ii
Like other commanders, Saris would attempt to justify his personal trade on the grounds that it was common practice. So it was and so, in spite of repeated proscriptions, it would remain. There were a few exceptions, a few men of extraordinary probity like ‘the honest Mr Cocks’ who never ventured a penny on their own account; but, as will be seen, they rarely made effective factors. It stood to reason that any man willing to gamble his life on a voyage to the Indies would think nothing of gambling his wages on a few diamonds or a sack of cloves.
Even the Dutch Company was finding it impossible to suppress the entrepreneurial spirit of its merchants. In 1609 two Dutchmen, lately returned from the East with a handsome profit of £600, offered to invest their nest egg in the London Company. From the uncertainty over their real identities it may be assumed that the V.O.C. had refused to re-employ them and that they were keen to cover their tracks. To the directors of the London Company they were ‘Peter Floris’ and ‘Lucas Antheuniss’ and their offer was in the nature of a rather intriguing proposal.
Evidently both men had served at Dutch establishments on the east, or Coromandel, coast of India. This was an area of considerable interest to the London Company as a principal source of those Indian cottons so beloved of the Javanese. Keeling had been instructed to call there on the Company’s Third Voyage (1607) but had failed to do so. Now Floris and Antheuniss were proposing to take up the challenge on the Company’s behalf and open trade not only on the Coromandel coast but also in the Gulf of Siam. They asked no wages, they would venture their own £600 towards the capital, and they would be happy with a share of the returns which they confidently predicted at 300 per cent.
After due consideration and some careful vetting of the Dutchmen’s characters, their proposal was accepted by the Court of Committees. A subscription book was opened and a single ship, the Globe of about 300 tons, was made ready. She sailed, the Company’s Seventh Voyage, in January 1611 (so three months ahead of Saris).
Apart from its casual inception the voyage of the Globe was unusual in that it afforded clear evidence of the Company’s interest in Asia’s internal carrying trade. The original proposal envisaged an absence of four years during which the ship would ply back and forth between the Coromandel coast, Bantam and Siam. In the event some of this shuttling had to be curtailed; but the Globe would still be away some four and a half years and for most of that time would be carrying, or awaiting, cargoes that were never intended for European consumption. The two Dutchmen knew the eastern markets and the trading seasons and they had done their sums carefully. While English commanders like Saris or the Middletons were making speculative calls and optimistic assessments at any port that would entertain them, Floris and Antheuniss had a definite plan of investment.
The total subscription for the voyage came to some £15,000 of which perhaps £7,000 was available as trading capital (after equipping and provisioning the ship). Most of this sum was in pieces of eight. By repeatedly investing them in Indian cottons and then reinvesting them in Thai and Chinese products, and eventually buying pepper and Chinese silks for the homeward voyage, they aimed to raise the value of their trading stock to over £45,000, thus giving the desired return of 300 per cent on the original £15,000. Other voyages of the period operated on a similar cumulative principle; but in this case because there was only one ship, because its commanders had a high stake in its success, and because they were in no position to engage in any political posturing, the bare commercial realities are more pronounced. It is significant that the Court of Committees when faced with such a juicy proposal allowed no reservations about the proposers’ nationality to cloud their judgement.
With all possible speed the Globe made straight for the Bay of Bengal. By late August 1611 its factors were ashore at Petapoli and Masulipatnam, ports within the independent kingdom of Golconda (later Hyderabad, now Andhra Pradesh) at which the Dutch were already established. Cottons suitable for the eastern market were ordered and monies advanced to the weavers and dyers. There was the usual wrangling over customs dues but by February they had acquired a good loading ‘without having made any penny in bad dettes or leaving any remnants behind us on shoare’. Profits on the sale of their few English exports had more than covered all duties and gifts, and ‘having yett a good monsoon to performe our voyage’ Floris was pleased to report that ‘our estate is att this present in verye good being’.
In April 1612 they called at Bantam and landed part of their Indian cargo plus a factor who was to sell the cottons and buy pepper whenever the markets were favourable. The Globe then sailed north and thereafter matters went less smoothly. The plan had been for a quick turn-round in Siam so that the ship could catch the south-east monsoon back to India at the end of the year. This proved over-optimistic, and the Globe was to remain in the Gulf of Siam until the autumn of the following year, 1613.
Floris and Antheuniss had miscalculated on three counts. The first was the attitude of their countrymen. At both Patani and Ayuthia, the two Siamese cities at which the Globe attempted to trade, Dutch factories were already in existence. Not without reason would Coen complain that the English fed off Dutch enterprise. Relations between the two nations were rapidly deteriorating and, as in Japan, the Dutch did their utmost to flood the local markets. They also agreed to exorbitant customs dues and other restrictions that might discourage their would-be competitors. Floris was frankly nonplussed. Four years earlier he had seen ‘such a vente [sale]’ at Patani that ‘it seemed the whole world had not clothings enough to provyde this place as was needful’. Now it was so ‘overcloyed’ that instead of a 400 per cent profit ‘I cannot at this present make 5 per cento’. He would happily have abandoned the Siamese trade altogether were it not for the fact that his remaining stock of Indian cottons had been specially ordered for the Siamese market and would not sell elsewhere.
But if disposing of his cargo presented difficulties so did the purchase of a new lading. Siam turned out to be in a state of turmoil, with war threatening on several fronts and internal trade at a standstill. When a factor was sent north to Chieng Mai in search of those forest products – skins, dyes and resins – for which the country was famous, he was captured by the Burmese and not heard of for four years. Yet somehow Floris must employ his capital during the long sojourn in Siam. He therefore dispatched another factor with a cargo for Japan (he knew of Adams’s existence but not yet of Saris’s arrival) and yet another for Macassar. Neither of these ventures brought a speedy return so that when in the spring Chinese junks began to appear at Patani and Ayuthia he had no cash with which to buy their silks and porcelains.
To make matters still worse he was having acute problems with his men. The captain of the Globe, Anthony Hippon, had died as soon as the ship reached Patani. Of the three men who in turn took his place, two proved to be dangerous drunkards, the third turned mutineer, and all were professionally incompetent. To the crime of fisticuffs on deck they added that of private trade ashore. Floris and Antheuniss, if anyone, might have been disposed to overlook this matter were it not that the crew’s trade was competing directly with that of the Company. The men were habitually underselling