INDIAN NAVY. In A.D. 1609, in the early years of the English East India Company's trade with India, the need for the protection of their shipping led to Sir Henry Middleton being sent with three ships to Surat. His flag-ship ran aground at Mocha, and he was detained more than a year by the .Arabs, and, after reaching Surat, he withdrew, under the advice of both the native and the English merchants, and drove a kind of filibuster ing trade in the lied Sea. Afterwards he was joined by Captain John Saris, who was sent out with three more vessels to protect the Indian trade. Captain Hippon, who was despatched about the same time in a single ship, the Globe, founded the factories in the Bay of Bengal which developed into the Presidencies of Calcutta and Madras. The victory of Captain Best over the Portnguese fleet in the roadstead of Surat, October 29, 1612, which two years later was eclipsed by the operations of Captain Downton, followed lip by exploits in the Persian Gulf, crowned by the capture of Ormuz, disposed of all fear of Portu guese ascendency in the east, and firmly estab lished this East India Company's trading privileges. In 1615 a local marine force of ten grabs and galivats was established, which, added to the small home squadron, formed the nucleus of the future navy of the Company. The right of trial by common and martial law, as in the royal service, was in 1624 conceded to the Company's commanders and agents abroad, to which was added that of building forts for the security of their trade, the earliest of these being that of Fort St. George at Madras, erected in 1640. The acquisition of Bombay in 1668 gave the Company a valuable port and naval station, and their service, —thenceforth known as the Bombay Marine,— now amounting to a respectable fleet, was not long in distinguishing itself in the defence of Surat and Bombay against the Mahrattas, as well AS in repelling the threatened attack of the Dutch in 1672. On the pacification which ensued, the English Company's ships were entrusted with the police of the Southern Indian seas, the pro tection of the Red Sea being assigned to the Dutch, and that of the Persian Gulf to the French. The suppression of piracy became from the first one of the prominent duties of the service. Surat, where the larger vessels had originally been con structed under native foremen, gave place in 1735 to Bombay as the depot for building purposes. The Company's fleet then numbered more than 20 vessels, one of them, the Revenge, mounting 28 guns, 20 of which were twelve-pounders. This fine frigate was lost, with all hands, in a gale, April 20, 1782, after having done good service in the war with France and Hyder Ali. In the reduction of Pondicherry, August 23, 1793, the capture of Ceylon in 1795, and the attack upon the Dutch in the Moluccas in 1801, the services of the Bombay Marine were of the utmost value ; nor were they less conspicuous in the taking of Mauritius in 1809, in the reduction of Java in 1811, in the attack upon Mocha in 1820, and in the operations against the Joasmi pirates in the Persian Gulf, who, from the year 1797, had given unintermitting trouble to the protective cruisers of the Company. The Burmese
war, from 1824 to 1826, gave occasion to many a brilliant display of skill and valour, for which the thanks of the Directors and of both Houses of Parliament were tendered at the conclusion of peace. Remodelled under the chine of Sir Charles Malcolm, brother to the Governor of Bombay, as superintendent, the service was con stituted as a marine corps, with the title of the Indian Navy, under an order dated May 1, 1830.
Under Sir Henry Leake, the naval expedition, 1852-53, which aided in the reduction of Burma, was ably planned and carried out, followed up by no less successful operations in the war with Persia in 1856-57. The latest and not the least brilliant of the warlike services of the Indian navy was that rendered by the detachment which, after aiding in the suppression of panic in Calcutta, pushed up the country to the relief of the be leaguered Europeans. But no officer of the service was ever honoured with knighthood or with a mili tary order. Until the final hauling down of the flag in Bombay harbour at noon of the 30th of April 1863, its duties—faithfully, zealously, and often brilliantly discharged—brought with them little more reward than that which is proverbially said to be conferred by virtue upon itself. Nevertheless its band of skilled officers had given to the world a body of charts the value of which it is impossible to overstate, and the hydrography of the Indian coasts and seas had been carried to a degree of perfection which is beyond all proportion to the slenderness of the means under command. Among the most notable are the surveys of the Red Sea by Elwon and Moresby, those of Mesopotamia by Lynch, Campbell, and Felix Jones, those of the Coromandel coast by Lloyd and Fell, those of the south-east coast of Arabia by Haines and Saunders, with the more recent charts of the Persian Gulf by Constable and Stifle, and those of the Katty awar and Malabar coasts by Commander Dundas Taylor. To the last-named officer maritime in terests are indebted for the Wind and Current Charts, which give so much security to the navi gation of the Indian seas ; and above all, for a Sailing Directory, founded on Horsburgh. To the impression produced by Captain Taylor's memorandum on the existing state and deficien cies of the Indian marine surveys, was due the seasonable establishment, about 1873, of a special department of that nature at Calcutta, of which Commander Taylor was made superintendent, with a staff of well-chosen assistants. In the year 1858 the whole service had been summarilybroken lip, the vessels were condemned to be sold, the officers pensioned off, the official records disposed of as waste-paper. In his anniversary address to the Royal Geographical Society in 1863, Sir Roderick Murchison said its services had been varied, useful, and honourable : the beneficial and enduring results of its suppression of piracy and the slave trade are well known, and the wide spread and lasting utility of the excellent surveys made by its officers hold an equally prominent place.—East India Marine Surreys.