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HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY. 385
veller, visited them in 1835, they received him with open
arms, and treated him most hospitably ; they also conversed
with him freely on the subject of their defeat, but, while
entertaining no animosity against us, inveighed bitterly against
the Imaum.* x\.ltogether the retrospect of this Beni-bou-Ali
imbroglio is not one on which we can look hack with unmixed
satisfaction, and while the murder of the pilot called for
punishment which would have been sufficiently inflicted by the
surrender of his murderers, a condition agreed to by the chief,
tht^re is reason to believe that the first P^xpedition was prose-
cuted by Captain Thompson as a concession to the interests of
the Imaum of Muscat, not warranted by his instructions from
the Bombay Government.
On the conclusion of this service the ' Prince of Wales'
sailed for the Persian Gulf, and her first lieutenant, ^Ir. R.
Kinchant, was placed in command of the ' Vestal,' ten-gim
brig, ffe signalized his first command by attacking off the
town of Biddah, on the Arabian Coast, oj)posite El Kateef, four
ti-ankies, full of armed men, which had been disturbing the
[teace of the Gulf. Lieutenant Kinchant attacked and sunk these
trankies by his fire, for which service he received the thanks
of the Bombay Government, and the captain of a ship of
the Royal Navy then in the Gulf, informed him that had he
been in the King's service he would have received promotion.
In 1826 Lieutenant Kinchant received command of the ' Nau-
tilus,' and so valuable were his services diu-ing the succeeding
four years, in maintaining order and keeping down piracy in
the Persian Gulf, that his Highness the Imaum of Muscat
presented him with a valuable sword.
During the month of August, 1821, H.M.S. 'Liverpool,' fifty
guns, visited the Persian Gulf on her return from China, and
lost in a few days, from the effects of the great heat, Lieu-
tenants Fenwick, Giranlot and Bell, ISurgeon Alexander, her
assistant-surgeon, and five men. Mr. James B. Eraser, author
of "Travels in Khorassan," who was at Bushire on the TJth
of August, when the 'Liverpool' arrived at that port, says,
speaking of the sufferings caused by the intense heat :— " Eur
some time the lower deck of the ship resembled a slaughter-
house from the number of persons constantly undergoing the
operation of venesection in every part of it."t
* For this hatred they had good cause, as Klindira-bin-Ali, brother of the chief
taken to Bombay, died of his wounds on the way to Muscat, and eighty of the
captives carried thither by the Iniiuini were conlined in the eastern tower, whore,
says the native historian, " they died of starvation."
't It has been variously stated by writers of that day that the loss on board the
' Liverpool' was thirty or lifty men, and we, having nuMitioned the lesser number
in a work of travel, entitled "The Land of the yun," published in lS7i), tlie late
Captain John Wlieatley, K.N.— who was good enough to inform us that lie had
perused tiie book with much pleasure—wrote the following letter eorreet-
nig the erroneous statement. Captain Wheatley, then male of tlie ' Liverpool,*
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