Short Distances, Longer Odds

Short Distances, Longer Odds

From Sea to Shore in the Long Eighteenth Century

Model boat, surf boat from southern India known as masula (or masulah) © The Trustees of the British Museum

BY MORGAN BREENE

Intercontinental travel has almost always been a tedious and potentially life-threatening endeavour. Vast distances on the open ocean confound human conception—no landmarks, no guarantees of safe passage or a timely arrival at a preferred destination. The way historians think about the impact the dangers of sea-travel had on the development of the British empire, however, overlook or underestimate the final hurdle of any voyage: the passage in small boats from ocean-going ships through the surf to dry land. In the Age of Sail, built harbour installations, such as docks and breakwaters, were not always available in foreign ports. Instead, boats were used to transport goods and passengers between ships and land. The in-between spaces in which these boats travelled were comparatively small, but surprisingly difficult to cross; boats often faced strong surf, riptides, unexpected shallows, rocky shorelines, and hungry or poisonous marine life. Madras (modern day Chennai) is a prime example of the impact of environmental limitations faced by Britons attempting to cross from sea to shore. Established in the 1640s as an East India Company settlement, Madras became one of the most important trading ports in British India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast on a straight, sandy stretch of coastline with no natural promontories to protect the beach from a continuous triple bar of heavy surf. This surf was infamous amongst the ever-increasing numbers of European visitors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mrs Eliza Fay recorded in her journal in 1780 that she had been taken aback by the surf, calling it a “great evil”, and “not only alarming but dangerous”, while other travel writers, such as Hobart Caunter and Julia Maitland, called it ‘formidable’ and an “insurmountable impediment”. Despite the danger, however, all arrivals to the port had to travel the last half mile from ship to shore in local boats, known as masulas— no functional breakwater or docks existed at Madras until the turn of the twentieth century. Throughout the 250-year delay between the founding of the port and the completion of harbour installations, the risks of the surf zone were keenly felt by merchants and visitors. The export company Parry’s of Madras, established in 1796, estimated that 90% of all cargo losses occurred in the Madras surf, rather than on the high seas. Local boatmen and divers were paid a premium for recovering lost anchors and supplies—the Oriental Commerce, published in 1813, recorded an award

of “one pagoda (approximately eight shillings) per cwt. [hundredweight] …for each anchor”. Accounts of deaths by drowning in the surf and the potential of shark attack also spread in newspapers including the Madras Mail and Bombay Times. British tourists and merchants in Madras risked more than life and property in the crossing between ship and shore, however. They were also forced to confront their own culturally ingrained prejudices against the technological expertise and navigational skill of non-European boat-builders and sailors. Travel writers regularly described masula boatmen in racist or dehumanising terms, focusing on the colour of their skin, their near-total lack of clothing, and their singing which, to travel writer Mary Sherwood, sounded more like “wild howlings”. And yet, British commentators were utterly reliant on these boatmen and masulas to reach the shore. European-style ship’s boats, which were heavily constructed using metal nails and internal frames, were too rigid to survive the constant beating of the surf. In 1848 Captain Christopher Biden, the Master Attendant of the Madras port, went so far as to publish a warning against crossing in European boats in the Bombay Times, writing that “the incautious use of ship’s boats… have been attended with accidents and a very narrow escape from fatal results; I hope such perilous encounters will operate as a salutary warning to Commanders who frequent this coast”. Masulas, on the other hand, while alien in form to the British observer, were perfectly suited to the surf. Box-shaped with high sides, lightly built, and, most importantly, sewn together, rather than fastened with nails, masulas could bend and withstand the multidirectional forces of the waves.

British attitudes towards masulas and boatmen shifted over the nineteenth century. Early travel accounts often extolled the skill of the masula boatmen and the suitability of the boats to the surf. Hobart Caunter, who crossed in a masula in the early 1830s, recalled:

“It is really astonishing to see with what dexterity the boatmen manage these awkward-looking machines…bringing them safely on shore through a surf that would appal (sic) the stoutest heart which had never before witnessed nature under any similar aspect of her power and her sublimity”. Later writers, however, became increasingly concerned with the optics of British reliance on local boats and boatmen in such an important colonial port. Writing of masulas in 1834, John Malcolm expressed his amazement that “notwithstanding their superior science, Europeans have been unable, during an intercourse with India of two centuries… to bring into successful practice, one improvement”. An anonymous editorialist published in the Nautical Magazine in the 1840s put it more plainly, writing: “…the defect in [British] boats, tends in some measure to give barbarous people a somewhat mean opinion of our boasted superiority”. By 1869, the Madras Mail had branded the masula boatmen “a floating nuisance”. Nevertheless, masulas manned by local boatmen remained essential to the continuation of trade through Madras. The role of Madras as a major export centre and seat of government for both the East India Company and the British Raj meant the ship to shore crossing through the infamous surf was unavoidable for thousands of Britons and other Europeans travelling to India. Though a short distance, the reliance on the irreplaceable masulas challenged the preconceived notions of British passengers by exposing them to new means of constructing and piloting boats. The danger posed by the surf was both physical and psychological—not only were lives and livelihoods on the line in the shallows, but also culturally ingrained worldviews, prejudices, and notions of Western technological ‘superiority’. The risks of sea-travel extended beyond the long-distance traversal of the high seas, to the much shorter, but still impactful, crossing from ship to shore.