The dealing at this time seemed closed; but the gentlemen who chartered the ships, always recollecting something, applied anew to the board to be furnished with cannon from the Company’s ordnance.  Some was delivered to them; but the Office of Ordnance (so heavily expensive to the Company) was not sufficient to spare a few iron guns for a merchant ship.  Orders were given to cast a few cannon, and an application made to Madras, at a thousand miles’ distance, for the rest.  Madras answers, that they cannot exactly comply with the requisition; but still the board at Bengal hopes better things from them than they promise, and flatter themselves that with their assistance they shall properly arm a ship of thirty-two guns.

Whilst these dispositions were making, the first proposer, perceiving advantages from the circuitous voyage of the second which had escaped his observation, to make amends for his first omission, improved both on his own proposal and on that of the person who had improved on him.  He therefore applied for leave to take two hundred and fifty chests on his own account, which he said could “be readily disposed of at the several places where it was necessary for the ship to touch for wood and water, or intelligence, during her intended voyage through the Eastern Islands.”  As a corrective to this extraordinary request, he assured the board, that, if he should meet with any unexpected delay at these markets, he would send their cargo to its destination, having secured a swift-sailing sloop for the protection of his ship; and this sloop he proposed, in such a case, to leave behind.  Such an extraordinary eagerness to deal in opium lets in another view of the merits of the alleged dulness of the market, on which this trade was undertaken for the Company’s account.

The Council, who had with great condescension and official facility consented to every demand hitherto made, were not reluctant with regard to this last.  The quantity of opium required by the freighters, and the permission of a trading voyage, were granted without hesitation.  The cargo having become far more valuable by this small infusion of private interest, the armament which was deemed sufficient to defend the Company’s large share of the adventure was now discovered to be unequal to the protection of the whole.  For the convoy of these two ships the Council hire and arm another.  How they were armed, or whether in fact they were properly armed at all, does not appear.  It is true that the Supreme Council proposed that these ships should also convey supplies to Madras; but this was a secondary consideration:  their primary object was the adventure of opium.  To this they were permanently attached, and were obliged to attend to its final destination.