It is difficult to realise all that the East India Company stood for. It comprised under its head a large shipping line with many of the essential attributes of a ruling nation, and its merchant ships not only opened up to our traders India, but Japan and China as well. And bear in mind that the old East Indiamen set forth on their voyages not with the same light hearts that their modern successors, the steamships of the P. & O. line, begin their journey.6 Before the East India Company’s ships got to their destination, they had to sail right away round the Cape of Good Hope and then across the Indian Ocean, having no telegraphic communication with the world, and with none of the comforts of a modern liner—no preserved foods, no iced drinks or anything of that sort. Any moment they were liable to be plunged into an engagement: if not with the French or Dutch men-of-war, then with roving privateers or well-armed pirate ships manned by some of the most redoubtable rascals of the time, who stopped at no slaughter or brutality. There were the perils, too, of storms, and of other forms of shipwreck, and the almost monotonous safety of the modern liner was a thing that did not exist. Later on we shall see in what difficulties some of these ships became involved. It was because they were ever expectant of a fight that they were run practically naval fashion. They were heavily armed with guns, they had their special code of signals for day and night, they carried their gunners, who were well drilled and always prepared to fight: and we shall see more than one instance where these merchant ships were far too much for a French admiral and his squadron.

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 out7 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 lot8 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.