Page 374 - INDIANNAVYV1

342 HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY. ;

protection of the trade, until the exigencies of the public service
in other quarters should admit of an expedition being detached
against the pirates. Sur}»rise has been expressed by contem-
porary writers tliat the Joasmis, whose fleets were supposed to
have been destroyed in their ports during the 1809 Expedition,
should have so quickly recovered the effects of their losses as
to cover the seas with their ships; but this apparently
unaccountable circumstance is explained by the fact that owing
to the Persian Gulf having never been surveyed—a task
accomplished by the officers of the Indian Navy a few years
later—certainly one half of the Joasmi ships had been secreted
in the various inlets and backwaters, which abound in the pirate
coast, probably to a greater extent than on any coast-line of
similar extent in the world. Country ships and merchantmen
generally were now forced to sail under convoy of ships of war,
and the services of two or three of H.M.'s ships, in addition
to those of the Company that were available, were called into
requisition.
The Bombay Government always appeared to regard with
equanimity the attacks of the pirates upon their small cruisers,
but. as in 1808, when the merchant ship ' Minerva ' was captured,
they vigorously resented the seizure of the four Surat ships.
After much delay, owing to the majority of the ships of the
Bombay Marine being employed in the Eastern Islands, a small
squadron was assembled at Bombay for despatch to the Persian
Gulf, consisting of H.M.'s sloop 'Challenger,' eighteen guns,
Captain Bridges, and the Company's cruisers, ' Mercury,' four-
teen guns, and ' Vestal,' ten guns. By these a despatch
was forwarded to the Resident at Bushire, instructing him to
demand from the chief at Ras-ul-Khymah, the restitution of the
Surat ships and cargoes. The squadron left Bombay in the
early part of September, 1816, and, after a long voyage, in
which the 'Mercury' lost her mainmast, the 'Challenger'
reached Bushire in November, and the other vessels a few days
afterwards. In the meantime, the ' Ariel,' which had touched
at Bushire on her way down from Bussorah, had been despatched
to Ras-ul-Khymah with a letter from Mr. Bruce, inquiring into
the circumstances of the captures alluded to, and reproaching
the Joasmis for a breach of faith in their departure from their
agreement to respect the British flag. To this they replied by
a flat denial of the charge of having captured English vessels
hailing from Surat, coupled with the remark, that, if even they
had seized the vessels in question, they would not thereby have
departed from the terms of the treaty, and that they would
respect the sect of Christians and their property, but none other
that they did not consider any part of Western India as ours
except Bombay and Mangalore ; and that if we interfered in
favour of the Hindoos and other unbelievers of India, we might