- East Indiaman
An East Indiaman was a
ship operating under charter or licence to theHonourable East India Company . The company itself did not generally own merchant ships, but held amonopoly granted to it by QueenElizabeth I of England for all English trade between theCape of Good Hope andCape Horn , which was progressively restricted during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. English (later British) East Indiamen usually ran between England, theCape of Good Hope andIndia , often continuing on their voyages toChina before returning to England via theCape of Good Hope . Main ports visited in India wereMumbai (then Bombay),Chennai (then Madras) andKolkata (then Calcutta).Description
East Indiamen were designed to carry both passengers and goods and to defend themselves against
piracy , and so constituted a special class of ship. In the period of theNapoleonic Wars they were often painted to resemble warships, an attacker could not be sure if gunports were real or merely paint, and some carried sizeable armaments. A number of these ships were in fact acquired by theRoyal Navy , and in some cases they successfully fought off attacks by the French. One of the most celebrated of these incidents occurred in1804 , when a fleet of East Indiamen and other merchant vessels successfully fought off a marauding squadron commanded by Admiral Linois in theIndian Ocean . The event is dramatised inPatrick O'Brian 's novel "HMS Surprise".East Indiamen were the largest merchant ships regularly built during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, generally measuring between 1100 and 1400 registered tons. Two of the largest were the "Earl of Mansfield" and "
Lascelles " being built atDeptford in1795 . Both were purchased by theRoyal Navy , completed as 56-gun Fourth Rate Ships of the Line, and renamed "Weymouth" and "Madras" respectively. They measured 1426 tons on dimensions of approximately 175 feet overall length of hull, 144 feet keel, 43 feet beam, 17 feet draft.According to historian
Fernand Braudel , some of the finest and largest Indiamen of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were built in India, making use of Indian shipbuilding techniques and crewed by Indians, their hulls of Indianteak being especially suitable for local waters. These ships were used for the China run. Until the coming of steamships, these Indian-built ships were relied upon almost exclusively by the British in the eastern seas. None sailed to Europe and they were banned from English ports. Many hundreds of Indian-built Indiamen were built for the British, along with other ships, including warships. Notable among them were "Surat Castle" (1791), a 1,000 ton ship with a crew of 150, "Lowjee Family", of 800 tons and a crew of 125, and "Shampinder" (1802), of 1,300 tons. [cite book |last= Braudel |first= Fernand |title= The Perspective of the World: Civilization & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Volume 3 |year= 1979 |publisher= Harper & Row |isbn= 0-06-015317-2 |pages= p. 506]Another significant East Indiaman in this period was the 1176-ton "Lord Warley" that was being built at the Perry yard at Blackwall in 1795 when sold to the
Royal Navy and renamed HMS "Calcutta". In1803 she was employed as a transport to establish a settlement atPort Phillip inAustralia , later shifted to the site of current-day Hobart,Tasmania by an accompanying ship, the "Ocean". HMS "Calcutta" was seized by French forces in1805 and sunk by theRoyal Navy offSicily in1809 .The 1200 ton "Arniston" was likewise employed by the Royal Navy as a troop transport between England and Ceylon. In
1815 , she was wrecked nearCape Agulhas with the loss of 372 lives after a navigation error that was caused by inaccuratedead reckoning and not having amarine chronometer with which to calculate herlongitude .Due to the need to carry heavy cannon, the hull of the East Indiamen — in common with most warships of the time — was much wider at the waterline than at the upper deck, so that guns carried on the upper deck were closer to the centre-line to aid stability. This is known as
tumblehome . The ships normally had two complete decks for accommodation within the hull and a raised poop deck. The poop deck and the deck below it were lit with square-windowed galleries at the stern. To support the weight of the galleries, the hull lines towards the stern were full. Later ships built without this feature tended to sail faster, which put the East Indiamen at a commercial disadvantage once the need for heavy armament passed.With the progressive restriction of the monopoly of the
British East India Company the desire to build such large armed ships for commercial use waned, and during the late 1830s a smaller, faster ship known as aBlackwall Frigate was built for the premium end of the India and China trades.The
shipwreck of one of the largest East Indiamen, the "Earl of Abergavenny", is located atWeymouth Bay, inEngland .The word is also used as a translation of the Dutch "Oostindiëvaarder" of the
Dutch East India Company .
= Notable Indiamen =ee also
*
Armed merchantmen References
External links
* [http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/ConNarrative.136/chapterId/2781/The-East-India-Company.html The East India Company]
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