The VOC – High Stakes on the High Seas
The VOC or Dutch East India Company was the largest trading company in the world throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. It was set up in 1602 to protect trade in the Indian Ocean and help in the war against Spain.
In 1619 the city of Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) was set up as the Company's headquarters, and by 1652 the VOC's monopoly extended from its new staging post at the Cape of Good Hope eastward to the Strait of Magellan.
An equivalent organisation, the GWC or Dutch West India Company, had meanwhile been established in 1621 in competition with Spain for trade in the Americas and western Africa, setting up several forts including Manhattan Island and Fort Nassau on the Delaware River.
For two hundred years Dutch trading ships sailed all the major sea-routes, criss-crossing the globe with cargoes of all kinds, including hundreds of thousands of slaves. For the main part, these ships were crewed by riff-raff and lowlife. No professional sailor would have undertaken the job at any price, but the desperate, the hunted, criminals of every kind and the dross of any number of countries all found employment in this melting-pot of humanity.
Making up part of all the ships' crews were soldiers whose sole purpose was to keep lookout and provide security. This was a source of great and simmering resentment to the sailors, who suffered the constant and punishing burden of carrying out all the other duties on board. To avoid frequent clashes, the soldiers' accommodation was on a lower deck, and with some difficulty, given the cramped and stifling conditions on a typical trading ship, the two groups rarely mixed. But with every ship's typical medley of nationalities (some of whose countries may well have been at war with each other) disharmony was always bubbling away beneath the surface and often erupted into violence.
Life for all seafarers in those times was always unpleasant, and at its worst appalling. For the hundreds of thousands of slaves carried from Africa to the east and west the conditions were so horrifying that frequently large numbers of every human cargo would die during a voyage; many perished even before the ship set sail or before they could be disembarked. A typical ship would be built to carry 450 slaves but often held 600, most in the filthy, dark depths of the hull but some out on the exposed upper decks; all were bound or chained. The sick lay next to the dying; the dead were simply thrown overboard. Others broke free and threw themselves into the sea rather than face a life of slavery or worse: many had believed persistent rumours that they were being sent over the sea to be eaten by cannibals. Not until 1814 was the terrible business of transporting slaves abolished by the Dutch. In many places slavery itself continued for a long time afterwards.
On board ship there was no protection against foreign diseases, and medical facilities were almost non-existent. Even if these had been available, ships' surgeons would rarely have had the skills or time to carry out more complicated operations.
The very nature and complexity of a sailing ship of those times made almost every task a potential hazard. Severe injuries to limbs were common and would often require surgery, which in most cases meant the swift amputation of the affected extremity to the nearest unaffected joint. The combination of insanitary conditions and the continuous and often violent movement of the ship made further treatment impossible. The stereotyped depiction of sailors with peg legs and hook hands simply reflects the harsh reality. Scurvy, typhus, dysentery, pleurisy and pneumonia were among the many afflictions suffered by sailors, but at sea disease was not the only enemy.
The elements were another constant danger, as they are for sailors today. Clothing was basic and offered little or no protection. Many seafarers – officers, crew and slaves alike – were lost to violent storms, exposure, cold, blistering heat and other extremes of the weather. Pirates and enemy foreign ships presented yet more perils.
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