The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago

The Pirates of Malabar, and An
Englishwoman
by John
Biddulph

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Title: The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two
Hundred Years Ago
Author: John Biddulph
Release Date: March 2, 2004 [EBook #11399]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE PIRATES OF MALABAR AND AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN
INDIA TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO
[Illustration: MAHRATTA GRABS AND GALLIVATS
ATTACKING AN ENGLISH SHIP.]
THE PIRATES OF MALABAR AND AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN
INDIA TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO
BY COLONEL JOHN BIDDULPH
1907
PREFACE
For most people, interest in the doings of our forefathers in India dates
from our wars with the French in the middle of the eighteenth century.
Before then their lives are generally supposed to have been spent in
monotonous trade dealings in pepper and calico, from which large
profits were earned for their masters in England, while their principal
excitements were derived from drinking and quarrelling among
themselves. Little account has been taken of the tremendous risks and
difficulties under which the trade was maintained, the losses that were
suffered, and the dangers that were run by the Company's servants from
the moment they left the English Channel. The privations and dangers
of the voyage to India were alone sufficient to deter all but the hardiest
spirits, and the debt we owe to those who, by painful effort, won a
footing for our Indian trade, is deserving of more recognition than it
has received. Scurvy, shortness of water, and mutinous crews were to
be reckoned on in every voyage; navigation was not a science but a
matter of rule and thumb, and shipwreck was frequent; while every
coast was inhospitable. Thus, on the 4th September, 1715, the
Nathaniel, having sent a boat's crew on shore near Aden, in search of
water, the men allowed themselves to be inveigled inland by
treacherous natives, who fell upon them and murdered twelve out of
fourteen who had landed from the ship. Such an occurrence now would

be followed by a visit from a man-of-war to punish the murderers. Two
hundred years ago it was only an incident to set down in the ship's
log-book. But all such outrages and losses were small in comparison
with those to which traders were exposed at the hands of pirates.
It is difficult to realize, in these days, what a terrible scourge piracy was
to the Indian trade, two hundred years ago. From the moment of losing
sight of the Lizard till the day of casting anchor in the port of
destination an East India ship was never safe from attack, with the
chance of slavery or a cruel death to crew and passengers, in case of
capture. From Finisterre to Cape Verd the Moorish pirates made the
seas unsafe, sometimes venturing into the mouth of the Channel to
make a capture. Farther south, every watering-place on the African
coast was infested by the English and French pirates who had their
headquarters in the West Indies. From the Cape of Good Hope to the
head of the Persian Gulf, from Cape Comorin to Sumatra, every coast
was beset by English, French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Arab, Malay
or other local pirates. In the Bay of Bengal alone, piracy on a dangerous
scale was practically unknown.
There was no peace on the ocean. The sea was a vast No Man's domain,
where every man might take his prey. Law and order stopped short at
low-water mark. The principle that traders might claim protection and
vengeance for their wrongs from their country, had not yet been
recognized, and they sailed the seas at their own risk. Before the close
of the seventeenth century the buccaneers had passed away, but their
depredations, in pursuit of what they called "free trade," were of a
different nature from those of the pirates who succeeded them.
Buccaneer exploits were confined to the Spanish main, where they
ravaged and burnt Spanish settlements on the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts, moving with large forces by sea and land. According to
Esquemeling, Morgan sailed on his expedition against Panama with
thirty-seven sail and two thousand fighting men, besides mariners and
boys. But the Spanish alone were the objects of their attack. So long as
Spain claimed a monopoly of South American trade, it was the business
of Spain alone to keep the marauders