E. Keble Chatterton

Name: The Old East Indiamen
Author: E. Keble Chatterton

Summary

E. Keble Chatterton’s The Old East Indiamen examines the crucial role of the East India Company’s merchant fleet in shaping British commerce and imperial growth from the 17th to the 19th centuries. By concentrating on the ships, sailors, and goods that characterized this period, the book emphasizes the vessels’ dual role as both commercial and military instruments, their confrontations with adversaries such as the Portuguese, and their part in establishing the Indian Empire.

Through detailed descriptions of voyages, the author illustrates the lasting impact of these ships, highlighting their construction, the trade system based on monopoly, and the unyielding determination of their crews. Chatterton’s narrative connects maritime history with imperial aspirations, portraying the East Indiamen as lasting emblems of Britain’s worldwide influence.

Quotes from The Old East Indiamen (E. Keble Chatterton)

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ And this fine spirit will be found to be confined to no special century nor to any particular ship: but rather to pervade the whole of the East India Company’s merchant service. The days of such a monopoly as this corporation’s trade and shipping are much more distant even than they seem in actual years: but happily it is our proud boast, as year after year demonstrates, that those qualities, which composed the magnificent seamanhood of the crews of these vessels, are no less existent and flourishing to-day in the other ships under the British flag that venture north, south, east and west. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ The East India Company rose from being a private venture of a few enterprising merchants to become a gigantic corporation of immense political power, with its own governors, its own cavalry, artillery and infantry, its own navy, and yet with its trade-monopoly and its unsurpassed “regular service” of merchantmen. The latter were the largest, the best built, and the most powerfully armed vessels in the world, with the exception only of some warships. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ INTRODUCTION In this volume I have to invite the reader to consider a special epoch of the world’s progress, in which the sailing ship not only revolutionised British trade but laid the foundations of, and almost completed, that imposing structure which is to-day represented by the Indian Empire. It is a period brimful of romance, of adventures, travel and the exciting pursuit after wealth. It is a theme which, for all its deeply human aspect, is one for ever dominated by a grandeur and irresistible destiny. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ No one can fail to admire the consummate cleverness with which a modern mercantile captain brings a gigantic liner through a narrow, twisting channel in a strong tideway and berths his ship so quietly as not to break the proverbial eggshell. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ As Columbus, by believing in the sea, was enabled in looking for India to open up the Western world, so was da Gama privileged to unlock the East. And since the sea connotes the ship we arrive at the standpoint that it is this long-suffering creature, fashioned by the hand of man, which has done more for the civilisation of the world than any other of those wonderful creations which the human mind has evolved from the things of the earth. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ The call of the sea to English ears was being listened to more attentively than ever, and when that call summoned men to such profitable trade it continued to be heard through the centuries. Each success added zest and gave an increased enthusiasm. Men who wanted to see the world, or to increase their meagre incomes, or to get away from the narrow confines of their own town or village were eager to take their oath to the Company and go East, where a more adventurous life awaited them. But with the Portuguese it was not so. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

E. Keble Chatterton, The Old East Indiamen

“ Having come alongside the East Indiaman, the great man always refused to trust his valuable life to the ropes and accommodations supplied for entering the ship, but used his own long ladders. Business was duly contracted, and then he would make a present to the ship’s company of bullocks, flour, fruit and a vile, maddening spirit of a most intoxicating nature, which the men were made to exchange for something better. ”

E. Keble Chatterton

Summary

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