Page 216 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

for a voyage to Mauritius, when she was suffering from consump­
tion, from which she subsequently died; the sea trip was probably
regarded as being beneficial to her health. On another occasion,
lie took the Duke of Cumberland in his ship to Canada. He lived
in Edinburgh until his wife died in 1859. After her death, he
retired to Cheltenham, where ‘he followed a retired mode of life*
until he died in 1863, at the age of seventy-five.
A portrait of Francis Loch, after lie retired, shows him a very
typical Victorian old gentleman, seated by a small table, on which
his top hat is deposited, with a book in his hand. He has white
hair, white whiskers and a chin beard and a slightly petulant
expression on his full, round face.
In 1908, Percy Gordon Loch, who was then in the Indian Army,
was employed as an Attache to the Resident at Bushirc, and in
1916 he was appointed Political Agent in Bahrain and again in
1932. Gordon Loch was the great-great-nephew of Francis Loch,
who almost a century before, had played such an active part in
the affairs of Bahrain; one of his great interests was genealogy,
and it was while lie was in Bahrain, that he completed his book
The Family of Loch. He used often to talk to me, in the old
Political Agency at Bahrain, about his naval ancestor who had
been there so many years before, but it seems that he had then no
knowledge of the diary kept by Francis Loch, during the expedi­
tion against the Pirate Coast.

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