Thames. Ship-builders in the Port of London took the
lead in raising the cry of alarm. They declared that
their business was in danger and that the families
of all the shipwrights in England were certain to be
reduced to starvation."
As a result, the British Parliament started a war
on Indian shipping and enacted in 1814 that no ship,
even British, could enter London which had not
aboard, three-fourths of its crew of British mariners.
"Thus." says Radha Kamal Mukerjee, "has passed
out one of the great national industries of India after
a long and brilliant history, covering a period of more
than twenty centuries. It was undoubtedly one of
the truimphs of Indian civilisation, the chief means
by which that civilisation asserted itself and influenc-
ed other alien civilisations. There can hardly be con-
ceived a more serious obstacle in the path of her in-
dustrial development than this almost complete ex-
tinction of her shipping and ship-building.'*
THE "DIVINE" DISPENSATION
And now I may turn to the period, to use the
words of our leaders of the last century, of the Divine
dispensation which sent Britain to India. Sir Herbert
Fitzherbert, Flag Officer, the Indian Navy, said in
1940: "At the present moment no ship building indus-
try exists although, as everyone knows, in the past
India's ship-building industry was world-famous. Such
an industry to be successful needs courage, enterprise,
forethought. That all these are present in India is a
fact that cannot be denied,"
, India has now the smallest mercantile marine.
VThile Britain's foreign trade is about 5 times that of
India, Britain's tonnage is 140 times as large. As the
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