CHAPTER IV
Life at Sea in the Seventeenth Century
Wide range of the East India Company's operations—Henry Middleton conducts a voyage to Bantam.—Keeling, Sharpeigh and David Middleton command expeditions to the East—Building of the Trade's Increase—James I christens it—Life on the Company's ships—The character of crews—Preachers appointed to the ships—The Company's commanders—Discourses by William Keeling and Nicholas Downton
ONE remarkable feature of the earliest operations of the East India Company was their wide geographical scope. Within ten years of the granting of the charter the Company's representatives had ranged the East from one extreme almost to the other, had planted the flag of England in the distant isles of the Eastern seas, had established definite though somewhat unsubstantial relations with the Malayan princes in and about the Straits of Malacca, had visited Aden and penetrated to the then largely unknown and, therefore, doubly perilous waters of the Red Sea, and had formed the first connexion of England with the continent of India by sending a representative to the Court of the Great Mogul. Bearing in mind that all this was accomplished with a capital not larger than that of an ordinary suburban trading venture of to-day and in the face of immense difficulties, not the least of which was the bitter hostility of the Portuguese, we can only wonder at the splendid optimism which guided the councils of the Company in this period, and offer our meed of admiration
