Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/258

 208 FIRST SETTLEMENTS ON THE BOMBAY COAST fifty-seven ships containing 26,690 tons, besides eight- een pinnaces, to be worn out by trading from port to port in The Indies." To this scattered fleet, strongly armed and always eager to fight, the Surat factory added a local flotilla of stout sea-going craft, carrying two to six guns apiece, and charged with the defence of the Tapti estuary and Gulf of Cambay. Ten of these Surat " grabs and galli- vats " are said to have existed in 1615, during Captain Downton's six weeks' battle with the Portuguese, and from that year the permanent establishment of our Indian navy has been reckoned. In 1622, four of them accompanied the squadron which drove the Portuguese from Ormuz and the Persian Gulf. These Surat cruis- ers were greatly superior to the Portuguese " frigates." Yet the Portuguese " frigates " sufficed to make it un- safe for Dutch ships to lie in at the Malabar roadsteads. The broad lateen sails, light draught, and hardy rowers of the Surat " grabs," or galleys, enabled them to out- manoeuvre both the Dutch and the Lisbon galleons along the shore. When combined with the heavily armed English ships engaged in the port to port trade, they made up a formidable force. The viceroy at Goa now found his whole line of com- munication on the west coast of India dominated by our Surat factory. The English at Surat, on their side, felt the necessity for a direct trade with the pepper dis- tricts and spice ports of Malabar, which also remained the Indian marts of exchange for the more precious cloves and nutmegs of the Eastern Archipelago. Euro-