Page 129 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

CHAPTER X

‘Notwithstanding the meanness of Bushirc as a
town, it is the best, excepting Bussorah only,
that now exists in the whole of the Persian Gulf.
It possesses considerable importance as the only
port of such an extensive empire as Persia.’
Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia:
J. S. Buckingham - 1829

HE Eden sailed from Muscat on the evening of May 16th,
‘to the inexpressible joy of all on board, for the weather
had been more oppressively sultry than can be conceived,
never at the coolest time of the day, under 96° in the shade’. In
Muscat, unlike the other Gulf ports, there is no real cool season.
In Bahrain and Kuwait, during two or three months in the winter,
Europeans have fires in their houses and wear thick clothes. The
climate of Muscat, combined with the mental depression caused
by the huge, forbidding black mountains which encircle the town
and harbour, has taken toll of many British lives. When the first
Political Agents were posted to Muscat, not long after Loch was
there, it is recorded that three of them died within the space of a
few months.
When the Eden sailed, she had a prisoner on board; he was one
of the pirates who had been captured in the last engagement.
While in port, he was in charge of a sentry, but when the ship
was well away from Muscat, he was allowed to move about
without a guard. On the morning after they sailed, it was re­
ported to Loch that the prisoner was not to be found, and it was
assumed that he had jumped overboard, and had perished in
the sea.
It was not until Loch’s next visit to Ras al Khaima that he heard
what had happened to his prisoner. The sea was warm and, as
he says, ‘as smooth as glass’. The pirate had managed to swim
ashore, and then, hiding during the day among the rocks, feeding
on shell fish and walking down the coast at night, he had finally
made his way back to Ras al Khaima. His adventures were
107