Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/17

Rh largest ship that had ever been constructed in England for the merchant service, some accounts making her burden to have been a thousand, others eleven or twelve hundred tons; and, after the king, with a numerous attendance of the nobility, had witnessed the launch of this portly argosy, which his majesty named the Trade's Increase, and been entertained on board with a magnificent banquet served in dishes of China ware, then quite new in England, it was put, along with two other vessels, under the command of Sir Henry Middleton, who set sail with his little fleet for the Red Sea in the spring of 1610. Neither Middleton nor his good ship, the Increase, ever saw England again; the ship was lost in Bantam Road in 1613, and Sir Henry soon after died of grief; but the other two vessels, which returned home towards the end of the following year, brought such productive cargoes as afforded the partners a dividend of above 121 per cent. Another adventure in a single ship, which sailed from Gravesend in January, 1611, and returned to England in the summer of 1615, produced the still larger profit of 218 per cent, upon the capital invested; and another with three ships, which were sent out in April, 1611, and returned in September, 1614, was very nearly as successful. Another voyage, reckoned the ninth, brought a profit of 160 per cent, after three years and a half; a tenth, in about two years and a half, 148 per cent.; an eleventh, in twenty months, about 340 per cent.; and a twelfth about 134 per cent., in a year and a half. Each of these adventures, it is to be observed, had, in so far as regarded the pecuniary results, been the separate concern of the individual members who chose to engage in it; but the commanders in general appear, nevertheless, to have considered themselves in all other respects as the representatives of the company in its corporate capacity, or even in some sort of the nation, and, as such, to have freely, whenever occasion or opportunity offered, both entered into treaties with the native powers, and employed arms, defensively or offensively, against the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Turks, or whatever other foreigners