"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٥‎٨] (١٧٨٢/٣٠١)

Formation of
the Secret
and Political
Department
of the Bom
bay Govern*
ment, 1785.
Services ren
dered hy the
Royal Navy
in the Persian
Gulf.
158
receipts from duties were divided into " customs " and " consulage,"
of which the former ordinarily amounted to 3 per cent, ad valorem
and went into the public treasury, while the latter was at the rate of 2
per cent, and was equally divided between the Governor of Bombay
and the * Agent or Resident at the port of collection. About 1773-75,
however, the total of the duties taken by the Company at Basrah seems
to have been 6 and not 5 per cent.; and from 1784? onwards half of the
consulage seems to have been carried to the credit of the Company
themselves, instead of to that of their ofRoers.
On the 11th of January 1785 the Government of Bombay resolved
to separate the secret and political part of their work from the rest; and a
Secret and Political Department, distinct from the Public Department,
was on that day established, with Mr. James Beck as its first Secretary.
Of the signatures appended to the resolution constituting it, one was
that of the Hon'ble Mr. R. H. Boddam, Resident and Governor, proba*
bly the same whof visited Masqat in 1769, and another that of Brigadier-
General Nilson, doubtless the officer who commanded the land troops in
the British attack on Kharag in 1768. All subordinates, including those
in the Persian Gulf, were immediately informed of the new arrange
ment.
The occasional employment of the Royal Navy in the Persian Gulf,
in support of the East India Company's marine, seems to have begun
during this period. The action of the Shaikh of Bushehr in 1770, when
he invited the Company to re-establish the Residency withdrawn from
his port in the previous year, was attributed by the Agent and Council
at Basrah to " his apprehensions on hearing- of the arrival of one of His
Majesty's ships in the Gulph "; and in 1771, on the Agent and Council
clamouring for a strong expedition to be sent to the Gulf to chastise
Karim Khan and suppress piracy, the Court of Directors in London
passed the following remarkable, because novel, order: " If all efforts
<< to put an end to the piratical views of the Persians and other powers in
"the Gulph, and to procure reparation of injuries, without having recourse
" to arms, shall prove ineffectual, you are to represent the same to the
" Presidency, that they may lay it before the Commanding Officer of His
" Majesty's ^hips in the East Indies and endeavour to obtain such
" protection and assistance in the circumstances as the case shall require .
*■ During the time that Bushehr was a Residency under the Basrah Agewy>
however, half of the local ghare went to the Resident at Bushehr and half to the Agent
at Basrah.
| See chapter on the history of the 'Oman Sultanate.