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64 HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY. ;

Mr. Aungier sent two armed ships into the Persian Gulf
for the protection of the Company's trade, and intimated
to the Shah of Persia that the charges of these ships must be
paid, in addition to the moiety of customs raised at Grombroon,
otherwise the English ships would cease to protect the port
and the President declared, in terms which showed the
independent position he assumed, that any refusal of this
demand would be considered as equivalent to hostilities. This
was one of the last public acts of I\Ir. Aungier, the able and high-
spirited President of Surat, who died on the 30th of June, 1()77,
to the extreme regret of his colleagues. He was succeeded by Mr.
Rolt,* the agent at Gombroon, ]\Ir. Henry Oxendeu assuming
the Government of Bombay.
During the past few years the fleet of the Seedees, Cossim
and Sambole—for there were two contending for the pose of
admiral to the Mogul—had passed the monsoon in Bombay
harbour, and, by their lawless conduct and faction-fighting,
caused much annoyance to the garrison and squadron in the
harbour. In 1678 two admirals of Sevajee's fleet, which num-
bered, according to Orme, "fift3'-seven sail, of which fifteen
were grabs, and the rest galivats, all crowded with men,"
came down to Panwell with four thousand men, with the object
of crossing over and attacking the ships and quarters of Cossim,
who was now the recognised chief Seedee. But the steps taken
by the Company's military and naval commanders, assisted by
the Portuguese Governor of Bassein, who was alarmed for the
safety of Salsette, were happily successful in warding off a
collision. The Soubadar, or Native Governor, of Upper Clioul,
who had claims on one of the Company's factors, relying on the
support of Sevajee, on the frustration of his hopes of burning
the Seedee's fleet, seized thirty Bombay boats trading in the
ports and rivers under his jurisdiction. Upon this being known
at the Presidency, four armed vessels, having sixty European
ridge of powder, and squenehed his eloaths aflame in the ocean, so that they
were fully bent to board vis ; but they rising to come in, we all this while having
seulked imder our targets, discharged our blunderbusses, which made them sheer
off, never to come near us again ; after which we chased them, they flying afore
us." The spectators of this encounter were the Dutch chief and governor on
the shore, and a ship of twelve guns in the road. "By three," he says, "we
came ashore with light hurts, but cried up mightily by the people, who are con-
tinually infested by these pirates without any resistance." During his passage
from Surat to Gombroon in one of the armed ships of the Company's Slarine,
in 1676, Dr. Fryer saw some of the pirates that infested those waters, "but," he
says, " they were not so foolhardy as to come nigh us, being content to gaze on
what they durst not seize, and to wish us impotence instead offeree." Of the
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pirates infesting the seas between Surat and the Persian Gulf, he says " Here in
this large piece of water the Sindaniau pirates wreak their malice on the unarmed
merchants, who, not being able to resist their unbounded lust, become tame
slaves to their laivless rage. These are ahke cruel and equally savage as the
Malabars."
* In 1681, Mr. Rolt was succeeded by Mr. Cliild, brother of Sir Josiah
Child, Governor of the East India Company.