The Nineteenth Century Madras Port

The following excerpt is from "Dubhashi and the Colonial Port in Madras Presidency"
Thanks to:
K. Marimuthu, M.A., M.Phil.
Department of History
Bharathidasan University
Tiruchirappalli - 620 024
Tamilnadu, India

 The entire report (with numerical references) is available at the following link:
 http://www.languageinindia.com/oct2010/marimuthuports.pdf

The late nineteenth century was an important period in the history of India‟s colonial port cities: it was during this time that Madras, Bombay and Calcutta began to take on a visibly urban form. After 1858 when the British Government assumed full administrative control over its colony from the East India Trading Company, municipal institutions in the three Presidency capitals were granted effective powers of taxation, and for the first time were able systematically to provide urban facilities such as hospitals, burial and burning grounds, markets, housing and transport.

Madras particularly benefited from its new urban status for in the course of the nineteenth century the administrative offices of the Madras Government, and the major banking and commercial establishments of South India were located in the city, as were the principal educational institutions. Voluntary associations of a political, social and religious nature were also founded in Madras. This was a time when the city assumed a larger role as a distribution center for goods and services throughout the South; when innumerable buildings were erected to give the city a new urban image; and when plans were made for constructing a harbor, and for laying railway lines to link Madras with its hinterland and the other major cities of India.9

However, Madras was established as a base for the export of ready-made cloth to a European market, and its initial settlement patterns were controlled by the British. Merchants and dubashes (interpreters) were given permission to settle on land adjacent to the Fort (St. George) and White Town, the European enclave. Their residential neighborhoods were bordered on the north by weavers and dyers of cloth, who were at a lower economic level and thus lived further away from the Europeans; towards the limits of the settlement were the food processors (the fishermen, butchers, bakers, milk suppliers, oil-mongers); and the boatmen, potters, barbers and others who serviced the European and indigenous communities.10

By 1688, Madras town had grown to such an extent that it was incorporated by Royal Charter of the East India Company. At this time three distinct areas of the town were recognizable: The Inner Fort, containing the Factory House; the Outer Fort, and the European Quarter or White Town; and Black Town to the north of the Fort, marked by temples, a mosque and bazaars.16 Although there are discrepancies in population figures for early Madras, the most reliable estimate places the population in 1687 at about 50,000, “and even this is an immense number to be collected in forty-seven years in connection with a trade that never at that period amounted to more than six ships per annum”.11

Ever wondered what made the British to turn a fishing village called Chennapatnam into the metropolis of Madras? What is the reason for Chennai to be one of the four largest cities in the country? Any idea about why Chennai became the capital of Tamilnadu? The only answer for all the above questions is the sea port, which helped history to dock in.

Built on Trade

It is quite imperative that the city of Madras was built on her trade. It was a trading settlement that Francis Day founded in 1639. On the site of the little fishing village; the East India Company had no interest whatever in anything else. When in the nineteenth century her trade declined, her importance sank to nothing. As efforts were made to improve her shipping accommodation, her trade began to return and the withered beldame to revive.12 The more the harbour grew, the more trade and prosperity returned, and for this reason the history of the Port is a vital part of the history of Madras and also the Presidency for more than three hundred and sixty years.
The success of Madraspatnam as a trading settlement soon made it the chief port of the English in India. On September 24, 1641, it became the chief factory of the English on the East Coast. Commercial success came despite the settlement not being a port.13

Whenever a ship arrived at Madraspatnam, it caused great excitement, everybody thronging the beach to watch the ship lying at anchor in Madras Roads, a mile or more from the Fort; and in front of it was nothing but an angry surf and a narrow strip of beach that could be reached only by local rowboats called masula-s. The journey to shore and back was fraught with danger.14

The first offices of this „harbour‟ and its godowns were in Fort St. George, but by the end of the 18th Century, trade had outgrown die Fort. The Governor, the second Lord Clive, in 1798 moved the Sea Customer out of the Fort, first of all to temporary huts on the beach, and then to the Paddy Godown on the northeast beach that had once been a French prison. The Custom House is even today on this site.15
It was the Madras Chamber of Commerce (now the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry), born 170 years ago (1836) on September 29, that first pressed for a harbour for Madras, though Warren Hastings did moot the thought in 1770. The earliest proposal the Chamber backed was by a French engineer in 1845, but nothing came of its endorsement.

Masula Boats

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Masula boat, also known as masoola or masulah boat, is a kind of non-rigid boat built without knees used on the coast of Madras (the present day city of Chennai), India, along with catamarans. Locally known as padagu or salangu among the fisher folks, it is a large, flat-bottomed, high-sided, open boat with a clumsy design consisting of mango wood planks sewed together with strands of coir which cross over a wadding of the same material, but without frames or ribs, so that the shock due to surf is much reduced. It is specially designed for use where there are no harbours of refuge, chiefly upon the surf-beaten Coromandel Coast of India. It is used in shooting shore seines and also as a cargo lighter. Its range extends along the whole of the eastern coast of India northwards of Cape Calimere. The equivalent type of boats used on the west coast are the beach lighters.^[1] Masula boats are generally smaller, although they can be up to 9 m in length. The pattern varies across the coast, namely, padava on the Andhra coast and bar boat in Orissa coast. A variant found in the region between Kakinada and Machilipatnam has ribs inside.^[2]
The masula boats were mainly used by Europeans in the 19th century before the building of Chennai Port.^[3][4] The dimensions of the masula boat generally varies from 30 to 35 feet in length, 10 to 11 feet in breadth, and 7 to 8 feet in depth. On the Coromandel Coast, it is distinctly short, measuring as short as about 28 feet in length. In the northern region of the coast, chiefly in Godavari and Visakhapatnam districts of the Andhra coast, it exceeds 40 feet in length. However, the beam and the depth measures about 8 feet and 4 feet, respectively, across the region. An oculus is sometimes painted on the bows of the masula boats in the Madras region. They are rowed by a crew varying from 8 to 12 men using bamboo or casuarina paddles, which consist of a board measuring about 10 inches in width and 14 inches in length, fixed at the end of a bamboo or young casuarina tree. They are steered by one or two tindals (coxwains), and two men are constantly kept to bale out the water.^[5] Mast and sail are not used in the masula boats as they never go far from the shore. However, in the event of any accident, a catamaran can be used as a life preserver.


The information shown below regarding Masula boats is an excerpt from the following report: 

Preliminary investigation:
Marine archaeology of the anchorage and waters
off Tranquebar in India
Carried out 4 - 10 February 2007
Gert Normann Andersen
Strandingsmuseum St. George

Thanks to Gert Normann Andersen!
                                                                                  

Expansion of Fort St. George into Madras

Courtesy of Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chennai
Francis Day and his superior Andrew Cogan can be considered as the founders of Madras (now Chennai). They began construction of the Fort St George on 23 April 1640 and houses for their residence. Their small fortified settlement quickly attracted other East Indian traders and as the Dutch position collapsed under hostile Indian power they also slowly joined the settlement. By the 1646, the settlement had reached 19,000 persons and with the Portuguese and Dutch populations at their forts substantially more. To further consolidate their position, the Company combined the various settlements around an expanded Fort St. George, which including its citadel also included a larger outside area surrounded by an additional wall. This area became the Fort St. George settlement. As stipulated by the Treaty signed with the Nayak, the British and other Christian Europeans were not allowed to decorate the outside of their buildings in any other color but white. As a result, over time, the area came to be known as 'White Town'.
According to the treaty, only Europeans, principally Protestant British settlers were allowed to live in this area as outside of this confine, non-Indians were not allowed to own property. However, other national groups, chiefly FrenchPortuguese, and other Catholic merchants had separate agreements with the Nayak which allowed them in turn to establish trading posts, factories, and warehouses. As the East India Company controlled the trade in the area, these non-British merchants established agreements with the Company for settling on Company land near "White Town" per agreements with the Nayak. Over time, Indians also arrived in ever greater numbers and soon, the Portuguese and other non-Protestant Christian Europeans were outnumbered. Following several outbreaks of violence by various Hindu and Muslim Indian communities against the Christian Europeans, White Town's defenses and its territorial charter was expanded to incorporate most of the area which had grown up around its walls thereby incorporating most of its Catholic European settlements. In turn they resettled the non-European merchants and their families and workers, almost entirely Muslim or of various Hindu nationalities outside of the newly expanded "White Town". This was also surrounded by a wall. To differentiate these non-European and non-Christian area from "White Town", the new settlement was termed "Black Town. Collectively, the original Fort St. George settlement, "White Town", and "Black Town" were called Madras.