[G] I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness in this chapter to Captain Rathbone Low’s “History of the Indian Navy.”
We have made reference during the course of our story to the grave risks which were run by the mercantile East Indiamen in regard to pirates and privateers. It will now be our duty to give some instances of these and to show that if the captains and officers of the Company’s ships received big rewards for their few voyages, they were certainly entitled to a high rate of remuneration considering the dangers which had to be encountered as regards ships, cargoes and human lives. The very essential basis of overseas trade is that trade-carriers shall be able to go about their lawful business with some certainty of not being attacked on the way. To-day, if a war broke out between our own and some other country possessing a navy, the merchant ships would be so endangered that they would either have to remain in port or else wait till our cruisers could convoy them.
To a certain extent this happened in the time when the East Indiamen flourished. But some say that to-day privateering could not be revived, and in any case piracy, if not quite dead in the East (and for that matter off the north coast of Africa), has been so heavily crushed, thanks to the good work of the Royal Navy, that it would not avail much against our big modern liners and freight-carriers. But in the days with which this present volume is concerned, piracy was a very real, flourishing concern: and quite apart from all the long-drawn-out hostilities between our country and other powers this remained an eternal source of anxiety to an East Indiaman captain. If he could not meet the pirate on an equal footing the end would come quickly and decisively, for the pirate captains were often enough of British origin and just as fine seamen and fighters as any in the employ of the East India Company.
Take the case of Captain John Bowen, who about the year 1700 used to cruise over the Indian Ocean between the Malabar coast and Madagascar, making piracy his serious trade. One day he fell in with an English East Indiaman homeward bound from Bengal under the command of a Captain Conway. In a very short space of time she had been overcome, made a prize of, taken into port, and both her hull and her cargo put up for sale to the highest bidders, which consisted of three merchants glad to obtain the spoil at their own price. A little later on the East Indiaman _Pembroke_, having put into Mayotta for water, and being promptly boarded by the boats of the pirates, whose men killed the chief mate and one seaman, the ship was taken. Some idea of the experiences which beset the East Indiamen may be gathered from a letter dated from Bombay on 16th November 1720 by a certain Captain Mackra, who was in command of one of the Company’s ships.