East Indiaman was a general name for any ship operating under charter or license to any of the East India Companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries. Thus, one can speak of a Danish, Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, or Swedish East Indiaman.
In Britain, the Honourable East India Company itself did not generally own merchant ships, but held a monopoly granted to it by Queen Elizabeth I of England for all English trade between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, which was progressively restricted during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. English (later British) East Indiamen usually ran between England, the Cape of Good Hope and India, often continuing on their voyages to China before returning to England via the Cape of Good Hope. Main ports visited in India were Bombay, Madras and Calcutta.
Read more about East Indiaman: Description, Indiamen
Famous quotes containing the word east:
“A puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odours of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out the still night—the first sigh of the East on my face. That I can never forget. It was impalpable and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of mysterious delight.... The mysterious East faced me, perfumed like a flower, silent like death, dark like a grave.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)