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The Ships of the Arabian Sea about A.D. 1500

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

W. H. Moreland
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Extract

THE origin of this note is to be found in a passage in Mr. C. N. Parkinson's Trade in the Eastern Seas (Cambridge, 1937), where, in connection with the Portuguese enterprise in the East, the suggestion is made that Asiatic seamen were deterred from rounding the Cape by want of courage rather than technical equipment. The passage is as follows (p. 6).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , January 1939 , pp. 63 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1939

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References

page 63 note 1 I say nothing about the ships of the Bay of Bengal because I have found no contemporary data regarding them. All we know is that the old methods of building on the Coromandel Coast, whatever they were, were transformed under Dutch and English guidance in the course of the seventeenth century. The junk build was found also in the ports of Java and Sumatra.

page 66 note 1 Sir Bartle Frere wrote from Western India about the middle of the nineteenth century: “Stitched vessels are still used. I have seen them of 200 tons burden; but they are being driven out by iron-fastened vessels, as iron gets cheaper, except where (as on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts) the pliancy of a stitched boat is useful in a surf.” (Yule's, Marco Polo, i, 117Google Scholar. For the full title of this reference, and others, see the concluding note.)

page 66 note 2 The ton then represented about 60 cubic feet of cargo space: the butt (used by Italian seamen) represented about half this figure. I discussed the ton in Appendix iv of India at the death of Akbar (London, 1920)Google Scholar.

page 67 note 1 I suspect this expression to be less than fair to the sails. The Dutch found Indian sailcloth, woven from cotton, a tolerable substitute for canvas.

page 69 note 1 I am indebted to Dr. E. J. Thomas, the Deputy Librarian of the Cambridge University Library, for generous assistance in preparing this translation.

page 73 note 1 Damião de Goes, in the Crónica de felicissimo Bei D. Manuel, says (i, 74, 126, of the Coimbra edition of 1926) that the ships seen in African ports had pegs (cavilhas de pao); but he had no personal experience, and a scholar of his eminence is as likely to have drawn on one of the later versions of Marco Polo as on anything else.