The Maratha Navy refers to the Maratha Empire's naval arm, which operated in India from about the middle of the 17th century to the mid-18th century. The Maratha king, Shivaji Maharaj, was the father of the Maratha Empire Navy.
The naval arm was largely neglected by Muslim rulers. The Portuguese arrived in India and began to monopolise and control trade on the continent's western coast. Chhatrapati Shivaji realised the worth of a strong navy.
The task of building various naval bases was taken up by Shivaji Maharaj. Around 20 warships were part of the Maratha Navy. In the Maratha military tradition, recruiting mercenaries was relatively common and the Navy was no exception to this rule.
As fleet commander, Portuguese naval officer Rui Leitão Viegas was hired, partly because the Maratha wanted to gain insight into Portuguese naval technologies and capabilities.
The Maratha Navy's first test of strength came in 1679, although during Shivaji 's attack on Surat in 1664, the British had a taste of it. Shivaji annexed the island of Khanderi, located 11 miles from the entrance to Mumbai, in 1679. Several sea-borne attacks on the island were carried out by the Anglo-Siddi combination, but the Marathas could not be dislodged from there. The British, the Portuguese, and the Mughals were made to realise that not only was Shivaji strong on land, but his strength was shown equally at sea.
In order to check the alliance between Janjira's Siddis and the English East India Company, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj had begun to build the naval forts of Khanderi and Colaba near Mumbai.
At the time of the death of Shivaji Maharaj in April 1680, the construction of these forts was incomplete. Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj succeeded him and the remaining work on these forts was finished immediately.
In several small battles along the Konkan coastline in 1682, the Marathas defeated the Portuguese.
In 1683 With a force of 1,00,000 soldiers, thousands of camels, elephants and horses, Aurangzeb's had sent his son Muazzam to save the Portuguese from Sambhaji Maharaj's vicious assault on Goa.
He ordered him to descend into Goa through the Ramdara Ghat to assist the Portuguese. The primary goal of Muazzam was to assault the southern Maratha territories in Konkan. Aurangzeb ordered his navy in Surat to supply the enormous force of Muazzam in Goa.
These supply ships were raided by the Maratha navy and were able to seize a significant portion of those supplies. This created an immense food shortage for the forces of Muazzam. Consequently, due to starvation, sickness and relentless guerrilla attacks by the Maratha army, Muazzam 's army had to withdraw.
Sambhaji Maharaj wanted the Maratha Navy to be modernised. So Arab Naval Commander Jange Khan was invited to Konkan by Sambhaji Maharaj to train the Maratha navy in rapid shipbuilding and artillery use. The Maratha Navy was trained by Jange Khan in various aspects of shipbuilding and artillery use.
The Maratha Navy, as such, managed to survive after the death of Admiral Sidhoji Gujar in 1698, largely because of the untiring efforts of the legendary Admiral Kanhoji Angre.
The Marathas built a naval base at Vijayadurg and dockyard facilities under the command of Kanhoji to construct warships, mount guns, and prepare them for the sea.
By the beginning of the 18th century, from Savantwadi to Mumbai, Kanhoji Angre was in control of the whole coast. There was hardly a creek, a bay, a harbour, or an estuary where fortifications such as a fortress or citadel with navigational facilities had not been built. Any ship travelling through Maratha territorial waters was to pay a levy called Chouth, thus demonstrating the dominance of Angre in those regions.
Unlike Kanhoji Angre, Admiral Tulaji Angre, his successor, defied the authority of Nanasaheb Peshwa, the then ruling Peshwa, the de facto chief of the Maratha Empire. The British took advantage of the opportunity and burned much of the fleet in Tulaji. The Peshwas were waging a war with Tulaji. Under the command of the Dhulaps, but without success, the Peshwas attempted to revive the navy. Thus, by the start of the First Anglo-Maratha War, the Maratha Navy was never able to achieve its former glories and was in a crippled state. The Maratha Navy was commanded first by Rudraji Dhulap and later by Anandrao Dhulap in the 1760s and 1780s.
The Maratha Navy engaged in offensive operations against enemy ships in the latter half of the eighteenth century, as and when the Marathas were at war with the English or Haider Ali of Mysore. The Angre family became the British colonial family in 1818, after the end of the third and final Anglo-Maratha War, and in 1840, the tiny Angre state was eventually annexed to British India.