The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [144]
Many of the great Portuguese naus, and later company ships, were made in Asia. Due to cheaper labour and materials, the cost per ton in India was only half what it was in Europe. One reason for this was that caulking, which was done for European ships built in Europe, was very expensive, and in any case this technique had no advantage over the cheaper traditional north Indian method of rabetting. Indian ships continued to use cables and cordage of coir, not hemp ropes, but coir was perfectly adequate so long as it was kept in salt water to keep it strong.53
Indian shipbuilders began to pick up some European techniques, such as some use of iron nails in construction. This was done especially for ships engaged in oceanic, as opposed to coastal, trade. European observers appreciated that Indian craftspeople were very skilled, and quite ready to draw on European expertise if this appeared to be superior. Bowrey found ships for local owners being built in Coromandel.
Very Expert Master builders there are Severall here who have most of their dependancie Upon the English, and indeed learnt theire art and trade from some of them by diligently Observeinge the ingenuitie of Some that built Ships and Sloops here for the English East India Company and theire Agents, Soe that they build very well and give good reasons for what they doe, and launch with as much discretion as I have Seen in any part of the world....
He particularly commented on a huge 1,000 ton ship belonging to the sultan of Golconda, which was being hauled out to be repaired.54
In the past few centuries Europeans had been able to improve considerably the ratio between ship size and crew needed. In the fourteenth century one man was needed for each ton of capacity, but by around 1600 the ratio was about one man for every four tons. This ratio appears to apply to Indian ships also.55
The crews on European ships in the Indian Ocean were usually as much Asian as European. The officers might be Dutch or English or some other European, as in the ship we described going from Goa to Hurmuz, but the rest were locals. Carletti travelled in a Portuguese ship from Macau to Melaka.
They were commanded by a Portuguese captain, pilot, coxswain, mate, and other officers, but were manned by Arab, Indian, Turkish, and Bengali sailors, who gladly serve for so much per month, taking care of their own expenses under the rule of their head man, who commands them and whom they call their saranghi [sarang], and who also belongs to one of the aforesaid nations. They make their understandings with him, recognize and obey him, so that even the Portuguese captain, the master and pilot of the ship, is commanded by this saranghi. And they all embark with their wives or concubines, which as a sight is no less indecent than filthy and unseemly, and which causes such confusions as it is impossible to make clear.56
Sailors seem to have been ready to serve wherever there was work to be had. In 1625 a small Portuguese fleet set off to attack some EIC ships. Of the men on board the Portuguese ships, more than 200 were English, Scottish, Irish and Dutch. Many of the local crew were Muslims, and they seem to have been happy to serve even on ships attacking Muslim ships. The Portuguese fleet sent off to relieve Mombasa from its Muslim conquerors was largely Muslim. On the four ships in this fleet in 1698 there were 126 'white' and 376 'non-white' seamen and gunners.57
Many ships carried large numbers of passengers. All of them carried merchants big and small, but the most passengers were carried on the ships going to the Red Sea full of intending hajjis,