But others besides Raleigh and his followers had been inflamed with the accounts floating about concerning El Dorado. Berrio, the Spanish Governor before mentioned, [pg 9]despatched his camp master to Spain to levy men, sending with him some golden carvings and “images, as well of men as beasts, birds, and fishes,” in order to obtain further aid from the king and his subjects. This agent, Domingo de Vera, was a man of ability, and thoroughly unscrupulous; he courted notoriety by appearing always in a singular dress, adorned with golden trinkets and jewels, and being of great stature, and riding always a great horse, attracted much attention, being known popularly as the Indian El Dorado. He was successful in raising seventy thousand ducats at Madrid, and a large additional sum at Seville: obtained authority for raising a band of adventurers, and five good ships to carry them out. Men of good birth left their estates, respectable middle-class men gave up their incomes and employments, sold everything, and embarked with their wives and children; even a prebendary, and many priests, gave up sure prospects of advancement to join the expedition, which at last aggregated two thousand persons. Berrio had only asked for 300, and when the expedition reached Trinidad, they had to be apportioned to various other settlements; the women and children being serious encumbrances at the time, and enduring great misery. The savage Caribs attacked their canoes when proceeding to St. Thomas and elsewhere. One detachment of three hundred were reduced to thirty souls by the crafty Indians, who, after very partially supplying them with provisions, watched them sink with weakness and disease till they became an [pg 10]easy prey. In some places they set fire to the grass, and the wretched travellers, unable to fly before it, were burned to death. Those who reached the Orinoco, not merely found no gold, but little of that abundance so glowingly described by Raleigh. Vera himself soon died in Trinidad, and Berrio did not long survive him. Of the original two thousand who left Spain, it is doubtful whether a tithe survived the first year. Had Raleigh been a favourite with the people, or had his character been above suspicion, it is more than likely that some similar disaster might have had to be recorded on the pages of English history.
Sir Walter Raleigh has enlightened us,[1] as regards the condition of commerce and of the English mercantile marine shortly before the union of the crown of England and Scotland, in a remarkable paper, “which contains,” says a competent authority, “many remarkable commercial principles far in advance of the age in which the author lived.” He states that the ships of England were not to be compared with those of the Dutch, and that while an English ship of one hundred tons required a crew of thirty men, the Dutch would sail such a vessel with one-third that number. Holland became the depôt of numerous articles, “not one hundredth part of which were consumed by the Dutch,” while she gave “free custom inwards and outwards for the better maintenance of navigation and encouragement of the people to that business.” Sir Walter tells us that France offered to the vessels of all nations free customs twice and sometimes three times each year when she laid in her annual stock of provisions, and also in such raw materials as were not possessed by herself in equal abundance. Denmark granted free customs the year through, excepting only one month. The Dutch were the great carriers by sea, in consequence of the facilities granted them at home, “and yet the situation of England lieth far better for a storehouse to serve the south-east and the north-east kingdoms than theirs do; and we have far the better means to do it if we apply ourselves to do it.” He complained that although the greatest fishery in the world is on the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Holland despatched to the Baltic and up the Rhine more than a million pounds sterling worth of herrings, where we did not export one. He states that Holland trafficked in “every city and port of Britain with five or six hundred ships yearly, and we chiefly to three towns in their country and with forty ships; the Dutch trade to every port and town in France, and we only to five or six,” and that the Dutch were even ruining our Russian trade. In spite of probable exaggerations in Raleigh’s statements as laid before the King, it is evident that with the laws as they stood, the Dutch must have had, as regards their commercial marine, very much the best of it.
While there was much depression among the shipowners, they did not overlook the advantages to be derived from intercourse with the newly-discovered world of North America. Though the expeditions promoted by Raleigh and his associates had been unfortunate, profitable ventures were soon after made, beads, trinkets, and articles of little value being exchanged for skins and furs obtained by the Indians; and Captain Gosnold made in 1602 the first direct voyage across the Atlantic to America—all other English sailors at least having sailed by way of the Canaries and West Indies. “Steering in a small bark, directly across the Atlantic, in seven weeks he reached Cape Elizabeth on the coast of Maine. [pg 11]Following the coast to the south-west, he skirted ‘an outpoint of wooded land;’ and about noon of the 14th of May he anchored ‘near Savage Rock,’ to the east of York Harbour.... Not finding his ‘purposed place’ he stood to the south, and on the morning of the 15th discovered the promontory which he named Cape Cod. He and four of his men went on shore. Cape Cod was the first spot in New England ever trod by Englishman.” He traded with the natives in peltries, sassafras, and cedar-wood, and was probably the first to sow English corn on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard. In 1606 two maritime companies, the “Plymouth Adventurers,” and the South Virginia Company, were authorised to colonise and form plantations; the first having right to the territory which now embraces Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York; and the second, to that which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. A single steamer of these days has often landed more emigrants at New York than did a dozen of these early expeditions at other points, for their progress at first was painfully slow.
The great East India Company was formed in England more than a century after the discovery, by Vasco de Gama, of the route to India viâ the Cape. The first voyage of Thomas Cavendish is worthy of more note than it has received, inasmuch as it contributed more than anything else to awakening the merchants of London to the importance of the trade prospects there. Starting in July, 1586, he circumnavigated the globe, passing through the Straits of Magellan westward, in eight months less than Drake. He was the first English navigator to discern the value of the position of St. Helena, to describe with accuracy the Philippine Islands, and to bring home a map and description of China; and what is more remarkable is the fact that he was scarcely more than twenty-two years of age when he took command in this first most adventurous voyage. He was shipwrecked five or six years later on the coast of Brazil, and lost his life there. Through Mr. Thorne, an English merchant, often mentioned in connection with these early voyages, the London merchants gained a considerable amount of knowledge relating to the important trade with the Indies enjoyed by the Spanish and Portuguese; and at length, in the year 1600, more than 200 shipowners, traders, and citizens associated, and formed a body corporate, having received many special privileges from the Crown, “including,” says Lindsay,[2] “that of punishing offenders either in body or purse, provided the mode of punishment was not repugnant to the laws of England. Its exports were not subjected to any duties for the four first voyages, important indulgences were granted in paying the duties on imports, and liberty was given to export £30,000 each voyage in coin or bullion, provided £6,000 of this sum passed through the Mint. But not exceeding six ships, and an equal number of pinnaces, with 500 seamen, were allowed to be despatched annually to whatever station might be formed in India, with the additional provisoes that the seamen were not at the time required for the service of the Royal Navy, and that all gold and silver exported by the Company should be shipped at either London, Dartmouth, or Plymouth.” The Company started with a capital of £72,000, and equipped five vessels for the first venture, the largest of which was the Dragon of 600 tons; her commander, according to the practice of the day, receiving the title of “Admiral of the Squadron.” The first voyage was very successful; important commercial [pg 13]relations were formed with the King of Achin, in Sumatra; and a factory established at Bantam, after which the ships returned to England richly laden.
A serious rival was, however, in the field. The separation of the Dutch provinces from the crown of Spain had caused their merchants to be sent abroad to seek new fields of commerce, and as they had gained an intimate knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese affairs, they were then the predominant naval power in the Indian Seas, and were quite ready to contend against any supremacy on the part of England’s traders. English merchants were, however, ready for them, the profits on the first expedition having incited them to grander efforts. They obtained a new Charter in 1609, and the Company constructed a vessel of larger size than any hitherto employed in the English merchant service, which they named the Trades’ Increase. She was 1,200 tons, and even her pinnace was 250 tons. At her launch, the Company gave a great banquet, at which the dishes were of china ware, then a great novelty in England. With these and two other vessels Sir Henry Middleton set sail, touching at Mocha, on the Red Sea, where, entrapped ashore by the Mohammedans, eighty of his crew were massacred, sixteen others disabled, and he himself severely wounded. Proceeding to Bantam, the Trades’ Increase was unfortunately shipwrecked, and poor Middleton died heartbroken at the failure of the expedition. But other voyages followed, which were enormously profitable to the Company. One expedition is mentioned which, “though absent only twenty months, earned in that time a profit of no less than 340 per cent.” “Factories”—trading posts or forts—were established, and the Company obtained the favour of the Moghul Emperor, Jehangir, more especially after they had been fortunate enough to repel some of the Portuguese who were attacking his posts. They even contrived to obtain a footing in Japan, through the influence of William Adams, a Kentish man, who had been pilot on one of the earliest Dutch expeditions, and who stood high in the Emperor’s favour. The intercourse then opened was allowed to die out, and has only been re-established late in our own time. In seventeen years after the first establishment of the Company its affairs had become so prosperous that its stock reached a premium of 203 per cent., and the Dutch East India Company suggested an amalgamation of the two corporations with a view to exclude and crush their common enemy, the Portuguese. This was never carried into effect, but in 1619 a treaty of trade and friendship was established. They were to “cease from rivalry, and apportion the profits of the different branches of commerce between them.” Alas! all this amicable billing and cooing were to speedily end; such self-abnegation was found hardly practicable between business rivals. A series of hostilities ensued in the following year; a number of Englishmen were massacred by the Dutch at Amboyna, and sea-fights occurred between the vessels; the result being that the Dutch had it all their own way in a few years afterwards. The directors of the English Company even meditated winding up its affairs. Something similar happened more than once afterwards before they became a grand company and the real governors of India. The rise of British power there is one of those surprising revolutions which never before occurred in history. The managers of a trading company in London first became the lords of a manor a dozen times the size of England, and controlled the destinies of kings and princes, engaging in war or peace as occasion seemed to demand. Think of the affairs of a great country settled in a counting-house! But at length the anomaly had to cease, and, as most readers will remember, the East India Company lost its powers and privileges in 1858, [pg 14]and ceased to exist as a governing body. Retiring allowances were made to commanders and officers. It may be interesting to note that up to 1814 trade with India, so long a jealously-guarded monopoly with the Company, was thrown open to private competition, but that they retained the exclusive trade with China for a long period after that date.
A trifling digression may be allowed here, as it really bears on our subject. The East India Company was long a synonym for everything that was rich and powerful, and many of its civil servants visited or retired to England as opulent and independent men. The maritime branch of the service received a goodly slice of the pie; and some facts relating thereto recorded by Lindsay, the authority before quoted, himself long a great shipowner, will astonish and interest the reader. A commander’s position in the H. E. I. Co.’s service was most assuredly worth having, for his salary was a very small part indeed of his receipts. The Company granted a number of “indulgences” to their naval officers, of which the following are only part. Ninety-seven tons of space were reserved for the commander and officers, of which the former of course took the lion’s share, 56½ tons. They were permitted to import on the homeward voyage tea to the following extent:—9,336 lbs. for the commander, 1,228 lbs. for first mate, and the lower grades were each privileged in the same way, but to a smaller extent. The officers might bring in China-ware as a flooring for the tea-chests, the quantity of which might range from 20 to 40 tons, according to the size of the vessel. They were even allowed surplus tonnage, when it could be safely and conveniently carried. The commander received as his perquisite the passage-money paid by all private passengers, the cost of their provisions and wine being alone deducted. His table was luxuriously supplied, and he was allowed to import for his own use two butts of Madeira wine. The first mate had, among his extra allowances, and quite apart from the regular supply of provisions on board, 24 dozen of wine or beer, 2 firkins of butter, 1 cwt. of cheese, 1 cwt. of groceries, and 4 quarter casks of pickles for the voyage. Lindsay says, “So many were their privileges, and so numerous their perquisites, that during five India or China voyages a captain of one of the Company’s ships ought to have realised sufficient capital to be independent for the rest of his life.” He was, in effect, a merchant, doing business for himself while in the employ of a large mercantile concern, and his officers were the same on a smaller scale. The above writer considers that the direct and inevitable remuneration to a commander was from £3,000 to £5,000 per round voyage, out and home, but that with his privileges and perquisites it might and often did reach £8,000 to £10,000, or more. He mentions one instance which came within his own knowledge, where “the commander of one of the ships employed on the ‘double voyage’—that is from London to India, thence to China, and thence back to London, where he had a large interest in the freight on cotton or other produce conveyed from India to China—realised no less than £30,000.” And yet some of them were not satisfied, and the Company had to make laws and investigations concerning illicit trading and smuggling with the connivance of the Custom House officers. Some of the commanders had even put into ports for which they had no orders, to carry out their own purposes.
The internal economy of an East Indiaman was, as regards discipline and order, modelled for the most part upon that of a man-of-war, and carried more men, twice over, than does many a modern steamer double her tonnage. Thus, one of the finest vessels of [pg 15]the Company, mentioned by Lindsay, was for a considerable period the Earl of Balcarras. She was of 1,417 tons, and had 130 souls on board. After the commander came six mates, a surgeon and assistant, six midshipmen, purser, boatswain, gunner, carpenter, master-at-arms, armourer, butcher, baker, poulterer, caulker, cooper, two stewards, two cooks, eight boatswain’s, gunner’s, carpenter’s, caulker’s, and cooper’s mates; six quartermasters, a sailmaker, seven servants for officers, and seventy-eight seamen. But we are wandering from our theme.
MONSON AND THE BISCAYAN SHIP.
The reign of Elizabeth was a glorious epoch in the history of naval affairs, and great names crowd upon us. It is impossible to pass by that of Sir William Monson, who served his country for fifty years, through three reigns, and whose “Naval Tracts” are almost as valuable as were his services, illustrating as they do the condition of the navy and maritime affairs of the period, and abounding in the details of well-described exploits.