British Ships Based on Ancient Bengali Shipcraft

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BRITISH SHIPS WERE BASED ON ANCIENT BENGALI SHIPCRAFT

http://www.vedicempire.com/bengalboat.htm

 

In the book, TRADE IN THE EASTERN SEAS 1793-1813, British Maritime

Historian; C. Northcote Parkinson reveals that British advances in

ship craft were based on ancient Indian maritime expertise.

 

"When Vasco da Gama first reached India he not only found a broker

from Tunisia speaking fluent Portuguese, he also found some local

seamen who knew more about navigation than he did. When he tried to

impress them with his navigational instruments, they instantly

produced their own, which he found to be similar but quite obviously

superior. Judging merely by knowledge of navigation and

shipbuilding, there was nothing whatever to have prevented Asiatic

seamen from sailing around Africa's Cape of Good Hope and

discovering Europe." (Page 6)

 

"The Indiamen (merchant ships used by the East India Company) also

attained a degree of superiority over the (British) King's ships

through contact with India where the art of shipbuilding was in some

respects more advanced than in any part of Europe. In this

connection the career of Mr. Gabriel Snodgrass is of great

importance. Sent out as a young man to Bengal, as shipwright to the

East India Company, he returned to England and became one of the

company's surveyors in 1757. As chief surveyor, he was still in

office as late as 1796. With the knowledge acquired in India and

the prestige of his long period of service, he was enabled to bring

about a number of important alterations in the design of the

company's ships." "In advocating a nearly vertical side, Snodgrass

was probably drawing on his experience in India; and he was

certainly here on very firm ground." (Page 134-135)

 

"...Snodgrass showed startling originality in deriding the French

models which it was the fashion to venerate. He thought the French

men of war if anything worse than the English in everything except

size, being slighter, weaker, drawing more water and tumbling-home

more absurdly. "It must appear very extraordinary," he wrote "that

there are several Line of Battle Ships and large Frigates now

building for Government from Draughts copied from these ridiculous

Ships..." Snodgrass was a bold man, but he was not bold enough to

sum up his advise by urging the Government to build each future man-

of-war as nearly as possible like a Bengal rice-ship." (Page 136)

 

SOURCE: TRADE IN THE EASTERN SEAS 1793-1813

 

Printed 1937 by Cambridge At the University Press

 

By C. Northcote Parkinson

 

M.A.; Ph.D.; F.R. Hist.S

 

Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge

 

Julian Corbett Prizeman

 

 

 

C. Northcote Parkinson

 

Cyril Northcote Parkinson (July 30, 1909 - March 9, 1993) was a

British historian and author of some sixty books. Besides his

numerous works on British politics and economics, he also wrote

historical fiction, often based on the Napoleonic period, and sea

stories. He is most famous for his ridicule of bureaucratic

institutions, notably his Parkinson's Law and Other Studies, a

collection of short essays explaining the inevitability of

bureaucratic expansion. As early as the 1930's, for example,

Parkinson had successfully predicted that the Royal Navy would

eventually have more admirals than ships.

 

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