Page 148 - Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters
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Table .: A representation of the activities of the various types of VOC vessels in the region Malaysia by -year period up to into the system of loading the retourschepen with pepper before they left for Europe. The pewter trade to destinations in western Asia did not call for special vessels, and pewter cargoes could be picked up by most available (or passing) bigger vessels. The safeguarding of the production areas along the Strait of Malacca where the VOC strived for a monopoly required small, armed vessels. It were these smaller vessels in particular that stayed in a region (rather than arriving there from another area) that are not visible in the database statistics. For instance, we know that the vessel Punto de Gale (ID ), which was probably captured during the raid on Galle in , was active in the Strait of Malacca between and but its activities are not re- corded in the statistics because they did not involve inter-area trips. Case Study - The fleet at Malacca In the period - the fleet in the waters of Malacca was operating under the command of Jacob Coper. It was his task to have a fleet of various types of vessels ready at the moment the monsoon would allow easy passage through the strait. ‘The waters east and south of Malacca till mid-May, when the southern monsoon is blowing forcefully and no enemy vessel from the North can be expected, needed to be occupied \[...\] and be alert for the Portuguese vessels that in principle will arrive with the northern monsoon from the coast of India, St Thome and Ceylon’ (Colenbrander , p. ). To make his fleet fit for the anticipated chase, Coper had his vessels beached and the hulls cleaned and maintained with materials received from Batavia: ‘\[...\] the yachts as much as possible prepared, ... ... on the th \[May\] \[we\] sailed with the whole fleet to Malacca \[where we\] stranded a certain Portu- guese ship of about last coming from Goa \[...\] \[and chased\] a certain Portuguese ship of about last \[...\] and ran it aground and scuttled it’ (Colenbrander , p. ). For purposes of pursuit the Commander had at his disposal smaller swift sailing vessels, often cap- tured from the Portuguese. During his term as Commander, Coper used various captured rate and rate vessels. His fleet in consisted of vessels: one prefabricated rate vessel, three vessels of rate and nine medium-sized yachts of rate . Five vessels of this fleet were captured from the Portu- guese. For the Commander and the crew it probably meant long months on relatively small vessels. To Fleets per region
