Shivaji and His Times c12.s2.5

c12.s2.5

Shivaji's navy immediately took to plundering the coast of Kanara and Goa, and brought to him vast quantities of booty in the same way as his land-forces did. They often fought the Siddi fleet. (Sabh. 68.) We may here record what little is definitely known about Shivaji's mercantile marine. Soon after getting possession of the ports in North Konkan, he began to engage in foreign trade on his own account. Early in January 1660 he captured at Rajapur one of the junks of Afzal Khan and turned it to his own use. In February 1663 the English at Surat report that he was fitting out two ships of considerable burden for trading with Mocha (in western Arabia) and loading them at Jaitapur, two miles up the Rajapur river, with "goods of considerable value which were by storms or foul weather driven upon his coast." Two years later (12th March 1665), they write that from each of the eight or nine "most considerable ports in the Deccan" that he had seized, he used to "set out 2 or 3 or more trading vessels yearly to Persia, Basra, Mocha, &c." Again, we learn that in April, 1669, a great storm on the Karwar coast destroyed several of his ships and rice-boats, "one of the ships being very richly laden." (F. R. Surat, Vols. 2, 86, 105.)