The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c16.10

c16.10

Foiled in their attempt against Janjira, the Peshwa’s fleet employed itself for the next fifteen years in their routine work of issuing passports and seizing ships that did not possess them. These duties could not always be effected without fighting. In 1763, for example, the Peshwa’s captains seized a Dutch ship off Anjidiv;³ they also took a Danish vessel, which was rescued later by a Portuguese squadron.¹ The Portuguese themselves lost several boats, as Conde de Ega informed the home authorities in 1764.² The Maratha fleet, he wrote, infested the sea and respected no nation except the English. They had in the previous year captured a Portuguese ship of Macao, a *Pal* belonging to Mozambique and some small vessels belonging to the traders of Portuguese India. Their losses might have been much heavier had the Maratha Admiral been better versed in the art of navigation, for both the north and the south-going Portuguese merchant fleets had been attacked by numerically superior Maratha squadrons.³ In 1767, a Maratha fleet of six *Pals* and fifty-four *Gallivats* attacked a Portuguese squadron of one *Pal* and four *Manchuas* convoying a big merchant flotilla near Gheria but after two hours’ obstinate fighting the Peshwa’s fleet had to retire.⁴ Gheria still continued to be a point of danger for merchant fleets, though its prestige had evidently much declined since the days of Sambhaji and Tulaji Angria.