different kinds of vessels are very numerous—prau, that which is most familiar to
Europeans, being the general one for all vessels. The language has also terms for the
different modes of sailing, such as to luff, to go free, and to tack.
When Europeans first became personally acquainted with the Archipelago in the
last years of the fifteenth and first of the sixteenth century, they found the Malays
navigating it from one extremity to the other,—from Sumatra to Luzon northward,
and from the same island to Timur eastward. The oourse of their navigation and
trade is thus described by Barbosa, such as they were before the arrival of the
Portuguese. After describing the voyage of the native traders of Malacca to the
Moluccas for cloves, he adds, “ They trade also at many islands on the way, as far as
Timur, from which they bring white sandal of which the Indians (Hindus) consume
much. In return for it, they give iron, needles, knives, swords, cloths of Pulicat and
Cambay, copper, quicksilver, tin, lead, and paternosters of every sort coming from
Cambay (carnelian beads). With such things they purchase the sandal-wood, and
also honey, bees’-wax, and slaves. Then, they go to the Banda Isles for nutmegs and
mace, for these are the places that produce them, and they give in exchange for them
the merchandise of Cambay. They go also to Sumatra and other islands, whence
they bring black pepper, silk in hanks (!) benzoin, fine gold, camphor, and
aloes-wood, which are afterwards conveyed to Tanasori (Tennaserim), Bengal, Pulicat,
Coromandel, Malabar, and Cambay.” Barbosa in Ramusio, vol. i., p. 317.
At the time in question the Javanese were found to be conducting the carrying
trade of the Archipelago in common with the Malays. This is expressly stated by
all the Portuguese historians. Indeed, the Javanese at the arrival of the Portuguese
were the most wealthy resident merchants of Malacca. Their trade, however, was
not confined to this place, for it was carried on from several emporia of their own
island, as Bantam, Jacatra, and Gressik. Both nations were found equally in possession
of the mariners’ compass, the name of which is derived from the Javanese word
for a needle, dom, the derivative being pandoman, or the object with the needle.
According to Ludovico Barthema they also used charts, but it is more than probable
that they received both these and the compass from the Arabs in comparatively
recent times, these people themselves having borrowed them from Europeans, as
without doubt they did gunpowder and fire-arms.
It was not however to charts or the compass that the Malays and Javanese were
indebted for their power to perform long voyages, but to the monsoons, and to the
physical geography of the Archipelago, consisting of innumerable islands, each of
which was a land-mark in its navigation. The periodical winds blowing steadily
for several months from one quarter, and for a like number from the opposite one,
enabled them to perform, without serious difficulty or danger, voyages outward and
inward, which in any other seas would have been wholly impracticable to a people
in the same state of society. Over 10° latitude of this navigation on each side
of the equator, the adventurers were even safe from the equinoxial gales that vex
regions beyond these limits.
The prevalence of the easy language of the Malays, as that of intercommunication
with strangers in every part of the Malayan Archipelago, and even in the Philippines
before their occupation by Europeans; the existence of Malay colonies or
settlements on the coasts of most of the islands remote from the parent country of
this people, and the infusion of more or less of the Malay and Javanese languages
into all those from Sumatra to New Guinea and Luzon, are sufficient proofs, even of
the antiquity of Malay navigation, for such effects are not the result of a few years’
intercourse, but of that of ages.
Malayan navigation, although it probably embraced an area of not less than a
million and a half of square leagues, it is certain never extended much beyond the
bounds of the Malayan waters. The exceptions to this are few, and limited to places
at a very moderate distance from them. I t extended as far as Martaban on the Bay
of Bengal, to the north, and to the south as far as the northern coast of Australia,
for the fishery of tripang and tortoiseshell as it still does. In the China Sea the
Malays went as far as the 10° of north latitude, planting a colony in Kamboja, the
limit of the region which is free from the equinoxial storms. That Malayan influence,
although not navigation, extended far beyond these limits, is sufficiently attested by
the presence in the language of Madagascar, and in the languages of all the islands
of the Pacific, of words of the Malay and Javanese tongues. On this obscure and
mysterious intercourse, which more resembles the changes which have taken place in
the physical geography of the globe than the civil history of man, I have offered
some remarks in a Dissertation to another work which need not here be repeated.
The natives of Celebes have, in the navigation of the Archipelago, to a great
extent, taken the place which the Malays and Javanese occupied before the arrival
of the Portuguese. These consist of two nations, the Macassar and Bugis, but
especially the latter. It is singular that Barbosa, who describes so correctly the
trade which the Malays and Javanese conducted from Malacca, does not even name
the people of Celebes as being present at that place. The first account we have of
them is in the native annals of Ternate, as given in the “ History of the Moluccas”
bv Argensola, where they are described as having frequented that island in 1338.
The earliest notice we have of them in the annals of the Malays is in the reign of a
prince called Mansur Shah, who ascended the throne of Malacca in 1374, and died in
1447. They are, in this case described, not as traders but as freebooters that harassed
the trade of Malacca, under the leadership of a notorious pirate of the name of
Samerluk, whose title of Kraing shows that he was of the Macassar, and not the
Bugis nation. When the Portuguese first became acquainted with the inhabitants of
Celebes, they had not yet been converted to the Mahommedan religion, and it seems
to have been subsequent to ¿heir conversion that they acquired that industry and
spirit of enterprise which has continued ever since to distinguish them. The account
which Barbosa, in the beginning, and De Barros about the middle of the 16th
century, gave of the people of Celebes, is probably greatly exaggerated, and indeed,
is hardly credible of a people possessed as they were of the art of writing, and even
of a literature. That they were, however, in a rude state, and possessed none of the
enterprise which now distinguishes them, is certain. I t seems probable that their comparative
freedom from the depressing influence of European nations which has acted so
injuriously on the Malays and Javanese, has been one of the chief causes that favoured
the development of their character, and promoted their progress in civilisation.
The vessels in which the most distant voyages of the most civilised nations of the
Archipelago are performed, are all of small size, seldom exceeding the burden of 50
or 80 tons. What they want in size is, in some degree, made up in numbers. The
number of foreign and native vessels which yearly frequents the port of Singapore,
and it includes the junks of China, Cochin China, and Siam, gives an average burden to
each vessel of no more than 30 tons, their number being about 2400. All native vessels
continue to use the oar as well as the sail. The larger vessels of the Malays and Javanese
go under the name of jung, the same word which the Portuguese write junco, and
which we have corrupted into junk, and apply to the huge unwieldy vessels of the
Chinese. Neither of them have any name for a ship in our sense of the word, except
the foreign one, kapal, which they have borrowed from the natives of Coromandel,
who have immemoriallv traded with the western parts of the Archipelago in vessels
that have some right to this name. Each nation of the Archipelago has its own
form of construction, both as to hull and equipment, and by this their nationality
is readily known. Flags, in so far as shipping is concerned, have been taken from the
Portuguese, as the sole name, bandera, implies. Such rude native vessels as are here
referred to are to be seen in the same harbours with the sailing ships and steamers
of European nations,—with the unwieldy stereotyped junks of China, and with the
lighter and more manageable ones of Siam and Cochin China,—all affording true
types of the respective social conditions of the people to whom they belong.
The war-boats of the Indian islanders are but their merchant-vessels, built for
speed, furnished with bulwarks, and better armed and manned. For open war, the
presence of three powerful European nations has wholly superseded them, and the
present vessels of war of the insular nations are only piratical praus. Speed is, in
this case, the main object, and for this purpose, the hull is often built on a model
which rivals that of our fastest steamers. In this fashion are constructed the praus
of the most notorious corsairs of the Archipelago, the Lanuns of Mindano.
In the early period of European intercourse with the nations of the Archipelago,
we find them in possession of large fleets of vessels of the description just referred
to. Thus, the king of Malacca, after his expulsion from his capital, was still in
possession of a fleet that in a good measure blockaded tbe town, interrupting the
supply of corn from Java, so as to produce a famine in the recent conquest, and this
in despite of the fleet of Alboquerque, who was himself still in the roads of Malacca.
A still more remarkable instance was presented in a fleet which had been prepared
by certain Javanese chiefs, for the purpose of wresting Malacca from the Malays, an
enterprise which was persevered in, even after it was known that it had fallen into the
hands of the Portuguese. Castaghneda gives the following account of this singular
expedition “ Fern&o Perez, admiral of the Malacca Sea, observing that the city
was secure from attack, resolved to return to India. With this intention, he sent a