Indian High Sea

These are the open waters of the Bay of Bengal off the Andhra coast, between the mouth of the Krishna and the harbour roads of Visakhapatnam. Along this shore ships lay at anchor in open roadsteads and were loaded from the beach by local masula boats. Machilipatnam, at the Krishna mouth, was the sea port of Golconda and sent out the cloth woven in the Godavari delta, a trade that made the kingdom rich in the 1620s and 1630s. French merchants took a factory at Masulipatnam in 1669, and the Dutch and English traded along the same coast.