ABSTRACT
In 1810 of the thirty-two ships registered at the Port only seven were under 500 tons. Ownership was roughly half-in-half, Indian (almost all Parsis) and European British, (although frequently Indians were associated with the English agency houses although unnamed). All the ships were commanded by British free mariners. In 1819 the situation was beginning to change. Of forty-four ships, twenty-eight were now under 500 tons. Ownership was roughly fourteen English to twenty-seven Indian, divided almost equally between Muslim, Hindu and Parsi, although all the captains were English except three Muslim nacodas. In 1805, 22,544 tons of shipping had been registered at Bombay; in 1829 it had dropped to 14,453 tons. By 1840 of forty-eight ships, twenty-nine were under 500 tons. But the most dramatic change was that only three ships were European owned. Of the Indian owners these were still divided almost equally between Hindu, Muslim and Parsi. As for the captains the number ofIndians had increased to about thirteen, most of them Muslim nacodas. The skills of the nacodas were passed down from father to son. The remainder were still English. (Over the years Armenian and Portuguese Indians also usually owned one or two ships.) To sum up, by 1840, the number of ships of smaller tonnage had increased quite substantially from the beginning of the century due to the expansion of the west coast opium trade. English ownership of Bombay Country ships had steeply declined maybe because of a lack of familiarity with the intricacies of that trade and that the motive force appears to have transferred to Bengal. Between 1810 and 1840 there had been two renewals of the East India Company's Charter whereby its patronage of the Country trade was first to diminish and then to disappear. The third change was that
The decline in European commitment
there was a substantial increase in the number of Indian commanders of ships. Since there were no longer so many English owners, this probably had a knock on effect and influenced the number of English Country captains appointed. Perhaps also it was not so lucrative an occupation nor was there the same cache attached to commanding a Country ship as in the old days of the cotton boom. English fathers no longer saw the Country trade as a reliable means of their sons making a fortune in the East Indies. Trade slumps in 1820 and 1830 and finally the opium wars made a career in the Country ships far less attractive. Most important the English based shipping companies were soon to eclipse the Bombay based agency houses who had often had one partner in the East India Company. By 1851 of the fifty or so ships registered in Bombay only one small vessel of 380 tons was English owned.
