Page 68 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

his wife, who lived in a house on the southern point of the harbour
entrance. I le was met on the shore by a palanquin, carried by
four coolies, who conveyed him from the beach to the house
where Mrs. Forbes ‘a very nice person, who did all in her power
to make us comfortable, procured for me an excellent dinner,
drest in the Portuguese style’. It is not clear whether it was Mrs.
Forbes or the dinner which was ‘drest in the Portuguese style!’
Perhaps Mrs. Forbes was a descendant of one of the female
orphans who used to be sent to Goa every year. Pietro Della
Valle, who was in Goa in 1523, described how the King of Portu­
gal sent ‘a small annual investment of female orphans to India for
the especial use of the settlers on the western coast. They were
poor, but well-descended orphans, which were sent from Portugal
at the King’s charge, with a dowry which the King gave them, to
the end that they may be married in India in order to further the
peopling of the Portuguese colonics in those parts.’ On arrival,
the brides-to-be were lodged in a Convent, where the suitor was
allowed to call on the lady of his choice, chaperoned by the con­
vent matron. Rings were exchanged, and solemn promises of
marriage were made in the presence of the Archbishop who
afterwards performed the ceremony. Fryer, in 1676, reported
that the ladies of Goa were ‘not of that coruscant beauty that our
English ladies are’, but in those days ‘to ogle a lady in a balcony,
if a Person of Quality, is revenged with a bocca mortis (blunder­
buss)’. But William Francldin, a young ensign in the East India
Company, a few years later describes meeting ‘three really fine
girls’ at Goa.
Three days later, on November 22nd, the Eden reached Bom­
bay where she stayed for eleven days, taking on stores and enlisting
a few seamen to complete her compliment. There had been
several deaths among the seamen during the voyage and, on
reaching India, two of the officers had to be sent home owing to
sickness. There was, at this time, a good deal of ill feeling be­
tween commanders of ships of war and captains of merchant
vessels on the subject of enlistment. Naval commanders had
orders to bring their crews up to full strength when in Bombay,
but they were not supposed to press seamen in time of peace, nor
were they allowed to enlist men from merchant ships if, by so
doing, they would endanger such vessels. If, however, seamen
from merchant ships volunteered for service in the Navy, and
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