Page 154 - Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters
P. 154
due to the complexity of the logistics between Taiwan and the Pescadores where the big ships had to anchor. If these retourschepen were not affected by the typhoon season they could make it back to Batavia before the end of the year to load the remaining cargo and leave for Europe. The high rate of flutes to Cambodia in Table - can be explained by the unique situation on the Mekong River where vessels had to be dragged manually far up stream by their anchors. This situation has been described as very arduous and almost inhumane for the crew who had to handle the heavy anchors in the heat of the sun: ‘and when at night the time had come to get some rest it was impossible because of the mosquitoes that were in such large quantities that one doesn’t know where to turn’ (NA .., VOC , fol. , ). Damaged rinckelwerck or not, it must have been more efficient for the VOC to use flutes rather than the yachts because they had a better cargo capacity for the same effort. A complication was still the danger of hostilities on the Mekong River that required the protection of the vessel, crew and cargo. The VOC probably did develop a more heavily armed flute. This more defensible flute type is re- corded on one occasion in the Arabian Sea when, against all odds, the flute Noortster (ID:) was escorting a yacht. This flute then had a crew of and was armed with canons (Colen- brander , p. ). In the database more of these types of defensible flutes have been found: Vliegend Hert (ID ), canons, Zon (ID:) canons, Koning David (ID:) and Trouw (ID:) canons. Table .: Activity levels of the various types of VOC vessels in the separate destinations in the region of the Far East. - (areas in the first row of the table: .Sarawak, .Gulf of Thailand, . Cambodia and lower Mekong delta, .Vietnam, north from Mekong Delta, .Sulu Sea, . Coastal China, . Taiwan and adjacent islands, . Japan and Korea) Fleets per region
