The end of the seventeenth century, then, saw the British Mercantile Marine both in respect of its fishing craft and its cargo-carriers, going ahead. As regards the latter, the finest of all were the ships of the East India Company of England and those of the Dutch East India Company, with their stately hulls, lofty sterns, high freeboard and two decks of guns. A picture of 1647 shows them with three masts, as well as bowsprit, and they even carry topgallant sails on fore and main. Such craft are, in fact, the connecting link between the last of the mediæval ships and the first of the famous clipper ships. The stolid majesty of their design and build, the elaborateness of their seventeenth-century carvings, were expressive of that permanence with which the Merchant Service now rightly regarded itself. Indeed so prosperous had the British East India Company become in the seventeenth century, that by 1681 this corporation owned about thirty-five ships, ranging in size from 100 to 775 tons, and in customs alone the company was paying £60,000 a year. They used to take out to India cargoes of lead, tin, cloth and stuffs, bringing back home raw silk, pepper and other Eastern goods. Trade prospered so well, indeed, that between 1682 and 1689 as many as sixteen East Indiamen of from 900 to 1300 tons were built, and all these ships had to be armed; for during the last decade of that century these merchantmen ran the risk of being attacked by French men-of-war as well as by privateers, so that in carrying from thirty to fifty guns these East Indiamen were very powerful vessels for any enemy to have to encounter. [Illustration: SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH EAST INDIAMEN.] [Illustration: SIGNAL CODE. Used in a British East Indiaman.] CHAPTER VIII SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SEAFARING Few people realise that the trade routes of the world are the lanes along which history is constrained to flow. It is a fascinating study, but we have little enough room to develop the subject here. The success of Prince Henry the Navigator’s influence, the achievement of Vasco da Gama, completely revolutionised the trade routes of the world, transformed the European mercantile system, made the gate of commerce not Venice but Lisbon, transferred the centre of progress from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic; and the discovery of America accentuated this new condition still further.