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'