Page 330 - INDIANNAVYV1

^^8 HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY.
Upper Duncan Dock, built in the year 1810, by Captain W.
Cowper of the Bombay Engineers, and so called after the
Governor, General Duncan, of the ' Malabar,' seventy-four guns,
a teak-built ship constructed by the venerable builder, Jarnsetjee
Bomanjee ; and soon after, the keel of another line-of-battle
ship, to be called the ' Ganges,' rated at eighty-four guns, but
pierced to carry ninety-two, and of 2,289 tons, was laid by that
disguished naval architect. On the following 10th of February,
a new fifty-six-gun ship, for the service of the Imaurn of Muscat,
was floated out of the old middle dock, and received her name
of Shah AHum' at the hands of Mr. Meriton, the Superinten-
'
dent of Marine, who employed a copious effusion of rosewater
and attar, instead of wine, as the christening liquid, the use of
the latter being contrary to Mahommedan usage. Again, on
the 5th of September in this year, a third ship, a thirty-eight gun
frigate, called the ' Seringapatam,' was floated out of the dock
and added to the strength of the British Navy : and within the
next few years, besides the ' Ganges,' eighty-four guns, the
—
following ships were constructed for the Royal Service ' Asia,'
eightj^-four guns, (which noble line-of-battle ship bore the flag of
Sir Edward Codrington at the Battle of Navarino) ; the
'Bombay,' eighty-four guns; the 'Manilla,' forty-six guns;
and the ' Madagascar,' forty-six guns.* Soon after this a ship
was also built for the Bombay Marine, by the Parsee naval
architect, Mr. Jarnsetjee Bomanjee. This was a small thirty-
two gun frigate, which, on being floated from the Upper
Bombay Dock, on the 2nd of May, 1821, received the name of
* Of the strength and superiority of the Bombay-built ships, an unimpeach-
able witness, the First-Lieutenant of one of them, the ' Salsette ' frigate, bears
testimony in the following letter to the builder, Mr. Jarnsetjee Bomanjee. This
officer came to Bombay in 1819 as Captain of the merchant ship ' Stakesby,'
when he wrote to the Parsee builder requesting him " to accept of the accom-
panying clock as a small mark of esteem, and kind of remembrancer that under
Divine Providence, his professional abihties were the happy means of preserving
Mr. Henderson and the rest of tlie crew of H.M.S. ' Salsette ' from what appeared
to the human eye unavoidable destruction ; that ship, with five other small
vessels of war, and twelve valuable merchantmen luider their convoy, being beset
by the ice in the Baltic Sea in the winter of 1808-9, and she alone escaped ship-
wreck." In accepting this present, and the gratifying letter which accompanied
it, Mr. Jamset;jee said in the course of his reply, dated on the following day (the
: —
15th of June, 1819) "The 'Salsette,' (first named the 'Pitt') was, as you are
Itiilding for the Navy, and you will forgive me
aware, our first efforts in frigate
when I say that the praise 1 received on that occasion was, in a great measure,
owing to the very seamanlike style of the ' Pitt's ' equipment, under your super-
intendence as First-Lieutenant in charge of her. I had heard a rumour of the
' Salsette's ' escape while frozen in the Baltic ; but to have this rumour confirmed
by an officer in His Majesty's Service who had first contributed to her debut as a
man-of-war, and who had, subsequently, under Providence, witnessed the strength
other hull, in withstanding a danger that overwhelmed so many vessels in com-
The ' Ganges,'
pany, is more gratifying to me than I can find words to express."
eighty-four, was launched on the 10th of November, 1821, on which occasion the
Governor, Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone, stood sponsor, her designer and con-
structor, the venerable Jamsetjee Bomanjee, having died a few months before the
launch of this noble ship.