Excerpt

I feel, then, that I may with confidence ask the reader who loves ships for themselves, or is fascinated by history, or is specially interested in the rise of our Indian Empire, to follow me in the following pages while the story of these old East Indiamen is narrated.

In a little while we shall have passed entirely from the last of all surviving ocean-going sailing ships, but during the whole of their period none have left their mark so significantly on past and present affairs as the old East Indiamen.