History of the Indian Navy - Volume I: 1613 to 1816

By Charles Low

This is the first of four volumes originally published in 1877 (two volumes) and covers the history of the Indian Navy from 1613 to 1816 when it was called the Bombay Marine and served as the naval arm of the British East India Company. It is, essentially, a tale of high adventure at a time when the British and other European countries had no distinct technological advantages over the Asian powers they encountered as they sought to expand their wide-ranging mercantile empires. It is filled with harrowing first-hand accounts of these adventures in distant lands that, by their very nature, could never avoid being romanticized by later generations.The Bombay Marine was formed to protect the East India Company's merchant ships from the pirates of the Malabar coast and the Portuguese warships that sought to preserve Portugal's lucrative monopoly in the Indian Ocean trade. Most of its little-known battles were fought on a small-scale against the ships, boats, and strongholds of Arab, Malay, and Indian pirates, and such English buccaneers as Captains Kidd and Avery, in exotic locations, ranging across the southern oceans from the Red Sea, to the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, the East Indies, and as far east as the China Sea. It soon, however, became an instrument of empire and was involved in sea battles with and against the naval forces of the Mogul emperors, the shahs of Persia, the Maratha (Mahratta) Rajahs, and the ships of the Dutch and French colonial empires.The three subsequent volumes of Charles Low's History of the Indian Navy will chronicle the transformation of the East India Company's Bombay Marine to the British Empire's Indian Navy, and its ultimate and much regretted disbandment in 1863.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1523474815
• ISBN13: 9781523474813
• Release Date: January 2016
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 386 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"