The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c15.135

c15.135

‘Sambhaji’, says Captain Anselm, ‘got seven of his Grabbs afloat, which was all he intended to launch, not having men for his other two. He has in all thirty fighting Gallivats, rowing with thirty oars and upwards; 14 of which are very large carrying six Guns’. ² Nearly twenty years later, in 1754, Edward Ives found the band of the Angria’s fleet to consist of ‘a plain brass tube, shaped like a trumpet at both ends, and about ten feet in length; and a kind of drum called *Tom tom*, being a skin stretched out on a large shallow brass-pan, on which they struck with two large sticks’. ³ Probably these instruments constituted the military band in Sambhaji’s time also.