Licences for ships

The East India Company had a measure control over the Country ships; in order to be registered at the Port of Bombay, ships had to hold the Company’s licence. It must be in the owner’s name and not his agent’s or, say, the captain of the ship unless he was the owner. ¹ When vessels were registered it indicates that they were in the business of being tendered to Government or else were owned by a partnership, which would pay the proceeds of their venture into the Canton Treasury. What proportion of ships trading on the west coast were actually registered is impossible to say. There are examples that come to light of vessels owned by Bombay inhabitants but which are not registered. For instance in 1825 the Bombay Gazette noticed the arrival from Trinco, having touched at Cochin, of the unregistered Orlando, (Capt. Thomas Crawford, owned by the son of the Master Shipwright). She disappeared, perhaps to Daman, as mysteriously as she had arrived.