Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/492

 London; and in one instance within our own knowledge, the commander of one of the ships employed on the "double voyage"—that is, from London to India, thence to China, and thence back to London, where he had a large interest in the freight on cotton or other produce conveyed from India to China—realised no less than 30,000l.

But notwithstanding these numerous privileges, the Court of Directors having frequently received information of an illicit trade carried on by too many of the officers and commanders of their ships, at last resolved, with the view of putting an end to practices "so detrimental to the revenue, the Company, and the fair trader," to invariably dismiss from their service any one found guilty of such practices. Indeed, in the hope of detecting the delinquents, they went so far as to publish advertisements, wherein they state that "having received information that great quantities of woollens, camblets, and warlike stores have been illicitly imported; also great quantities of tea,