Page 106 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

Pasha of Baghdad, who in turn was responsible to the Ottoman
Sultan in Constantinople. The Company’s representative, Mr.
Colquhoun, who had been there for eight years, had become ill,
and Bruce’s assistant, Mr. Taylor, had been sent to Basra to relieve
him. Bruce thought it desirable to be present at Taylor’s instal­
lation, and wished a British man-of-war to be at Basra on this
occasion. At nine in the morning of February 28th, Bruce came
on board the Eden, under a salute of 11 guns, with him were his
wife, Mrs. Taylor and her sister. The Conway, commanded by
Captain Barnard, was left at anchor at Bushire.
The voyage to Basra was long and tedious. O11 March 2nd,
the Eden ran aground off the ‘almost imperceptible island of
Corgo’, near Karak Island ‘but she was afloat again almost as soon
as the sails were thrown back’. This was the third time that the
ship had been aground since she came to the Gulf, ‘owing to the
uselessness of the charts’. At Karak, the Eden took on a pilot to
navigate the river. Loch mentions the white, limey clay near the
shore at Karak, which the inhabitants used as soap; at one time
this clay was sold in the Bahrain bazaar as shampoo for the hair.
The Eden followed the course which Ncarchus, the Admiral of
Alexander the Great, took in the year 325 b.c., which is described
by Arrian. Many pages of Loch’s diary are taken up with his
efforts to identify the places mentioned in the journal of Ncarchus
with the places in the Gulf, which he saw and visited, but since
his day this question has been discussed and written about by more
authoritative writers. Progress up the Persian coast was slow,
and it was necessary to keep the lead constantly going. On the
3rd, the snow-covered Bakhtiari mountains were sighted some
sixty miles inland, to the northeast. When passing the mouth of
the ‘Granis or Rohilla’ river, Loch mentions ‘an English gentle­
man’ who, some years before, suggested a scheme of making a
cana 1 to join the Rohilla and the Tab, and to connect the Rohilla
with the Bay of Bushire. In return, he asked for the canal transit
dues to be paid to him for a specified time. According to Loch,
the Persian Government was interested in the scheme, but no
agreement was made.
The Eden ran aground in the mud shoals again before reaching
the river. A kedge anchor was dropped by the ship’s boat some
distance ahead, and by winding the hawser to which the anchor
rope was attached, the ship was pulled off the mud-bank, but the
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