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Memorial Letter from Captain George Probyn, Chairman of the Committee of Commanders and Officers of the Maritime Service, dated 30th July, 1834.

To the Honorable the Court of Directors of the East India Company. The Memorial of the Commanders and Officers of the Maritime Service of the Company



That the Maritime Service of the East India Company has existed for a period of upwards of two hundred years; that the ships and seamen employed by the said Company have been, in a great degree, instrumental in acquiring and securing the now vast territory of British India, and in advancing its commercial success to that degree which it so long maintained. That your Memorialists entered into that service in the confident expectation that it was a provision for their lives, and they were justified in such expectation by the fact that the Company's trading Charter was perpetual, and that the continuance of their trade must have rendered a Maritime Service necessary. That by the measure of last session of Parliament, the trade of the Company being suddenly stopped, your Memorialists are altogether deprived of their profession, and those prospects on which they relied for their advancement in life, in entering the service of your Honorable Company, are destroyed.

Under such circumstances, your Memorialists, on behalf of themselves and the other members of the service, most respectfully urge their claim on your Honorable Court for that compensation which, by the Act referred to, the Company is authorized to grant to persons employed "by or under the Company, who have suffered loss by the discontinuance of their trade." Your Memorialists trust that it is not necessary for them now to urge the validity of their claim as persons employed by or under your Honorable Company. The words in question were introduced into the Act expressly to meet the claims of your Memorialists, which were recognised by Parliament as within the scope and object of the Legislature; and if it were doubtful whether your Memorialists were employed "by," there could be no doubt that they were employed "under" your Honorable Company. The Maritime Service, however, has