As if to deny the victories of the Seven Years’ War, the British Admiralty recalled back to Britain all the Royal Navy ships in the Indian Ocean when the war was over. This did not happen all at once, but the big ships were recalled by 1764, leaving two frigates and one sloop in 1765; only one frigate was left the following year, and this was withdrawn in 1767. This was part of an extreme programme of cost reduction, aimed at reducing the National Debt, but it reduced the Royal Navy to little more than its frigates and smaller ships.

The maritime wing of the Company was thus once more only the Bombay Marine, without any support from larger ships of the Royal Navy. Its capture of Surat, and its participation in the events of the recent war had shown that the Marine was capable of activity on a small scale by itself, but its ships were still small and were not numerous. It was, in fact, capable of little more than local campaigns against coastal towns along the Indian west coast, unless it was supported by bigger ships. These might be forthcoming from the great trading ships, but not always. It was not long before the absence of the Royal Navy was felt, and requests for support were dispatched to London.

The Marine would rarely act aggressively. Instead it reacted to what was seen as a threat – its purpose, after all, was the defence of Bombay and the trading ships, and no more, though this did include overseeing the Company's establishments overseas. In other words, the driving forces of Indian history which were the greater events in the interior were not its, or Bombay’s, direct concern. Those conflicts were beginning to sort out the new political condition of the country after the Mughal Empire's disintegration; how far the Company should become involved was a question. For the Bombay Council this meant watching the actions of the Peshwa of the Marathas, based in the hills above Bombay at Pune, and the rise of the kingdom of Mysore. Both of these were neighbours to the Bombay Presidency's coastal factories and posts.