East India Company ships at Deptford
The ships used by the East Company were
initially purchased privately as required. Losses from wear, tear and
wreck took their toll and large ships suitable for the Eastern trade
were soon at a premium, some costing as much as £45 per ton. In 1607,
the Company therefore decided to build its own ships and leased a yard
to do so at Deptford, just upstream from Greenwich on the west side of
Deptford Creek, with another on the north side of the Thames at
Blackwall, downstream from Greenwich. Initially, this change of policy
was found to be fully justified, the first ships costing the Company
about £10 per ton. However, both yards proved highly expensive to run
and maintain. The Company, ever eager to save money, then had second
thoughts and reverted to the practice of hiring suitable vessels built
by private investors for the East Indies trade. In 1644 it sold its
Deptford yard and while this painting was previously called 'The East
India Company Yard at Deptford', it in fact shows Indiamen being built
and maintained there under the later private regime. The church tower in
the centre is that of St Nicholas, Deptford. In 1656 a Deptford
shipbuilder called Henry Johnson, a grandson of the shipwright Peter
Pett and trained by his nephew, Phineas, also bought the Blackwall yard.
Johnson (d. 1683) was succeeded by his son (also Henry) and, after his
death, their Perry and Green family successors developed Blackwall into
the largest private shipyard in the world. By around 1700 century
Deptford's significant East India activity, as shown here, had declined
and Blackwall's was rapidly growing, constructing and maintaining
Indiamen in large numbers well into the early 19th century. The Museum
previously dated the painting to around 1660. It has more recently been
suggested that the large ship shown being fitted in the dock is the
Indiaman 'Charles the Second', 775 tons, belonging to Captain Sir Thomas
Grantham, which was launched by Johnson at Blackwall in February 1683
when the king knighted Grantham on board for previous gallant conduct:
this in turn might indicate that he commissioned the picture. The ship's
stern bears the appropriate Stuart royal arms and an early 1680s date
is also likely given that the royal yacht with elaborate carved work in
the left foreground has also now been fairly well identified as the
'Henrietta' of 1679 (see K. Moneypenny and D.P. Bucur 'The Royal Yacht
'Henrietta' of 1679...', 'Mariner's Mirror', vol 100, no 2 (2014) pp
132-46). The large mansion to the right has not yet been explained,
since it does not convincingly fit what is known of Sayes Court, which
was the diarist John Evelyn's house at Deptford, set in extensive
gardens further back from the river.
