Indian Antiquary Vol 49

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 67

APRIL, 1920]
EPISODES OF PIRACY IN THE EASTERN SEAS
5-c.
Letter from Captain James Pearce of the " Ruby" Snow to Humphrey Morrice, dated Jamaica 19 June 1723.
63
"By a sloop belonging to the South Sea Company arrived here from Portobello we have an account that the large Pirate on the Spanish American Coast formerly called the Cassandra have surrendered themselves to the Spaniards allowing 20 per cent. out of their riches."
[ India Office Miscellaneous Letters Received, Vol. 14, p. 205 et seq.]
XXI:
ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THE REVENGE AND BOMBAY GRAB AND A MARATHA FLEET, 1775.
Technically, I suppose, the Marâthas engaged in this fight were not pirates, as their commander was a Marâtha officer, but practically the whole Marâtha fleet engaged in piracy in peace times, and became respectable, like the old Elizabethan privateersmen, when war broke out. The fight described below was altogether one-sided, as the Marathas were no match for the English in gunnery, though they were quite as heavily armed as the English ships. In the circumstances attending the encounter now reported one can, therefore, only admire the courage of the Maratha commander, who sacrificed his ship to save the rest of his fleet.
A Narrative of the Engagement between the Revenge and the Bombay Grab 48 with the Moratta fleet off Cape Dobbs 49 [1st and 2nd February 1775, by a Passenger on the Bombay Grab].
The enemy were seen in the morning of the 1st instant, consisting of five large ships and two ketches with some gallivats. At one in the afternoon the two ketches with three gallivats bore away to the eastward. At four the Commodore [John Moore] made the Grab's signal to chase to the south-west. At past five the ships separated, two departing to the eastward and two to the westward with the remainder of the gallivats. The fifth ship stood on to the south-east, which the Revenge and the [Bombay] Grab pursued.
About past seven in the evening the [Bombay] Grab had the good fortune to get up alongside within pistol shot of the Moratta ship (since found to have been the Sensare Jung [Shamsher Jang] of forty guns and 350 men), when she began a brisk firing both with great guns and small arms. Some few of both were returned by the enemy, but far short of what might have been reasonably expected from a vessel of her force. The Revenge was at this time far astern, nor could she come up till about ten o'clock, when a brisk firing commenced from her also.
The evening being dark, it was impossible to see the damage she must have received from the Bombay Grab's cannonading: the shots were heard to strike very forcibly against 48 Two of the Company's cruisers.
47 Probably at the Gulf of San Blas.
19 By Cape "Dobbs " the writer apparently means the southern point of the mouth of the Vashishti river, from which Dabhol, in Ratnagiri district, is six miles distant.-ED.