had entered the Company’s service in the confident expectation that it was a provision for life. But now they found themselves deprived of their profession owing to the sudden ceasing of the Company’s trade. Although the commanders and officers were in the first instance recommended by the shipowners to the Company, yet the latter examined and approved them, and into the latter’s service they were sworn. They were paid, fined, suspended or dismissed by the Company—and not by the owners. They wore the Company’s uniform, enjoyed rank and command under the latter, and became eligible to offices of high honour and emolument. And the extraordinary fact was that they even took precedence of the Company’s Bombay Marine. These maritime commanders ranked with the field officers in India, were saluted with guns, and were eligible for important offices of profit in India.

The position now was therefore not one which seemed to have a bright outlook. They had served in capacities of great trust, and many of them had devoted the whole of their lives to service in the Company’s ships. But when the “free traders” now came on to the scene the latter did not care to employ captains and officers who had been accustomed to navigate only vessels of the size and expensive equipment of those of the East India Company. Only one-fifth of these men were therefore at once taken over by the shipowners, who were now buying up the Company’s ships or building new ones. As for the rest of these officers they had enjoyed the dignity and privileges of the Company for so long a period that they did not care to be employed in “free trade,” considering it derogatory. In any case they could not obtain, from the new owners, the same amount of remuneration as they had been accustomed to receive from the Company. For the latter’s extravagant methods were to give place to a more business-like method. In plain language, the rest of the merchant service rather fought shy of employing these former East Indiamen skippers, and the latter were not anxious to degrade themselves by signing on in these interlopers.

So the captains and officers appealed to the East India Company for compensation in the shape of pensions. The petition was received with little enthusiasm, but the directors could not deny that there was a good deal of truth in what was set forth by these men, and ultimately decided to grant compensation to all commanders and officers who had been actually employed in the Maritime Service for five years on 22nd April 1834. Thus a commander received a monetary payment of £1500, with lesser sums for the other officers. In addition to this, each commander received £4000 for three unexpired voyages, £3000 for two voyages and £2000 for one voyage which they would have made had they continued in the service. Besides these sums, commanders who had served for ten years were granted a pension for life of £250 a year, the chief mate receiving a pension of £160, and so on down to the carpenter and gunner. The condition being that these men assured the Company of their inability to obtain further employment, and that any income which they possessed was to be in abatement of these pensions.