It is only by examining the official correspondence which passed between the Company’s servants and themselves that we are able to get a correct insight into the lesser, though usually more human, details connected with these ships. In the last chapter but one we saw that the third voyage had been financially satisfactory. But there are a few sidelights which show that these voyages were not mere pleasure cruises. If this particular one earned 234 per cent. it was by sheer hard work on the part of the men and of the ships. Captain Keeling writes that he had, whilst in the East, to buy “of the Dutch a maine top-sayle (whereof we had extreame want) and delivered them a note to the Company, to receive twelve pounds twelve shillings for the same.” So also it was with men as with sails. Anthony Marlowe writes home to the Governor of the Company, under date of 22nd June 1608, from on board the Hector, that during the voyage “there hath died in our ship two foremast men—Wallis and Palline: and two lost overboard, Goodman and Jones: also there hath died Dryhurst, steward’s mate, John Newcome, John Asshenhurst, purser’s mate, Mr Quaytmore, purser, and Mr Clarke, merchant.”

If there was ill-feeling ashore between the English and the Portuguese, and the English and Dutch, so all was not ever as happy as wedding bells in the English ships. One June day in 1608, during this third voyage, a violent enmity had broken out between Anthony Hippon, master of the Dragon, and his mate, William Tavernour. Someone endeavoured to get them to make up their quarrel, but Hippon was obdurate, and “was heartened forward in his malice against the said Tavernour by Matthew Mullynex the master of the Hector.”

And there is a further letter, dated 4th December 1608, which was sent by another of the Company’s servants named James Hearne, which again calls attention to the Dragon’s want of sails, the ship then being at Bantam. There was no canvas procurable out there, “therefore,” he suggests, “one hundred pound more or less, would not be lost in laying it out in spare canvas in such a voyage as this.” And then he concludes his letter with a postscript, which shows that the life of a factor in the Company’s service ashore out in the East was not a lucrative occupation. “That it may please your worships,” he petitions, “to consider me somewhat in my wages, for I have served 2 years already at £4 a month, and in this place I am in, my charge will be greater than otherwise.”

We have already alluded to the setting forth of the sixth expedition under Sir Henry Middleton in 1607. Middleton was instructed to proceed to the west coast of India with the intention of obtaining from Surat Indian calicoes which would find a ready sale at Bantam and the Moluccas. Having set forth from England in the year 1610, he arrived at Aden, where he left the Peppercorn, and then with his flag in the Trade’s Increase sailed for Mocha, which is at the southern end of the Red Sea. No English vessel had yet thrust her bows into this sea, though the Portuguese had been there even during the previous century. And here the Trade’s Increase, which had received such an ovation when she was first launched at the Deptford yard, was to begin the first of her serious mishaps. Like many another ship that came after her, famous for unprecedented size, she was destined to be unlucky.

She was making for Mocha with the assistance of native pilots when she had the misfortune to get badly aground. She was a clumsy, unhandy ship, and it was natural enough that the natives who had been accustomed only to their smaller craft might get her into trouble. The incident occurred in November 1610, and the following account sent home by one who was on board her at the time may be taken as representative of the facts. “About five a clocke,” runs the account, “in luffing in beeing much wind, we split our maine toppe sayle, and putting abroad our mizen, it split likewise: our Pilots brought our shippe a ground upon a banke of sand, the wind blowing hard, and the Sea somewhat high, which made us all doubt her coming off ... we did what we could to lighten our ship, sending some goods a-land and some aboard the Darling ... we land as well our Wheat-meale, Vinegar, Sea-coles, Pitch and Tarre, with our unbuilt Pinnasse, and other provisions which came next hand, or in the way, as well as Tinne, Lead, Iron, and other merchandise to be sould, and staved neare all our water.” The reference to the “unbuilt pinnasse” is explained by the fact that it was the custom of the Elizabethan and later voyagers to take out from home the necessary timber and planks and to build the little craft on board as they proceeded. This kept the men occupied and was a saving in wages, besides not involving the risk of losing such a craft before the end of the voyage was being approached. Such a top-heavy, cumbrous vessel as the Trade’s Increase would need very careful “nursing” in a squall to prevent her from capsizing, and it is perfectly clear that the sudden luffing up into the wind to ease her was too much for the canvas that had already been considerably worn and chafed during the voyage across the Equator and round the Cape of Good Hope up to the Gulf of Aden.

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.

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.

And so this leaky, crank, badly built ship came fighting her way along over the trackless ocean, a continuous source of anxiety to her commander. Troubles often enough come not singly, and the Peppercorn was another unlucky ship. By sheer carelessness she and all hands barely escaped ending all things by fire at sea. “At noon,” says Downton, “our ship came afire by the cook his negligence, o’erguzzled with drink, digged a hole through the brick back of the furnace and gave the fire passage to the ship’s side, which led to much trouble besides spoil to our ship.” The punctuation of this sentence needs no modification to show the short, sharp impressions jotted down by a choleric captain. The name of this “o’erguzzled” cook was Richard Hancock, and no doubt he had so undermined his health with drink, or had been so severely punished by his commander that he could not long survive, for he died shortly after one day at noon and was buried at sea.

But he was not the only careless member of the ship’s company. At least one of the watch-keeping officers was just as bad in his own sphere. “The 27th at 2 after noon we were suddenly taken short with a gust from the SE, which by neglect of the principal of the watch not setting in time, not only put us to much present trouble but also split us two topsails at once, and blew a third clean away.” The following month on the eleventh the Peppercorn was at midnight overwhelmed by heavy squalls which “split our main bonnet and fore course, whereby we were forced to lie a try with mainsail, the sea very violent, we mending our sail.”

The meaning of this may not be quite apparent to those unfamiliar with the ships of those days. The “bonnet” was an additional piece of canvas laced on to the foot of these square-sails. It had been long in use by the ships of the Vikings and the English craft of the Middle Ages, and continued to be used during the Tudor period and the seventeenth century. Even in the twentieth century it is not quite obsolete, and is still used on the Norfolk wherries and on some of the North Sea fishing vessels. It was such a canvas as certainly ought to have been taken in quickly if the Peppercorn was likely to be struck by a heavy squall, being essentially a fine-weather addition. And whenever it was unlaced the equivalent was obtained of putting a reef in the sail. To “lie a try” was a well-known expression used by the Elizabethan seamen and their successors: it meant simply what we mean to-day when we speak of heaving-to. The ship would just forge ahead very slowly under her mainsail only, being under command but making good weather of the violent sea of which Downton speaks, and allowing most of the hands to get busy with the sails, which had to be sent down and repaired.

They had barely begun to resume their voyage when, on the thirteenth of the month, the Peppercorn broke her main truss—that is to say, the rope which kept the yard of the mainsail at its centre to the mast. The main halyards also carried away and again the main bonnet was split, but this time the mainsail as well. The “main course,” says Downton, “rent out of the bolt rope”—that is to say, blew right away from the rope to which it is sewn—and so they were, owing to “want of fit sail to carry, forced to lie a hull,” which means that they had to heave-to again. Meanwhile the Peppercorn was still leaking away merrily. “This day again,” reads an entry in the journal a little later on, “by the labouring of the ship and beating of her bows in a head sea, whereby we found in the powder room in the fore part on the lower orlop, 20 or 24 inches water, which have so spoiled, wet and stained divers barrels, so that of 20 barrels of powder I do not now expect to find serviceable 2 barrels, besides all our match and divers other things.” It would therefore have gone ill with the Peppercorn if she had fallen in with a big, powerful Spanish ship on the high seas ready to blaze away at her.

It took thirty-six hours to get these sails repaired and new ropes spliced. This mending became in fact the rule rather than the exception. “Our daily employment either mending of our poor old sails daily broken, or making new with such poor stuff as we have.” There can be no doubt whatever that these ships were sent to sea with all too few stores to allow of accident. We have already seen that additional canvas could not be obtained in the East, except with the indulgence of some Dutch captain, who would naturally charge the English the full value of a new sail, and a bit more. One wonders, indeed, how often those London merchants realised how dearly these big percentages had been bought—how only the dogged determination of the captains and masters, the sufferings of the crews in the leaky, ill-found ships could provide fortunes and luxuries for those who stayed at home in ease. However, little though they knew it at the time, it was these ill-faring mariners who were really building up the foundations of England’s Eastern wealth and her Eastern Empire. Human lives in those harsh days were rated low enough, and a poor, common sailor was not slobbered over. He was merely one of the meshes of the big net cast into the sea to bring in large spoil to the financiers of that time. But it has always been thus, and the more long-suffering the seaman has shown himself, the more courageous and patient he has been, the more he has been treated with contumely by those very persons who have obtained all that they possess through his achievements.

It cannot be supposed that these seventeenth-century Indiamen were on the whole happy ships. The captains feared mutiny all the time, and the men were compelled to live and work under trying conditions which were enough to break the spirit of any landsman. Downton’s journal shows this all too well. Take the following entries, which are sufficiently expressive:—

“July 2. Mr Abraham Lawes conceives he is poisoned for that his stomach falls away, and he hath often inclination to vomit, for he saith he was so at Venice, when he was formerly poisoned.”

Three days later Thomas Browning died, and on 27th July comes this entry:

“This day Mr Lawes died and is opened by the surgeon who took good note of his inward parts which was set down by the surgeon and divers witnesses to that note.” Similarly on 21st August: “Men daily fall down into great weakness”; and, again, four days later: “Edw. Watts, carpenter, died at midnight.” Under the twenty-ninth of the same month we find the following entry:—“Stormy weather, dry, the night past Thomas Dickorie died. Most of my people in a weak estate.” The last day of the month we read that “John Ashbe died by an imposthume at 7 o’clock after noon,” and other members of the ship’s company continued to die almost daily. An “imposthume,” by the way, is an abscess.

But the Peppercorn, though she had long since crossed the line, and was even now beyond the Bay of Biscay, was destined to suffer ill luck right to the end of her voyage. She ought, of course, to have rounded Ushant and then squared away up the English Channel. But as a fact Downton got right out of his reckoning. He rather imagined that his reckoning was wrong and suspected “all the instruments by which we observed the variation by.” The result was that he got farther to the north than he expected. He therefore ran right across the western mouth of the English Channel without sighting anything, so that eventually he found himself between Wales and Ireland—miles and miles out of his course. All too late he realised the mistake, so determined to put in to the nearest port. He thought of Milford, but as the Peppercorn would not fetch thither, he decided to run for Waterford in Ireland. He ran down to the coast, but when off the entrance a thick fog enshrouded the land, so he had to put out to sea once more, being able eventually to run into Waterford river when a more favourable opportunity presented itself. He had got his ship safe back into the Narrow Seas, but he had arrived a long way short of the River Thames and the port of London, and it would mean the wasting of further delay before the Peppercorn’s rich cargo could be sold in the metropolis. But with what success this voyage concluded to the stock-holders we have already seen.

Apropos of this voyage there is still preserved a letter written by Downton “aboard the Peppercorn to the Right Worshipful the Indian Company in Philpot Lane, September 15, 1613,” in which this captain asks for “3 cables and other cordage of divers sizes, a set of sails, sail needles and twine, and some Hamburrough lines for sounding lines.” With regard to the bad land-fall which Downton made coming home, there can be no doubt that he had reason to suspect those crude, inaccurate navigation instruments to which we have already called attention. In addition, of course, the early seventeenth-century charts bristled with errors. As for Eastern waters, the English skippers were much indebted to the charts which the Dutchmen had made for themselves, the Dutch at this time being the best cartographers in the world. There is at least one instance of a navigator of one of the English East India Company’s ships “finding it to be truely laid down in Plat or Draught made by Jan Janson Mole, a Hollander, which he gave to Master Hippon, and he to the Companie.” To this knowledge received by the Company were added the “plots” (i.e. charts) which their own masters of ships brought home at the end of every voyage, amended and added to as their experience dictated. We have already seen that it was compulsory for the master of every East Indiaman to deliver to the Governor of the English East India Company four copies of his journal and other “worthy” observations of his voyage within ten days of his arrival back in the Thames. The information thus derived was systematised, and as time went on and the voyages became more numerous still there was thus accumulated a number of invaluable sailing directions which were to be condensed into “Rules for our East India Navigations” by the famous John Davis of Limehouse, who had himself made no less than five voyages. The East India Company thus not only built its own ships at its own dockyard, victualled them from its own stores, but conducted its own hydrography department. It was therefore positively unique in its monopolies and self-dependence. England has never had any corporation like it: and it is pretty certain it never will.