by Frank Sherry
But the action of the company that did most to promote mistrust in Aurangzeb’s heart was an internal declaration issued in 1689 that revised the stated purpose of the company to include political as well as commercial activities. Among other things, the declaration asserted that the company “must make us a nation in India. Without that, we are but a great number of interlopers, united by His Majesty’s Royal Charter fit only to trade where nobody of power thinks it their interest to prevent us.”
This remarkable statement clearly forecast the future of the East India Company as an ever more powerful state-within-a-state that finally became dominant on the subcontinent. There is no reason to think that Aurangzeb remained long ignorant of this company declaration. Even if, in view of the power of his own monarchy, he dismissed the document as the absurd scheming of an arrogant, but impotent, cabal of barbarians, Aurangzeb must have been extremely irritated by the presumptuous words and deeply suspicious of the authors. Certainly, as he was soon to demonstrate, Aurangzeb would not hesitate to crush the company if he became convinced that it constituted even the slightest danger to the Peacock Throne—or failed to exhibit proper respect for the Muslim religion.
As it entered the decade of the 1690s, however, the company seemed to believe that despite Aurangzeb’s distrust and his continuing harassment, it had earned, and would continue to hold, a powerful commercial position in the Great Mogul’s realm.
The most vexing problems facing the East India Company at that time, its directors thought, were not in India at all but in London—and derived not from the suspicions of the Great Mogul but from the jealousies of merchants, shippers, and political figures who had been excluded by the company’s monopoly from the East India trade.
In the 1680s the company had begun to receive much criticism in London from powerful political and mercantile interests who pointed out that only five hundred shareholders made up the East India Company, and that this exclusive group derived its wealth-producing monopoly from the Crown rather than from Parliament, which was, after all, the nation’s ruling body. The company had also come under considerable fire from merchants of Bristol, Liverpool, and Hull, who were outraged by the fact that the East India Company operated exclusively out of London, denying other ports any part of the trade.
In 1688, England’s new king, William III, in response to the opprobrium directed toward the East India Company, had granted a second company the right to trade with India. Parliament, glad of this opportunity to chastise the East India Company of the Stuarts, confirmed King William’s grant to the new company by a margin of ten votes. As Samuel Pepys put it: “The old East India Company lost their business against a new company by ten votes in Parliament, so many of their friends being absent going to see a tiger baited by dogs.”
Although by 1690 the new company—which called itself the “English” East India Company to distinguish itself from the original—had been in business for less than two years, the directors of the East India Company in London were already noting a decrease in company profits.1
Nor was the challenge from the new trading company the only competition that worried the company’s directors in London. Unauthorized merchants, to whom the company gave the name “interlopers,” had begun to appear in increasing numbers in Indian waters. Many of these unlicensed merchants, whose ships brazenly defied the company’s royal monopoly and traded independently with Indian businessmen, were from the American colonies—a fact that caused much ill will between the company and American merchants. This ill feeling was to worsen considerably in the years ahead.2
While the activities of the American interlopers in India did not constitute as serious an economic challenge as did the operations of the new English East India Company, the Americans certainly added to the anxieties of the company directors, who were well aware that even though the company stood at the apex of its profitability and power, it depended for its existence upon Parliamentary support as well as the continuing goodwill of the Great Mogul. Furthermore, the company directors knew better than anyone else that if the East India Company should go under because of ill-conceived competition from English rivals or American interlopers, then Dutch, Portuguese, and French merchant companies would fill both the commercial and political vacuums left by the company’s demise—to the great detriment of England.
In the midst of these concerns, it is not surprising that company officials, both in London and in India, did not at first pay very much attention to reports of increasing piratical activity in Indian waters. Pirates, after all, had been an intermittent nuisance to eastern trade for decades, especially in the area near the mouth of the Red Sea. Moreover, company ships had not yet been attacked. Most of the pirates, according to company information, seemed to be from the English colonies of North America—and seemed to be intent upon taking “Moorish” ships.
When the first reports had been received in London that a Newport raider named Amity had pillaged a considerable amount of treasure from one of the Great Mogul’s own ships, the company had regarded it merely as an isolated incident.
In fact, Aurangzeb himself seems to have considered this initial attack on one of his ships simply an unavoidable hazard of sea travel. After all, the Muslims of India’s western coast were not unfamiliar with piracy, having long had to contend with their own local pirates.3
In any event Aurangzeb took no action in response to Tew’s attack on his ship.
However, as English-speaking pirates began to flock into Indian waters in Tew’s wake and began to prey in ever-increasing numbers on Mogul shipping, Aurangzeb’s uneasy mistrust of the East India Company was aroused. Since the majority of the newly arrived pirates seemed to be English or Americans, it seemed to Aurangzeb that they might be acting in collusion with the English company. But he kept his mounting misgivings to himself.
Then came news that an English pirate, Henry Every, had captured and sacked the Mogul’s own great ship, the Gang-I-Sawai.
Aurangzeb exploded in fury. Not only had Every dared to board one of the Great Mogul’s own ships, he had also stolen goods and gifts meant for Aurangzeb’s personal use. Further, the barbaric English pirates had murdered Aurangzeb’s servants, and had committed an incredible sacrilege by attacking pilgrims bound home from Mecca. But even worse than these heinous crimes, Every had permitted his men to lay their infidel hands on Muslim women aboard the Gang-I-Sawai—some of whom were the wives of Aurangzeb’s servants and relatives of the Great Mogul himself.
Never had Aurangzeb suffered so great an affront.
His wrath broke like a monsoon on the heads of the officials of the East India Company.
Accusing the company of being in league with the pirates, he seized the company’s establishments at Surat, Agra, and other places. He jailed fifty of the company’s English employees, including the company’s manager. The Englishmen were kept shackled, three to a cell, in Aurangzeb’s dark and primitive dungeon for up to six months. Some of the English prisoners were treated so severely by guards that they died.
Company officials tried to convince Aurangzeb that they had had nothing to do with Every, or with the other pirates now active in the Indian Ocean. They argued that, like the Great Mogul himself, they viewed all pirates as enemies, regardless of their national origins. They finally persuaded Aurangzeb of their innocence, and the imprisoned company employees were released. But the Great Mogul’s anger against the European pirates was not appeased. Nor were his doubts about company complicity completely allayed. Aurangzeb informed company officials, and all other Europeans trading with India, that from now on he would hold them responsible for the safety of his ships.
Company officials, still quivering from their terrifying experiences in Aurangzeb’s prison, realized that the Great Mogul’s frustrated fury against the pirates threatened to tear down all that the East India Company had built up over the previous ninety years. They appealed to London for aid. The pirates, they warned the British government, could destroy the company a
nd put an end to British influence in the East if their depredations were not stopped. The London government responded by offering a reward of £500 for Every and each member of his crew. The company added another £500 to the reward offer.
Regarding London’s response as inadequate, the company then requested that the government permit the company itself to arrest and try pirates in special courts, rather than going through the long and expensive process of remanding captured pirates to London for trial. The request was denied without comment.
The company also beseeched London for help from the Royal Navy, even though company officials knew very well that London was not likely to provide such help since the war with France was still absorbing all the Royal Navy’s energies. As expected, this request, too, was turned down.
Company officials then undertook to convoy Mogul ships with their own armed merchant vessels. It was the only strategy they could think of to comply with Aurangzeb’s edict making the company responsible for Mogul ships.
But the company knew that this convoy strategy was at best a makeshift. Convoys could not protect all the Mogul vessels that plied between the Red Sea and the Malabar Coast of India. In any convoy under sail, company officials knew, there would always be stragglers who could be picked off. There would also be Mogul ships that for reasons of time could not wait for the formation of a convoy, but would risk sailing alone. Finally, company officials knew that their own armed ships were inadequate to ward off a really determined attack by pirates. Until now the company’s “private navy” had been used primarily to frighten off the ships of interloping colonial merchants, who, more often than not, turned tail as soon as a shot was put across their bows.
In brief, the company’s naval arm, crewed for the most part by inadequately trained Indian gunners and sailors, was no match for pirate vessels crewed by veteran English and American cutthroats.
Nevertheless, the company adopted a convoy strategy and hoped for the best.
Inevitably, from this time forward, pirates began to come into conflict with company ships sailing in convoy with Moorish vessels. Soon pirates who had previously avoided attacks on English vessels abandoned that policy, apparently deciding that if company ships were going to defend Moorish vessels, they were themselves fair game. Within months after commencing its convoy policy, East India Company ships were being attacked regularly by pirates, who almost always won any encounter.
Nor did the pirates treat company ships and personnel any more gently than they treated Moorish vessels—as an incident that occurred late in 1696 illustrates.
The incident began when two pirate ships, the John and Rebecca and the Charming Mary, cruising together off the coast of India, intercepted two East Indiamen, the Ruparel and the Calicut Merchant. Both merchants belonged to the East India Company and had English captains and officers.
The two pirate vessels, each heavily armed and each crewed by more than three hundred desperadoes, easily overtook the two merchants, boarding them without resistance from their native crews.
After ransacking both vessels and transferring valuable goods to their own ships, the pirates began to put the officers and men of the cargo ships in open boats and prepared to put both East Indiamen to the torch, intending to burn them to the waterline and leave them dead hulks. Suddenly the captain of the Ruparel suggested that rather than destroying the two captured ships, the pirates should take them to the Arabian port of Aden where, he was sure, company representatives would pay a considerable ransom for their ships and cargo. The pirates agreed, and the four ships sailed off to Aden. But port officials there refused to allow the company to deal with the pirates. They even refused the company permission to ransom any of its cargo.
Company officials had been particularly anxious to ransom a consignment of Arabian horses aboard the Calicut Merchant—an extremely valuable cargo that the pirates had no interest in stealing, but which would bring great profit in Europe. In spite of all pleas, the port officials remained adamant. The pirates, feeling themselves somehow cheated, then angrily burned both ships in full view of the shore, after removing their European masters and officers. The native crewmen were allowed to swim for their lives. The fate of the Arabian horses was not recorded.
The angry pirates then deposited their European captives ashore and resumed their cruise with impunity.
Rich company ships like the Ruparel and the Calicut Merchant fell to pirates throughout the 1690s, until it seemed that the pirates of Madagascar had declared implacable war on the East India Company. Further, it was a war that the company could not win, thanks to a series of factors beyond its control.
First, the pirate sanctuaries in and around Madagascar were too numerous, too far away, and too well defended for the company’s inadequate naval forces to attack. It would require a squadron of Royal Navy warships to root the pirates out of their island bases, and the Royal Navy was not available.
Second, Admiralty law prohibited company ships from attacking a suspected pirate on the high seas until after it had committed a hostile act. Thus, a pirate could masquerade as a legitimate trader until it committed an overt offense. Further, even if the company did manage to capture pirates in the act, it had no power to try prisoners charged with the crime of piracy. Instead, prisoners had to be sent back to London for trial—a process that took time and effort and, more important, took up precious and expensive cargo space aboard company ships.
As a result of such restrictions, the company made little effort to take pirates as prisoners, and its ships engaged in combat with pirate vessels only when attacked, or when they had a distinct advantage in numbers and armament—and were certain that the ship they were attacking was indeed a pirate.
The third factor that contributed to the pirate ascendancy was the superior quality of the outlaws’ ships and crews. In general, the merchant ships of the day were slow and vulnerable, built for carrying capacity rather than speed or striking power. One of the most common merchant carriers in the seventeenth century was the broad-beamed flute. The flute was of Dutch origin and was designed with capacious holds for cargo and with simple rigging for ease of handling. Generally, flutes were in the 300-ton class and measured about 80 feet from stem to stern. They could, at most, accommodate ten cannon, but they almost never carried that many. Because flutes required so little handling, they seldom needed a crew of more than ten or twelve. Before the pirate menace became a major economic factor, flutes were the favorite European merchant ship in the East since they were so cheap to build and operate and could carry so heavy a payload. But they stood virtually no chance whatever against a pirate attacker—and consequently began in the 1690s to disappear rapidly from the eastern trade.
Another popular cargo vessel of the time was the three-masted square-rigger merchant ship, which carried passengers as well as considerable cargo. At 280 tons and 80 feet in length, the square-rigger was faster than the flute, but not much more maneuverable. Ordinarily it carried only a dozen cannon and a crew of twenty to twenty-five men. Relatively slow and clumsy, the square-rigger, too, was easy prey for pirates. Like the flute, it began to disappear from eastern waters very rapidly after the outbreak of the pirate war.
By far the most popular, and potentially most powerful, of the merchant ships in service in the East was the East Indiaman. At 700 tons, it was 160 feet long, and 34 feet in the beam. It was built to carry fifty-four cannon and a crew of three hundred—and when properly armed and crewed, it could be a formidable opponent of any pirate who might attack it. Fortunately for the pirates, however, few East Indiamen ever carried full armament or a complete crew. Most merchants, including the wealthy East India Company, knew that if they made room in their ships for fifty-four guns and three hundred sailors, they would have to reduce the amount of profitable cargo they could carry. Furthermore, the expense of feeding and paying a large crew would eat up much of the proceeds of the voyage. For these reasons the company’s East Indiamen usually carried only a very small part of their
potential armament and crew. Thus the company preserved its profits but in the process rendered its East Indiamen almost as vulnerable to pirate attack as the smaller, slower square-riggers and flutes.4
(Company ships did, however, attempt to fool pirates into thinking they were carrying a full fifty-four guns by painting false gunports on their hulls. It was a tactic that sometimes worked.)
In contrast to the merchant vessels that plied the Indian Ocean, pirate ships were always swift, well armed, well maintained, and crewed by scores of first-class fighting men.
As a general rule, pirates preferred ships of shallow draft and narrow hull, capable of crowding on clouds of sail—ships built for speed. The favorite pirate vessels were schooners and sloops, usually of no more than 100 tons. Pirates also liked the three-masted square-rigger. But they would modify the square-rigger for speed by removing cabins and most other deckwork, creating the flush deck that added significantly to velocity and maneuverability under sail. Pirates often chose such modified square-riggers for their ability to cruise on long journeys and because they could carry a crew of 150 men, plus thirty or more cannon. Pirates would also modify East Indiamen for their own use. When altered for speed, both square-riggers and East Indiamen found favor with pirates, often as the flagships of pirate fleets.
With heavily armed, swift-sailing ships under them, pirates were able to strike quickly with overwhelming strength in their encounters with the ships of the East India Company, the Great Mogul, or other European merchant vessels. These tactics of speed and power almost always carried the day against the slow and clumsy ships pirates preyed upon. Only a Royal Navy man-of-war, usually a 110-foot, 360-ton frigate, carrying a crew of two hundred, plus twenty-five well-served cannon (and looking much like a square-rigger) could match the outlaw ships.