BOODLE’S

The clip-clop of horses’ hooves echoed through the night along London’s fashionable Pall Mall. Towards the end of the cobbled thoroughfare, two lanterns flanked the doorway of a private gaming house known not by its owner’s name but, instead, by the name of the manager, a gentleman of society who had lost his fortune and had been forced to earn his livelihood as a professional host—Mr Boodle.

Apart from cards, dice and other games of chance, Mr Boodle’s house—or, as it was becoming known in society, Boodle’s—offered food and a fine selection of wines and liquors. The establishment also provided private parlours for patrons who wished to enjoy an evening in seclusion with their guests.

The late November evening was chilly and a fire had been laid in the hearth of the first floor parlour reserved for Sir Henry Maddox, a frequent visitor to Boodle’s and a member of the Honourable East India Company’s Board of Directors, the influential group of businessmen known as the Company’s Secret Committee.

Dining with Sir Henry Maddox was Sir Basil Rothingham, also a member of the East India Company’s Secret Committee, together with two gentlemen from the British Navy Board, Messrs John Todd and Timothy Weldon.

Roast fowl, a joint of beef and game pies had been devoured, pickles, beets and other condiments cleared from their pots; the four gentlemen passed from champagne to port as they began discussing their reason for gathering on this cold autumn evening in a private upstairs dining-room at Boodle’s.

Sir Henry Maddox, a round-bellied man, his hair tied in a queue and powered in the old-fashioned manner, sat back in his armed-chair. ‘The Company’s done its part,’ he began. ‘Now it’s time for the Navy Board to do theirs, eh?’

The two guests from the Navy Board, Todd and Weldon, sitting side by side on a padded leather bench on the opposite side of the oaken table from Sir Henry and Sir Basil, exchanged cautious glances.

John Todd, the taller of the two, replied, ‘You’ve been to the Deptford shipyards, Sir Henry. You’ve seen the vessels. You may have gathered from what you’ve seen that we’re planning to keep our side of the, ah, arrangement.’

Sir Henry Maddox leaned back in his chair, a bumper of port resting on his protuberant belly. ‘Aye, Sir Basil and I, we’ve been down to Deptford. We’re damned pleased, too, with what we saw. But there’s papers to endorse. Provisions to impress. We don’t want to part with a shilling till we know the bottoms are ours, clear and dry.’

Folding both hands in front of him on the table, John Todd assumed the detached tone of a scrivener. ‘Sir Henry, when the Navy Board receives word from Leadenhall Street that the Honourable East India Company’s Bombay Marines have launched their attack and have been …’ he looked at his colleague from the Navy Board, ‘… successfully annihilated—’

His cold grey eyes returned to Sir Henry Maddox. ‘Then and only then shall the East India Company have full deed to the six ships the Navy Board has commissioned from the Deptford shipyards.’

* * *

Plain, simple facts reduced to cold words were more chilling than the November night. The four men were all privy to confidential arrangements made between the Honourable East India Company and the Navy Board; they did not mention the details at the dining-table but the background was foremost in all their minds:

After France had surrendered Pondicherry, the French outpost on the Coromandel Coast, to the British in January of this same year—1761—the war had moved into a stalemate. England could not yet claim victory; France would not budge from India. The British began looking for an excuse to deliver a final blow to drive the French from India once and for all and make it impossible for France ever to re-establish a foothold in the Orient, so leaving all eastern colonies to Britain, all territorial trade there to the Honourable East India Company. But Britain could not appear as the obvious aggressor, not when treaties were yet to be signed, not with war also raging in Canada. The answer came from Le Havre, in the form of a clandestine report that France was dispatching a war chest to pay her mutinous troops on Mauritius. Looking to the Honourable East India Company to perform its share of the work in return for enjoying a trade monopoly, the Navy Board and the East India Company reached an agreement which would lead France into direct conflict, by tricking the French into attacking a private British vessel. The Company’s private fighting unit, the Bombay Marine, would be given an order to seize—to try to seize—the French war chest, a mission which was a hopeless military cause but politically volatile. The command would come from high in Company ranks, but would later be flatly denied. Who would believe it? Little David had more hope against Goliath than the Company’s shabby Bombay Marine had against a French treasure ship. When word came to London that the French had destroyed the Marine ship for no apparent reason, the Navy Board would be applauded for issuing orders to pound the French out of India. The price which the East India Company asked for sacrificing the lives of their Bombay Marines was the replacement of the Company ships which the Royal Navy had pressed into service and lost in battle. Arguments between the Navy Board and the East India Company had been extended for two additional weeks, until the Navy Board recognised that the term ‘lost in battle’ also included ships destroyed by storms while in service to His Majesty’s Royal Navy.

* * *

Sir Basil Rothingham, a short, meekly mannered man with steel-framed glasses, spoke for the first time since the discussion had begun after the meal. ‘This entire conversation could have been avoided if Lloyd’s did not demand impossible rates to protect ships in war time.’

Heads nodded on both sides of the oaken table, the gentlemen agreeing that the insurance agents acting out of Lloyd’s Coffee House were becoming avaricious.