What an Indiaman was
“East Indiaman” is a general term for the large merchant ships that European companies used on the route to Asia. The Dutch, English, French, Danish, Swedish and others all had them. They were not a single class with a fixed design: the word describes a role, namely a big, strongly built sailing ship that was carrying valuable cargo on long voyages and therefore armed and well crewed. Their size and appearance changed across the roughly two centuries in which the type was used, and the Dutch East India Company, the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC, was where the model first appeared at scale.
The VOC and its organisation
The VOC was formed in 1602 when several competing Dutch trading groups were merged into one company, with a charter from the States General granting it a monopoly of Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope. It was run through regional “chambers”, including those of Amsterdam and Zeeland, each of which built, equipped and dispatched ships. Directors, known as the Heeren XVII, set overall policy. The company had its own shipyards and storehouses, and the Amsterdam yard was one of the largest industrial sites in Europe in the seventeenth century.
By the standards of its day it was a financial novelty. Investors held shares in a permanent enterprise, and these could be traded, an arrangement discussed more fully in the overview of maritime trading companies. It had authority to wage war and build forts. Its Asian headquarters was at Batavia, founded in 1619 on the island of Java.
The ships
The company’s main long-distance ships were often called retourschepen, or return ships, because they were meant to make the round trip. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they were typically three-masted, square-rigged vessels with high sterns, built mainly of oak. Sizes grew over time, from several hundred tons in the early years to well over a thousand tons for the largest of the eighteenth century, though figures differ depending on how tonnage was measured.
They carried guns, commonly a few dozen on bigger ships, to guard against pirates, privateers and enemy warships. In war the company’s fleets could be targeted by rival navies, and for that reason the ships were sometimes grouped in convoys. Compared with warships, however, they were built for capacity first; the armament was less than that of a ship of the line of similar size.
Smaller Dutch ships, such as the cargo-carrying fluyt, were used on European routes and in company service within Asia. The VOC also maintained a large “country” fleet within the Indies for local trade, which was separate from the long-distance Indiamen.
Crews and life aboard
Indiamen often carried crews of well over a hundred, and sometimes more, together with soldiers and passengers heading to the East. The company recruited widely, not only from the Netherlands but from German lands, Scandinavia and elsewhere. Life aboard was hard. Space was crowded, the diet depended on preserved food, and disease claimed many lives. Descriptions of daily life aboard sailing ships apply closely here, and the problem of scurvy at sea was a constant concern. Commonly cited estimates suggest that close to a million people sailed with the company over its lifetime, and a substantial share did not return, but exact figures are uncertain.
The route and its rhythm
Ships sailed from the Netherlands in fleets at set times of year, took the Cape route round Africa, often stopping at Table Bay for fresh supplies, and then crossed the Indian Ocean to Batavia. After Dutch navigators found that the strong westerlies south of the Cape could carry ships east quickly, the passage became faster. A voyage out might take around six to eight months, with the return trip taking a similar time, though delays were common.
The ships brought home pepper, cloves, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, textiles, porcelain and eventually tea and coffee. Outward cargoes were typically silver, metals and manufactured goods, with a large proportion of the value being silver bullion in the early years. A crucial source for the spice trade was the Moluccas, and the company’s control of these islands was often enforced harshly.
Shipwrecks and archaeology
Wrecks of VOC ships have produced some of the best-known finds in maritime archaeology. The most famous is Batavia, a newly built ship that ran aground off Western Australia on her maiden voyage in 1629; the story of the Batavia wreck, with the mutiny that followed, is covered separately. Other wrecks along the Cape route and off the Western Australian coast, many of them from the early eighteenth century, have been excavated. A replica of Batavia was built at Lelystad in the Netherlands, and a replica of the later ship Amsterdam is displayed in Amsterdam. Such projects are discussed under replica ships and experimental archaeology.
The English comparison
English East Indiamen, built for the English company chartered in 1600, followed a similar pattern, and in the later eighteenth century they became known for their size and for their appearance, which was sometimes similar to naval ships. Both companies at times hired ships from private owners rather than owning them. The English ones were built in the Thames yards, and their crews were famous in the age of sail; the history of the Port of London and its docklands includes the East India Dock, built to handle them.
Decline
The VOC ran into financial difficulties by the late eighteenth century, hit by war with Britain, rising costs and competition, and it was dissolved at the end of 1799, its possessions passing to the Dutch state. English Indiamen continued longer, but the company lost its monopoly of Indian trade in 1813 and of the China trade in 1833. The East Indiaman’s era ended as faster ships took over, especially the clipper ships of the nineteenth century, and then steam.