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I

The Diary of a Mocha Coffee Agent 103

were given the right to export 600 bales of coffee a year free of
customs duty. In 1708- 9 a French factory was opened at Mocha.
Between about 1720 and 1740, European trade in Mocha coffee
reached record proportions.
During this period, and later, an official Diary of Transactions was
maintained by the English East India Company’s Factory at Mocha.
The article which follows is based on edited extracts from the Mocha
Supercargoes Diary from 1 April to 11 August 1733, a copy of the
original document (No. 74/1725—33) in the Secretariat Record
Office, Elphinstone College, Bombay, having been obtained through
the courtesy of Dr P. Joshi, the Librarian.

2. Diary of the Transactions of Mr. Francis Dickinson Commissary
for Affairs of the Hon'ble United East India Company in the Gulph
of Mocha 1st April, 1733

After a thirty-eight-day passage from Bombay, the East India
Company ship Carolina arrived at noon and anchored in the busy
roadstead offshore Mocha. The winds had been unseasonably light
and being short of water, the Carolina had had to put in at the north
coast of Socotra where, Mr. Dickinson observes:
The King resides, and we enquired of him for Alloes, and he told
us they were all sold and carried away to Mocha and Juddah. The
Island does not produce above fifty or sixty Mocha Bahar (a Bahar
being approximately 450 lbs in weight)2 in a year which is a
Tribute the Mountaineers are obliged to pay the King annually,
and they dare not sell it to anybody else. He distributes some of it
amongst his friends and relations, and some he sells to the natives
for about Twenty Spanish Dollars the Bahar, but of Strangers he
demands a great deal more. They are little acquainted with money,
and scarce know what to ask for their things, their usual manner
being to barter for Coarse Cloth, Rice and other Grain. The
greatest part of the Alloes bought here comes from Shahar
(al-Shihr on the South Arabian mainland) which is equally good as
that which comes from Socotra, tho’ all goes under the latter
name.3
Alighting from the East India ship, Mr. Dickinson must have been
aware immediately of the commercial competition which lay ahead,
for nearby were moored a Dutch ship from Batavia, the Pondicherry,
a French ship from the port of that name, a Moor’s grab (a square
rigged two masted vessel with projecting stern and no bowsprit)
nagnfromD-and th® Nogdy Sanay' " lndian ship PortUg