Page 65 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

CHAPTER IV
Life at Sea in the Seventeenth Century

Wide range of tho East India Company’s operations—Henry Middle-
ton conducts a voyage to Bantam.—Keeling, Sharpeigh and
David Middleton command expeditions to tho East—Building
of the Trade's Increase—James I christens it—Life on the
Company’s ships—The character of crews—Preachers ap­
pointed to the ships — The Coinpan y’s commanders —
Discourses by William Keeling and Nicholas Downton
o NE 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 un­
known 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
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