ABSTRACT

And what is known about those who owned the Bombay Country ships? The answer is that, except for the well-known names, for the most part very little. Anyone could buy a ship or part invest in one, Indian or European - as individuals, like the captain of the vessel, or in partnerships such as the agency houses. The more important ones soon had branch houses in London. The most notable Bombay ship-owners were the agency houses. As a Bombay merchant himself, William Milburn described their methods of operating and their limitations with feeling. At the beginning of the nineteenth century none of them could:

subsist upon the advantages of the agency business alone, it being very confined, and the profits in a great measure absorbed by interest of money on the cash balances they are obliged to keep, and the expenses of the establishment. Their advantages arise principally from mercantile transactions; and though they hold out the agency business to be the line they confine themselves to, yet without trade they would scarcely gain a subsistence.'