Four
ships were equipped and sent out, and before long it became known that
two vessels from Surat and Diu had been plundered by Courten's ships, and
their crews tortured. Again the Company's servants at Surat were seized
and thrown into prison, where they were kept for two months, being only
released on payment of Rs.1,70,000, and on solemnly swearing to respect
Mogul ships.
The Civil War brought these courtly piracies to an end, and the decay of
the Spanish power drew the more turbulent spirits of Europe and America
to the Spanish main, so that for a time there was a diminution of
European piracy in Indian waters. As buccaneering became more dangerous,
or less lucrative, adventurers of all nations again appeared in Eastern
waters, and the old trouble reappeared in an aggravated form. The Indian
Red Sea fleet offered an especially tempting booty to the rovers. Lobo, a
Jesuit priest, writing in the seventeenth century, tells us that so vast
was the commerce of Jeddah, and so great the value of the ships trading
to that place, that when, in India, it was wished to describe a thing of
inestimable price, it was customary to say, 'It is of more value than a
Jeddah ship.
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