Page 380 - Green - Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook. 2nd ed

Chapter 13: Post-Excavation Research 359
for the Indies, trade items, etc. For the archaeologist, this can be a unique opportunity to determine the complete inventory onboard the ship. We know that before each company ship departed for the Indies, a compre- hensive list was made of all the material taken onboard. On the ship’s return from the Indies, there was a reconciliation with this equipage list. Thus every item that had been put onboard prior to departure had to be accounted for. Originally, these lists were handwritten, but later, as the ship’s company became increasingly standardized, the lists were printed and the numbers of items filled in by hand and then signed for. The equipage lists, therefore, are itemized accounts of everything that would be required by the differ- ent specialist groups of people who were basically responsible for getting the ship to the Indies. The steersman would be supplied with charts and navigation equipment that would enable him to set the course. The cook would be allotted the requisite utensils and equipment to cater for the crew, the passengers, and the soldiers on the voyage. The constable would be responsible for the arms and ammunition necessary for the defense of the ship. Additionally, there were the provisions with which the ship was sup- plied for the voyage.
Of great importance, of course, was the cargo that the ship carried. This might be divided into two parts: the supplies for the company at the Cape of Good Hope and in the Indies, and the goods for trade in the Indies. None of this is easy to quantify. The archival sources do not have regular cargo lists of these items. Even though only a few equipage lists survive, we may assume that the equipage was virtually the same for each ship of a partic- ular size, because the company resolved that this would be standard each year. However, the supplies for the Indies and the trade goods varied con- siderably from year to year. The main source of information comes from the Eijsch (or requisitions) from the Indies. Each year, the Governor General and the council at Batavia sent a list of requisitions for the fol- lowing year to the company in The Netherlands. These requisitions included supplies for the company in the Indies, requests for money to conduct trade, and trade items that were deemed to be profitable for trade at that time. Unfortunately, only a few of these requisition lists still survive, and as they relate only to the mid-17th century, they are of limited use. A further com- plication is that it seems that the requisition lists were frequently disre- garded by the company at home as there are numerous instances of letters from the Governor General at Batavia complaining that the requisitions and requests had been ignored. Thus the lists give only an indication of the types of goods that were required in the Indies.
Another group of documents from the same period records the supplies that arrived in Batavia on particular ships. Only some of these inventories