Publications, Newspaper Cuttings, Photographs and Correspondence about Persia and the Persian Gulf [‎140r] (280/879)

Bennett 7
that when in 1820 England made a general
treaty with the chiefs of the maritime tribes for
the suppression of piracy it was not her own
protection alone that she sought for. In
forcing the tribes to abandon piracy “ against
any nation whatever,” she was solicitous for the
common good, and was serving other nations
as well as herself. And if this Were a detailed
history of the dealings of England, through
her servants in India, with the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. ,
much more would need to be said of the
efforts and sacrifices which this nation has
made to bring about that Pax Britannica
in those waters which other nations —and
too many Englishmen — regard as a spon
taneous and easy evolution of the centuries;
There is time here to tell of one stirring
episode; which has been chosen because it
is characteristic not only of the peril which
Englishmen have faced in the Gulf, but of the
spirit in which they have confronted it. I
take it from Lieutenant Low’s account of the
punishment which was inflicted by the East
India Company’s sloop Elphinstone, Captain
Sawyer, upon a squadron of seven war vessels
with which the chief of the Beni Yas ventured
to challenge the supremacy of the British flag
in the Gulf: —
“ As the evening drew near, Lieutenant Low says :
Captain Sawyer saw he had a desperate game to
play, for if once they could only grasp his vessel they
would pour hundreds of men upon his decks, and
eighty British seamen, with about thirty or forty
natives and marines, could not hope long to maintain
so unequal a conflict. ‘Now,’ said he to his men,
4 the first shot here is half the battle; put a third
round into the quarter deck gun, and don’t fire till I
give the word of command.’ He then steered, with
a light breeze, for the enemy, and perceiving two
Of the largest vessels sufficiently apart to pass through,
he said to the master, ‘ steer straight between them.’
When within a few yards the Arabs leaped upon
the bulwarks, two men with grappling irons, and the
remainder with sword and spear. A young officer
covered one of the men with the grappling irons,
and another marksman took the second, and both fell
dead with bullets through their hearts. In return?
came a shower of spears, and then one heard
the clear calm voice of the captain ' steady, ready,
fire.’ From eighteen 32-pounders there poured
a storm of shot, scattering death and destruction
around, and making the little ship quiver from stem
to stem. The two vessels were riddled like sieves,
and those of the Arabs not killed or wounded sought
death by leaping overboard. For a passing second
there was a dead silence, the concussion of the salvo
having produced a calm. Then was heard a storm of
shouts and groans from the Arabs, mingling with the
exulting cheers of the British seamen, and above the
din rose the word of command from the captain, 'first
division of boarders away 1 ’ In a moment the men
left their quarters, prepared to cope with some hun-
dreds of desperadoes whom they had seen swarming
on the decks and bulwarks of the five remaining
vessels. But the scene was now changed. The Arab
crew, appalled by the dreadful lesson thus read to
them, rapidly got out their sweeps, and pulled for
their lives. Boats were lowered, and the sheik's
baggalah Large trading vessel. , the largest of the squadron, was boarded,
when it was found that one of the round shot had
broken to pieces the caldron of boiling oil, specially
prepared for the heads of the Christians, and scattered
the contents around. In the cabin were discovered,
paralysed with fear, and prostrate on the deck, a
young Hindu lady and her father, whom the pirates
had taken from a vessel the day before.
Relations with THE Tribes.
It would be going beyond the scope of this'
paper to follow in detail the dealings of the
East India Company and its successors with the
tribes of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. and the Oman coast
The intimacy of these relations is, however, a
matter of practical present day interest/
and should always be borne in mind in
the presence of suggestions that England
should step aside for the convenience of
any new comer who may desire to further
his own policy by taking up a predominating
position on the Gulf. Let us take Bahrein,
for example, the seat of the pearl fishing.
The chiefs of that island have been under
British influence for nearly a century. They
joined in the general treaty which was signed
in 1820, after the third of the important
expeditions in which the East India Company
discharged its obligations in respect of the
policing of the Gulf. Egypt in 1837, Persia in
1843, and the Turkish Government on various
occasions subsequently, have in vain endea
voured to undermine the independence of the
Bahrein chiefs. The Porte has invariably
been told, as our answer to such overtures,
that the British Government had treaty relations
with Bahrein as an independent State, and
that we could not acknowledge any arrange
ment which would bring it under Turkish
sovereignty or protection. Some of our
neighbours are inclined to impute selfishness
to England when they find her thus marking
off the outlying regions of the earth for her
Special care. The answer to any such sug
gestion as this will be found, not in any mere
verbal justification of her policy, but in that
policy itself. Let us take, for example, this
leaf from the records of British connection
with this same chiefdom of Bahrein. In
1861 the Bahrein chief threatened the tran
quillity of the Pirate Coast by blockading
certain Wahabi ports. The Indian Govern-
ment, as policemen of the Gulf, promptly came
down upon him and made him enter into a
treaty, having for its object ′the advance
ment of trade, and the security of all classes of
people navigating or residing upon the coast,"
and specifically binding him to abstain from war,
piracy, and slave importation. And when this
instrument failed, seven years later, to prevent
Mahomed bin Khalifa from again launching
upon his career of piracy, the policeman’s
baton had to be brought into requisition. A
British naval force, with the Resident of Bushire
as political officer, goes to Bahrein, seizes the
truculent chief’s war vessels, and deposes him
in favour of his brother. This must stand as a
typical instance of the service that England
rendered to humanity by her measures for
.preserving the peace of the Gulf during the
last century, a service which found formal
embodiment in the Maritime Truce at first
imposed upon the warring chiefs on the coast
in 1836, renewed from time to time, and made
perpetual in 1853. The old law of retaliation
for aggression, which belongs to the code of the
natural man, was hereby superseded, and these
wild Arabs of the Gulf pledged themselves to
refrain from righting their own wrongs, appeal
ing instead to the Resident at Bushire, or to
the Commodore of the Indian N avy at Bassadore,
for it was solemnly recited in this beneficent