In the 1660s, calico was quietly remaking English life. Long before it sparked fashion bans or industrial revolutions, this soft, plain-woven cotton — named after Calicut in India — was already flowing through London’s markets, ships, and homes.

Samuel Pepys, a naval administrator and inveterate diarist whose daily notes captured the texture of Restoration London, noticed. On October 6, 1664, he went “among the linen drapers to enquire about callicos.” A few days later, he paid £208 18s for 100 pieces — far more than any household could use. By December, he was still settling accounts with the same draper, suggesting an ongoing trade.

A couple of years later, calico surfaces again in his records, this time as naval flags — Pepys was then a senior official at the Navy Board. The same fabric that clothed Londoners was being stitched into symbols of empire, fluttering from English masts.

In Pepys’s brief mentions, calico shifts from a luxury import to a working fabric of the state. It’s both ordinary and global — a cotton that connected Indian looms, English merchants, and imperial ambitions.

References:

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1669/05/28/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/12/21/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/06/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/07/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/08/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/12/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/12/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/09/24/

For context, go here first to check out the customs officer drama that happened on board the St. George in 1712.

Now this is how I found out a little bit more about the ship and its crew:

DISCLAIMER: I am not a maritime historian. I know nothing about ships. So information below is just me chasing something down a pointless research rabbit hole.

Anytime, I want to find out about a British East India Company ship, I start here.

From 1600-1834, there were four ships registered with the title St.George. Of the four, one was active from 1709 to 1719 or thereabouts, right at the time of the above-mentioned customs drama. It is recorded as a 459 ton ship.

So that means… the St. George was likely an “East Indiaman,” a type of ship that the East India Companies used as merchant vessels, like the one shown below.

Given the time period, and the ship weighing 459 tons would be a medium-sized merchant vessel. It would carry about 30 cannons and about 90 crew members. We don’t know how many people were aboard St. George but a similar ship in weight and plying that route around that time, Cadogan (1718), had 30/32 guns, 90/92 crew.

This crew would include officers like the captain, mates, and a surgeon, as well as specialists like the boatswain, gunner, carpenter, and cook. There would also be seamen (including Lascars), servants, and others employed on these ships.

Now what I really do know about this ship is that one of its doors got unsympathetically broken down in 1712 by a zealous customs officer.