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The Ships of the Arabian Sea about A.D. 1500

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

W. H. Moreland  and
Richard Burn
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Extract

It is clear then that the ships plying in the Arabian Sea in 1250–1350 were structurally weak. The question whether this feature persisted until 1500 must be answered almost exclusively from the early Portuguese literature. It is very voluminous; most of it is either badly indexed or not indexed at all; and I have not been able to search it all through, but have looked only in the likely places. My collection of passages may thus be incomplete, while those I have found are mostly fragmentary, and to interpret them itis necessary to have a general view of the course of shipping in the Arabian Sea.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , April 1939 , pp. 173 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1939

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References

page 173 note 1 It will be recalled that when the Turksbuilt fleets at Suez to attack the Portuguese, the timber was either transported from the Mediterranean across Egypt, or was brought by sea from the Konkan (Correa, i, 746; iii, 450, and passim). Hormuz imported timber from Ceylon (Correa, i, 646), but only, I think, for repairs and refitting.

page 176 note 1 The kings of Gujarāt cannot as a rule be described as pious, but this very fact would make it advisable for them to conciliate their pious subjects when they could do so at a profit.

page 183 note 1 I have not reproduced Clavijo's account of the Arab ships, because it is obviously hearsay; his route did notbring him near the Arabian Sea.

page 184 note 1 A third timber, the wild jack or angelim (Artocarpus hirsida), was used for building the barges (toné) which carried pepper on the inland waterways in Malabar (Correa, i, 405). I have not traced its use for sea-going vessels, but in any case it can be nailed.

page 186 note 1 In recent times benteak has been cheaper than teak, but the difference has not been very material. I have traced nofigures for comparative prices in the eighteenth century.

page 188 note 1 For the absence of pumps in mining, seeMethwold on the Kollur diamond mines (Hakl. Soc, ii, 66, p. 32)