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was probably in the middle of the town), during the latter half of the eighteenth century.

At this distance of time, in the comparative comfort lent by ice and electric fans, we can wonder what Bushire was like to live in then. "A laboratory of malaria and disease,” so a Residency surgeon describes it, writing the best part of a century ago, “the almost unapproachable place emits a deadly sickening stench along with eddying bubbles of noisome gas; and the mid-day breeze coming from the West carries the noxious elements through and over the town.” . . "There is a day or two about the 23rd August," he continues, "when the feeling of depression is so intense that the entire population refuses to move." And much more to the same effect. . . . We can sympathise, then, with Mr. Beaumont who, writing to the Presidency of Bombay in 1780, reports, "with concern," that the heavy rains that winter had "destroyed a fourth part of this rotten factory,” and that the rest was "in danger of falling from every shower." Eighteen years after, Nicholas Smith, of whom we shall hear later, writing with even greater concern-for he had just survived two revolutions in Bushire in the course of five months-begs for "a reinforcement of sepoys as absolutely necessary to defend this old ruin from the attempts its appearance seems to invite with impunity to the beastly rabble which have of late inhabited this place." And he pointed out, polite but indignant, that “as no fundamental repairs have since been made [that is, since Mr. Beaumont's report of 1780] you may judge its present state cannot be either very convenient or respectable.”

The insecurity of this old building was typical of the insecurity of everything else in the Gulf during these years. It is almost impossible to keep track of the upheavals which occurred at Bushire alone between 1763 and 1800. The Residency was withdrawn in 1769; re-opened in 1775. Bushire was sacked and looted in 1779 by Baqir Khan of Tangistan, in the Bushire hinterland; one revolution broke out in 1798; another only five months later. Meanwhile every day and in every way our position in the Gulf was becoming more involved. Mir Mohanna of Bandar Rig, the Arab pirate, whose capture of Kharag Island from the Dutch in 1767 has already been referred to, was a thorn in the flesh of Karim Khan; so much so that in 1764 Karim Khan approached the British Resident in Bushire with a request

"to assist him with a vessel or two to prevent the rebel from escaping by the sea." He undertook to pay Rs. 40,000 a year for two "cruizers," or Rs. 20,000 for one. He had even, it was said, offered to cede to the company the town of Bandar Rig— after Mir Mohanna's defeat. The authorities in Bombay were not prepared to go so far as "to station a vessel or two continually in the Gulf" to support Karim Khan. However, "if the resident thought it any time material to our honourable masters' interests to assist him with one occasionally they had no objection to his doing so provided it did not interfere with any service the company might have" for such vessels. At Mr. Jervis' request the Tartar, which was then at Basra, was sent to Bushire to help Karim Khan. The danger of such interference in local politics was foreseen at the time by the council in Basra, who, it is quite clear, sent the Tartar to Bushire against their better judgment. "She was never intended and is in no proper state for such service," they write to Mr. Jervis; and they prophesied that whatever part the vessel might be made to play, nothing but discredit and harm would come of it.

Very sensible; yet, why, knowing the risks, did they deliberately court them? And, still more strange, why did they do the very same thing two months later by permitting the company's ship Fanny to join with the Turks in an expedition against the Ka'ab, an Arab tribe near Mohammerah, which had caused some trouble by their depredations? The immediate sequel of this encounter was that in July the Ka'ab retaliated by seizing the Sally and Fort William as they were coming up the river to Basra from Bushire. The agent and council at Basra were now to realize only too well the wisdom of the sermon they had preached to Mr. Jervis. From that incautious adventure of the Fanny sprang a whole series of enterprises, each more rash and more fatal than the other. First came the inevitable punitive expedition sent from Bombay in 1766, “ as well for the credit of the honourable company as to prevent our trade to the Gulf being molested in future, to reduce him (the Ka'ab Shaikh) to obedience and obtain satisfaction for the above captures." A fleet of six vessels with 50 European infantry, 15 artillery men, 150 sepoys and 25 lascars sailed for Basra to co-operate with the Turks in suppressing the Ka'ab. The result of this expedition was lamentable. For a long time the Turks would not move.

Our fleet hung on in Basra. When at last the attack was made, it failed; the Ka'abs burnt the Sally and Fort William ; the British forces lost heavily; the Turks broke up their camp and retired. To complete everyone's discomfiture, Karim Khan suddenly interfered and claimed the Ka'ab as his subjects, against whom neither the Turks nor anyone else had any business to wage war. It was obvious, therefore, that as the council at Basra reported to the directors in London-there could be no hope of reducing the Ka'ab without Karim Khan's help. The president and council in Bombay had also realized this, and deputed an agent to visit Karim Khan at Shiraz and "induce him to join us against the Ka'ab." So essential was it that the Ka'ab should be reduced that Bombay agreed," though with very great reluctance," that if Karim Khan demanded as his price our cooperation with him against Mir Mohanna, that price must be paid. And, of course, that is precisely what Karim Khan did demand.

The negotiations which followed are remarkable in that everyone seems to have been at cross-purposes. Bombay wanted peace with Karim Khan at any price; Basra was perfectly prepared for war; indeed, ordered the factor at Bushire to seize Karim Khan's ships while negotiations were in progress; the envoy himself (Skipp) quarrelled with the Vakil. However, in the end, an arrangement was concluded. The British were to attack and capture Kharag Island" with all their ships"; Mir Mohanna was to be handed over to Karim Khan, alive if possible, but "if he should be killed in the war, his head or some sign of him.” In return, Karim Khan would give us 15,000 tomans after the capture of the island, and make good the losses caused by the Ka'ab, his subjects, who, the Vakil admitted, had certainly "got possession of a considerable quantity of goods, the property of persons belonging to the English company." The attack on

Kharag took place on May 21, 1768. It was a dismal failureeven more humiliating to our prestige than the Ka'ab defeat. And our ships left the island before Karim Khan's forces had

come up.

But we have not finished the dismal catalogue of our mistakes. Some time back a British ship (the Islamabad-Captain Sutherland) had been driven ashore by stormy weather at a place called Mogoo, on the Persian coast," that noble bay," as an old

admiralty report describes it. The Arab lascars had treacherously murdered Captain Sutherland and the officers, and plundered the ship. The lascars, landing on the island of Qais with their loot, were seized and plundered by the Shaikh of the island; who, in his turn, was attacked later on and robbed of the treasure, which consisted of many pearls, by Shaikh Abdullah of Ormuz. All this happened in 1765. In October, 1767, the agent and council of Basra had a consultation on the subject. Time was heavy on their hands, "the operations against the Ka'ab being at a standstill," and now was a favourable time for getting restitution.

Though Shaikh Abdullah was neither the murderer of Captain Sutherland and his officers, nor the person who was immediately concerned in the plunder of the Islamabad, still as by all accounts he is in possession of that ship's treasures knowing them to be stolen and has not been sufficiently honourable to return them to us, justice most assuredly demands that restitution. . . . Moreover his fort is all in pieces and not one of his gun carriages but what is useless: his gallivats are all in very bad order; our ships could go within hail of the Fort, and if they were to go, the Fort could not hold out two hours.

Finally, no trouble was to be anticipated from Karim Khan, the more so as that gentleman was to get half the plunder recovered. So light-heartedly did the council at Basra embark on their little war with the Shaikh of Ormuz-to kill time while Skipp was evolving a treaty up at Shiraz.

If the expedition against the Ka'ab was a failure, that against Ormuz was a disaster. The Defiance was blown up near the island of Kishm, with the loss of eleven officers. The enemy's vessels in large numbers, prevented any help being given by the other ships of the squadron, and the survivors " thought it more prudent to make the best of our way to Gombroon road."

What the poor directors, sitting in their board-room in London and dreaming about dividends, thought of all this muddle and failure, can easily be imagined. Bombay and London did not see eye to eye with regard to policy in the Gulf-especially in the matter of the treatment of Karim Khan-but they both agreed whole-heartedly in lamenting" the precarious and unsettled state of affairs in the Gulph of Persia." The court of directors wrote bitterly to the agent and council at Basra in 1768: "We observe with great concern that the forces sent before had not been able to effect one single object for their interest or credit; on the contrary . . . will be attended with a considerable expense to us

and embroil their affairs in every part of the Gulph." They criticize in detail each one of the unfortunate undertakings we have narrated, and wax particularly disagreeable on the subject of the Ormuz expedition: "a most imprudent and indiscreet action"; as to which they observe, " if you had met to consider a mode to embroil our affairs it is very doubtful if you could have done it so completely as by the measure you have now taken.” They conclude in plain English: "Upon the whole, from the best judgment we can form, we totally disapprove of your system of politicks."

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Indeed, for a purely commercial company, as it was then, whose servants, whether styled as "agents" or residents," had no political functions whatever, these adventures were somewhat surprising. In a letter written from Bombay in 1769, the President and Governor in Council echo these sentiments: "We feel an equal concern with our honourable masters for the distressed, disgraceful situation of affairs in the Gulph of Persia." But immediately after this, and as though they were not yet satisfied with what they had done, Basra and Bushire between them managed completely to antagonize Karim Khan. To the intense indignation of the council in Bombay, who had all along fought hard to keep the peace with the Vakil, Mr. Morley, their Resident at Bushire, advertized to the world the rupture of friendly relations by abandoning the factory there entirely on his own responsibility. For the next six years we continued more or less at war with Karim, that is to say, our ships were captured and plundered by all and sundry. These piracies, Karim Khan could have stopped, but did not-for the obvious reason that he profited by them.

And yet the strange thing is that, in spite of these mistakes and worse, the closing years of the century saw British influence

paramount in the Gulf "—as the historians put it. The reason probably was that although we certainly did not do well when it came to trying conclusions with the Ka'ab or Mir Mohanna, or even Shaikh Abdullah of Ormuz, nobody else could do any better; and after Karim Khan died in 1779, no one could do as well. All the little Powers up and down the Gulf busied themselves with cutting each other's throats. "The Imam of Muscat," writes John Beaumont from Bushire, in 1780, " continues at war with Shaikh Rashid (of Bahrain). Shaikh Abdullah of Ormuz is at war with the people of Kharag; the Grain (Koweit) people

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