The loss of East Indiaman HCS `Halsewell' on the coast of Dorset in southern England in January 1786, touched the very heart of the British nation. `Halsewell' was just one of many hundreds of vessels which had been in the service of the Honourable East India Company since its foundation in the year 1600. In the normal course of events, `Halsewell' would have been expected to serve out her working life, before passing unnoticed into the history books. However, this was not to be. Halsewell's loss was an event of such pathos as to inspire the greatest writer of the age Charles Dickens, to put pen to paper; the greatest painter of the age J. M. W. Turner, to apply brush to canvas, and the King and Queen to pay homage at the very place where the catastrophe occurred. Artefacts from the wreck continue to be recovered to this very day which, and for variety, interest, curiosity, and exoticism, rival those recovered from Spanish armada galleons wrecked off the west coast of Ireland two centuries previously. Such artefacts shed further light both on `Halsewell' herself, and on the extraordinary lives of those who sailed in her.

"This book follows the trade winds, the trade routes, and the port cities across the East Indies and the Orient. High finance, piracy, greed, ambition, double dealing, exploitation all is here. Driven by the search for spices, silks, gold, silver, porcelains and other oriental goods the Portuguese trading monopoly was challenged by the Dutch East India Company and then the English East India Company, the worlds first joint stock and multi-national trading companies. The struggle for supremacy between the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English ranged across the Eastern Seas and in the settlements of Goa, Malacca, Ambon, Macao, Canton, Nagasaki, Solor, Batavia, Macassar, Johor and Singapore for 250 years. Visitors to these destination will be interested in this book. The story is told by the history of these port cities, beginning with Malacca -- one of the worlds largest trading ports in 16th century and ending with the founding of Singapore and Hong Kong." --Publisher description.