Er. Rajesh Pathak
Chhatrapati Shivaji built under his naval commander, Kanhoji Angre, a naval force composed of valiant Hindu Nishad-Kewat community residing on the seashore. Along with sea-forts Shivaji built cargo and war ships too. Built in Konkan, the ships were capable enough to be ferried up to Europe; and warships, equally advanced to match out any assault. And in the Battle of Khanderi it was even proved by the defeat of British Royal Navy, which even the commander WilliumMinwinadmitted ‘It is due to Shivaji that built the Sangmeshwari fleet of 20 ships with 32 guns to be stationed on them that we lost the battle. (‘Shivaji and his times’ : Sir JadunathSarkar )
In the medieval period of history, when other Hindu kings couldn’t even think of lifting their eyes before Aurangzeb, the Mughal king, Shivaji was the one to initiate fearsome attack on him. Notwithstanding extremely adverse circumstances with numerically small army and minimum of resources, he gave defeats to the armies of Aurangzeb and British many a time, adopting guerilla- warfare and cleverly drawn strategies. One of the most notable defeats he dealt to British navy was in the Battle of Khanderi, mentioned above.
Shivaji had known it too well that if anything that threatened Hindvi- Swaraj [Hindu self-rule] most was the menace of European invasion from the sea-front. To deal with any such kind of eventuality he therefore decided to build a fleet of warships in Bhagwati river, close to the western coastal border. So the service of 400 Portuguese naval specialists was taken to fulfill the entire operation. They were paid whatever money they demanded for their service. Knowing the fact that Portuguese, being the foreigners after all and therefore couldn’t be relied upon blindly, Shivaji deputed a crew of equal numbers of selected Marathas of sharp intellect with them so that they could learn the technique of warship-building. And, few days later, what Shivaji suspected came true. At the very crucial moment when the British were to launch the attack on the Marathas, Portuguese dismantled the fleet and slunk away from there. But thanks to Shivaji’s far-sightedness that till then Maratha-crew had become well-versed in the technique of building the fleet themselves.
And, soon a new fleet named Sangmeshwari got ready to face the British army. This was the miracle of Reverse Engineering through which imported technology is improved on to make the use of it according to the local condition; Japan is said to be far ahead in this mode of technology.
The fleet thus built by the Shivaji’s men proved far better than the one to be built through foreign technique. Western border of India thus got to be well defended. So much so that in the battle with British, Maratha emerged victorious.
