Hi Jim,
here is some more info on Indian seafaring. Quotes from a PDF (address below, page 16 to 44)
".......India's maritime history can be broadly divided into five distinct periods— the Hindu period extending from the hoary past to the middle of the 15th century A.D., the Portuguese period from the closing years of the 15th century to the end of the 16th century; two British periods—from 1612 to 1830 and from 1830 to 1947; and the Indian period which commenced on August 15, 1947. The British period is divided into two parts because in 1830, the East India Company's Navy in India underwent two major changes; it was constituted as a combatant service and given the name Indian Navy...
.... Late Professor Buhler,the well-known German orientalist, expressed the view that "there are passages in ancient Indian works which prove the early existence of navigation of the Indian Ocean and the somewhat later occur rences of trading voyages undertaken by Hindu merchants to the shores of the Persian Gulf and its rivers."......
This fact is further borne out by available works in the languages of the littoral states of the region; such as Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Konkani, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya and Bengali; the writings of foreign travellers and historians—Chinese, Arabic and Persian—which contain observations on Indian subjects; the evidence available from archaeology—epigraphic, monumental and numismatic; and Indian and foreign art and foreign literature—English, Greek, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic,Malay, Thai, Burmese and Sinhalese.
Some of the little-known facts about the extent of commercial and cultural influence of India and sea-borne trade using ships built in India during the Hindu period (pre-Christian era to the middle of the 15th Century A.D.) are: :¦ —The Matsya Yantra5 (the fish machine), an iron fish floating on oil Q i t i g to the north serving as a primitive compass used by Indian sea- farers for several millennia (as per Hindu mythology, Matsya was the first incarnation of LordVishnu).
During the Hindu period, considerable maritime activity took place in the waters around India. As described by Megasthenes, the royal shipyards of the Mauryas built seagoing ships of various classes.
……..on September 5, 1612. This date is regarded by the British as the foundation day of the Royal Indian Navy, as the first arrival of their warships in India and the formation of the Indian Marine took place on this day.
The nucleus of the Indian Marine consisted at that time mainly of some warships built in
England and a larger number of vessels built in India. The Ghurabs were heavy beamy vessels
(about 300 tons) of shallow draft and were armed with six 9 to 12-pouiider guns while the
Galivats were smaller craft (about 70 tons) mounting half-a-dozen 2 to 4-pounders. The crews of these craft consisted mainly of Hindu fishermen from the Konkan Coast.
http://indiannavy.nic.in/under2ensigns.pdf
It seems that naval activity, warfare and trade has been rife in the Indian Ocean for hundreds of years ....way back to 200BC and beyond.
The Maratha Fleet (Hindu state) commanded by Kanhoji Angre had great sucess in battle. Other fleets were employed by the Moghuls and other Indian states.
David
This was another interesting thought....not relating to the sword though..
Portuguese supremacy over the waters around India was thus established
and reached its zenith during the days of Albuquerque.
But in 1580, when Portugal joined hands with Spain and the Spanish Armada suffered a crushing defeat, it changed the course of events around the globe, one of its off shoots being the decline of Portuguese supremacy in the Indian region. It is a moot point that if the Spanish Armada had triumphed, the United States could in all probability have become a Latin American country and India a Portuguese dominion! '