Indian Antiquary Vol 61

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 333

NOVEMBER, 1932]
THE SCATTERGOODS AND THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
161
It seems that only the " perishable" goods on board had been sold at the date of the letter, for on 27 September 1716 Raworth and Bourchier petitioned the Council at Fort St. George for leave to sell the cargo of the captured junk, in order to satisfy "the respondentia creditors" who were "very pressing."
In para. 64 of their letter to the Court of 9 October 1716, the Council again alluded to the affair of the Chinese junk (Coast and Bay Abstracts, II. 55-68)
"They refer to Consultations of several dates and divers letters in their books for a full account of bringing the junk from Amoy; were necessitated to do as they did; the produce of the junk and cargo ready to be paid into cash; forced to send home the tea because the Company restrain the quantity in private trade and would not let the Lisbon Interloper have any; desire the net produce may be applied to accommodate affairs, and kept the account apart, or as the Company shall direct; have for form valued it at 30 pagodas the pecull."
The outcome of the incident in China is narrated by Dr. Morse (op. cit I. 151-3): "The Chinese officials at Amoy were dismayed at the result of their action and hastened to report the affair to Peking in such a way as to throw a favourable light on their own conduct
'The Tytuck wrote the Emperor that an English ship on pretence of trade, had staid a great while in that port, till at last, finding a proper opportunity, she seized a junk which had completed her cargo without telling him that this English ship was [a] private trader from Madras, or what grievances the supercargoes had met with, to put them to such a proceeding. The Emperor, upon this first notice, despatched a messenger to Amoy with a commission to enquire into the cause of it. Thus he came to a knowledge of the whole matter; and finding his own people the first aggressors, he disgraced several Mandareens and imprisoned one more immediately connected with the native merchants, who withheld the remains of the investment due and contracted for, and seized all his estate.'
The Peking government was manifestly sensible of the wider issues involved; and the Company's agents were no less deeply impressed by the danger to English trade, and to their own operations in particular, through the impulsive act of a private trader."
Dr. Morse then goes on to tell how Captain John Powney was empowered to settle the cost of the junk with the Chinese. He further narrates the action of Monsieur Edmé Bongré, the "French gentleman well skill'd in the Mandarine language," in conjunction with Linqua and Anqua, the powerful Chinese merchants, who promised "that the whole expence in this negotiation shall be at their own proper cost and charge." The final result is not recorded, but that the incident had no great effect on commercial relations is shown by the fact that the three English ships of the following season, the Marlborough, Susannah and Stringer galley met with no molestation from the affair of the Ann (although the Marlborough was, as Fenwick tells us, for some time in great trepidation as to her reception). "So true was it," adds Dr. Morse, "under the Empire, that 'the Mandarins meddle not with anything out of their own province." "
The comments of the Court of Directors on the affair and the action of their servants at Fort St. George are brief and to the point. In their letter of 8 January 1717-18 (Letter Book, XVI. 335) they wrote:"We are not yet come to any resolution concerning the Annes taking the China junk, of which you give a large account in the letters of the 29th August and 9th October, para. 64. We judge it necessary to hear what news our next China ships bring before we are ripe for giving an opinion. Mr. Harrison hath not yet apply'd to the Court, though he was so deeply concerned in that voyage. The care which appear'd in giving such particular notice of that unhappy accident to our supra cargos bound to China deserves approbation."
Subsequent letters, however, have no allusion to the junk, and the last echo of the incident appears to be a claim made by Thomas Theobald at a Consultation at Fort St. George on 6 November 1718, for compensation for money expended on "the Chinamen belonging to the junk "whom he "shipped for Bencoolen " by the President's orders, he being appointed "one of the managers of the sale" after the "condemnation of the China junk."
(5) Fenwick's forebodings were not realized. In a second brief note to Scattergood, dated 30 December 1716, he announced that he had "a great hurry of business" upon him, and stated that his affairs were "in much better way than when I writ you last, for I have assurance to gett all I want on better terms, and doe all my other business much better than I expected; only I shall not be able to dispatch till latter end of January."
The year 1717 was one of feverish activity for Scattergood both as regards his domestic and business affairs. He installed his wife and family (increased in May 1717 by the birth of his sixth daughter, Katherine) in Lincoln with his aunts, the widowed Mrs. Farmerie and her sister Elizabeth Scattergood, and he appears to have spared no expense in the decoration of the house hired for their use, for among the bills preserved, we find one for £10 12s. for