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HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY. 45
and the Lord High Admiral, Captains Weddell, Bly th, Clevinger,
and Bevershani, were examined, also the several officers of the
Company's ships which had made prizes in the East Indies from
the Portuguese, and, particularly, those officers who had been
employed at the taking of Ormuz, from which it appeared that
the total amount of prize money was about 100,000 dollars, and
240,000 reals of eight ; but this calculation was made without
taking into view the charges and losses incurred by the Company
in their equipment, or by their ships being called off from com-
mercial engagements to act as ships-of-war.
While the suit was pending the ships of the season were
stopped at Tilbury, the Company "put in arrest," and all their
solicitations to the King and to the Lord High Admiral rejected.
Eventually they were obliged to compound by paying d£10,000
to the Duke of Buckingham to discharge his claim, and received
an order from Sir Edward Conway, the Secretary of State, to
pay also .£10,000 to the King.* Thus terminated this episode
of the conquest of Ormuz, but though it caused immediate
pecmiiary loss to the Company, the gallantry displayed by their
seamen, and the skill and conduct of their officers, raised the
British name in the estimation of Oriental Governments, which
recognised in the new aspirants for maritime ascendancy in the
East, a race whom it would be advisable rather to conciliate
than to drive into hostility. Further, the (Jompany gained a
footing at Gombroon, which they maintained for a century and
a half, when their factory was removed to Bushire. During the
past forty years our Government have twice occupied the island
of Karrack—the importance of which, from a military point of
view, as commanding Bushire and the Shatt-ul-Arab river, is
manifest by a glance at the map—but, on both occasions, have
evacuated the island on the conclusion of peace, and, at the
present day, the British flag flies only over the coaling depot at
Bassadore, in the island of Kishm, ceded to ns as a station
for the cruisers of the Lidian Navy, by the great Imaum of
Muscat, Seyyid Said, who rented it from the Shah of Persia.

* Bruce's " Annals," vol. i. p. 2-11.