Page 13 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

CHAPTER I

‘High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.
Paradise Lost: John Milton - 1608-1674

T HE Persian Gulf, which the Arabs now call the Arabian
Gulf, is almost an inland sea. At its widest, it is 180 miles
from the eastern coast of Arabia to the coast of Persia,
and at the south-east end, the Straits of Hormuz, which divide
the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman, arc only thirty-five
miles wide. What used to be known as the ‘Pirate Coast’,
reaching from the Qatar peninsula to the borders of Oman, has
been named the ‘Trucial Coast’ since 1820, when a treaty was
concluded between the British and the Shaikhs of the Coastal
States. Though this designation is used by Europeans, it has not
been adopted by the Arabs who live in the area.
The Pirate Coast was an ideal place for sea robbers. It is
studded with little islands, indented with narrow, twisting creeks,
protected by treacherous sand banks, and jagged coral reefs, which
arc often only a few feet below the water level. Even today,
navigation along the coast is difficult and dangerous. Until the
present century, the Gulf had not been thoroughly surveyed, and
ships, when sailing inshore, had to move slowly and cautiously,
taking soundings incessantly. Inland, beyond the bleak, low-
lying beaches, a barren coastal plain extends to a range of low,
rocky hills, or at some places, to where the sands of the great
desert begin. At infrequent intervals, wretched villages of palm
branch huts crouch on the shore near wells of brackish water.
The coast is almost without vegetation, except around some of
the wells where a few sparse date palms are, with difficulty, per­
suaded to grow. The Pirate Coast has always been a forbidding
place, scorching hot in summer, whipped by savage sand storms
and swept by sea gales when the shamaal wind rages down the
Gulf from the north in the winter.