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HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY. 13 ;

February, 1G12, and arrived in the Swally,* or roadstead of
Siirat, on the 5th of September. Notwithstanding the dis-
couraging account given by Captain Hawkins, little difficulty
was found in opening a communication with the town ; and
Mr. Kerridge, who appears to have been a factor, or supercargo,
on board the ' Hoseander,' was soon able to put Captain Best
in possession of a sealed certificate, giving the English authority
to trade. As it wanted some of the requisite formalities, some
doubts were entertained of its validity, and, before these were
solved, the Portuguese made their appearance.
The Portuguese fleet consisted of four galleons, and more
than twenty armed vessels, which had come with the avowed
determination of expelling the English. The Admiral's ship
mounted thirty-eight guns, and the three others twenty-eight
and thirty. The armed vessels, called by Orme, " frigates,"
had no cannon, but seemed intended for boarding and for ser-
vice in shoal water. This fleet appeared off the bar of Surat, on
the 28th of October, and, on being joined by other ships in the
river, the number of so-called frigates now amounted to forty
sail. Captain Best was well prepared for them ; and, deeming
it unnecessary to wait till he was attacked, at once assumed
the offensive.
"On the 29th of October," says Orme, "Captain Best bore
down from the roadstead of Swally, and engaged the Vice-
Admiral's ship, separated by the tide and sands from the
others. Placing himself in the 'Dragon,' at a distance of two
cables' length, 'I began,' he says, 'to play upon him witli
both great and small shot, that b}'^ an houre we had well pep-
pered him.' " A shot from her sunk his long boat and another
wounded his mainmast. The day after he engaged all four of
the ships; and three of them, either from ignorance or con-
fusion, grounded on the sands, where they would have upset,
if the crews of the " frigates" had not shored them up with
their yards until the tide and further assistance got them
afloat again. On the 31st the fight was renewed, and with
still more success on the part of the English, who again
defeated the Portuguese, and drove " three of their foure
shi23pes on ground on the sands thwart of the Barre of Surat."
* Swally, which formed the seaport for Surat, at which vessels of great burden
discliarged their cargoes, was a village situated about twelve miles west of the
city. The anchorage was in a road, seven miles in length, and one and a-half
in breadth, between the sliore and a sand-bank which was dry at low water
about midway up this channel was a cove called Swally Hole, where a fleet could
lie in tolerable security. We are told tliat later on, tlie English and Dutch Com-
panies built warehouses and laid out pleasant gardens at Swally, though Fr^'cr,
with his usual pungency of style asserts that the place was infested by " two sorts
of vermin, ileas and banyans." During the mouths between Sejitember and
March, when the Company's ships usually arrived from P^urope, the " bunyas,"
or native mercliants, congregated at Swally, when tliey pitched tents anil built
other temporary residences. See Anderson's " English in Western India."