Page 146 - Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters

medium-sized and big yachts. On the southeast coast all ship types could be expected as long as smaller vessels were available for carrying the cargo from the shore to the bigger ships. Table .: A representation of the activities of the various types of VOC vessels in the region Sumatra per -year period up to  In the period to , activities were mainly focused on the then important destination, Banda Aceh. The emphasis was on defensible vessels that could operate in an area of high political tension and military confrontation with the Portuguese. From , in the second period, the VOC started some experiments with smaller vessels to develop the pepper harbours in other parts of Sumatra. Consequently, an increase can be observed in rates  and  and later, after  in rate . As a bigger capacity cargo carrier, the rate  flute was popular. The heyday of Sumatra’s pepper trade was up to . After that pepper came more and more from the coast of Malabar. The relatively high component of the rate  and  vessels can be explained through their military function in the neighbouring region of Malacca. The southeast coast of Sumatra was close to Batavia and also along an important intersection of all the major routes. The ship- ping in this region, therefore, also reflects the total VOC shipping in Asia. As Table - shows, in Area , South East Sumatra, all rates are represented. Apart from the defensible vessels that could take in pepper on their way to Batavia, the flutes on their way to Taiwan also sometimes stopped over for pepper after . Even ships in a poor condition could often make a short trip to fetch pepper. The high component rate  Retourschepen are specifically linked to the logistics of cargo loading at Batavia. From the reconstruction of the cargo gathering of the retourschip Hollandia (ID:) in Chapters  and , the problem of having the right cargo available at the right time to be able to load the return fleet for its departure around the turn of the year became clear. With the passage of time a system was set up in which the retourschepen sailed with the right ballast from Batavia to Jambi on the southeast coast to load pepper. Returning to Batavia, the rest of the available cargo space could then be filled with products that had just arrived from other regions such as the silk that was rushed to Batavia from the Far East. Fleets per region 