Produced by Allen Siddle and PG Distributed Proofreaders
[Illustration: MAHRATTA GRABS AND GALLIVATS ATTACKING AN ENGLISH SHIP.]
1907
For most people, interest in the doings of our forefathers in India datesfrom our wars with the French in the middle of the eighteenth century.Before then their lives are generally supposed to have been spent inmonotonous trade dealings in pepper and calico, from which large profitswere earned for their masters in England, while their principalexcitements were derived from drinking and quarrelling among themselves.Little account has been taken of the tremendous risks and difficultiesunder which the trade was maintained, the losses that were suffered, andthe dangers that were run by the Company's servants from the moment theyleft the English Channel. The privations and dangers of the voyage toIndia were alone sufficient to deter all but the hardiest spirits, andthe debt we owe to those who, by painful effort, won a footing for ourIndian trade, is deserving of more recognition than it has received.Scurvy, shortness of water, and mutinous crews were to be reckoned on inevery voyage; navigation was not a science but a matter of rule and thumb,and shipwreck was frequent; while every coast was inhospitable. Thus, onthe 4th September, 1715, the Nathaniel, having sent a boat's crew onshore near Aden, in search of water, the men allowed themselves to beinveigled inland by treacherous natives, who fell upon them and murderedtwelve out of fourteen who had landed from the ship. Such an occurrencenow would be followed by a visit from a man-of-war to punish themurderers. Two hundred years ago it was only an incident to set down inthe ship's log-book. But all such outrages and losses were small incomparison with those to which traders were exposed at the hands ofpirates.
It is difficult to realize, in these days, what a terrible scourge piracywas to the Indian trade, two hundred years ago. From the moment of losingsight of the Lizard till the day of casting anchor in the port ofdestination an East India ship was never safe from attack, with thechance of slavery or a cruel death to crew and passengers, in case ofcapture. From Finisterre to Cape Verd the Moorish pirates made the seasunsafe, sometimes venturing into the mouth of the Channel to make acapture. Farther south, every watering-place on the African coast wasinfested by the English and French pirates who had their headquarters inthe West Indies. From the Cape of Good Hope to the head of the PersianGulf, from Cape Comorin to Sumatra, every coast was beset by English,French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Arab, Malay or other local pirates. Inthe Bay of Bengal alone, piracy on a dangerous scale was practicallyunknown.
There was no peace on the ocean. The sea was a vast No Man's domain,where every man might take his prey. Law and order stopped short atlow-water mark. The principle that traders might claim protection andvengeance for their wrongs from their country, had not yet beenrecognized, and they sailed the seas at their own risk. Before the closeof the seventeenth century the buccaneers had passed away, but theirdepredations, in pursuit of what they called "free trade," were of adifferent nature from those of the pirates who succeeded them. Buccaneerexploits were confined to the Spanish main, where they ravaged and burntSpanish settlements on the Atlan