Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/177



The separation of the Dutch provinces from the crown of Spain had induced their merchants to seek more distant and more lucrative channels of employment for their ships, while their superior information respecting Spanish and Portuguese affairs gave them a marked advantage over their English competitors in the valuable trade of the East. They had now supplanted the Portuguese in the Moluccas, driven them out of their most valuable trade with Japan, and become the predominant naval power in the Indian seas, a power they long maintained. Finding England, however, a more stubborn rival, they employed all their influence and artifices to molest the ships of the Company and other English traders. Just, in fact, as the Moors had endeavoured to ruin the Portuguese in the opinion of the native princes of India, so the Dutch, having expelled the Portuguese from the chief trade of the East, now resorted to any expedient, either by secret intrigue or open force, to drive the English merchant vessels from the same localities. But the profits realised in their first expedition had inspired the London merchants with fresh energy. Having obtained a new charter (31st of May, 1609) for fifteen years, the Company set about constructing the Trades' Increase, of one thousand two hundred tons, the largest ship hitherto built for the English merchant service. At her launch, and at that of her pinnace, of two hundred and fifty tons, bearing the equally appropriate name of the Peppercorn, the