The captain of the _Viper_ was ashore at the time in the agent’s house, but as the order was produced to the officer on board the powder and shot were delivered and the dhows subsequently made sail. At this moment the crew of the _Viper_ were below at breakfast, when suddenly they were alarmed by a cannonade from two of the dhows directed at the _Viper_. The Joassamees attempted to board, but the English officers leaping on deck sent the crew to quarters, cut the _Viper’s_ cable and got sail upon her so that she might have the advantage of manœuvring. A regular engagement now followed between the _Viper_ and four dhows, all being armed with guns and full of men. The commanding officer of the _Viper_ was wounded, but after tying round a handkerchief still kept the deck, till he fell with a ball entering his forehead. The command then devolved on a midshipman, who continued the fight with great bravery, and the result was that the dhows were beaten off and chased out to sea.
Reverting now to the Company’s purely mercantile ships it is well to see how they were armed to withstand the attacks of their enemies. On another page the reader will find the lines of one of the finest East Indiamen of the early nineteenth century. This was one of the Company’s ships which carried freight and passengers between England and India and was not one of their cruisers belonging to the Bombay Marine. We may take this vessel as typical of the biggest and most formidable type of their ships at the time of which we are speaking. She measured 165 feet 6½ inches long. Her length of keel (measured for tonnage) was 134 feet. Her extreme breadth was 42 feet, and the depth of her hold 17 feet, her burthen working out at 1257 tons. Such a ship was armed with twenty-six 18-pounders on her middle deck and ten 18-pounders on her upper deck, with two more guns in the after ports as stern-chasers. One of the greatest authorities on shipbuilding and naval architecture of that time, who himself was a Fellow of the Royal Society, went so far as to state that the biggest East Indiamen were not safe owing to their bad design below water, adding that whenever these vessels got ashore in bad weather they usually broke their floors and then filled with water—so weakly constructed were they below.