Page 10 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

Damhall. 6th June 1835
My Dear Children,
The following pages were compiled from various notes
and Memoranda taken during the time that 1 had the Naval
Command in the Persian Gulph and also while acting in concert
with the Expedition which succeeded in the total overthrow
and destruction of the Pirates of those Seas, likewise while in
India.
1 had long kept those notes and Memoranda by me with­
out meaning to make the slightest use of them, but on casually
showing them to some of my intimate friends and acquaint­
ances they strenuously advised me to place them in such a shape
that they might hereafter be an amusement, if not a utility, to
you all. 1 so intended when, on again showing them to some
more of my friends, they conceived that my manuscript ought
to be published.
Loch gives the various reasons why his friends were in favour
of his publishing the journal. ‘One stated that, even partial as
was the account which I had given of the mouths of the Indus,
yet it is more than is generally known and contains a great deal of
curious and interesting information. It cleared up many points
between ancient and modern history, which must naturally inter­
est The Reading Man and give knowledge about what he did not
thoroughly understand before to the Geographer.’
This refers to Loch’s lengthy dissertations on the course of the
voyage of Ncarchus, an Admiral of Alexander the Great, along
the Indian and Persian coasts, and his theories about the Jewish
settlements on the west coast of India. These I have not included
in the extracts from his diary.
Loch continues: ‘Again I was requested by a Gentleman to
allow him, at some future date, when he had leisure, to make
extracts for the purpose of printing them at his own expense.
Lastly I was informed by another of my friends that the time - I
thought my book would come out in the Spring of this year -
was just when as I ought to publish, as there was an expedition
on the point of starting, under Captain Chesney, to explore that
part of Syria lying between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates,
and from thence to India, for the purpose of establishing steam
navigation by that route.’