The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c15.44

c15.44

Kanhoji positively refused ‘to deliver up the ship *Robert* or free the Englishmen belonging to her, on pretence of her belonging to the Moors’.³ The English were still unable to retaliate. ‘Our condition at present obliging us to dissemble these insults and the President embarquing to-morrow for Surat directed that Mr. Parker during his absence endeavour by Rama Comatec to get the Europeans taken in said ship set at liberty, but that wee do not appear in it ourselves till a more favourable opportunity should offer.’⁴ Kanhoji having captured another ship, the *Otter*, the Council decided on 5 April ‘to serve him in the same kind’ and authorised the Governor to issue private instructions to the English frigates to take and destroy Kanhoji’s ‘grabbs should they fall their way’. But war had not yet been declared. Open hostilities were hastened by the detention at Mahim of a *Shibar* belonging to Angria’s port Alibag, which evoked a wrathful letter to Boone from Kanhoji.