File 619/1907 Pt 8 'Arms traffic:- Persian Gulf - Seizure of French dhows "Musafa" and "Fath-el-Khair".' [‎63r] (26/219)

Sir,
India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. ,
June 1911.
I am directed by the Secretary of State for India to acknowledge
the receipt of your letter dated the 23rd May 1911, No. 18,190,
forwarding copy of a Note from the French Ambassador as to the
boarding of the French dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. Musaffa by a British naval officer in the
Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. .
1 he Earl of Crewe agrees that, notwithstanding the suspicious
behaviour of the dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. , the British officer must be held to have exceeded
his rights in boarding a vessel flying the French flag. But he feels it
necessary to add that every allowance should be made for the difficult
position in which Mr. Midshipman An experienced sailor, but not a commissioned officer. Morgan was placed, and he trusts
that the French Government will recognise that inevitable accidents
need not be magnified on the one band, nor too readily repudiated
on the other. The insuperable reasons which compel His Majesty’s
Government to suppress the illicit traffic in arms in the Persian
Gulf are well known, and it is their earnest desire to arrive at a
friendly settlement with France which will put a stop to an evil that
is contrary to the interests of all civilised Powers. If occasionally the
officers on the spot have reasonable doubts as to the genuine character
of claims to French protection, and seek to establish the true facts by
inquiry, it is not too much to ask a friendly Power to overlook pre
cautions which inflict no real injury, and are not intended to challenge
any legitimate rights of the French flag.
Lord Crewe would leave it to Sir E. Grey to decide whether the
present incident might not usefully be made the occasion of offering
some further remarks to the French Government on the general subject
in connection with the memorandum presented to M. Pichon on the
1st April 1910. It might be pointed out that, although there is no
prohibition on the import or export of arms in Oman, their importation
in Persia and elsewhere on the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. littoral is strictly prohibited
by the authorities concerned; and that incidents such as that of the
Musaffa, though its immediate cause may have been an excess of zeal
on the part of a subordinate officer, must always be liable to occur so
long as the illicit traffic in arms continues to be carried on from Muscat.
The French Government are aware of the circumstances in which His
Majesty’s Government, acting in concert with the Persian Government,
and with the sheikhs of the Arabian coast, were compelled to take active
measures for the suppression of the arms traffic in the Gulf. The
continuance of these measures has been forced upon them, much against
their will, by the failure of the French Government to consider arrange
ments on a basis that could be entertained by His Majesty’s Government
with a view to closing Muscat to the free importation of arms.
The Under Secretary of State,
Foreign Office.