How the Royal Navy checked the East India Company at sea

Royal Navy officers on half pay often commanded armed East India Company shipping. During a dispute, the Navy could post those officers back to naval ships and leave the Company without its experienced command cadre. That personnel leverage mattered because the Company still depended on naval protection for profitable trade, even when it resisted naval authority over dockyards or early anti-slavery enforcement. The Navy could therefore coerce a powerful chartered company without fighting it. In the anti-slavery example, the threat of criminal prosecution on returning to Britain is recalled as another reason to stop resisting enforcement.