On July 25, 2017, INS Sudarshini, a 3 Masted Sail Training Barque of Indian Navy set sail from Boston harbour, with her bow pointed towards Ponta Delgada in the Azores, which is her intended destination. After a month in the waters of the United States, her arrival comes to an end. This is more than just a standard port call, however, thanks to the timing, the symbolism and the money quietly coming and going.

The figures in the book say it all. It took Sudarshini a little more than five and a half months and thousands of nautical miles to arrive at the U.S. East Coast in time for the country's 250th birthday celebration – a fleet of over sixty tall ships from more than twenty nations were scheduled to arrive for Sail250 and the International Naval Review 250. As she travelled, she stopped at Norfolk, Baltimore, New York and Boston, passing through naval facilities, shipping terminals and some of the busiest commercial shipping channels on the Atlantic seaboard. At Boston she passed Castle Island and the Seaport District under a full Tricolour before she tied up at Boston Fish Pier before crowds of consuls, diaspora and curious dockside people lined the portage to walk her decks. She was the sole naval tall ship from Asia and the only one from the broader Indian Ocean area to participate, Indian officials emphasized. That's not coincidental in terms of scheduling. It is a conscious attempt to put India next to Washington in the Indo-Pacific, and in front of the biggest patriotic gathering in the U.S. in a decade, while Washington is realigning its regional partners.

The crew of Commander Ravikanth Nandoori was not just going on a picturesque sails. The ship also participated in SAIL250 Maryland and the accompanying air show in Baltimore, and the cadets walked the streets of Boston in a City Parade, which the Navy's social media were proud to showcase. While all that pomp, the Indian Embassy in Washington was also working away at strategic convergence between the Indian and US armies at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Washington, a testament to the fact that a wooden-hulled training ship and hard-nosed defence conversation can ride the same wave.

The background is important because of the development of the defence and trade relationship between the two countries in a relatively short time. The bilateral defence trade is growing at around $21 billion, with core deals including an industrial security arrangement, COMCASA (Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement), LEMOA (Logistics Support Agreement) and BECA (Basic Exchange and Mobility Agreement) paving the way for Indian and American forces to share logistics, secure communications and geospatial data with the seamless ease that would have been unimaginable even 15 years ago. The two nations signed a ten-year Framework for a Major Defence Partnership in late 2025, which the Pentagon itself called the most comprehensive bilateral defence document that either has ever produced, ranging from co-production of jet engines to drones, armoured vehicles and ship repair. In the commercial sphere, which is the main one, the US and India have agreed an interim trade pact in February this year in which US tariffs on Indian products have been reduced from a punishing 50 percent to 18 percent, while India has offered to buy about $500 billion worth of products from the United States over five years, ranging from energy, aircraft, semiconductors to agriculture, and the two countries are now openly discussing the possibility of bilateral trade reaching $500 billion by 2030. It's not a cheque that a training ship crew made up of naval cadets signs. It navigates into harbours however, where those numbers are being negotiated and it sails with a flag that just so happens to look a great deal more consequential than a decade ago.

A bigger debate is taking place in strategic minds in Washington to Brussels, whether India has moved from being a prudent regional balancer to a more networked actor more visible and more countable with the established naval powers of the world. These are each small data points that paint a picture of an Indian Ocean Region seat at events centered around America's founding narrative, a navy built to be a diplomatic instrument and not just a defensive force. But critics will point out that soft-power theatre is less expensive than hard commitments and that previous goodwill port calls haven't automatically led to more arms co-production and fewer trade tensions. That's a sensible precaution. Tall ship diplomacy does not do the tariff schedule re-writing or the fast-track engine transfer piece of the puzzle.

What it does is ensure India's presence at the right moment when Washington is reshaping its Indo-Pacific strategy, while simultaneously actively seeking partners to court and secure on chips, critical minerals and military hardware. After visiting the Azores, Sudarshini is next on an even longer voyage back across an ocean that has been one of the more closely monitored in modern geo-politics. She will come home with cadets a bit wiser and a log to show for nautical miles. It remains to be seen if the trip will be anything more than good will on both sides, but it's a question that the trade negotiators, not the sailors, will determine.The above chart depicts the tariff change that shapes the economic context of this story: The tariff rate for the US on Indian goods was reduced from 50 percent to 18 percent in the interim trade deal from the US and India signed in February 2026, and India has committed to purchasing approximately $500 billion in American goods over a five-year span, making it easier to understand why U.S. port calls are being more closely monitored than they would have been a few years ago.