8. East India Trading Company

“I do want you to remember, Jack, that the East India Trading Company has more ships than the British Royal Navy."  Quote from Lord Cutler Beckett to Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Carribean book, The Price of Freedom.  The East India Trading Company was featured in many Pirates of the Carribean movies and books because of its historical signficance in the Golden Age of Pirates. 

The East India Trading Company, or E.I.T.C., was a British privately-owned company formed in 1600 for monopolizing trade with India, East Indies, and later China and the Caribbean. The East India Trading Company traded in exotic cotton, silk, indigo dye, spices, tea and opium.  The company was ruthless in its quest for profits. 

By the year 1690 the East India Trading Company was able to mint its own money, acquire new self-directed territory, build forts and castles, raise and command a military, and literally to wage war.   Piracy was one of the biggest problems for the East India Trading Company.  

In 1696 Captain Kidd, in his ship the Adventure Galley, attacked an East India Trading Company convoy and was branded a pirate which eventually led to his hanging and gibbeting.

At this stop you will find genuine artifacts from the East India Trading Company.  Of note is the East India Trading Company Blunderbuss Rail Gun, which was most likely installed on one of the ships that the Company had specially built called an East Indiaman Galleon.