APPENDIX No. 15. Vol. ii. p. 84.

To the Honorable the Court of Directors of the East India Company. The Memorial of the Commanders and Officers of the Maritime Service of the Company

Sheweth:

That the Maritime Service of the East India Company has existed for a period of upwards of two hundred years; that the ships and seamen employed by the said Company have been, in a great degree, instrumental in acquiring and securing the now vast territory of British India, and in advancing its commercial success to that degree which it so long maintained. That your Memorialists entered into that service in the confident expectation that it was a provision for their lives, and they were justified in such expectation by the fact that the Company’s trading Charter was perpetual, and that the continuance of their trade must have rendered a Maritime Service necessary. That by the measure of last session of Parliament, the trade of the Company being suddenly stopped, your Memorialists are altogether deprived of their profession, and those prospects on which they relied for their advancement in life, in entering the service of your Honorable Company, are destroyed.

Under such circumstances, your Memorialists, on behalf of themselves and the other members of the service, most respectfully urge their claim on your Honorable Court for that compensation which, by the Act referred to, the Company is authorized to grant to persons employed “by or under the Company, who have suffered loss by the discontinuance of their trade.” Your Memorialists trust that it is not necessary for them now to urge the validity of their claim as persons employed by or under your Honorable Company. The words in question were introduced into the Act expressly to meet the claims of your Memorialists, which were recognised by Parliament as within the scope and object of the Legislature; and if it were doubtful whether your Memorialists were employed “by,” there could be no doubt that they were employed “under” your Honorable Company. The Maritime Service, however, has been so frequently recognised by the Company as a branch of its establishment, that no substantial doubt can exist that your Memorialists were in the direct service of the Company. It is true that, by the arrangements of the Company, the Commanders and Officers were allowed to be recommended by the Ship-Owners, but they were recommended to the service of the Company. They were examined and approved by your Honorable Court, and sworn into the service of the Company; they were paid by the Company, and subject to fine, suspension, and dismissal by the Company, and not by the Owners; they wore the uniform of the Company, enjoyed rank and command under the Company, and became eligible to offices of high honour and emolument. The officers of the Maritime Service took precedence of the officers of the Company’s Bombay Marine; the Commanders ranked with Field Officers in India, and were eligible to the office of Master-Attendant and other offices of profit in India.

The Commanders in the Maritime Service, though serving in different ships, owned by different parties, held seniority according to the date of their being first sworn into the Company’s service, and gave orders to the Commanders and Officers of such ships. In all these respects there was no preference to the Commanders of the few ships belonging to the Company. Seniority was the title to command, and the Officers of the Company’s own ships were in the same grade as those of the regular ships. Your Memorialists forbear to enter into details on this question, they will merely, therefore, refer to the following Resolution of Court:—

“Sec. 6. It is ordained, that the Court of Directors shall, as soon as reasonably may be, from time to time, preserve and keep a list or register of all existing Commanders and Sworn Officers which have been or shall be employed in the Company’s Maritime Service, except Commanders and Officers who have been or shall be dismissed or removed for misbehaviour, or shall have resigned and quitted the service; and all the Commanders and Sworn Officers of ships already built, now building, or to be built for the service of the Company, or taken up as regular ships, shall be selected from such list or register, but with liberty to admit new Officers to the lowest station of Sworn Officers as the service may require, with the approbation of the Court of Directors, so as always to keep up a sufficient number of Commanders and Officers regularly bred in the service.”

In conformity with the policy proposed in the above resolution, the Honorable Company has encouraged the formation of a class of Commanders and Officers for their particular service, and your Memorialists, under that encouragement, have been induced to enter the service, and have committed their prospects in life to your Honorable Company; and now that the service, from no fault of your Memorialists, from no decline in trade or natural fluctuation of events, but by the violent hand of power, and with views to public policy, is destroyed, your Memorialists confidently rely upon the justice of your Honorable Court to award them compensation. The policy of the Honorable Company, in thus forming Officers for their Commercial Navy, was based upon the most accurate view of their own interest and advantage. The Maritime Service of your Honorable Company was one of great trust and responsibility. The most valuable cargoes were necessarily entrusted to your Commanders, and such was the confidence justly reposed in them, that this property was left altogether uninsured either against sea-risk or barattry. Without assuming extraordinary merit to your Memorialists, they confidently assert that this important pecuniary saving could not have been effected but by Commanders and Officers who had been educated for, and brought up in, the particular service: your Memorialists, however, find that the qualifications which were so important to the service of your Honorable Company are of small account in the open trade system, and Ship-Owners object to employ individuals who have navigated only in vessels of so high a class of equipment as those in the service of your Honorable Company. This is no fancied evil.

The education and habits of your Memorialists as Officers of the Company’s service afford a decided objection to their employment in the free trade; and in proof of this fact, your Memorialists beg to state, that although the tonnage now engaged in the trade to India and China has doubled, not one-fifth of the Officers of the Company’s service have obtained employment.

Your Memorialists moreover entered the service of your Honorable Company from their interest in that particular connection. That interest is of no avail to advance them in another service; and even were employment obtained, your Memorialists could not look to be remunerated upon a scale in any degree commensurate with the emolument derived from the Company’s service, where higher qualifications were required and paid for.

From the regulations of your service, your Memorialists were alone eligible to stations in the Company’s regular ships, while in the general Commercial Navy of the country, they have not even a fair prospect of competing with others; they have not only lost a profession in which they had graduated, and in which they had expected to find a provision for life, but they have lost a connection by which their interest in that profession would have been insured. This is the ground of your Memorialists’ present claim. All the service sustain the loss of profession and connection, and it is in respect of this loss that they ask for compensation.

Your Memorialists state this the more prominently, because they have heard it proposed that compensation should be limited to such Officers as could show an engagement for future employment; but your Memorialists conceive that this is an unsound principle. The Honorable Company established a service with a view to insure a succession of Officers for their employ. There are not now Officers more than sufficient for the supply of the average number of ships employed by your Honorable Company; it is obvious, therefore, that these Officers had a reasonable and just ground to expect, and would have found, employ in the service of the Company but for the Act of last session, which has suddenly destroyed this prospect. Many cases exist, in which, from illness and other temporary causes, Officers were not at the moment of the closing of the Company’s trade in active service, though they might, and probably would, have resumed it; and your Memorialists conceive that all are entitled to compensation who have not absolutely resigned or been dismissed from the Company’s service. If it should be determined to draw a line, to exclude those who have discontinued the service for a certain period, there must be cases of exemption, otherwise the most meritorious Officers would be excluded: but your Memorialists are satisfied, that the attempt to restrict compensation to those who were in actual service, or about immediately to resume it, would be in its operation partial and unjust, and would not afford relief commensurate with the injury. Your Memorialists cannot too strongly press upon the consideration of the Court the fact, that as the number of Commanders and Officers is not excessive, all had a reasonable expectation of employment of which they are altogether deprived, and yet few might be able to show any actual contract for employment, particularly having regard to the temporary system adopted by the Company in the last two or three years, of chartering old ships from voyage to voyage.

Your Memorialists cannot enter into speculations as to what might have been the extent of the Company’s trade if continued. They are fully satisfied that it must have been carried on upon a scale of great magnitude; but this must be mere matter of conjecture. It is by reference only to the past, which is capable of being ascertained, that the loss of your Memorialists can be estimated, and not by surmising a state of things which has no existence.

Your Memorialists have not hitherto proposed any particular scale of compensation, conceiving it to be more respectful to your Honorable Court to await a suggestion from them, and satisfied, from the scale of pensions granted to your Home Establishment, of the desire of the Court to relieve those who have suffered from the consequences of the abolition of the Company’s trade.

The subject, however, having been referred to your Honorable Court with the favourable recommendation of the Proprietors, your Memorialists beg respectfully to present their case before your Honorable Court, with an earnest hope that they may be compensated upon the only principle which can afford them adequate relief, viz., by grant of pensions to the Commanders and Officers who have served the Company. Your Memorialists therefore beg respectfully to submit to your Honorable Court a scale of compensation, which has been prepared with an anxious desire to preserve the utmost moderation.

Your Memorialists are aware that a scale of allowance has been previously prepared, slightly differing from that now submitted. The alterations your Memorialists have made are in favour of the Junior grades of the service, upon which the loss will fall heavily, while the compensation proposed is not considerable. Upon a point so deeply affecting them, your Memorialists feel assured that their suggestion will be received with a favourable consideration, and that your Memorialists will experience at the hands of your Honorable Court that liberality which has ever characterised the conduct of the Honorable Company towards its Officers.

And your Memorialists, etc., etc.

(Signed)        George Probyn,
Chairman of the Committee of Commanders
and Officers.

London, 30th July, 1834.