Page 131 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

Between Bombay ancl Ceylon, the Eden met the full force of
the Southwest Monsoon, and was driven off her course, but on
[une 11 tli, the wind shifted and the weather became fine. The
crew were able to dry their clothes and bedding, for a week the
ship’s company ‘had hardly a dry stick on them, owing to torrents
of rain and the waves breaking over the ship’. Next day, the
Eden anchored off Trincomalcc, ‘where there is, every evening,
while the land breeze lasts, a delicious odour of aromatic shrubs,
reaching a distance of many miles’. The ship stayed for a few
days at Trincomalcc, which Loch says was ‘a neat, well-built,
small town*; after which, Loch got orders from Admiral Sir
Richard King to proceed to Madras.
Landing at Madras was no easy matter in those days, owing to
the heavy surf. Locally built flat-bottomed boats, made of planks
bound with fibre ropes, were used: they reminded Loch of‘great
oval washing tubs’. The crew, a dozen or more men, propelled
them with bamboo poles with flat pieces of wood at the ends, the
steersman using a similar oar. As the boat approached the break­
ers ‘the crew shouted a wild, uncouth song’. At the edge of the
breakers they held the boat by backwatcring, then, after a heavy
sea had broken, they drove it through the surf, shouting together,
‘Ya Allah, Ya Allah!’ The men employed on the masoolas, as
they were called, were evidently Moslems. After crossing several
waves of breakers, the boat was thrown high and dry on the beach.
Loch’s friend, Colonel Manscl, who travelled out from England
with him, was waiting on the shore to meet him, so Loch hurried
to get out of the boat. At once he was surrounded by ‘a crowd
of wretches, all most officious to be of service’. He heard Mansel
shout: ‘your cloak, your cloak!’, and looking round he saw his
cloak in the hands of an Indian, who made off into the crowd: he
never saw his cloak again.
The view of Madras from the Roads was very impressive. The
churches and fine houses, faced with a type of plaster which gave
the appearance of marble, were surrounded by luxuriant gardens
producing ‘a most agreeable effect’. The principal building was
the fort of St. George, which contained the large barracks, public
offices, the Treasury and the houses of many of the officers and
officials.
‘In Madras, no-one moves out in the heat of the day who can
remain within doors, but at sundown, there is to be seen on the
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