Humanizing Insurance
About Humanizing Insurance
Meeting the people behind the policies.
Humanizing Insurance is brought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird.
It’s a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase: “Insurance is a people industry.”
Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.
This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person - someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.
If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.
You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend our next guest, or request a topic that you'd love to hear more of.
Humanizing Insurance - one conversation at a time.
Humanizing Insurance
The Risk-Averse Adventurer: Captain Thomas Bowrey and Early Marine Insurance
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Captain Thomas Bowrey left London for India in 1669 at just ten years old. By the time he returned two decades later, he had become a sailor, merchant, linguist, map collector and author, with a remarkable understanding of the risks involved in global trade.
In this special episode of Humanizing Insurance, created in support of the Insurance Museum’s After the Fire exhibition, I’m joined by Sue Paul, author of Jeopardy of Every Wind: The Biography of Captain Thomas Bowrey.
Sue tells the story of discovering Bowrey through an archive of papers hidden in an attic for more than 200 years. We explore how the plague, the Great Fire of London and his childhood voyage to India shaped a man who lived an extraordinarily dangerous life, but was, in many ways, deeply risk-averse.
We also look at Bowrey’s connection to the emerging marine insurance market. His papers reveal how merchants divided investments between ships, insured different stages of a voyage and relied on London’s coffee houses for intelligence about vessels, cargo and events overseas.
Among the stories discussed is the disastrous voyage of the Mary Galley, involving privateers, capture, imprisonment, insurance claims and arguments over who was ultimately responsible. We also explore the extraordinary case of the Worcester, whose seizure in Scotland and the execution of three members of its crew helped accelerate the political union between England and Scotland.
The conversation covers:
- Bowrey’s journey to India at the age of ten
- Independent merchants and the East India trade
- How merchants spread risk between ships and voyages
- Early marine insurance and the challenges of proving a loss
- The role of coffee houses as centres of intelligence
- The Mary Galley and its complicated insurance claims
- The Worcester and the formation of Great Britain
- Bowrey’s connection with Daniel Defoe
- His linguistic work, maps and written records
- Slavery, colonial trade and how we should assess his legacy today
Bowrey’s life takes us from plague and fire in London to trade across India and Southeast Asia, before returning to a rebuilt City in which coffee, information and insurance were becoming closely intertwined.
It’s a story of exploration, ambition, failure and contradiction, and a reminder that understanding risk is not the same as being comfortable with it.
About the guest
Sue Paul is the author of Jeopardy of Every Wind: The Biography of Captain Thomas Bowrey. Her research reconstructs Bowrey’s life through his surviving correspondence, trading records, manuscripts and the remarkable archive discovered more than two centuries after his death.
Further listening
You can also find previous Humanizing Insurance episodes exploring Edward Lloyd, Nicholas Barbon and the development of insurance following the Great Fire of London.
Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.
Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.
This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.
If these stories resonate with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a colleague or friend who still believes in the people side of this business.
You can also connect with Daniel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, recommend guests, or request a topic that you'd like to know more about.
Humanizing Insurance — one conversation at a time.
Hello and welcome back to Human Latin Insurance. As always, I'm your host, Daniel Grimwood, and we're here with a very special episode today. We were asked by friends at the insurance museum to record an episode about Captain Thomas Barry. Captain Barry hasn't been with us since the late 17th or early 18th century. And it is impossible to get the full idea of the man unless you know someone who literally wrote the book on him. And I'm delighted today to be joined by Sue Paul, the author of Jeopardy of Every Wind, the biography of Captain Thomas Bowery. Sue, good morning. How are you?
SPEAKER_00Morning. Fine, thank you. And you?
SPEAKER_01I'm I'm wonderful. I'm delighted to be having this conversation. I'm delighted to be supporting our friends at the Insurance Museum. Uh Captain Thomas Bowery is one of the main people in their uh their upcoming exhibition at the at the Bank of England, uh, looking at the the City of London, how the Great Fire of London changed it, and how it was reborn uh after that. Uh along with Edward Lloyd uh and Dr. Nicholas Bardin, who we have done episodes with in the past uh with the director of the insurance museum, Howard Bench. So if you haven't listened to those, do go back in the back catalogue and have a listen. I'm a huge fan of history. Uh, and to get the opportunity to talk about, as I have him in my head, I shouldn't come in with preconceptions, but I do. Uh swashbuckling uh a swashbuckling captain of the high seas, uh maybe with a trihorn hat. I don't know. We might get into that, we might not. Um but let's start right at the beginning. So you came across Captain Bowery while conducting some genealogical research.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What what made you look at him and go, I need to tell his story?
SPEAKER_00Well, basically, I think few researchers can resist the story of a discovery of a hidden archive. And I certainly couldn't. And this all started just as I began um researching the surname Bowery. And as a matter of routine, I just keyed his name into the Amazon search engine, and it produced two books, both published in the early 1900s, by a veteran of colonial India, Sir Richard Kemple. One was um Barry's personal manuscript of his first 10 years in India, 1669, and the other was the edited papers, or some of the edited papers of that they'd found in the attic. But that book, that second book, was The Crunch. It told the story of finding these documents. They'd been hidden away for 200 years in a dark chest, in an attic, in a chest in a dark attic. And I was just fascinated. But unfortunately, Temple died before he could publish much more, and which had always been his intentions. And I wanted to know all. And eventually I realized that Varry wasn't unknown to the world. He had um people researching his papers, they'd been around for a hundred years in various alphabets, but nobody was looking at his life as a whole in the way that Temple attracted. And I realized if I wanted to know more, I was gonna have to write that guy. In fact, I was gonna have to learn how to write, and then write that night. So it was a long it was a long and long thing. Um, but it was worthwhile.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I uh in preparation for this uh this chat, I did I did buy the book and I have I've enjoyed every section uh of his life throughout it, and uh and he he is an interesting character, isn't he?
SPEAKER_00Much more interesting than I ever realized at the start he would be. Um I mean that the most astounding thing uh to some extent was just discovering how young he was when he went to India. Kemple had obviously assumed that he was much older, as anybody would have done, but he'd missed one little clue hidden in the depths of the papers that proved that he was just ten years old when he left for India.
SPEAKER_01And it it's important to put this into context because this is the 1660s.
SPEAKER_001669.
SPEAKER_011669. So the the voyage to India is perilous. It is fought with dangers, you know, not just the ocean, because we're we're traveling in in wind-powered wooden crafts around Africa and up to India. There is the the high seas, the the Cape of Good Hope is is well known for destroying ships. There is disease, there are privateers. The yeah, the the risks are enormous. Um for a for a 10-year-old to take that journey is is huge. But let's and let's look at that early life. So he lost his father during the plague. He will have experienced the the great fire of of London.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um which very, very nearly reached where they were in Whoopin. Yes. It stopped very, very close to uh the Tower of London, which incidentally was loaded with with ammunition of uh explosives. It was the explosive store, a massive amount. And had the fire reached that far, the Wapin would have been wiped out, and on with the tower. So it was a perilous situation.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And and the Great Fire is a cataclysmic event at this point, isn't it? The vast majority of London is destroyed. Um so he he sees that as a seven-year-old, and then he gets sent to to India. How do these these early experiences shape him? Do we have anything on that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it if you think about it, this his ex at this young age he's experienced trauma, separation from his mother and his stepfather, as the story goes on. And he arrives in this alien land alone. You can see how he would have spent the rest of his life trying to build some sort of security and protecting his future, and it was down to him and him alone. So it's a uh he understood all about risk and what what could happen, what the worst was. Um, and it shaped him completely. He he didn't really handle risk well for the rest of his life. Um, because I think he was just looking for some form of security. And he proclaimed that in becoming proficient at what he did. Although I would argue with this idea of a someone in a trichord hat swashbuckling around, that definitely wasn't him.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00I will temper my expectations of I don't know about the hat for certain, but I, you know, would you really be wearing a hat like that if you're out in the out in the tropics? Probably not.
SPEAKER_01Personally, if I was on a 70-foot galley, I would take every opportunity to wear a tricorn hat, but that's more an insight into me than maybe into Thomas Bowery. Um I mean let's let's talk about what he did because he's uh he's a sailor, becomes a captain, he's a merchant, he's a linguist, he's a cartographer, he's a writer. Um how did someone I'm presuming I'm making a presumption here, so sent to India at 10, so relatively little formal education.
SPEAKER_00How does someone don't think you'll you're right quite right there. I mean, we always assume that that children didn't have much education, but we have to put it in perspective. He lived in Wapin, his father was in the Commonwealth Navy, which is the the Navy during the Protectorate under under Cromwell. The during that time, during the Protectorate, there was um strong Protestants, and they believed that you needed to teach a child to read so that he could read the Bible for himself.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00This we might not realize today was the focus of the difference between the Protestants and the Catholics at the time, whether you read the Bible or you had the information fed to you by your priest. So schooling was considered education, uh important under the protectorate. Um schools for navigation and engineering had been in place since the time of Elizabeth, because um the Navy was so important to the security of the nation. Therefore, there were schools around that taught the necessary skills that you needed to be a mariner. Um, London was well endowed with schools compared with other areas of the country. Uh, for example, if you just base it on who could sign their name and who couldn't, usually take them for marriage certificates. In more across all social strata and both sexes, you're more likely, they were twice or three times as likely to have been able to write um than the rest of the country.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00Schools were available, um, they didn't charge very much. The in London, most parishes had their own schools for children of the poor, and they very much focused on um writing and arithmetic and navigation because that would make these poor children uh able to get a job in the navy come the the the coming of age. So he very likely received some training. I mean, they started, I think, about six or seven education. So he likely received some education before he just he went, um, and that would likely have included some navigation as well as writing arithmetic. I mean, he's his writing style, having read so many documents written by him, was very readable. It's not difficult considering the day he was writing at the end of the um 17th, beginning of the 18th century. His writing is really legible, right? Um, his spelling is a lot more consistent than many of his correspondents. Um I think he had a good education in London before he went, but we'll never know. There are no records.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00But we can make some assumptions based on how he reacted to children that he cared for. He he he never had children of his own and he seemed to mentor young young men that he knew about friends, children, and distant cousins, that sort of thing. Um, and he did such things as um pay for some education for them. Uh one one cousin he um he paid for him to be treated uh educated in navigation before he left, and he was going to become a midshipman on one of the ships Bowie had an interest in. And he instructed the um the captain that the second mate was to continue the boy's um education in mathematics. And the captain was meant to include the young lad in all the discussions ashore about trade and on the ship about about the voyage, and that is something that would never happen normally to a young midshipman.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_00And for it it seems to indicate the sort of training that he may have received once he was in India, a practical training, shadowing his boss.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So when does he start because he starts sort of trading and and sailing and um I guess being a merchant first before the linguistics and the cartography and stuff comes in?
SPEAKER_00Um can I set something in um in place first? Because a lot of people who are listening to this won't necessarily understand the structure of the East India's trade at the time. The India Company at this time was a trading company, been set up under Elizabeth I, and it traded with India and had the sole rights to trade with India to this country. There were other East India companies, the Dutch and the Portuguese, for example, who were uh um who were enemies as much as uh especially in trade terms.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um, this is why the East India Company focused on India because they couldn't get a look in in the the more lucrative spice islands, because the Dutch wouldn't let them. Sure. But Bowery, when he went out, um wasn't ever part of the East Indus trade. Um sorry, the East India Company. He was what we call an independent country merchant. Now, country merchants could have been local natives of the region or Europeans, but they traded from port to port. Ums which they would eventually bring back and sell on to the East India Company, who would then ship them to England. The East India Company itself had long stopped doing this itself. It wasn't very good at the trade, needed different ships, you needed lower, uh shallower hell ships to do it. You could get into the smaller parts, ports. Um, often didn't have the language skills if they'd just the captains had just come out from England. And therefore, this was a vital part of the trade, mirrored what had been going on for centuries before Europeans arrived, but wasn't connected to but not part of the East India Company, who at this time wasn't the East India Company that most people know of, that was um basically running India and became British India. These were still considered to be um interlopers by the by the nobles, by the Maharaj of the and the and the local governors and so forth. So it was a very fraught situation. They were he was trading with with um local traders and the East India Company, and the East India Company, despite its opinion of its, its high opinion of itself, was actually not considered to be the um not considered to be sort of as important as I think it would have liked to have been among the among the local population.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00So he he's this is the market that he's functioning in. So what he he he he learned this trade of going around navigating the areas, presumably if if what um they instructed to be happening to his cousin, he was learning the trade as he went. They were very small ships. There would have been perhaps one or two Europeans um on board, one of which would have been a gunner because it was always dangerous, um, and a young lad as a cabin boy um learning the trade like Thomas, and then a few um Laskers, local regional um sailors to help sail it. But there wasn't a huge crew, and so it would have been perfectly feasible for Thomas Barry to have shadowed his boss, learnt all about the trade, picked up the language because he was young, and young minds absorb languages more easily, and learn, make contacts with people from a young age. And I think there are um stories which we won't go into, but that seem to think that they found this really young lad from Europe going around to be quite a novelty, right? Um, so I think the the local traders probably took well to him as well.
SPEAKER_01Some things never change. I know when when when I go on holiday with my two boys, it's always it's always them that gets the attention and uh yeah, they get the ruffle of the hair and an extra suite, and I may be able to get it.
SPEAKER_00This is how you can imagine it. So um I forgot what the question was now. I was putting you in putting it into perspective.
SPEAKER_01No, that's that's wonderful context.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you were asking how he he came to be such a multi-skilled individual. I think the thing that I would argue with is he was a cartographer. Most mariners at the time would borrow maps and charts and copy them.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00I think he was a copyist rather than a cartographer.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Because he had far too many maps to have been a cartographer. I mean, one of the maps that that is he's renowned for now, he passed on to um William Dampier, um, who we tend to consider a pirate, and the Australians consider to be an explorer. But um, he had a map um that was probably written um originally drawn by Tasman of the Coast, part of the coast of Australia. Um I doubt very much. Well, I'm certain he never went down to Australia. So he didn't have that map because he was a cartographer, he did it because he copied it.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Good to set the record straight. So didn't create maps, but but did copy them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but if you've seen them, they are incredibly um well drawn. I mean, he and he must have been taught um drawing skills or drafting skills at some stage as well.
SPEAKER_01Okay, cool. So he spends a couple of decades trading around India and Southeast Asia. Um beyond just being a sailor, what do you think made him successful?
SPEAKER_00I think because he learned young, he learned well. And he specialized, I mean he would trade in in pepper and the other um obvious goods, but he also knew a lot about textiles. Right. And it is a it is a very rich and complex um subject in this area of the world. I mean, in on Borneo, he traded, he he he clearly knew a lot about Borneo and traded with them a lot. And on Borneo, some of the textiles that they imported from India had an almost rich logistic or um valuable um uh meaning. They didn't wear the textiles, they stored them in the rafters of their huts so that the smoke kept the pests away from them.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And these these were heritage items, these were heirlooms you passed down from generation to generation. And they also imported um although they made their own textiles, which they traded with the rest of the region, they imported textiles to wear from India as well.
SPEAKER_03Right, okay.
SPEAKER_00But on top of that, there were also textiles shipped home to to England.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And despite leaving at such a young age, but Bowie kept in touch with what was required. And he knew the the colours and the designs that were required back home as well. And the uh he spent some months towards the end of his um time in in the region working with dyers, dyeing these fabrics uh to his own specification.
SPEAKER_01Right. So kept his kept up with the trends of London to be able to better provide, and then I guess eventually becoming a trendsetter by having his own his own standards that he was.
SPEAKER_00Once he returned, he would send orders back to India with his friends and acquaintances, asking for specific textiles, which appeared to have been what he wanted for his own home.
SPEAKER_03Right, okay.
SPEAKER_00Cool.
SPEAKER_01So he I mean let's move on to that. So he does come back to London. So I've got written down sixteen eighty-eight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think he might have arrived at sixteen eighty-nine, but around there, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So it takes a long time.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So maybe left left India, left Southeast Asia in 1688, arrived back in 1689. So 20 years since he he was sent off as a 10-year-old boy. He's now a 30-year-old man. What kind of city is he returning to? And is there any semblance of home for him?
SPEAKER_00I think he always thought of it as home.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And he certainly kept in touch with it at home. Um, for example, he delayed his return journey because he understood the unrest would that would be in the country after the death of Charles II and the accession of his younger brother, who was a secret Catholic, or believed secretly to be a Catholic. Right. Um, the country was wouldn't weren't happy to accept that. And he understood that risk and delayed his departure home. So he'd obviously kept very much in touch with what happened. And once he returned home, his car his correspondents were all asking, Are you married yet? Or how's your marriage? And so he he appears to have always planned to marry as soon as it once he ran returned home. Because most of his acquaintances in India would marry in the in the East Indies, and they intended only to come home once they couldn't function anymore because of trading conditions.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Whereas he he'd built up his his um his wealth, he'd been gradually shipping it home, he'd made arrangements for it to be shipped over a number of years on a number of ships after he'd left. So he'd always considered that he was going back to England. Um and I he always considered it home, but it would have looked very different because although Wappim was probably unchanged, more or less, um City of London itself was totally rebuilt. I mean, the St. Paul's Cathedral was still a building site, obviously, it took much longer to build. But he returned to a city that kept the same footprint. They they had all sorts of plans from people like um Wren to build this city that was completely laid out differently. But people knew where their house was, where their road was, and they had to rebuild on the same footprint, more or less. But these were houses that are no longer made of wood, uh and they were made of stone and brick, and weren't as tall, because the the the regulations after the fire specified that you could only have a certain height of building and the materials had to be made of. So it would have looked very different, but the layout was probably very much the same. And how how familiar that would have felt is difficult to envisage, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um but but certainly he still had friends, maybe some family in certain in the city.
SPEAKER_00He he was clearly related in some way to the family he married into. But it I found it impossible to find how they were related.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00But he he always wrote home to his future father-in-law as kinsman.
SPEAKER_03Right, okay.
SPEAKER_00Um I s my I have a secret idea that he probably was intended to marry um the older sister of the the the young girl that he did marry. She was older and better educated.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00I suspect he was always meant to marry her, but perhaps he fell in love with her sister. His yeah, her sister.
SPEAKER_01It's uh it's like an episode of of Neighbours or Homeway Up Coronation Street or Pick Pick Your Soap.
SPEAKER_00Except they they they never fell out. He would use his sister-in-law um as a business contact.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01Right, okay. Perhaps because she was better educated.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, she certainly had a beautiful hand, whereas his his wife was almost illiterate.
SPEAKER_01Right, okay. Okay. As the as an elder sibling, I can I can relate to that. Um when he gets back to London, does he so he he's still a merchant or is he starting other ventures?
SPEAKER_00No, he continues as a merchant for some time.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, again, as an independent, not part of the East India Company. He had shares in the East India Company.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00But this is where it starts getting very complicated. At some point shortly after he dumped, the they develop the a group of independent merchants were fed up with being blocked out by the East India Company, who had a legal monopoly on the trade in East India's. And a second East India Company, known as the New East India Company, was formed. It didn't last very long. The old East India Company held more than half the shares of the new East India Company.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And so it was never going to, although they were in composition, it was a really weird situation, and eventually they merged.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00While there were the two companies, independent traders, not not they may have been invested in the other companies, but not as part of those companies, were able to get licenses to trade with India on their own account. And this is what Barry and many of his friends did. Once the two companies merged, they realized that these licenses were going to be stopped again. So there's this limited period after he returns when he um was trading uh with the um on ships, but he invested, he was part investor in each of these voyages, right? Then taking the full risk. So they all all these merchants did, they spread their risk across a number of ships over a number of um voyages each year, um, because it was such a risky business. But he continued doing that until the licenses stopped, basically. And that coincided with a lot of very poor experiences on his part. Um and after that he started trying to dream up all sorts of other projects and schemes to to make himself money. I don't think any or many of them were at all successful. Okay.
SPEAKER_01We'll we will all certainly train one of those in a second because there's uh there's a very interesting story about one of them, isn't there? Which we'll which we'll come on to. Um we've we've mentioned Bowery and and wrist getting the same sentences and and talked about his attitude. It it seems interesting just having this conversation that we he obviously understands how bad it can get. He's seen he saw the great fire, he lost his father in the plague. He has been on these grand voyages across the world and and smaller voyages, but it's still risky voyages trading across Southeast Asia. And it appears that sometimes he's you know incredibly gung-ho, and sometimes he's quite risk-averse in that he never takes the whole risk in these new ventures and he sends his wealth back across multiple ships, across multiple years, so that you know you don't put all of your proverbial eggs in one basket or wealth in one ship, uh, in this case. I mean, what what can we tell from from his records about his attitude towards risk?
SPEAKER_00I think he was extremely risk-averse, which is weird for somebody who trading in such a risky environment. Um he didn't handle poor results very bad well at all. I mean, there's two two examples that come to mind. Whilst he was in in the East Indies, he he had, shall we say, what you'd expect the Europeans' attitude to the native population was in many ways. And at one point he he struck or hit the servant of a local um military commander.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And for do for that he was imprisoned by the commander.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00And he then proceeded to fire off these virtually hysterical letters um to the East India Company, who he he wanted to come and rescue him basically.
SPEAKER_03Right, okay.
SPEAKER_00It's really interesting because he wasn't doesn't really get on very well with them in the first place. But um, you know, it's it it's the tone of the letters just shows how as soon as something had gone wrong, he in total and utter panic mode.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Then towards when he was in England, after a while, he'd got this idea that he he wanted to set up a trading voyage to Worneo, where as I said already, he he considered himself an expert, and he was going to um command the ship himself, and he convinced his friends to invest in the ship. But he got no further than Portsmouth, by which time he'd suffered a leaky ship, a mutinous crew, and the threat of pirates and um privateers, and totally and utterly lost his nerve, tried to sail into Portsmouth um without a pilot, which is never a good idea, um, and hit a Swedish ship, which he damaged and and all sorts of range of things, and and basically chickened out of going any further on the voyage, which caused all sorts of problems from years into the future, um, as he tried to claim money from people who hadn't actually paid up their investment who weren't inclined to pay up now, he hadn't gone anywhere, yeah. Um and complaining that he'd sold off all the goods that were intended for the voyage um too cheaply. And this this went on for years, and eventually he fell out with many friends and acquaintances because of it. So, you know, he he he's the sort of person that might have had all these big ideas, but as soon as it slightly slightly um slight problems occurred, he he fell to pieces, which is really weird for somebody trading in the way that he was.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Um let's stay on this wrist piece then because I imagine if he was risk-a-verse, the the marine insurance industry is built around London uh and around Edward Lloyd's uh coffee house. So if we may, let's just touch on insurance because it is in the title of the podcast.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um do Bowie's papers have any material relating to Lloyd's or shipping insurance? And if so, what what do they reveal about how merchants engaged with the industry?
SPEAKER_00This is very interesting because there's various bits in the pay in the papers, but then they never complete. But there is thing there are what I imagine are insurance proposal forms, but there's certainly some form of insurance, pre-printed insurance forms, completed in Barrett's hands, um, about insurance on on ships. And he had there are two exist for the Worcester and the Rising Sun. The Worcester, neither of them, surprisingly, mentions the name of the underwriter at all.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00But they both name the address where the the insurance was was taken out. The Worcester has the address of Lombard Street, okay, and the rising sun says what Lombard Street or the Royal Exchange. They're both the addresses used by Lloyd's for the insurance.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So he did take out insurance, but there's also a very, very interesting note in um his handwriting and a scrap of paper, not much bigger than this, on which, and I'm going, I've written it down so I can quote it to you. Yeah, he's complaining that um that the insurance is very difficult because there is little inclination to subscribe upon the whole navigation and trade in East Asia, and it seems from this that he could he got different um rates charged, so what we would call different premiums charge for different stages of the voyage.
SPEAKER_03Right, okay.
SPEAKER_00And he seemed in this note to be saying that you have to look at the stage of the voyage and what the risks are at that stage of the voyage, and whether it's worth taking the insurance out for that.
SPEAKER_03Right, okay.
SPEAKER_00Um and that that's a size scrap of paper, but it it's it doesn't there's some insight in there, and you just wish there'd be more. When we come to the Marin Galley, another ship and a disastrous result. He appears, and it's very difficult, there's not an insurance form for it, but he appears to insure um in either or both of Amsterdam and Barcelona for different stages of the voyage. Now, all we have are the letters about the claims later on, nothing, no documents of on the insurance at all. But he appears to be claiming because the uh Mary Galley was taken by privateers in Europe, and he seems to be claiming for that voyage in Amsterdam. There's a complicated the the guy he's writing to in Amsterdam appears to be Spanish from his name, and that may be the Barcelona connection comes in or not, I don't know. But as I say, there's holes of there's huge holes in the papers, and you can you can't follow it all through. There is the long story of the case of the Mary Galley in the second book I talked about at the start, the papers of Thomas Bowery, um, by Richard Carlack Temple. And if anyone's really interested in it, they should read that with a caveat that I don't always agree with his conclusions about things, and he seemed to have access to more documents than now exist.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00Possibly because he did all sorts of things with them that they shouldn't do, like applying chemical treatment to them to make them more readable and things. Yeah, you know, that the story is very convoluted because Barry also didn't think I mean he never trusted his crews anyway, and he doesn't think that they did um good enough trade, and therefore he had consequential losses from that that he needs to claim from um the the captain and so forth. So it it it gets to be very difficult to untangle what it's all about. But um there's definitely a lot there about insurance, but he never was satisfied with the three that I talked about, never satisfied with what he was paid, and he would never have been satisfied about what he was paid because he always thought he was badly treated.
SPEAKER_01Okay. We all know someone like that, don't we?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we all know someone like that, and of course, you've got the difficulties that there's so many different risks that a ship could undertake. It could um sink, it could um be taken by pirates, it could be impounded by authorities, there's all sorts of different things, it could just disappear without trace, and in many cases, the only evidence that you would have this happened is rumour circulating around the maritime community. And Shoran's claims must have been incredibly difficult to sort out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the the Marigalli. So if I give you my version of the Marigelli, then you can you can correct me. So uh Bowry is not on the ship, he's a he's an owner of the of the vessel, a part owner of the vessel, and um it is being taken to India to trade and then bring stuff back. It starts off badly because they leave Portsmouth and immediately are pounced on by privateers and chased back. They then go out again with a navy escort, but as soon as that leaves, privateers jump on them again and they have to race away. They go around the Good Hope to India, they do some trading, they get in some trouble with the Dutch, they won't let them into places. Then they come back, and rather than coming into London, they try and avoid the privateers by heading west coast of Ireland, up round Shetland. They don't want to go to Scotland because of what happened to the Worcester, and are told not to go there, and then they're in a Dutch um convoy and they get separated by the fog. They then get pounced on by privateers again off the east coast of England. The captain is injured and gets taken below, and the first mate takes over. The first mate then thinks he can see the English Navy or the Dutch Navy and heads towards them only to find that he steered right into French privateers. They get taken and captured, they're taken to Dunkirk, three or four of the crew die, um, the rest are imprisoned, and the the captain pleads with Bowery to get him released from this Dunkirk prison. And then afterwards, there's a whole other drama because it goes to arbitration, because the Bowery blames the captain, the captain blames the first mate, and said, actually, if I wasn't injured, it we would have been fine because I never would have sailed towards French privateers, and it all ends up in this huge mess. But it it's almost an entire insurance um chain of events, from you know financing the vessel and the building of the vessel and the setting up of the venture through the you know the life of the policy, which has to be extended a number of times and amended because it takes longer, and then they might be coming back with the Dutch, they might not, or they might have different cargo on board all the way through to it being captured, there being a claim, and then there'd be an arbitration to find out who was actually at fault. Is that is that right? Have I had the main point?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, except we've missed the fact that all the intelligence that Bauer is receiving from the East says that they're not doing very good trade there either. And they're not making the money that they should make. So there's there's resentment and covering backsides all round the place. Uh and it's just a nightmare, really.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00With writing that's not clear and easy to read, like Barry's. And it you I don't think with many of these situations you can a hundred percent know what was meant in the correspondence.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and the Worcester just to just to touch on that, because we had a very interesting conversation before we recorded this. Yeah. The Worcester w was again one of Bowery's was a part in an adventure, and that that had a big effect on the formation of the UK, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I mean, at the time, we need to study it again in perspective, although from James James time of James the first of England and James VI of Scotland, England and Scotland had the same monarch, they were not a united country, such. They were two still two separate countries.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh the Worcester, another um trading situation in the East, which wasn't as good as it should have been, but that's just something that that clouds the water, um, had tried to sail with a convoy from Cape of Good Hope to avoid all the risks of pirates and well privateers more, um, on the journey home. The problem is both the Marigalley, the Worcester, most of the ships that the Barriers was trading, and not the big ships like the the the m um the Royal Navy and so forth were using these were smaller ships with shallow holes so which meant that they could go into the the smaller ports and so forth.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But they were they probably weren't really suitable for that sort of voyage. I mean, okay, Captain Cook managed to use them to find Australia. Yeah. But they were basically ships designed um to carry coal from Newcastle to London. Right. And going to ports and so that way. They weren't so when they were in a convoy with uh with military ships, they were never able to keep up at the best of times.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Although the very galley would turned out to be a very fast ship because being a galley it could also be rowed as well as soiled with sails.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And they the the the captain was actually impressed with how fast it went after all but the the the none of these ships managed to keep up with their their their escorts. They always ended up leaking and dragging further and further behind and this is where the travel starts. So with the Worcester tried to do the same thing go up the the west coast and down cross over Scotland. And it got as far as Leith Harbour in Edinburgh. Now we need to pass to the political situation between Scotland and England which was very bad that the the they really did not get on as two countries to put it very um shortly um the the Scots had their own version of our East India Company called the Scottish Company and this had been trading very very badly for some time and having disastrous um results of voyages and so forth um and also tried to do something political in Central America that blew up in their face um the Darien expedition but that the the whole of the trade in Scotland and the economy of Scotland was tied up in this company and it was it was floundering badly somehow well not somehow one of their ships had been taken by pirates and lost which is and it compounded the problem somehow they decided that the Worcester had been the ship that had carried out this piracy. As they were not in the same place at the same time that's extremely unlikely but and the head Mackenzie the head of the the the the Scots company knew that the Worcester was not an East India Company ship but they he managed to um get the the ship impounded in Leith Harbour on the grounds that had um committed piracy and murder against their ship and crew.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00The ship was impounded the crew of the Worcester were imprisoned the they tried very hard to get people to confess and so forth. They went to trial the trial was never going to be um a fair one and they were all convicted of I think it was ten men convicted of piracy and murder and sentenced to death two crew of the ship that had been lost that knew the story finally arrived in London swore an affidavit about what had happened and that Worcester wasn't involved it was um and Queen Mary added um it was Queen Mary the Queen added a um a note an a note to this pleading for clemency and of course she was the Scottish queen as well and they no it's Queen Anne sorry but um they the the this affidavit and the witness statements were charged up to Scotland and for an appeal the Scottish council were too scared of the crowd outside that had built up to to grant the appeal and the first two first three the the captain and the first mate and the a gunner were hung um as pirates but they weren't hung and left hanging for three tides as would normally happen for pirates because they would have been torn to pieces had they they were talking of and I don't know how valid numbers are when we go that far back but they were talking of a crowd of 8000 people protesting and making sure that this hanging took place it was always believed even by the Scots that these were really innocent men and they quietly ferried the the the remaining condemned men away so they weren't hung. But um Barry's group gets really involved because he tries very hard to to get some compensation for this without success but the the this time we had the start of the the the national press in Scotland and England but the Scots press really acted like the worst tabloids of today screaming that these these people were were um were guilty and it was a total conspiracy about against the Scots by the English and so forth. It just made the the situation between the two countries even worse. As a result of this Queen Anne insisted that her ministers made a real effort and hurried through the political union of the two countries as was always likely to happen eventually but it's considered that this case of the Worcester actually accelerated that process and rushed through the the union of the two countries and we know how popular that is today.
SPEAKER_01And you can still if you search on the internet you'll still find people going on about the Worcester and the union of the two countries interesting you as we go through this you realise just quite how much of history Bowery touches indirectly and and and directly um there's another famous link isn't there with Daniel Defoe so the the English writer who was also a merchant as well wasn't he amongst other things but the the author of Robinson Crusoe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah how did those two so how did those two and what what did they do together it seems an unlikely duo it is an unlikely duo but um as you said he wasn't just a novelist he was a journalist he was a political agitator he had um a patron in um Harvey who I've forgotten what position he held now but he he was had some sort of important government position and he was also what he called a projector i.e people who who had whom took part in projects and this is the time when Bowery's life was such that you would call him a projector as well and he Bowery had many years ago had um made a presentation to the East India Company about the setting up of a trading post in what they called the South Seas which is basically South America and nothing happened in the end about it but it was considered to be a way another route through to um the East Indies via South America but as it involved tramping across the Alps on a regular basis this was put forward by people who had no idea what the Alps were like not the Alps the Andes yeah so I mean nobody in their right mind would consider tramping goods and the um people across the Andes on a regular basis as a trade route that was better than going good hope. At some point Daniel Defoe got involved in this as well because Harby had an interest and Broui finally around I think it was about 1707 wrote to Daniel Defoe asking for a meeting the letter specifies not nothing about what it was like about um Daniel Defoe said I have a he he he was very risk averse as well because he'd had all sorts of bad experience right so he said I don't know who you are um I need I need you to tell me more about what this is about. The second letter from Daniel Defoe we haven't got Barry's letters which is a shame the second letter from Daniel Defoe said oh I've talked I've asked around presumably in the coffee shops and I know you're a person of good standing and I know you're in bad health at the moment so I'll come and see you. Now that's the sum total of what we know but there exists British Library Daniel Defoe's plans or proposals for a trading post in South America of Valparaiso and Bowie has similar in his papers has similar proposals for the South Sea Islands South Sea companies. And if you sit and compare the two and you do need special position permission at the British Library to see these Daniel Defoe documents because obviously high risk of people nicking the thing um they are so similar. The Bowerys as normal goes into a lot more detail but the the skeletons are the same are identical thing it it's almost certain that they must have worked on this together at some point.
SPEAKER_01Amazing and it's also it's also amazing with that that letter from Daniel Defoe and to show how much happens in coffee shops and the intelligence that's gathered and you know what people know not just the good standing piece but the I know you're in I know you're in poor health so I'll come to you so they found you know he's found out quite a lot through in the uh episode I did with Howard about Edward Lloyd one of the big things about the coffee shops wasn't necessarily the the insurance although it was a major part but it was the intelligence it was the sharing of information that made it so successful that's where they were why the how they were used most of all I think I mean I don't think he used Lloyd's coffee shop but Barry used at least four other coffee shops as his his postal address and that presumably put his business meetings there. Um there were loads around I think the Marine and the Royal Union Garraway's and one other that that he's had as the address his address when people writing to him and to have be have your correspondence addressed to a coffee shop you must be a regular attendee there for people to know um and that must have been where they they picked up their intelligence about what were happening you know was there any news from French ship about my ship sort of thing out there did they yeah absolutely this is this has been a a wonderful wonderful conversation Sue I've I've thoroughly enjoyed it I always end these historical ones sort of thinking about the the person and to give a view of how we should think about them because I'm keen that we shouldn't you know judge people from 400 years ago by today's standards in the same way in that I hope in 400 years if someone's listening to this podcast they judge me by today's standards and not by whatever uh happens over the next 400 years. But Bowery seems to me while a paniker to be somewhat resilient he has seen a a vast amount in his life um quite intellectually curious there there's other stuff that we haven't touched on like you know the first dictionaries that he did um also potentially the first documented person to be smoking cannabis that's that's another tangent recorded yeah um as another recreational cannabis so recreational about the same time someone else was writing about medicinal cannabis right um so intellectually curious maybe experientially curious uh as well and undoubtedly you know he must have been resourceful but it also comes with this backdrop of the East India Company and colonial trade and undoubtedly slavery and I think there are records of you people on his ships being enslaved people or owned by you know other people on on the ship how should we you know look at someone like Bowry today you'd say quite rightly it you can't necessarily judge people by the the values of today but it wasn't um that clear cut even back then um he spent his life his early life around the East India Company at a time when an East India Company ship not an independent merchant ship was required to take 10 African slaves to India on every voyage was a farm and it had to be done he himself as you've indicated had voyages where they were going to trade in slaves often it went very badly wrong and you think well you deserve that but that's looking from today's point of view.
SPEAKER_00Yeah so he he was well aware of what it meant there are accounts in his his papers of food being obtained for the slaves so he clearly looked after if not owned or kept slaves himself so you think oh it was just common at the time but it wasn't necessarily he lived when he got back to London to England at Wapping. Whopping had a strong Quaker merchant community he had an acquaintance with Peter Briggins who was a a staunch Quaker Quakers had were the first to have abolitionist views they believed that every man was equal in the sight of God and therefore you should not keep slaves. It's coloured by the fact that there are records of some um Quakers having slaves but the it was a standard um idea that that uh that slavery was the wrong yeah you think word you know perhaps he did he did know and he would know that conditions for crew English crew on slave ships was appalling it was the last resort the mariner to go on a slaver ship because everything else was better even the chance of the Royal Navy which is only um in action when it was at war when you went to answer dying conditions were so bad it doesn't take any stretch of imagination and he was an intelligent man it doesn't take any stretch of imagination to know that conditions of for the cat the slaves on those ships was even worse so he would have known that it was not a good thing. Yeah now can you hold those two views at the same time can you think that slavery isn't right but that you should carry on slaves well Thomas Clarkson who worked with Wilberforce um when he was in Bristol he did most of the legwork for Wilberforce so he went around the country he went to Bristol and he found that the population there in general realized that slavery was a really bad thing but not one of them wanted to abolish it because a lot of Bristol's wealth was built on the slave. So he it is possible to hold two views at the same time it was documented some decades later by by Clarkson so he would have known he did know that it wasn't right it was uh inhuman to keep slaves but he was involved in it so I don't think it's judging him by our attitudes and values judging him by his own likely attitudes and values he compromised and cannot be excused by saying oh it's a different time it that's my attitude to it and I thought about it a lot because it was very difficult to finish writing the book without addressing it one way or another.
SPEAKER_01Yeah Marx well thank you for for sharing that uh that view obviously everyone uh will make up their own mind but I do think you know I I do I do agree with you that uh you know if you if you know it's bad you probably shouldn't you probably shouldn't do it regardless of the the age in which you you live in and uh are brought up in Sue thank you for joining me today I'm gonna give you a shout out for your book Jeopardy uh of every wind the biography of Captain Thomas Barry I I thoroughly enjoyed reading it it's available everywhere that you get books uh I imagine um if people want to and as an e-book in Kindle format as well uh perfect so however you however you uh engage in reading it is it is there for you if you buy it direct from the publisher I'm sure it's still the same thing you you buy the physical book from the publisher you get a free ebook as well wonderful well there you are for everyone listening if you want to dive deep uh into the world of Captain Thomas Bowery and why wouldn't you then go and get Sue's book buy it from the publisher get your free ebook as well um all that's left to say is Sue thank you so much for joining me I've had a thoroughly enjoyable experience uh and we'll speak again soon it's fun thank you
