by which Conajee agreed to acknowledge allegiance to Satara, in return for which he was confirmed in command of the fleet, with the title of Surkheil, and granted twenty-six forts and fortified places with their dependent villages.[5] The first result of this treaty was a war with the Seedee, who had enjoyed some of the places in question for a number of years.  Conajee was supported by the Satara arms, and the Seedee was forced to submit to the loss.  To all intents and purposes, Conajee was now an independent chief.  He was the recognized master of a strip of territory between the sea and the western ghauts, extending from Bombay harbour to Vingorla, excluding the Seedee’s territories, a tract, roughly speaking, about two hundred and forty miles in length by forty miles in breadth.  With his harbours strongly fortified, while the western ghauts made his territories difficult of access by land, he was in a position to bid defiance to all enemies.  Moreover, he was the recognized chief of the hardy coast population of hereditary seamen, who to this day furnish the best lascars to our Indian marine.

Angria’s exploits on land had not interfered with his interests at sea.  In November, 1712, he captured the Governor of Bombay’s armed yacht, together with the Anne ketch from Carwar.[6] In the engagement, Mr. Chown, chief of the Carwar factory, was killed, and his young wife, a widow for the second time at the age of eighteen, became Angria’s prisoner.  A month later, the Somers and Grantham, East Indiamen, on their voyage from England to Bombay, were attacked by a grab and a gallivat belonging to Angria, off the coast north of Goa.  Owing to there being a calm at the time, the East Indiamen were unable to bring their guns to bear:  “for which reason and by y’e earnest intercession of y’e whole ship’s company to y’e captain” the boats of the Somers and Grantham were hoisted out, and an attempt was made to board the pirates.  The attack was beaten off with the loss of four men killed and seventeen wounded; but the pirates found the entertainment so little to their liking that they made off.

On hearing of the capture of the Governor’s yacht, the Portuguese wrote to propose a joint attack on Angria.  A few months before, he had captured the greater part of a Portuguese ‘armado,’ and disabled a thirty-gun man-of-war that was convoying it.  Governor Aislabie declined the Portuguese offer, but it had the effect of bringing Angria to terms.  Thinking it politic to make peace with the English, while his affairs with the Rajah of Satara were still unsettled, he sent a messenger to Bombay, offering to deliver up all vessels, goods, and captives taken from the Company, if an Englishman of credit was sent to him to settle on terms of peace for the future.  Aislabie demanded that in future English ships should be free from molestation; that no ships of any nation coming into Bombay should be interfered with between Mahim and Kennery; that English merchants