Hearts-of-Teak:
The Royal Navy’s Nineteenth-Century Timber Crises, Bombay Dockyard, And The
Teak Forests of Malabar.
Hearts
of Oak are our ships,
Jolly
Tars are our men
(David Garrick
1770).
The
ongoing timber crisis in Britain peaked in the period 1803 to 1830 as a
consequence of the renewal of the wars with France, in 1803, and America, in
1812. These led to a substantial increase in the building of warships. One
solution to the increased pressures of demand was to contract some of the
shipbuilding to foreign shipyards, in which Bombay played a role. The virtues
claimed for the teak-built Bombay ships were of legendary proportions, with
teak, throughout the historiography, being given almost mythical powers. This
paper asks the questions: if the quality of the output was so excellent, why
did the Navy Board end the Bombay contract? What were the environmental and
cultural issues concerning Bombay and the teak forests of Malabar? A critical analysis
of the work of both Indian and Western historians is compared and contrasted
with a documentary research into a substantial body of official correspondence,
and East India Company reports.
This
paper falls naturally into two parts, firstly an examination of the situation
in Britain that triggered the crisis. Here it examines the causes of the crisis
in terms of the home market and import market, in order to ascertain the scope
of the demands that needed resolving. The second, and major part of this paper,
concerns Bombay Dockyard and the Malabar forests through the first half of the
nineteenth-century. Here, research has largely been confined to Indian History.
This paper introduces new research to Naval History and the naval timber
crisis, through a cultural and environmental analysis of the reports of the men
who attempted to control the forests of Malabar whilst keeping Bombay Dockyard
supplied with teak. Their struggle to introduce conservation to the forests of
Malabar whilst introducing an unpopular monopoly, brings a broader
understanding of environmental and cultural issues surrounding the end of
teak-built ships.
Patricia
Crimmin’s acting as editor in the Naval Miscellany, orders the primary evidence
into a chronological sequence. She then sets them into context by way of an
introduction and notes.[1]
She explains how, to counter the threat of war in the ten years to 1813, the
British fleet expanded from 608 ships of which 81 were 74-guns, to 899 ships of
which 143 were 74-guns.[2]
In terms of timber needed to satisfy this requirement it is necessary to
understand that the standard unit of measure used was the ‘load’.[3]
One load of oak was equivalent to a ton-of-shipping, and so a 74-gun ship would
take approximately 2000 loads of oak to build, it follows that the extra 62 of
these vessels needed would require 124,000 loads, or tons. This undermines the
argument that, the lack of replacement planting of felled trees in the King’s
Forests had led to the shortage of oak.[4]
These forests only produced 4000 loads a year at best, which became almost
insignificant when compared with the effects of laying-down of a three-year
stock of oak as directed by the Admiralty. In 1802, the Navy Board wrote back
to the Admiralty:
‘In reply to the other part of your letter “Whether we have taken care
to have a three-year stock of
timber” […it is] Much beyond the
ability of the kingdom to supply to the same extent.’ [5]
They
went on to add that they had never been able to lay-down such a stock even when
it was only 60,000 loads.
Shipbuilding
was not the sole province of the Royal Dockyards for the Private Dockyards had
a requirement that dwarfed that of the Royal Navy. For example, in 1800 -1815,
for every 600 tons purchased each month to satisfy the requirement of the royal
dockyards, the private yards bought 2400 tons.[6]
This led to an unbalanced ability to bid in the marketplace, a primary crisis
driver. The private shipyards contractors were authorised to pay the price
asked, whilst the naval dockyards were restricted to a ceiling price set by the Navy Board. For
example, Benjamin Slade, a purveyor employed by the Naval Board wrote to them
in April 1804, concerning that very point. He had viewed 432 tons of trees
which he valued at £3200. When the sale began he found that:
“there were many bidders who seemed combined
against me and determined I should not purchase. I exceeded the valuation of 10
pr. cent, but was outbid, the
timber sold for £3520, and I
was told after the sale that if I had bid on they were determined to have the
timber”[7]
It
would be myopic to suppose that shipbuilding had the only claim on oak
supplies. For example, between 1680 and 1830, leather and leather goods were
valued as the second most important English industry, after textiles.[8]
Oliver Rackman argues that the increase in the manufacture of leather was
responsible for the increase in oak prices, insofar as that for every ton of
leather tanned, four to five tons of oak bark was used; this annual usage rose
from 10,000 to 100,000 tons in the hundred years to 1810. Rackman argues that
it drove the price of a tree up by 30%.[9]
This growth in demand for British timber led
to a rapid increase in timber prices, which the Admiralty was, at first, not
prepared to meet.[10]
The solution appeared to be to supplement domestic sources with imports. The
problem then became one of supplying an alternative to English Oak, and
defending the trade routes whereby it was transported to England. The best
theoretical solution was to have the ship built at the source of the imported
timber, and then sail it to England fully armed. One suitable contender seemed
to be Bombay (Mumbai) in India which used teak, which was considered an ideal
substitute for Oak. The teak forests of Malabar supplied Bombay Dockyard, and
these seemed inexhaustible although this came with a whole set of unique
cultural and environmental issues.
Crimmin recounts how the Earl of St Vincent had
worsened the situation after he became First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1801.[11] He suspected that the crisis was largely the fault of
the Navy Board who were in collusion with royal dockyard officials and the
contractors that purchased timber. Traditionally timber was bought from the
forest owners by contractors who in turn dealt with the dockyards. The system
was delicately balanced, being built upon the knowledge that each needed the
other to stay in business, relying on narrow margins of profit, and trust. St
Vincent upset the balance by attempting to deal directly with the forest owners
and setting unrealistic quality standards. This raised prices considerably and
caused frustration to all parties.
Crimmin
writes that the supply crisis came to an end in 1804 when the new First Lord to
the Admiralty, Lord Melville, reduced the severity of quality standards and
paid the contractors the prices they were asking.[12]
Significantly, Melville spoke of foreign timbers and their absolute importance
to the Navy. On the 4 July 1804, Melville wrote to Marquess Wellesley, who was
the Governor of Bengal at the time.[13]
He proposed to import oak from all parts of the world to be used in repairs of
Royal Navy ships, whilst reserving English oak for new builds. The simplicity
and clarity of the Melville plan even addressed the laying by of three years
stock of timber that had been so problematic to the Navy Board.[14]
He lay out exactly where the loads were to come from. By 1817, stocks of timber
in the yards stood at 96,863 loads, with 46,374 due in on orders. This total of
143,237 loads was almost enough to service three-year stock level needed to
satisfy an annual consumption of 54,000 loads.[15]
To sustain the stock levels the Navy Board relied heavily on imported timbers,
with imports having their own set of problems.
Melville
had to overcome much opposition to achieve the vast changes that he made in
resolving the crises. For example, in a
Parliamentary debate of 1805, on the ‘State of the Navy,’ he was taken to task
over the importation of foreign oak which was inferior to English – a common
jingoistic belief. [16]
He was challenged, that whilst English Oak forests stood rotting, foreign
imports continued. Another attack was over the use of private shipbuilders,
Lord Darnley claiming that, ‘… about 260,000 tons
built by contract, and only 156,000 tons have been built in the king's
yards,’ and the former were far more expensive than the Royal
Dockyards.[17]
Melville eloquently overcame the opposition, and continued his plans which were
not realised without overcoming problems from further afield.
One
major problem concerning the importation of timber was ongoing insofar as it
depended upon a continuity of supply, particularly of those timbers that were
not native to Britain. For example, Britain’s climate produced good oak, but
had to rely on pine, fir and spruce for masts and spars from abroad. Here the
Navy Board favoured the Baltic regions, however, when Napoleon conducted his
economic war against Britain, the Baltic supply became compromised. North
America was an alternative until America became increasingly hostile at which
time the Navy Board turned to Canada.[18]
Whereas Canada and the forests of Lower Canada and New Brunswick and the
forests of Malabar had many similarities, the Canadian timber had to be shipped
to England. Herein lay the second problem of loads being seized en route, not
that England were averse to seizing loads themselves and had been for a long
time. For example, the often-cited seizure by HMS Otter of the neutral
Dutch vessel, De Drie Gesusters, carrying timber from neutral Prussia.
The prize was escorted into Plymouth where a court judged the cargo was
destined for Port L'Orient, a port of the enemy France and hence contraband.[19]
One way of overcoming these obstacles, Melville proposed, was extending the
building of teak ships to India, and to have East India Ships to bring teak to
England for the repair of existing teak ships. This was the first step towards
a connection with Bombay and Malabar.
Within
the historiography of Bombay Dockyard and the Malabar Forests, an Indian
perspective is appropriate and hence this paper includes the work of Nitten
Agarwala, Devika Shankar, Louiza Rodrigues, and Cynthia Deshmukh. Although
Nitten Agarwala is primarily writing in a socioeconomic context about the
‘Wadia’ (shipwright) families of India, he provides a useful summary of the
history of Bombay, its Dockyard, and shipbuilding in that area.[20]
Agarwala writes that Bombay was all but unknown in the seventeenth-century when
it was given as a wedding gift to Charles II.[21]
At this time Bombay was not a commercial or political centre but known only for
its ‘noxious climate, [and] malarial mosquitoes’, it comprised seven islets and offered little prospect for
commercial enterprise.[22]
The British Crown had little interest and leased Bombay to the East India
Company (EIC) for £10 a year.
Although
the English fortified the main island and built a warehouse and customhouse it
was difficult to compete with Surat, which lay 400 miles to the north.[23]
Here, Agarwala writes, the Portuguese controlled the whole area and obstructed
the English attempts to acquire timber, labour, or ships. Along the west coast
were Portuguese shipbuilding yards who controlled materials and labour.
Nevertheless, in 1668, the EIC moved its
headquarters from Surat to Bombay where the new governor, Sir George Oxinden
attempted to develop it as a seaport.[24]
However, it was not until 1736 that a young Parsi Wadia, Lowjee Nusserwanjee,
was enticed to Bombay bringing with him ten of his skilled tradesmen, mostly
family. Initially, Lowjee worked under
the English Master Shipwright, Robert Baldry. When Baldry retired in 1748,
Lowjee, who by this time had gained the trust of the English, became the Master Shipwright of Bombay
Dockyard.[25]
Agarwala declared that a whole new era of shipbuilding had arrived and would
last for a 150 years.[26]
Cynthia
Deshmukh writes in a cultural and political context.[27]
Her account summarises the early history of the area and its shipbuilding
skills. She makes no reference at all to the Portuguese, which leaves the
impression that the shipbuilding in Surat and
the west coast was indigenous during the period in question. Deshmukh follows her short account of the
Wadia move to Bombay with a brief mention of Bombay Dockyard and lists some of
the ships built there. However, Deshmukh finds space to write that the builder
of HMS Cornwallis, Jamshedji Bomanji, had carved an inscription into
that vessel that read, ‘this ship was built by a damned black fellow’. [28]At
this point she turns to the downfall of the Bombay Ship-building Industry, and
becomes highly political, which falls outside the scope of this paper.
Deshmukh’s account is important insofar as it offers an alternate viewpoint and
invites academic debate. Louiza Rodrigues closely echoes Deshmukh, although she
relies mainly on quantitative research.[29]
Devika
Shankar writes in a socioeconomic context, using archived documents to argue
that the monopoly exerted by the EIC on the Malabar Forests brought the
displacement of the ports of Malabar
from their ‘central position in the Indian Ocean economy’.[30]
Her work is scholarly and unbiased.
Understandably,
Deshmukh, Rodrigues and Agarwala show a
patriotic pride in their country, they celebrate the Wadias, and speak of teak in terms similar to those
used throughout the historiography: collectively espousing teak
with almost mythical qualities. For example, Deshmukh claims, teak is stronger
than oak, and teak ships are faster than oak ships. Agarwala relates that the teak built Salsette
emerged undamaged from the Baltic whilst the other British ships, ‘built
elsewhere’, were damaged.[31]
Crimmin’s writes that the oil in teak allows iron spikes to be used.[32]
Daniel Spence seems to speak for everyone when he writes, ‘[…] universally
admitted that a Bombay teak-built ship is 50 per cent superior to vessels built
in England’.[33]
There is a danger here that teak is being seen as a replacement for oak,
rather than as temporary substitute. The pragmatic Navy Board were constantly looking for other
substitutes. For example, a letter from the Woolwich Dockyards Shipwrights to
the Navy Board, dated 9 March 1805, informed the Board that the Glatton had
landed a cargo from Botany Bay that comprised, Black Glum, Blue Glum, Stringy
Bark, Mahogany, and Lignum Vitae.[34]
They were reporting on the tests they had carried out on these timbers for
their suitability as a substitute for oak.
Teak
is a very attractive wood, with a dark reddish-brown colouring that is shown
off when varnished, being amenable to a high-finish. Teak ships, whenever they
appeared, certainly attracted crowds, and the attention of newspapers. For
instance, The Times, of the 21 July 1812, wrote quite a long piece on
the arrival of the Bombay built 74-gun Minden, which was being fitted
out at Portsmouth for foreign service. The Times was sure the public would be gratified to know
that the keel of Cornwallis was laid in Bombay in the previous
September. The article poetically concluded that the concerns about the
shortage of native oak could now be
forgotten because the arrival of the Minden had now:
‘cheered the prospect of the statesman and
the patriot,
with a noble specimen of the forests of
Western India.’
Teak
became an essential part of advertising the availability of passage on ships.
For example, The Times of November 1812 advertised passage from
Blackwall to Bengal, aboard the ‘teak-built Providence’.[35]
Similarly, The Times - 6 February 1818, advertised passage from Madras
to Bengal aboard a ‘remarkably fine teak-built ship’.[36]
However, by June 1824, teak had
merged into the everyday norm. For example, in the gossip pages of The Times,
news of the Bombay launching of the 84-gun Asia was situated between news that Lady Amherst had been thrown
from her horse, and the receipt of the New York papers. No mention of
teak.[37]
Dr H. Falconer MD., FRS. was the Superintendent of the East India
Company’s Botanical Gardens. In 1852, he wrote ‘Report IX’ which is an
important primary resource used here. In it he edits all the reports written
for the Indian forests including Malabar, accompanied by expert commentaries
and analysis. Falconer gives an excellent description of teak, and in doing so
dispels its myths. There are two species of teak, he writes, of which only one
species, Tectona Grandis, is fit for shipbuilding.[38]
In the early days, teak had a bad reputation with British shipbuilders, for it
seems unseasoned logs, seasoned timber, and logs ‘flawed with holes and clefts’
were batched together. Falconer continues, the Navy Board found teak went on
shrinking for ‘at least 4 to 5 years’
after reaching England. Most timber, oak for example, has its hardest wood in
the centre, whilst teak is hard throughout except for a spongy pith. This gave
problems to the British shipbuilders when they received it. The solution was found
when slabbing or planking the log, to
cut out a four-inch square plank from the unusable centre.[39]
The
obsession with teak seems to divert attention from the fact that the Admiralty
were the customers, and Bombay Dockyard the suppliers. They had reached an
agreement that the Dockyard would meet the specification given, at a price
agreed, by a specific date. That Bombay exceeded the draughts and specification
was of little consequence, the requirement was the ship would be ‘fit for
purpose’. That it would last 200 years, as in the case of HMS Cornwallis,
was of little importance, given that ships of the line were not needed to last
for such long periods[40].
The reality of the situation was that Bombay often struggled to meet orders. On 7 March 1806, for example, the
Navy Board wrote to the second secretary of the Admiralty, William Marsden, on
the subject of the 74-gun ship that they had ordered. It seems that
‘notwithstanding their best endeavours’, the Superintendent of Bombay was
unable “to provide on the whole coast of Malabar, teak timber of sufficient
scantling for floor timbers and first futtocks for the 74-gun ship”.[41]
This
problem with teak supplies had been foreseen in 1805, by Francis Wreade, who
wrote that the Malabar forests remained terra incognita to the EIC, with
their early surveys being aborted after the death ‘through fever’ of the survey
teams.[42]
Wreade was adamant that Bombay Dockyard has been built on the ‘deceitful dream’
of endless supplies of teak from the forests of Malabar, and that, ‘Failure to
conduct a comprehensive survey […] would lead to the most fatal consequences”.[43]
In a late response, a survey was organised with the specific objective of
identifying timber fit for the built of 74-gun ships; the building of a dry
dock large enough for such a ship was already in progress. To compound the
delivery problem, EIC and the Navy Board had an uneven relationship wherein the
EIC sought to maximise their profits whilst the Board had anticipated greater
cooperation in defending the nation.[44]
This in led to work frequently being stopped and delays experienced, for
example, four 74-gun ships began in 1815 were not finished until over five
years later.[45]
To
contain the situation the EIC saw the need to monopolise the forest and thus
control the felling of teak[46].
Shankar writes, that in moving to a
monopoly the EIC followed the route previously taken by the Portuguese and
Dutch.[47]
However, the problem became one of property, the Malabar forests had not been,
as the British had anticipated, the possession of the usurped Tipu Sultan that
the EIC had hoped to inherit. The forests were private property, nevertheless,
the EIC exerted its rights of sovereignty and banned the independent felling of
timber in April 1807.[48]
Falconer wrote that in 1806 a Captain Watson was appointed Conservator of
Forests.[49]
He continues that Watson claimed that the forest ‘owners’ were quite willing to
transfer ownership to the EIC for either a pension or for a fee paid for each
tree cut.[50]
Watson went further than his instructions, ‘acting on his own views’, soon
established a monopoly in both the states of Malabar and Travancore.[51]
He prohibited the felling of trees without a EIC license, or its transportation
without a certificate. Going further, Watson, had trees felled in private forests and those growing on
cultivated land. In the process, conservation rules were introduced, for
example, for every tree felled, five saplings were to be planted, trees not
felled below a certain size, sizes graded and so forth.[52]
Deshmukh, argues that these colonial scientific-conservationists only served
imperialist ends rather than those of conservation. However, Shankar turns that
around to say that in this case, ‘conservation was born out of commercial and
political ends.’[53]
Shankar concludes:
scholars have noted the extent to which
forest policies in the early nineteenth-century Malabar laid the foundations
for scientific forestry in India following
the revolt of 1857.[54]
The
EIC had dictated that for every tree felled, replacement saplings should be
planted.[55]
Whilst this is an ecologically sound policy, it did little for the immediate
needs of Bombay Dockyard: The teak was graded, into six classes with the lowest grade taking 40
years to be ready for felling and a class 1, taking 100-120 years to mature.[56]
Although the size of the Indian forests were large and spread across the
nation, they were not all geographically, and thus economically, available to supplement the
Malabar Forests, which were not inexhaustible, teak often had to compete with
three or four other species of tree, and even then may not be fit for purpose.[57]
For example, tall straight grained trees are not suitable for knees, futtocks,
or breast hooks; the most suitable being found in mountainous areas. Here
Falconer quotes a Mr Monro as saying that when they recently cut a Class 1,
they had found it was ‘[…] full of
earth, nearly to the top, and so hollow and decayed, that it was good for
nothing’.[58]
Falconer
moves on to explain the rules the EIC introduced to govern the mechanics of
felling, handling, and seasoning of timber.[59]
Before trees are felled, he wrote, they are ‘girdled’ and left for two years. [60]
Once felled, the timber was floated down river as single logs or on rafts;
trees felled green without ‘girdling’ will not float but rather sink to the
bottom. Falconer writes that the two years between girdling and felling were
sufficient seasoning time to bring it to market. Additionally, trees below a
certain height were to be left to mature.
Whilst
many landowners continued to dispute the legality of all these rules and
restrictions, discontent reached its greatest level when the peasantry were
denied their traditional rights to cut wood for fuel and the maintenance of
their homes.[61]
As a result, in 1822 the position of Conservator and the whole of the
regulatory system was abolished.[62] By 1830, forest and land-owners, had begun to
clear the land completely and indiscriminately felling mature and young
immature trees alike, and making no attempt to replant fresh plants. This led
to the destruction or damage of the accessible forests. The best quality timber
was no longer available whilst that of an inferior quality sold at inflated
prices.[63]
Rodrigues
makes no reference to the actions of the landowners, instead she writes that
the 1822 abolishment of the regulations now encouraged, ‘free trade in timber’.[64]
She attributes the deforestation directly with the building of ships for the
Royal Navy. Rodrigues uses quantitative data to define the building of Roya
Navy ships, totalling the timber demanded for a 74-gun ship and a
frigate to show how they had denuded the forest, and so giving a sense
of the deforestation they had
caused.[65]
She argues that Malabar could no longer produce sufficient timber of the sizes
required, and this led to other forests
of West India being exploited.[66]
Rodrigues fails to mention that during the whole period, the Dockyard built
over 350 vessels of which only 23 were for the Royal Navy.
Understandably,
the Indian historians set a parochial context in which Bombay Dockyard and the
Malabar forests were central. From the Navy Board’s viewpoint however, the context was broader covering the whole
British timber crisis, in which Bombay Dockyard did not occupy the major
position. For example, during the period of conflict, 1803 – 1815, only eight
Royal Navy ships were built in Bombay: three 74-gun ships, two 36-gun frigates
and three 16-gun brigs. During the same period, 82 Royal Navy vessels were
built in England, and 44 in the rest of the world.[67]
To various degrees, all four Indian historians see Britain as having been
deforested, and that the Royal Navy had turned to Bombay for the solution, in
doing so they inflate Bombay’s value in solving the Royal Navy timber crisis.
In reality there were ships being built in 16 dockyards in England, in
conjunction with those being built in Bermuda, Penang, and Halifax in Nova
Scotia. Meanwhile, in accordance with the Melville plan, oak was being imported
from all over the world.[68]
The Naval Board had done what it had always done, it had supported the needs of
the Royal Navy through a potential crisis. Although in 1811, the Admiralty had
taken over the administration of the now Royal Naval Dockyard Bombay, delays in delivery and reports of the Malabar
Forests depletion, saw the number of ships ordered from Bombay drop to only 5
in the thirty years to 1848. By this time the EIC were also operating in Madras
on the east coast of India, where they were developing processes to exploit the
teak forests of the Tenasserim Provinces, which were part of Burma that had
been annexed to India after the First Burma War, 1824-26.
In
1848, the British Government ordered the EIC to send to them, all copies of
reports on the Teak Forests of Tenasserim Provinces.[69]
Accordingly, the reports for 1846 were sent on 28 February 1848, and comprised
122 pages in 44 reports.[70]
In the covering letter, a Captain Guthrie is quoted as reporting that he finds
the state of forestry management to be
unfavourable with the felling of undersized trees and a failure to replant
replacement stock.[71]
Guthrie advocates that the existing private grant system be stopped, and that
the forest be worked by ‘agents on account of Government’.[72]
Weeks later, in report 162, Guthrie writes that on visiting the forests on the
Thoungyeen River, ‘I find Captain Durand and Major Mc Leod absent, and Dr
Richardson dead.’[73]
Guthrie continues that the amount of un-licenced work and total neglect of
other rules was so great, that the ‘time and trouble’ taken in collecting proof
and punishing the offenders would be, ‘…better given to the forests in
general.’
Given
the situation in Malabar that was recorded in the Tenasserim Provinces Reports,
must have convinced the Admiralty that it was time to stop using India to
supply its wooden warships. However, the peak demand brought about by the wars
with France and America had passed, and the advent of steam and iron ships had
arrived, both changing the requirements of the Royal Navy. Nevertheless, the
decline of shipbuilding in Bombay and the deforestation of Malabar were a
consequence. However, this is not how Deshmukh explains it: she is primarily
concerned with colonialism. Here her logical arguments are undermined by her
inaccuracies whilst using shipbuilding as her vehicle-of-debate.[74]
Deshmukh uses the East India Ships Registry Bill 1815 to argue that the
downfall of Bombay shipbuilding was due in the main to the politics in England
being driven by the demands of British shipbuilders. Here her well-made points
become clouded by referencing the 1651 Navigation Acts, and citing Sir William Digby, ‘… We are literally draining
India dry.’ Here Deshmukh might have introduced a balanced argument by citing
others from the same 6th June debate viz Mr F Dougan, ‘That empire would be best secured […] by
treating its inhabitants with justice—by allowing it to make use of its produce
and import its commodities on the fairest terms.’ [75]
The
Navy Board had once again shown itself to be the strength behind a fiscal Royal
Navy. The relationship with the EIC had not been an easy one and had
deteriorated over time with delayed deliveries and disputes over costs causing
the Navy Board to reduce orders, and the Admiralty to take over the
administration of Bombay dockyard. The inexhaustible Malabar teak forests
turned out to be the ‘deceitful dream’ Fracis Wreade had forecast.[76]
With the peak of wartime demands passed, and the advent of steam and iron
arriving with the Industrial Revolution, the Navy Board called for the EIC’s
reports on the Tenasserim Provinces Reports. They used these to ascertain the
sustainability of future transactions. At which point they terminated the
Bombay contract, which answers the first question asked by this paper: ‘Why did
the Navy Board end the Bombay contract?’
To
answer the second question asked by this paper, ‘What were the environmental
and cultural issues concerning Bombay and the teak forests of Malabar?’ The EIC
must be seen as the face of British Colonialism, wherein the EIC is criticised
for its treatment of the Indian people; for never being in control of the
forests; its lack of cooperation with the Navy Board and much more. Yet the EIC
still left a legacy for the Modern Indian Nation. It had reclaimed the land
from the original seven islets on which it built Bombay Dockyard. The
conservation philosophy it planned is claimed by Shankar as the basis for
emerging independent India’s forestry policy.[77]
The move of EIC towards a role that was purely an administrative one, led to a
slow demise of the EIC as a commercial entity. This weakened its ability to
fulfil all that it had planned, allowing the Malabar forests to become all but
deforested
The
shortage of timber available for the Royal Navy’s shipbuilding requirements in
the nineteenth-century, was not contingent to the wars of 1803 and 1812.
Although the wars had brought a peak in demand, the Navy Board had been having
to react to the frequently compromised supplies of non-native timbers for over
a century. The Melville era saw an easing of the domestic constraints and
spread of sources of supply globally, including contracting the building of
warships to supplement the output of British shipbuilders. One such foreign
contractor was the East India Company who had established the Bombay Dockyard
over a century earlier. The EIC was a commercial enterprise that favoured
profit above that of national defence, thus leading to frequent priority
disputes with the Navy Board. The Admiralty took over the administration of the
now Royal Naval Dockyard Bombay in 1811,
whilst the EIC attempted to manage the forests of India. The EIC developed a
method for preserving the forests that it is thought was adapted later in
modern India. For the Malabar forest maintenance plans to succeed called for
large scale law enforcement, which the EIC could not provide. Instead, the EIC
failed to establish the cooperation of the indigenous population who cleared
much of the forests for their own ends. The breakdown in teak supplies to the
dockyard led the Admiralty to ordering fewer vessels. The end of the home
crisis together with the advent of steam and iron ships saw the end of orders
placed with Bombay Dockyard. Whilst the Dockyard and the large dry dock are
still in use, the Wadias Master Shipwrights continued until 1884. The Malabar
forests, however, had all but vanished.
Bibliography:
PRIMARY SOURCES
Hansard Archives [Hereafter H A]
1. East India Ships Registry Bill:
House of Commons Debate 06 June 1815 vol 31 cc627-53
2.
State
of the Navy: House of Lords Debate. 29 March 1805, vol 4 cc145-57
Naval
Records Society
- The Naval Miscellany.
7. [Hereafter NRS]
NRS. 1. Navy Board to Admiralty Secretary, 30
March 1802
NRS.
2. Benjamin Slade to Navy Board3 George Inn, Bewdley 27 April 1804
NRS.
4. Enclosure in Lord Melville’s letter to the Marquess Wellesley 14 July 1804
NRS.
10. Woolwich Dockyard Shipwrights to Navy Board. 9 March 1805
RN Records Vol 50 Law and custom of the sea, Vol 11 English
seizer cargo of timber.
ADM
3881
The Records of The Bengal Government
Falconer,
H. ‘Summary of Papers relating to the Madras and Bombay Forests’.
No. IX Report on the Teak Forests of Tenasserim Provinces.
Military Orphan Press, Calcutta, 1852, 177-269. Edited by Dr H. Falconer
MD., FRS. Superintendent of the EIC’s Botanical Gardens, Calcutta. [Hereafter
Falconer, Report IX.].
Francis
Wreade’s Memorandum 1805, File 2408, Madras Records, Kerala State
Archives,
Kozhikode
UK Parliamentary Papers: Reports Respecting
Teak Forests in Tenasserim Provinces 1848. [Hereafter,
‘UKPP1848’]
UKPP1848
Report 32
UKPP1848
Report 162
Newspapers
The Times. ‘FOR BENGAL.-To Sail the End of
November, the Teak-Built Ship PROVIDENCE A BARCLAY Commander’. 27 October 1812.
The Times Digital Archive. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS17053531/TTDA?u=uniportsmouth&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=6a6c8571.
The Times. ‘FOR MADRAS and BENGAL, with Liberty
to Touch at Madeirs, the Remarkably Fine Teak-Built SHIP’. 6 February 1818. The
Times Digital Archive. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS16925254/TTDA?u=uniportsmouth&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=b7c4c5db.
The Times, “We
have received the Bombay papers to the end of January,” The Times, 17
June 1824, The Time Digital Archive
SECONDARY SOURCES
Agarwala, Nitin.
‘Shipbuilding Legacy in India under the Wadia Family’. Australian Journal of
Maritime & Ocean Affairs 15, no. 1 (2 January 2023): 69–88.
https://doi.org/10.1080/18366503.2021.1961353.
Arnold, David. Science, Technology and Medicine in
Colonial India. Vol. 5. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Clarkson, LA. ‘The English Bark Trade, 1660–1830’. The
Agricultural History Review 22, no. 2 (1974): 136–52.
Crevier, Martin. ‘The Making of a Timber Colony:
British North America, the Navy Board, and Global Resource Extraction in the
Age of Napoleon’. Itinerario 43, no. 3 (2019): 466–88.
Crimmin, Patricia K. ‘The Supply of Timber for the
Royal Navy, c. 1803–c. 1830’. In The Naval Miscellany, 191–234.
Routledge, 2020.
Deshmukh, Cynthia. ‘The Rise And Decline Of The Bombay
Ship-Building Industry, 1736—1850’, 47:543–47. JSTOR, 1986.
Grove, Richard H. Green Imperialism: Colonial
Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860.
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Knight, Roger. ‘Devil Bolts and Deception? Wartime
Naval Shipbuilding in Private Shipyards, 1739–1815’. Journal for Maritime
Research 5, no. 1 (2003): 34–51.
Langton, John. ‘Royal and Non-Royal Forests and Chases
in England and Wales’. Historical Research 88, no. 241 (2015): 381–401.
Low, Charles Rathbone, History
of the Indian Navy, (1613-1863). Vol. I (Luton: Andrews UK,
2012).
Madway, Lorraine. ‘Rites of Deliverance and
Disenchantment: The Marriage Celebrations for Charles II and Catherine of
Braganza, 1661–62’. The Seventeenth Century 27, no. 1 (2012): 79–103.
Rackham, Oliver. ‘Ancient Woodland, Its History,
Vegetation and Uses in England.’ Ancient Woodland, Its History, Vegetation
and Uses in England., 1980.
Refai, GZ. ‘Sir George Oxinden and Bombay, 1662–1669’.
The English Historical Review 92, no. CCCLXIV (1977): 573–81.
Rodrigues, Louiza. ‘Commercialisation Of Forests,
Timber Extraction And Deforestation Of
Malabar: Early Nineteenth Century’. Proceedings of the Indian History
Congress 73 (2012): 809–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44156277.
Shankar, Devika. ‘A Forest of Ships: Malabar’s State
Forests and Bombay’s Dockyards, 1795–1822’. South Asia: Journal of South
Asian Studies, 2023, 1–15.
Spence, Daniel Owen. A History of the Royal Navy:
Empire and Imperialism. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
Windas, J.M, ‘The Old Navy: The Excellent Ships of
Bombay,’ U.S. Naval Institute, vol.
98/4/830, (1972)
.
ANNEX ‘A’
|
Year |
Name |
Type |
Guns |
Tons |
|
1805 |
Pitt |
Frigate |
36
|
872 |
|
1807 |
Salsette |
Frigate |
36 |
885 |
|
1810 |
Minden |
74-Gun
ship |
74 |
1681 |
|
1813 |
Cornwallis |
74-Gun
ship |
74 |
1767 |
|
1814 |
Victor |
Brig |
18 |
384 |
|
1815 |
Wellesley |
74-Gun
ship |
74 |
1745 |
|
1815 |
Zebra |
Brig |
18 |
385 |
|
1815 |
Sphynx |
Brig |
12 |
239 |
|
1816 |
Cameleon |
Brig |
12 |
239 |
|
1816 |
Amphitrite |
Frigate |
33 |
1064 |
|
1817 |
Melville |
74-Gun
Ship |
74 |
1767 |
|
1817 |
Trincomalee |
Frigate |
46 |
1065 |
|
1818 |
Malabar |
74-Gun
Ship |
74 |
1767 |
|
1819 |
Seringapatam |
Frigate |
46 |
1152 |
|
1821 |
Ganges |
84-Gun
Ship |
84 |
2289 |
|
1822 |
Madagascar |
Frigate |
46 |
1164 |
|
1824 |
Asia |
84-Gun
Ship |
84 |
2289 |
|
1828 |
Bombay |
84-Gun
Ship |
84 |
2285 |
|
1828 |
Andromeda |
Frigate |
46 |
1166 |
|
1831 |
Calcutta |
84-Gun
Ship |
84 |
2298 |
|
1848 |
Nerbudda |
Brig |
16 |
420 |
|
1848 |
Jumna |
Brig |
16 |
420 |
|
1848 |
Meanee |
Ship |
80 |
2298 |
Annex ‘B’
Master Shipwrights
of Bombay.[78]
·
1736–1774, Lowjee Nusserwanjee Wadia
·
1774–1792, Maneckjee Lowjee Wadia and 1774–1790, Bomanjee Lowjee
Wadia. (joint)
·
1792–1804, Framjee Maneckjee Wadia and 1792–1821, Jamsetjee
Bomanjee Wadia (joint)
·
1821–1844, Nowrojee Jamsetjee Wadia.
·
1844–1857, Gursetjee Rustomjee Wadia.
·
1857-1866, Jehangir Nowrojee Wadia.
·
1866-1884, Jamsetjee Duhunjibhoy Wadia.
[1] Patricia K Crimmin, ‘The Supply of Timber for the
Royal Navy, c. 1803–c. 1830’, in The Naval Miscellany (Routledge, 2020),
191–234.
[2] Crimmin,
‘The Supply of Timber'.;191.
[3] A ‘load’ was between 40 to 50 cubic
feet of oak.
[4] Crimmin, ‘The Supply of Timber' .; 192.; It is best to think of
‘the King’s or Royal forests’ as state-owned woodland. Royal Forests is
a complex subject involving; boundaries, chases, hunting and medieval law. see John Langton, ‘Royal and Non-Royal Forests and
Chases in England and Wales’, Historical Research 88, no. 241 (2015):
381–401.
[5]
NRS, 1. Navy Board to Admiralty
Secretary, 30 March 1802
[6] Roger Knight, ‘Devil Bolts and Deception? Wartime
Naval Shipbuilding in Private Shipyards, 1739–1815’, Journal for Maritime
Research 5, no. 1 (2003): 34–51.; 37.
[7]
NRS, 2. Benjamin Slade to Navy Board3
George Inn, Bewdley 27 April 1804
[8] LA Clarkson, ‘The English Bark Trade, 1660–1830’, The
Agricultural History Review 22, no. 2 (1974): 136–52.
[9] Oliver Rackham, ‘Ancient Woodland, Its History,
Vegetation and Uses in England.’, Ancient Woodland, Its History, Vegetation
and Uses in England., 1980.
[10] Crimmin, ‘The Supply of Timber for the Royal Navy,
c. 1803–c. 1830’.
The Supply of Timber.; 191.
[11] Crimmin,. The Supply of Timber.; 193.
[12] Crimmin,. The Supply of Timber.; 202.
[13]
NRS, 4.
[14]
NRS, 1. Navy Board to Admiralty
Secretary, 30 March 1802.
[15]
NRS, 13. Sir T B Martin to Lord
Melville, 2 August 1817.
[16] H A 2
[17] H A 2
[18] Martin Crevier, ‘The Making of a Timber Colony:
British North America, the Navy Board, and Global Resource Extraction in the
Age of Napoleon’, Itinerario 43, no. 3 (2019): 466–88.
[19]
ADM 3881
[20] Nitin Agarwala, ‘Shipbuilding Legacy in India
under the Wadia Family’, Australian Journal of Maritime & Ocean Affairs
15, no. 1 (2 January 2023): 69–88,
https://doi.org/10.1080/18366503.2021.1961353.; The ‘Wadias’ of India were
Parsi shipbuilders who originated in Persia but were forced to leave during the
Islamic invasions. They settled in India where their skills became legendary.
For further information see National Maritime Museum https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/search/Bombay%20Wadia.
[21]
For Details see, Lorraine Madway, ‘Rites of Deliverance and
Disenchantment: The Marriage Celebrations for Charles II and Catherine of
Braganza, 1661–62’, The Seventeenth Century 27, no. 1 (2012): 79–103.
[22] Agarwala, ‘Shipbuilding Legacy in India under the
Wadia Family’.;
73.; Bombay comprised the islets of: Isle of Bombay, Colaba, Old Woman’s Island,
Mahim, Mazagaon, Parel and Worli. Following many land reclaimants, it had
become a single island by 1845.
[24] GZ Refai, ‘Sir George Oxinden and Bombay,
1662–1669’, The English Historical Review 92, no. CCCLXIV (1977):
573–81.
[25] David Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine
in Colonial India, vol. 5 (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
[26]
Agarwala , ‘Shipbuilding Legacy in India
under the Wadia Family’.;75.; In 1750 the Upper Bombay Dock was built; in 1762
the Middle Old Bombay Dock, and 1765 the Lower Old Bombay Dock. In 1807 the
Upper Bombay Dock was enlarged, and the new Upper Duncan Dock finished in 1807
and the new Lower Duncan Dock in 1810.
[27] Cynthia Deshmukh, ‘The Rise And Decline Of The Bombay
Ship-Building Industry, 1736—1850’, vol. 47 (Proceedings of the Indian History
Congress, JSTOR, 1986), 543–47.
[28]
Deshmukh showed no evidence of the inscription, and her account is already
unreliable, given that in the same passage she claims that Cornwallis was a 34-gun (the ship was a 74-gun)
and was the first warship built in Bombay (the Minden 74-gun was already
launched).
[29] Louiza Rodrigues, ‘Commercialisation Of Forests, Timber Extraction And Deforestation
Of Malabar: Early Nineteenth Century’, Proceedings
of the Indian History Congress 73 (2012): 809–19,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/44156277.
[30] Devika Shankar, ‘A Forest of Ships: Malabar’s
State Forests and Bombay’s Dockyards, 1795–1822’, South Asia: Journal of
South Asian Studies, 2023, 1–15.
[31] Agarwala, ‘Shipbuilding Legacy in India under the
Wadia Family’.;77.
[32]
Crimmin misses the point, when she claims that Iron Spikes can be used in teak
because its oil preserved them. Iron spikes can be used in most timbers. The
point she should have made is that iron spikes cannot be used in oak, but can
in its substitute, teak: Oak has on extreme corrosive effect of ferrous metals
when emersed in sea water.
[33] Daniel Owen Spence, A History of the Royal
Navy: Empire and Imperialism (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).
[34]
NRS – 10. Woolwich Dockyard Shipwrights to Navy Board. 9 March 1805
[35]
The Times ,‘FOR BENGAL.-To Sail the End of November, the
Teak-Built Ship PROVIDENCE A BARCLAY Commander’, The Times, 27 October
1812, The Times Digital Archive,
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS17053531/TTDA?u=uniportsmouth&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=6a6c8571.
[36]
The Times ‘FOR MADRAS and BENGAL, with Liberty to Touch at
Madeirs, the Remarkably Fine Teak-Built SHIP’, The Times, 6 February
1818, The Times Digital Archive,
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS16925254/TTDA?u=uniportsmouth&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=b7c4c5db.
[37]
The Times, “We have received the Bombay papers to the end of January,” The
Times, 17 June 1824, The Time
Digital Archive.
[38] Report
IX was written by Dr H. Falconer MD., FRS. who was the Superintendent of the
EIC’s Botanical Gardens, Calcutta
[39]
Falconer, Report IX.
[40]
See Annex ‘C’
[41]
NRS – 11. Navy Board to William Marsden. 7 March 1806
[42]
Fracis Wreade’s Memorandum 1805, File 2408, Madras Records, Kerala State
Archives, Kozhikode.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Crevier, ‘The Making of a Timber Colony: British
North America, the Navy Board, and Global Resource Extraction in the Age of
Napoleon’.
[45] Crevier, ‘The Making of a Timber
Colony’.; 474.
[46] The private owners sold to merchants
who in turn supplied Arab customers.
[47] Shankar, ‘A Forest of Ships’.; 688.
[48]
Falconer. Report IX.; 177.
[49]
Falconer. Report IX.; 178.; Shankar, ‘A
Forest of Ships’.; 690.
[50] The EIC did not agree to the
pensions: avoiding costs accrued over the long term. The fee system was
accepted quite readily, Watson claimed.; Shankar called the fee a kuttikaanam
or stump money.
[51]
Falconer. Report IX.; 179.
[52] Five saplings were reduced to three,
but seldom happened.
[53] Shankar, ‘A Forest of Ships’.; 690,; Here Shankar
quotes Richard H Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial
Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860
(Cambridge University Press, 1996).
[54] Shankar, ‘A Forest of Ships.’;683.
[55] Falconer,
Report IX.; 9.; Falconer acknowledges
that the rule was a dead letter and there was no evidence that a single tree
was planted.
[56] Falconer,
Report IX.; 182.
[57] Falconer,
Report IX.; 12.; Falconer writes that
the Teak was not the most common or prevailing species in the forests, rarely exceeding
1 in 10 trees.
[58]
Falconer, Report IX.; 182,
[59]
Timber contains a high content of fluid when green. It has to be seasoned: the
fluid needs to desiccate thoroughly over a number of years - during this period the timber shrinks, and
teak loses about a third of its weight
[60] Falconer,
Report IX.; 15.; ‘girdling’ is the removal of a band of bark 500mm high, around
the complete circumference of the tree, Falconer also refers to this process as
‘killing’ the tree.
[61] Understandably, the Indians see this
as the evil face of Imperialism. Here, they are viewing events through a modern
lens. During the same period, 1750 -
1860, in Britain the Enclosure Acts similarly took away the common land
used by the peasantry for collecting firewood etc. Which speaks of a social and
cultural system that was unique and specific to the time in which it occurred.
[62]
Falconer, Report IX.; 180.
[63] Falconer, Report IX.; 181.
[64] Rodrigues, ‘Commercialisation Of Forests’.; 816.
[65] Rodrigues, ‘Commercialisation Of Forests’.; 813
[66] Rodrigues, ‘Commercialisation Of Forests’. ; 812.
[67] Roger Knight, ‘Devil Bolts and Deception? Wartime
Naval Shipbuilding in Private Shipyards, 1739–1815’, Journal for Maritime
Research 5, no. 1 (2003)..; 45-46.; For further detail, see also Annex ‘A’
[68] Ibid.
[69] Provinces of Burma now annexed to
India.
[70] Accessed here under Primary Sources.
[71]
UKPP1848 Report 32.; Captain Gutherie was the newly appointed Executive
Engineer and Superintendent of Forests, here making an initial inspection.
[72] Grants had been allocated to private
individuals to manage the forests in accordance with a set of EIC rules, à
la Malabar.
[73]
UKPP1848 Report 162
[74]
Deshmukh undermines the historiography with many ‘technical’ errors, typically:
she calls HMS Cornwallis the first warship built; the 84-gun Ganges she calls a
frigate; She states that between 1839 and 1857 Bombay had built ‘nearly a score
of iron and steam vessels’, they actually built 57. Etc.
[75] H A 1
[76]
Fracis Wreade’s Memorandum 1805
[77] Shankar, ‘A Forest of Ships.’;683.
[78] Low, History of the Indian Navy, (1613-1863)..
