Page 206 - INDIANNAVYV1

174 HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY.

riii,<; a sufficient supply, he commenced building cruisers for the
Company's war Marine, and vessels for the trade of the
port.
In consequence of his success, the Superintendent of Marine
proposed, in 1754, and the local government sanctioned, a dry
dock, which was constructed for the small sum of 12,000 rupees.
A few years later, wet docks, sufficiently large for a seventy-gun
ship, were commenced, for which Bombay affords exceptional
advantages, owing to the rise and fall of the tide being consi-
derable and periodical, the rise at ordinary spring tide being
about fourteen feet, and not unfrequently as high as eighteen
feet. Mr. Lvii^, surgeon to Admiral Watson's flag-ship, the
' Kent,' writing of this dock in 1758, on his return from Cal-
cutta in the ' Revenge,' then commanded by Commodore James,
—
says : ' We expected to have found the dock at Bombay
capable of receiving a ship of sevent}'' guns, agreeable to the
repeated assurances given to Mr. Watson, but we were disap-
pointed in this particular, the hands to carry it on being very
scarce. However, Mr. Hough, superintendent of the Company's
Marine here, was indefatigable in his endeavours to finish this
work of immense labour and the dock is now completed.
Commodore (afterwards Admiral) Stevens was here obliged to
heave down the 'Elizabeth,' one of the ships of his squadron,
to stop a considerable leak, but in the first attempt she had the
misfortune to spring her mainmast, by which accident he was
detained a longer time than he wished."
Bombay, at this time, possessed every facility for careening
and refitting shattered ships, and was largely used by the fleets
in effecting repairs after their encounters with the French, or
the elements. Speaking of the Bombay Marine in 1754, on
the occasion of his first visit to Bombay, at the time of the
expedition against Gheria, Mr. Edward Ives* says: "Our
East India Company had here one ship of forty guns, one of
twenty, one grab of eighteen guns, and several other vessels
;
n)ore also were building." During Niebuhr's visit to Bombay
in 1763, the third basin of the dock was built, and he says that
the Boiiibay Government " maintain eight or ten small ships of
war with a number of armed barks," and states that they were
much employed in convoying the Company's ships and country
vessels from port to port for which service the " natives were
obliged to pay very clear." Writing in 1775 of the capabilities
of Bombay dockyard, Mr. Abraham Parsons says: ''Bombay

* Mr. Ives also gives a description of the fleets of vessels belonging to the
—
Mahrattas and Mannajee Angria, brother to Toolajee, the Chief of Gheria, lying
in the harbour. He says : " Each fleet consisted of about thirty sail, but among
Mannajee Angria's there were two ketches which they called grabs." He
describes the vessels of these fleets as " not being unhke the tartans of the
Mediterranean, only a great deal lower ; they carrieii two guns in their bow, and
a vast number of men."