it was the very success of Bombay’s shipyards that led to their undoing. The English shipping industry complained that “the families of all the shipwrights in England are certain to be reduced to starvation” unless India-built ships were barred from accessing British ports. In 1815, the British Parliament passed a law, the Registry Act, that placed tight restrictions on Indian ships and sailors (“lascars”). It has been said of this law that it was “more devastating to the economy of Indian shipping than all the competitive technological innovations of the last 300 years put together.”
