topics: |  history | asia | netherlands |

The Dutch East India Company dominated the Asian trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, in part due to their shipbuilding innovations in ships such as the fluyt (easy to handle, high cargo capacity, used primarily for within-Asia trade) and the jacht (a light fast vessel - the name transferred to a luxury ship - "yacht" - after Charles II promoted it during his reign starting 1660).

By 1669, the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) was the richest private company the world had ever seen.

There were two kinds of voyages undertaken by VOC ships - local (within Asia) and "homeward" (towards Netherlands).

The company had a large Asian headquarter at Batavia (today's Jakarta) from where local voyages scoured the ocean from the Coromandel coast to Japan. The fluyts, which were mainly dedicated to cargo and navigation in tight spaces, could not carry many people, and were the mainstay for these local voyages. On the other hand, homeward-bounders would be used to transport goods and people from the Netherlands and back. Unlike the fluyts, the homeward-bounders (also called Indiamen) were often heavily armed. In addition to Batavia, they would also visit Malacca and Sumatra; their primary trade good was pepper.

This book is based on a detailed analysis of these ships and their voyages, obtained from detailed records of the VOC. The analysis includes a wide range of smaller vessels and the analysis shows the role this wide range of vessel type / size had in enabling the Company the sail all around the year.

Archaeologist Robert Parthesius was a key member behind the project to reconstruct the VOC homeward-bounder Batavia, which had been wrecked off the Australian coast on its maiden voyage in 1629. After the shipwreck, a group of survivors mutinied and brutally murdered many others, leading to the ship becoming infamous.

The shipwreck was discovered in 1963 based on the logs and an accidental sighting by a local lobsterman.

 
The reconstructed homeward-bounder, Batavia, at Lelystad. source

From 1985 to 1995, a large group of young people worked at reconstructing
the Dutch Indiaman Batavia, under the direction of master-shipbuilder Willem
Vos and the author.  Today the ship can be visited at Lelystad, Netherlands.

Excerpts: Introduction - Dutch ships in Asian waters

From the 16th century European ships sailed to Asian markets on a regular
basis. Their main goal was the purchase of the highly sought after spices
from the East Indies and exotica from China. Traditional trade and shipping
relations between the west and east existed long before European ships
arrived in the Indian Ocean region. Before the Portuguese discovered the
seaway around the Cape of Good Hope to Asia at the end of the 15th century,
spices reached Europe over land.

 
Cover illustration: C.P. Mooy, VOC ships at the Cape of Good Hope, Amsterdams
Historisch Museum.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to play an active role in trading
directly with Asia by sea. From their headquarters at Goa on the west coast
of India, they tried to get a grip on the traditional trading and shipping
network by capturing the entrepot of Malacca, which had a strategic role in
the Asian trading network between the Indian Ocean region and the Far
East. Spain made its way into this region from their colonies in the
Americas.  The Spanish influence was in the region around the Philippines:
China , Japan and the Spice Islands. At the end of the 16th century, other
European nations also found their way to Asia.

Soon after the first expedition in 1595, the Dutch were able to surpass the
Portuguese and the other European nations’ trade in Asia. In various Dutch
cities, trade companies were established to equip ships for their voyages to
Asia. This new trade became popular because profit expectations were high, as
a result of which large fleets of ships were sent to Asia. Until 1602, when
the various companies were united under the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie
(VOC) or United East Indian Company, fourteen fleets were sent comprising 65
ships compared to a total of 59 ships that had been dispatched by the
Portuguese in the period
1591-1601.

Soon more then 50% of the European ships that passed the Cape of Good Hope on
their way to Asia were Dutch (Gaastra 1993).

This development had a major impact on the growth of the Netherlands,
although the economic contribution to the Golden Age in the 17th century
should not be exaggerated, the logistical implications of the Dutch expansion
into Asia were immense and very much evident in the VOC cities in the
Netherlands. Efficient trade was not easy, since the products had to be
collected from various parts of Asia, and the means of payment presented a
problem. The European traders initially intended to base their trading
activities on the available products in Europe, but they soon found out that
there was only a small Asian market for these items.  Large quantities of
precious metal were required for the trade in Asia. In order to limit the
complications and risks attendant upon the transport of money, the VOC soon
started to develop its intra-Asian trade. The Dutch had to establish their
position in the long-standing existing trade network in Asia. Especially
during the early years, the position of the company was one of skilfully
alternating between negotiations and the force of arms. That this policy was
successful can be concluded from the fact that the VOC was able to build up a
significant capital from its profits in Asia in the first half of the 17th
century. In the second half of the 17th century the VOC reached the zenith of
its intra-Asiatic trade. 

Dutch shipbuilders and skippers

In the course of the 16th century, the traditional sailing areas in northwest
Europe were extended to the Atlantic coast, the Arctic seas, the
Mediterranean and, later, also Africa and Brazil. These new destinations
meant new sailing conditions and new types of trade and cargo, which in turn
led to new requirements for ships and shipping organisation.

New ship types were developed as a result of a general scaling-up in the
second half of the 16th century. The most famous example of this development
is the development of the flute, which was designed in the 1590s as a new
type of ship for the developing European trade. It met the ideal combined
requirements of both the merchant and the skipper, being cheap to build, easy
to sail and having a large cargo capacity.  Changes took place on many levels
of the shipping and shipbuilding sectors. Most of these modifications were
not as spectacular as the new flute design; however, the instigation of these
changes was the reason for the success in shipping that the Dutch enjoyed in
the 17th century. 

Sailing and trading in Asia were new for nearly all the Dutch merchants,
skippers and sailors.  Although some theoretical information had been
gathered by spying on the Portuguese who had been sailing to Asia from the
end of the 15th century, the practicalities had to be learned by trial and
error.

Development of the fluyt (flute)

The advantage of the flute, that is, that it could be sailed by a small crew,
also meant that these vessels had little accommodation space, which made them
less suitable for bringing many people to Asia.

The Chamber Hoorn [one of 6 regional bases of the VOC] was ordered to build
an experimental vessel of 140 feet long and 24 wide, with a hold depth of 12
feet, which was described as a ‘handsame bequaeme fluyte’ (a handy and
suitable flute), but also named both a galiasse and a pinasse. A
comparison of dimensions of this and other vessels of the same period bought
or built by the VOC shows that this flute was extremely narrow with a
somewhat shallow hold. However, the vessel turned out to be suitable for the
VOC’s purposes in Asia.  On a request from the Directors to be advised of the
outcome of this trial in order to decide on whether to continue this
experiment, the Administration in Asia replied that the flute was useful and
seaworthy.

Some modifications were made to make this prototype, named Galiasse, fit for
its task: the accommodation space was considered inadequate, the
superstructure in the bow and the stern was extended in Asia, which
consequently reduced the sailing capacity. The Galiasse proved to be unsuited
to military action.  After an engagement on the Chinese coast in 1622, when
the Galiasse was used to attack Macao, the ship had to be abandoned because
of leakage. The dimensions were also possibly less suitable for the
intercontinental voyage or the routes in Asia because the flutes built later
for the VOC were not as narrow.

The fluyt gave a large boost to Dutch trade in Asia, since local trade
within Asia could be carried out at a much lower cost.  During much of the
16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch VOC contributed about half of Europe's
trade with Asia.