Page 112 - Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters

 ships: Vrede, Snoeck, Maastricht, Nassouw, Banda \[...\]  yachts small and big, under which  that are almost off.  flutes of which  almost off,  refurnished Moorish yachts that sail between the trading posts at the Coromandel Coast,  stone carriers,  chaloups, joncks, pilot boats etc, this are vessels that are no part of the intra-Asian trade and are only used for communication and assistance with loading and unloading. They request a number of  swift sailing flutes and yachts of  to  last to operate in the shallow waters of Tonkin, Taiwan, etc. Also  strong and very swift sailing galjoten are required for Ceylon and the river Ganges but also especially for the canal of Taiwan. They mention the possibility to build chaloups in Asia but according to them there is a lack of compass timbre. (Coolhaas , p. ) The stranglehold that VOC Batavia had on the Asian shipping network became even stronger after the directors in the Netherlands decided that all return shipping would be routed through Batavia. Initially, some retourschepen were still sailing directly back to Europe from the Coro- mandel Coast, Surat or Persia. This was eventually forbidden by the VOC in the Netherlands mainly for safety reasons, but this centralising policy was very much welcomed by VOC Bata- via in order to reinforce their central role. From  the number of homeward-bounders avail- able in Batavia was sufficient to make it desirable to employ them in between their return voy- age to Europe, on the Asian routes where a reliable supply of (bulk) cargo was available. In  the number of homeward-bounders in Batavia was so high that the best suited vessels were sent back to the Netherlands and the remainder were permanently reassigned to the in- tra-Asian network (Coolhaas , p. ). The management in Batavia was, in principal, bound to the directions they received from the Netherlands for the return cargo. However, to a certain extent Batavia was able to influence the policy by their implementation of the return shipping. Often they diverged from the directions using unforeseen circumstances as an accept- able excuse (Coolhaas , p. ; Colenbrander , p. ). Obsessively, they tried to meet the prescribed division of cargo for the various Chambers. It was only in exceptional circumstances that management in Batavia had to report that they were not able to meet the required ‘egalisatie’. In such cases, it was common to blame the Nether- lands organisation for not sending a suitable fleet of retourschepen that would enable them to distribute the cargo among the various Chambers in accordance with agreed formula: ‘Soo lange bij Uwe Ed. aldaer in 't herrewaerts seinden van goede retourschepen geen nader ordere gestelt wert, is't ons onmogelijck de gerecommandeerde egualiteyt in 't overseinden van de retouren aan de respective cameren t'onderhouden’ \[As long that your Hon. over there no system applies for the sending of good retourschepen, it will be impossible for us to meet the requirements of the recommended division of cargo ...\] (Coolhaas , p. ). An extra complication in this planning was that the homeward-bounders did not have standar- dised dimensions (NA .., VOC , --). The internal organisation of the VOC with its strict division of activities between the various Chambers was often a burden. The authorities in Batavia would have been gravely concerned with meeting the requirements of proportional division of the cargo for the various Chambers in the Netherlands. Further examination is warranted into how the ‘egalisatie’ driven organi- sation in the Netherlands fit into the establishment of the VOC in Asia which had a separate mission and was only confronted with the consequences of the egalisatie policy through: the ships that were granted for the Asian fleet; the restrictions in developing their own ship build- ing programme; and of course, the complex organisation of the return cargo. The ballast that was required for the specific design of the Dutch vessels formed an impor- tant logistical aspect of the organisation. In this aspect, the VOC demonstrated a commitment to search for an optimum system. Merchants within the intra-Asian network were permanently looking for suitable goods that could be used as ballast. Their challenge was to find ‘paying’  Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters