CHAPTER VII
EARLY HISTORY; MADRAS AND THE COAST[1]
"Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee."
Wordsworth, Sonnet on the extinction of the Venetian Republic.
The early settlements on the Coromandel Coast were usually spoken of collectively as "The Coast"; those in Bengal as "The Bay." These terms continued in use till towards the end of the eighteenth century. The term "The West Coast" was always applied not, as one might expect, to the Bombay Presidency, but to the English settlements in Sumatra, which lay along the south-west coast of that island.
The first voyage to the East Coast of India was made by Captain Anthony Hippon, in the Globe, in 1611. Hippon founded the Company's first factory in the Bay of Bengal on 18th Aug., 1611, at Pettapolli, now known as Nizampatam, at the mouth of the Kistna, and shortly afterwards that at Masulipatam. Pettapolli factory was dissolved in 1621, when the English joined the Dutch at Pulicat, where they remained till 11th April, 1623.
In 1625 was founded Armagon, their first settlement on the Coromandel Coast proper. This factory was located at a place called Chenna Kuppam, at the northern end of the Pulicat Salt Lakes, in what is now the Nellore district. When Masulipatam was abandoned in 1628, Armagon remained for a few years the only settlement on the coast. The Star, a vessel of 300 tons, sailed from England in Dec, 1629, for the Coromandel Coast, being the first ship sent direct there, except the Globe in 1611. In 1630 all of the Company's factories in India and the islands were placed under the President of Surat; Henry Sill was ordered from Bantam as Agent for the Coast, and sailed on 1st April, 1630,
- ↑ Much of the information in this chapter is taken from Vestiges of Old Madras, 1640-1800, by Colonel H. D. Love; four volumes, John Murray, 1913.
