In the same year, six men, of whom four were English and two Dutch, while on passage in a native merchant's ship from the Persian Gulf to Surat, seized the ship, killing the owner and his two wives. The lascars were thrown overboard, six being retained to work the ship. Their cruise did not last long. Making for Honore, they threw the six lascars overboard when nearing the port. The men managed to get to land, and reaching Honore, gave information of the would-be pirates to the local authorities, who seized the ship, and soon disposed of the rogues.
Three years later, two ships under English colours, mounting respectively forty-four and twenty guns, were reported to have captured vessels in the Red Sea, to the value of Rs.600,000. The Seedee of Jinjeera, who styled himself the Mogul's Admiral, received a yearly subsidy of four lakhs for convoying the fleet, a duty that he was quite unable to perform against European desperadoes. Public opinion at Surat was at once excited against the English, and further inflamed by the Dutch and French, who were only too anxious to see a rival excluded from the trade. Sir John Child, to pacify the Governor, offered to send a man-of-war to look for the pirates; but the Dutch and French factors continued to 'spitt their venom' till the Governor laughed in their faces and asked why they did not join in sending vessels to look for the rogues, since the matter seemed to them so serious.
In the same season a gallant engagement was fought against pirates, though not in Indian waters. The Company's ship Caesar, Captain Wright, bound from England for Bombay, was chased off the coast of Gambia by five ships, carrying each from twenty to thirty guns, under French colours. Wright had no intention of yielding without a struggle, so put his ship before the wind, to gain time for getting into fighting trim. The Caesar was carrying soldiers, and there were plenty of men to fight the ship. The boats were cut away, the decks cleared, ammunition and arms served out, three thousand pounds of bread which cumbered the gun-room were thrown overboard, and the tops were filled with marksmen. As soon as all was ready, the mainsail was furled, and the ship kept under easy sail. Before long the two smaller ships came up, hoisted the red flag, and began firing, one on the Caesar's quarter and one astern. Soon the three other ships, two of which Wright styled the Admiral and Vice-Admiral, came up. The Admiral ranged up on the quarter and tried to board, but was obliged to sheer off, with the loss of many men and a bowsprit shot away. The Vice-Admiral tried to board at the bow, but with no better success, losing a foreyard and mizzen-mast. For five hours the engagement lasted, but the small-arm men in the Caesar's tops fired so well that the pirates could hardly serve their guns. The crew showed a wonderful spirits cheering loudly at every successful shot, till the discomfited pirates bore up, leaving the Caesar to pursue her way to Bombay, much knocked about as to hull, but having lost only one man killed and eight wounded.
In the following year came news to Surat of two vessels, under Danish colours, that had stopped English ships and seized native ones between Surat and Bombay. The Phoenix, a British man-of-war, was at Surat at the time, so, together with the Kent, East Indiaman, it was despatched to look after the marauders, taking with them also two small boys, sent to represent the French and the Dutch. In due time Captain Tyrrell returned, and reported that he had found a squadron of four vessels; that after a two days' chase he had brought them to, when they turned out to be two Danish ships, with two prizes they had taken. They showed him their commission, authorizing them to make reprisals on the Mogul's subjects for affronts offered to Danish traders; so he left them alone. A few months later the Portuguese factory at Cong, in the Persian Gulf, was plundered by an English pirate; another was heard of in the Red Sea, while Philip Babington an Irish pirate, was cruising off Tellichery in the Charming Mary.
By 1689 a number of sea rovers from the West Indies had made their appearance, and the factory at Fort St. George reported that the sea trade was 'pestered with pirates.' The first comers had contented themselves with plundering native ships. Now their operations were extended to European vessels not of their own nationality. In time this restriction ceased to be observed; they hoisted the red or black flag, with or without the colours of the nationality they affected, and spared no vessel they were strong enough to capture.
The Armenian merchants were loud in their complaints. An Armenian ship, bound from Goa to Madras, with twenty thousand pagodas on board, was taken by a pirate ship of two hundred tons, carrying twenty-two guns and a crew of sixty men. Another Armenian ship, with fifty thousand xeraphims, was taken near Bombay, on its voyage from Goa to Surat. Besides those that beset the Malabar coast, there were pirates in the Persian Gulf, at the mouth of the Red Sea, and in the Mozambique Channel, while five pirate vessels were cruising off Acheen. During the next ten years the losses caused by the pirates were prodigious.
Ovington mentions that at St. Helena (1689) they were told, by a slaver, of three pirates, two English and the other Dutch, so richly laden with booty that they could hardly navigate their ships, which had become weather-beaten and unseaworthy from their long cruises off the Red Sea mouth. Their worn-out canvas sails were replaced with double silk.
"They were prodigal in the expences of their unjust gain, and quenched their thirst with Europe liquor at any rate this Commander (the slaver) would put upon it; and were so frank both in distributing their goods, and guzzling down the noble wine, as if they were both wearied with the possession of their rapine, and willing to stifle all the melancholy reflections concerning it."
Such an account was bound to fire the imagination of every seaman who heard it.
The number of pirates was increased by the interlopers, merchant adventurers trading without a licence, who, like John Hand, when they failed to get cargoes, plundered native ships. Their proceedings were imitated by the permission ships, vessels that held the Company's licence for a single voyage. Not seldom the crews of interlopers and permission ships rose and seized the vessel against the will of their owners and commanders and hoisted the Jolly Roger. Commissions were granted to the East India Company's commanders to seize interlopers; but the interlopers, as a rule, were remarkably well able to take care of themselves. As pirates and interlopers alike sailed under English colours, the whole odium fell on the English. In August, 1691, a ship belonging to the wealthy merchant, Abdul Guffoor, was taken at the mouth of the Surat river, with nine lakhs in hard cash on board. A guard was placed on the factory at Surat, and an embargo laid on English trade. As the pirate had shown the colours of several nationalities, the authorities were loth to proceed to extremities. Fortunately for the English Company, a member of the pirate crew was captured, and proved to be a Dane; so the embargo on English trade was taken off.