The Honourable Company. John Keay
in his absence and hanged in effigy. Fleets from Goa attempted to blockade Gombroon, the port to which the English had removed from Jask, and in 1625 they precipitated another titanic engagement. It was ‘thought to be one of the greatest that ever was fought’ according to Weddell who again commanded the English contingent and who was not given to exaggeration. But this time he had a new ally. The Dutch had duly noted English successes in the Arabian Sea and had opened their own factory at Surat. They still regarded the Portuguese as their natural foe and, by that Treaty of Defence which proved so disastrous for the English in the Archipelago, they were officially in alliance with the Company. Thus Weddell’s four ships were now joined by a Dutch fleet of similar size.
In all sixteen vessels plus a host of frigates and pinnaces were involved. The battle raged for three days and a final reckoning seemed to give victory to the allies; to their sixty dead it was claimed that the Portuguese had lost nearly 500. But this must have been an exaggeration for six months later the same Portuguese fleet was back in Persian waters and taking its revenge. It fell on the ill-starred Lion, a ship of about 400 tons crewed, if John Taylor, ‘the water-poet’, is to be believed, entirely by heroes. At their first attempt the Portuguese detached the Lion from her fleet, partially fired her, then boarded her and took her in tow. The English prepared to blow her up, but ‘God in his wisdome stayed us by putting it into the mind of some of our men to let fall an anchor’.
Which being done (the tide running very strong) brought our ship to so strong a bitter [i.e. halt] that the fast which the Portugals had upon us brake, whose unexpected suddaine departure from us left 50 or 60 of their men upon our poope, who still maintained their fire in such sort that we were forced to blow them up, which blast tore all the sterne of our ship to peeces from the middle decke upwards.
Miraculously the Lion, charred, battered and half demolished, was still afloat. She limped into Gombroon, discharged her cargo, and was promptly assailed by another Portuguese squadron. This time there was no escape. Forty-two men died as they finally blew up the ship, twenty-six were captured and beheaded, and of the rest all except ten had fallen in battle. ‘Thus was this good ship and men unfortunately and lamentably lost’, writes Taylor with admirable restraint, ‘yet as much courage and manly resolution as possibly could bee was performed by the English, nor can it bee imagined how more industry and truer valour could have been shewed.’
Nothing fuelled English resolve like a magnificent disaster. When word reached Surat that the Portuguese had ‘got into a hole called Bombay’ to refit, Weddell’s Anglo-Dutch fleet stormed down the coast. They were too late; the enemy had fled leaving only the town for the English to avenge themselves on. Thus, in October 1626, the first English to visit Bombay came as raiders. Warehouse, friary, fort and mansions were put to the torch along with two new frigates ‘not yett from the stocks’. A wild notion that this ‘excellent harbour’ with its ‘pleasant fruitfull soil’ might be worth occupying was scouted but firmly rejected as far too provocative.
Hostilities with the Portuguese rumbled on. The eventual peace which was signed at Goa in 1635 by William Methwold, now President at Surat, should have changed the whole balance of maritime power in the East. That was how the Dutch and the Moghul emperor saw it and they bitterly opposed it. It opened to the English Goa itself, the Portuguese settlements on the Malabar coast, and numerous other ports from Basra in Iraq to Tatta in Sind and Macao off the Chinese mainland. It would also last indefinitely, thus ironically enabling the Portuguese settlements in India to survive even the British Raj. But at the time its possible advantages were not paramount. The main point was that neither the Portuguese nor the English could afford to go on quarrelling. Thanks mainly to the Dutch in the East and the Spanish at home, the Portuguese empire was in an advanced state of decline. (In 1641 Malacca itself would fall to the Dutch.) And as for the English, the London Company was now approaching what may be regarded as the nadir of its eastern commerce.
CHAPTER SIX These Frowning Times
RECESSION, FAMINE AND WAR
Overseas the growth of the East India Company during the first two decades of its existence had been decidedly impressive. By 1620 the Presidencies of Bantam and Surat – ‘Presidencies’ because from about that time their Chief Factors were designated ‘Presidents’ – controlled nearly 200 factors scattered over more than a dozen trading centres. In the case of Bantam these stretched from Macassar to Masulipatnam and in the case of Surat from the Malabar Coast to the Red Sea.
But to the stay-at-home Englishman, dodging the sewers of his timbered metropolis and worrying about the next outbreak of plague, these exotic claims meant little. Masulipatnam could have been Mars – and to the lazy-tongued it probably was. For a peck of pepper and a bolt of brocade why, he might have asked, so much fuss? Or to so much fuss, why so little substance?
To remedy such unenlightened comment the loyal Company servant would have recommended a trip down the Thames. As yet the Company boasted no prestigious offices and until 1621 it still operated from the home of Sir Thomas Smythe, its governor. Built by his father, ‘Customer Smythe’ (because he had belonged to a syndicate which farmed the realm’s customs), this establishment was in Philpot Lane off Fenchurch Street. It was evidently of some size for it included a hall large enough for meetings of the General Court and could sleep 120 people. But with a permanent staff of half a dozen, the Company occupied only two or three rooms. For a warehouse it leased a disused section of Cosby House, a much grander edifice in Bishopsgate. In 1617, with subscriptions for the Second Joint Stock pouring in, the optimistic directors rented the whole of Cosby House. Here Sir Morris Abbot presided over the Court of Committees as they fulminated over the Amboina affair or greeted the news of Methwold’s Anglo-Portuguese truce. But in 1638 the Cosby House lease expired and once again the Company became a live-in tenant, this time in the Lime Street home of its new governor, Sir Christopher Clitherow. Although destined to remain on this site, colonizing abutting buildings and eventually acquiring a frontage on adjacent Leadenhall Street, the Company’s initial occupancy extended only to a few small and badly lit apartments.
But downriver from the City’s cramped thoroughfares, anytime during the winter months, the launch-pad of Eastern enterprise provided a sight to savour. Here, attended by a host of lighters, seven or eight of the tall ships later known as Indiamen might be viewed riding at anchor while final preparations were made for their dispatch. From every masthead and yard-arm there flapped flags and pennants of disproportionate size; all bore the red on white cross of St George. Seamen swarmed through the rigging; crates of livestock cluttered the decks. It was a sight, according to one traveller, rivalled only by that of ‘St Paul’s great church’.
Larger than most merchantmen of their day and as heavily armed as warships, the Indiamen were a source of national pride. Maritime artists generally preferred a low-angle half-profile from astern which would reveal the architectural character of a high blunt poop. Here arabesques in red and gold framed a deep veranda with, stacked above it, a row of leaded Tudor casements and perhaps a bow window. Lace curtains hinted at luxury within, for this was the roundhouse, the most sought-after accommodation on board; the captain’s apartments were on the next timbered storey. But amidships the ‘tea-shoppe’ aspect disappeared. From a row of square ports cannon and culverin of brass gleamed brightly between the scuppers and the waterline.
By 1620 the Company operated thirty to forty ‘tall ships’. Most belonged to the Company and many had been built in its own dockyards at Deptford and Blackwall. The latter, commissioned in 1614, was the first yard to be constructed on the left bank of the Thames and was the genesis of the later East India Dock. To anyone curious about technological advance, it was another of the capital’s sights ‘daily visited and viewed by strangers as well [as] Embassadours’. Here, besides wet and dry docks, there were timber yards, a foundry and cordage works for supplying the ships’ hardware and a bakery and saltings for their provisioning. More than 200 craftsmen were directly employed