Piracy along the west coast was practised by the men from the Malabar, Gujarat, as well as Europeans for long. The events of 1685 when two Gujarati merchants returning from Mocha laden with goods were robbed on the high seas sent all of Surat into a tizzy. The British Topikars (those who wore hats) were suspected and Aurangzeb launched a war on the British, who took shelter on the islands on the sea where no Mughal could reach them. The four-year war between them from 1687 led to the British attacking all Mughal merchant ships plying in the Arabian Sea. Soon, even American pirates sailed from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean region, with the Danes plying in the Persian Gulf.
Although a truce was called in 1690, piracy did not cease. In 1690, after Sambhajiraje was captured and killed by Aurangzeb, the Maratha Navy was practically taken over by the Siddis, and save the sea-fort of Colaba, held by Kanhoji Angre, the rest of the Maratha territory, including their capital Raigad was taken by the Mughals.
In 1692, some Englishmen landed at the port of Mangrol, near Junagadh, and began to sell goods at a suspiciously cheap rate. The townspeople lulled them by an offer of a feast and informed the local Governor, who sent them in chains to Agra. An order was passed whereby all European commerce was to be stopped at Mughal ports. There remained, of course, a strong British presence among pirates, and the name of Captain Kidd comes down to us as one of the prominent ones among them.
Despite the stoppage of commerce, in an incident in 1695, Aurangzeb’s own ship Ganz-i-Sawaiee was taken by British pirates with all its goods, and several Muslim ladies travelling on it were dishonoured. Once again, a ban on all commerce at Surat was ordered. As a consequence, a new system where ships were escorted by armed vessels of the French and the Dutch began. The system did not last long, however, as the Mughals stood aloof from the new arrangements. Eventually, the Dutch protested and left Surat for Batavia.
With fluid political boundaries, slow transmission of orders, and loose administrative control in the eighteenth-century India, each Sardar had a certain degree of autonomy within the territory allotted to him.
Sidhoji Gujar and Kanhoji Angre were one of the first Maratha Sardars of the Navy. Kanhoji succeeded Sidhoji Gujar around 1698. Kanhoji’s father Tukoji Sankpal had been one of the first to join the Maratha navy in 1658 and begun his career at the island fort of Suvarnadurg. The name of Angre came from his ancestral village Angarwadi near Pune. In his days at Suvarnadurg, Kanhoji first crossed swords with the Siddis and was captured. However, he escaped and went back to the fort, foiling the Siddis’ attempt to take it.
Kanhoji’s chief aim was to oppose the Siddis and claim the coastal waters of the Maratha territory as his jurisdiction. He, therefore, insisted that passage through these waters would need his permission. Kanhoji built a strong navy and led attacks on the Portuguese and the Siddis, as well as British ships that did not carry his passport. In case such a pass was not obtained by the ships, they were boarded, and their goods confiscated. The Europeans refused to obtain a passport from Angre and called his acts ‘piracy’. Kanhoji, therefore, became a common enemy for the Siddis and the Europeans.
Kanhoji’s ships were the larger Pals, the Shibad, the Machwa, the Galbat, and the Ghurab. Of these, the Ghurab was the chief, supported by the smaller Galbats which were essentially row-boats that towed the larger ships to the sea.
Ghurabs or Grabs have rarely more than two masts, although some have three; those of three are about 300 tonnes burden; but the others are not more than 150; they are built to draw very little water, being very broad in proportion to their length, narrowing, however, from the middle to the ends, where instead of bows they have a prow, projecting like that of a Mediterranean galley. The grabs carried a number of guns, two of them from nine to twelve pounders, placed on the main deck so as to fire through portholes over the prow, and the rest usually six to nine pounders fitted to give a broadside.
Galbat or Gallivat – a large row-boat of about seventy tonnes, much used in the shallows on the coast of Hindustan from Bombay to Goa; as they are frequently used by pirates, they are constructed so as to carry six or eight large cannon, beside petteraroes (a small gun); which are furnished with forty or fifty stout oars, by which means they are rowed at the rate of four miles an hour. They will carry from two to three hundred men in each, who fight and row by turns.
To be continued…
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