Voyage To Surat- J Ovington

Time Traveler In Surat

A good read in hand turns every travel trip into a two- fold adventure. Travelogues in particular, are perfect in providing the experience of a new culture. Such books encapsulate a different age in time while simultaneously enabling the reader to perceive it with the eyes of a writer.

Centuries since it was published in 1696, John Ovington’s travelogue-A Voyage To Surat in the year 1689, remains oft quoted a favourite and of the greatest possible value to historians and readers alike, who want a glimpse of Surat in the days of yore. Popular in the Australian National Library on one hand, this journal by an English Chaplain provides for case study to many Universities in the United States of America, on the other.

Considered one of the liveliest travel books, Ovington has been described as ‘a shrewd and practical observer of men and manners and by no means devoid of a sense of humour’, on his detailed account of Surat, as he saw it at the end of the 17th century.

Poet Laureate Naham Tate, famous author of the metrical paraphrase ‘The Psalms’, wrote a poetry on Ovington’s ‘Voyage to Surat ‘part of which reads,
’you have so lively Your Discoveries writ, We Read and Voyage with you as we sit, With you hoise Sail and reach the Indian shore; the real scene cou’d scarce delight us more.’

On 11th of April, 1689, Ovington set sail from Gravesend on East India Company’s vessel-Benjamin. While the first hundred odd pages provide for description of the exotic islands he visited en route from Madeira to Bombay, it is upon him embarking at Surat and the two and a half years that he spent there, that accounts for the true essence of the book.

Ovington’s profound and prolific proses provide a detailed and disciplined study of Surat’s contemporary life, customs, religious observances and politics. His diligent observation of the skilled commerce and cuisine that the town till date remains famous for, gives a picturesque glance of Surat city, whose bazaars, he wrote were ‘more populous than any part of London’.

Describing the Castle Green trade grounds and the ‘Kanchanis’-nautch girls who provided entertainment for traders by the river Tapi, John weaves the reader in the warp and weft of Surat’s rich silks, velvets, and taffeta. His text sparkles about the splendour of diamonds, rubies, sapphire and topazes; it is aromatic of spices that were shipped in and out namely nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon and mace.

It accounts how custom duty was charged at $ 1000 for an English ship of 400 tons. He describes how,’ Gold of Suratt is so very fine that 12 or 14 per Cent may be often gained by bringing it to Europe’, how silver had very little alloy in it, that 60 copper pice summed up to a Roupie and often bitter almonds were passed around as currency!


The crux of the commerce lay in the calm that the city functioned with.Ovington points out how despite of Surat being a conflux of several nations, this port from where Haj pilgrims sailed out, was a Mecca for universal merchants where foreign nationals such as Europeans, Arabs, Persian, Turks Armenians and locals merged in large numbers, yet, there was not a single capital punishment carried out in 20 years.