The Indian Ocean (42 page)

The speeds achieved varied with the monsoons and the skill of the crew. In the Mediterranean the best, and very exceptional, speed achieved was about 200 km a day.
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Ships racing before the monsoon did this regularly. Vasco da Gama sped from Malindi to Malabar in 1498 in 26 days, at an average speed of just under 200 km a day. In the next century the Dutch ships, which had begun to use the roaring 40s very early on, covered about 150 km a day.
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Life on board these ships ranged over great extremes, from boredom to savagery to danger. The accounts we have quoted, and many others, stress danger, drama, shipwrecks and so on, but the main aspects were tedium and the danger of disease. One traveller wrote that 'Certainly no one, to whom a house was offered, even if it was regally appointed, to live enclosed in it for six months, could remain so long detained and locked in it; much less in a ship, filled with so many and so varied inconveniences.'
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As to disease, it seems that there was a dim awareness that limes and lemons had some role in preventing scurvy, but even so this was a feared and loathsome disease which sometimes took a very heavy toll indeed. Victims died in excruciating pain, screaming in delirium. It affected the gums, so teeth fell out, or the legs, which swelled up with putrefying sores.
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It seems that social divisions were made much more visible, and even were exacerbated, during the months or weeks on board ship. Common sailors on the northern European ships were subject to extremely brutal discipline. Nickolaus de Graaff, who did five voyages as a surgeon on VOC ships in the seventeenth century, wrote that

if the sailors are punished, they are flogged with a thick rope's end for so long before the mast, that they fall on their knees and beg for mercy; or they are ducked from the yardarm into the sea, or keel-hauled three times under the ship, and then flogged before the mast. Or they get a chain and ball on their leg, and must endure hard labour with the black slaves on the Company's public works. Or they are deported to the west coast of Sumatra, or to the Banda Islands, or to Mauritius, or else banished to Robben Island off the Cape of Good Hope. So that there are many ways of taming them; because they are not much better treated than slaves, and must stand ready at the beck and call of the most junior officer.
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Problems with discipline no doubt increased as the quality of the crews and passengers declined. On VOC ships in the eighteenth century many on board were German beggars and paupers. On the Portuguese naus many of the troops on board had come straight from jail, dressed in rags, and suffering from syphilis and other diseases.

There was frequent overcrowding on the naus, a vast array of people travelling in
extreme discomfort. But the elite, even if their cabins in the superstructure in the stern were narrow, with ceilings only four feet high, were still much better off than the rest of the passengers. In a previous chapter we found Ibn Battuta travelling in some style, complete with concubines and servants (see pages 111–12). Earlier in this chapter we saw the Abbé Carré in his voyage from Surat to Hurmuz travelling with very wealthy Persian merchants and their harems (see pages 182–3). So also Carletti, who as a wealthy merchant set off from Goa for Portugal in 1601. He had with him three servants, respectively a Japanese, a Korean and a Mozambique Negro. He had his own bedroom, and took one hundred hens with him to provide food along the way.
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Indeed food was the area where the social divisions were most obvious. On Portuguese ships the elite carried livestock on board for themselves: chickens, sheep and even cows. They also had dried fruits, almonds, preserves, wine, oil, sugared candies and cheeses. So also on VOC ships. William Hickey travelled in one and sat at the captain's table and gorged himself. For breakfast there was 'coffee, tea, as good rolls as were ever baked on shore, and what was more extraordinary, admirable fresh butter, toast, eggs, ham, sausages, smoked beef rasped, and lastly an immense cheese.' All this was washed down with small beer and gin. The midday meal was much more substantial, and included fresh vegetables and fruit. Snacks between meals were also provided.
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The common folk, on the other hand, relied on what was provided, and it was very bad. Biscuit could be a year old when it was loaded, the dried fish was inedible and often had to be thrown out, the wine was rough, undrinkable stuff, and water was in very short supply.
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We can close this chapter with two accounts from the seventeenth century of life on board a Portuguese, and an Indian, ship. The first is based on Jesuit accounts. The fathers travelled in very cramped conditions, 'no more no less than sardines in a barrel.' Their cabin was so full of supplies and so small that they 'could neither stand nor sit; to enter [the cabin] it was necessary to drag one's body over barrels and crates, as snakes enter their holes.' The Jesuits, an enthusiastic and rigid new Order, were under a very strict regime, much more so presumably than the others on board. They were told not to spend time in their cabins, as these were unhealthy: rather they should walk around on deck. Clothes and cabins were to be washed frequently, and sheets changed at least every eight days. The food they took on board was very well chosen: water and wine to drink; cured meats, both hams and sausages, chicken, biscuits, dried fruits including figs and raisins, beans, cured olives, cheese, nuts and sweets like marmalade. This abundance meant that common passengers often begged food from the fathers. As is to be expected, they had an important religious role too. When the ship was in danger, or it was the feast day of the saint after whom the ship was named, they led processions around the decks. Apart from this they administered the sacraments and provided general spiritual counsel.
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Our Indian example is derived from an exemplary reconstruction by Professor A. Jan Qaisar, based on an important Persian text which describes a voyage to undertake the hajj. Some of the advice that the author, Qazvini, provides is very elementary. For example, the intending passengers should check the boat, and rely
on omens too as to whether they will go on it or not. The ship should be neither small nor old, and its length must be greater than breadth. One also needs to check the masts and rigging, and find out whether or not the crew is industrious. Passengers had a choice of travelling either on deck, or in a cabin, but in either case they had to provide their own food. In theory they were checked in and a list of them was kept by the nakhoda, though on Qazvini's ship there were meant to be 474 passengers, but another 40 appeared after the ship had sailed. Heavy cargo went in the hold, but passengers kept their personal luggage with them. Qazvini advises potential travellers to try and keep near the middle of the boat, near the main mast.

Water was provided for all, stored in big cisterns, but the wealthy brought their own too. Being a Muslim ship, this was not a matter of Hindu pollution problems but simply of accessibility and purity. A variety of food was brought on board. Common items were rice, ghee, dal, salt fish and butter, also smoked fish, breads, fruits and so on. Some better-off people took goats and fowls on board, which were slaughtered as needed. Eggs were preserved by being kept in finely ground salt. There is no mention of liquids like coffee, and nor of course of wine, but Qazvini does recommend tobacco smoking.

He also had some suggestions concerning health. He recommended that ships carry a doctor and a blood-letter. Apart from this he suggests some remedies, such as fruits and juice for those with a bilious humour from sea sickness, and for phlegmatics sweet things like honey and sugar. He does not mention scurvy, but we can assume that this was less of a problem on Indian ships because the voyages were shorter, and there were numerous stops where fresh provisions could be obtained. Life was quite pleasant on board. People studied, and held discussions on devotional and didactic matters. There were poetry recitals and music sessions, while some just relaxed in their harems, or gambled.
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These final chapters of my book cover the history of the ocean over the last 250 years. The treatment is sometimes topical, sometimes chronological. Most of this chapter is concerned with the nineteenth century, but some subjects will be dealt with well into the next century. Similarly, the last chapter is mostly about events in the twentieth century, but on occasion I have looked back to earlier times. Ideally these two chapters should be read as a single unit.

From around the middle of the eighteenth century a long process began which led over the next hundred years to a very dramatic change in the history of the ocean and its peoples. Over this comparatively short stretch of time people from outside the ocean took over most of the lands around the ocean, while the ocean itself became dominated by one naval power. Government policy and technological advances combined to undercut millennia-old indigenous maritime activities, with naval force always available as a back-up.

The foreign power in question is of course Britain (not 'England', for Scots were important participants). From being a relatively minor participant in Indian Ocean affairs even at 1700, the English East India Company (EIC) advanced dramatically and increasingly was backed by, and an arm of, the state. This was a state which guided, and benefited from, seismic changes in the home economy, the process which historians still refer to as the Industrial Revolution. Qualitative changes in productive techniques opened up, for the first time in world history, a pronounced gap between industrialised Europe, led at first by Britain, and the rest of the world.
Au fond
it was these immense advances in economic and technological matters which enabled Britain to establish an unprecedented control over the Indian Ocean.

There had been other European players in the Indian Ocean. Indeed, we noted that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) for a century or so did much better than the English. The French made a charge in the eighteenth century, and fought a series of wars with the English. It may be that the relative success of Britain in the Seven Years War (1756–63) marks the beginning of their dominance: certainly in the Indian Ocean this was the period when the British began the long process of conquering India and taking over important choke points. The Dutch meanwhile were much reduced by the financial problems of the VOC. They lost the Cape colony to
Britain at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and then turned more to the internal development of Indonesia. As part of this, in the nineteenth century they slowly took over large numbers of these scattered islands, and especially in Java intensified forced agricultural production. Meanwhile the French sought compensation in Indo-China, establishing a sizeable colonial presence there during the nineteenth century. The islands of the ocean also changed hands in this period, a matter we will come to presently. The Portuguese were reduced to operating for a time in the entrails of the British system, making good money from the opium trade in the early nineteenth century. Goa endured an occupation by British forces during the Napoleonic wars.

The central fact was British dominance of the ocean, and indeed of oceanic matters worldwide for a time. In 1890 sixty-three per cent of the world's combined ship tonnage sailed under the British flag. By late in the eighteenth century this industrialising country had major centres in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Penang, and beyond the edge of the ocean in Sydney. Over the next fifty years a series of vital ports were taken or created: Colombo in 1796, Cape Town in 1806, Singapore in 1819, Aden in 1839, and beyond the ocean, Hong Kong in 1842. So unchallenged was Britain in the Indian Ocean that they needed little force to ensure their control, as compared with what was needed in more contested oceans. At the height of imperialism, in 1914, the Royal Navy had 39 ships in commission in the Atlantic, 43 in the Pacific, but needed only 12 in the Indian Ocean.
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This British dominance characterised the Indian Ocean in the nineteenth century, and some way into the twentieth. In the next chapter we will see a reassertion of littoral Indian Ocean states in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Two small specific examples will begin to introduce the matter of British superiority. One is to see how European latecomers had perforce to operate in the interstices of the British system. In the early nineteenth century the various German states were left only with the crumbs, such as Siam, Zanzibar and Turkey. In 1846–48 a ship from the great port of Hamburg wandered the ocean looking for openings. It visited the Amirantes, the Seychelles, the Comoros, Massawa, Jiddah, Hodeida, Aden and Zanzibar, all to little effect. Things improved only after Germany was united, and acquired colonies in East Africa and the Pacific; these opened opportunities through and in the Indian Ocean.
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British dominance also acted to the detriment of those areas which remained independent for a time. For example, around 1800 Zanzibar could play off the British and the French, both of whom had a presence in East Africa and the islands. But once Britain had defeated France to end the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the sultans had no choice but to become staunch, and subordinate, allies of the British. Zanzibar's sultans had to tailor their policies to suit their de facto masters.

This dominance in material and military matters often flowed over into a belief in cultural and moral superiority. English writers were quite open in their expressions of superiority over and, as the inverse, contempt for the natives, often coupled with a desire to uplift them. Mrs Tompsitt visited Colombo in 1884: 'The poor peoples' huts seem to be very devoid of what we should consider necessaries. They
all sit and take their meals on the ground, yet they look good-tempered and happy. I expect what little cultivation and refinement they show is owing to contact with and the example of the English.'
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