Page 27 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)
P. 27
CHAPTER II
‘For I shall sing of battles, blood and rage
Which princes and their people did engage,
And haughty souls that moved with mutual hate,
In fighting fields pursued and found their fate.
Acnius VIII Trans: Dryden
P—f] 1HE expulsion of the Portuguese from Hormuz was the
beginning of the end of their domination in the Gulf, though
f they still held M uscat which was strongly fortified, and they
possessed a powerful fleet which harried the Persian and Arab
coasts. They made several unsuccessful attempts to recover Hor
muz, very nearly succeeding in 1625 when they were beaten off
by a combined English and Dutch Fleet. At Hormuz the Per
sians destroyed all that they could, concentrating on the develop
ment of Gombroon, a port on the mainland, which was named
Bundar Abbas in honour of Shah Abbas. Sir Thomas Herbert
who accompanied an embassy to Persia and visited Hormuz in
about 1627, writes: ‘This poorc citie is now disrobed of all her
braveric’: a city which, according to Herbert, was ‘the only stately
citie in the Orient*. Dr. Fryer, about fifty years later, described
Hormuz as famous only for its salt cliffs, ‘a cure for the most
burning fever, the only known remedy for such eases in this
climate*. The English were allowed to open a factory in the new
port which they retained for almost a century and a half.
The gratitude of the Persians for the help given to them by the
English in taking Hormuz soon evaporated. The Persians were
displeased when the English declined to give them further assist
ance in a projected expedition against Muscat. The action of the
English Company at Hormuz had met with the strong disapproval
of the Government, which was only allayed by substantial pay
ments by the Company to King James, and to the Duke of
Buckingham in his capacity as Lord High Admiral. A few years
later, the Portuguese had established themselves at Basra, in the
realm of the Ottoman Sultan, and had built a factory at Kung on
the Persian coast, having come to terms with the Persians in 1625.
13
