Indian teak's quality and shipbuilding cost

Would Indian teak have been a good substitute for building large sailing warships?

Yes; it was excellent timber, but its less-industrialized harvesting and processing made it expensive.

Indian teak was excellent timber for first rates and other large sailing warships. The obstacle to wider substitution was its price. British and European timber harvesting and processing had become partly industrialized. Indian production still relied on manual work, which raised the cost of supplying otherwise desirable shipbuilding timber.