Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/301

 EUROPEAN NATIONS. 285 The India voyage, as the greater part of it is per- formed within the tropics, — as it has the advantage of the trade winds, monsoons, and open seas, is, for its extent, with the exception of that across the Great Pacific Ocean, the safest in the world. Insurances are now made in the free trade for the whole voy- age out and home, at the rate of ^!j per cent, which is an incontestible proof of it. Notwith- standing this, and that the East India Company's officers are perhaps the best practical navigators in the world, from the impossibility of combining military and commercial pui-poses, as attempted in our Indiamen, there have been more losses by shipwreck with them, than perhaps with any other class of merchantmen whatever. In the years 1808 and 1809, there were totally lost 9000 tons of their shipping, of which between 5000 and 6000 foun- dered off the Cape of Good Hope, when their whole crews perished. None of these ships were lost in the Typhoons of the China Seas. No Ame- rican merchantmen were lost at the same time under the same circumstances as our Indiamen, although navigating the same seas, and in greater numbers. The Dutch, as their ships were less skilfully navigated than ours, and as, in point of construction and equipment, they were still more faulty, suffered still more severely. In the year 1723, at the very height of their power, they lost fourteen great vessels by shipwreck.