Page 44 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

cncd the shipping on the west coast of India almost as far as
Bombay. In earlier times the pirates were the maritime Arabs
of Oman but when the Bu Said dynasty expelled the Persians and
gained control of Muscat, there began the long struggle between
the rulers of Oman and the Joasmi pirates. Not all the pirates
were Arabs: at the end of the 17th century, European pirates,
whose base was Madagascar, appeared in the Gulf. Many of them
were financed and supplied from America. There is a story -
perhaps a legend - that one of the English pirate chiefs was a
woman.
I11 1683, the Company’s ship President was attacked, but the
pirates were beaten off. In 1696 a Company vessel, commanded
by Captain Sawbridge, carrying horses to Surat, was captured.
Sawbridge began to expostulate with the pirates on their way of
life, they ordered him to hold his tongue, but he continued to
address them. They evidently resented being preached at, though
as the Captain probably spoke in English or Hindustani it is un­
likely that they understood much of what he said. With a sail
needle and twine they sewed his lips together, and after keeping
him with his hands tied behind him for several hours, they took
him and his men on board the pirate dhow while his ship, with
the horses in it, was set on fire. Sawbridge and his crew were
then put on shore, where soon afterwards he died. In 1698, the
Company in India appealed to the home government for naval
help against the pirates; a few years later, the English, French and
Dutch, although commercial rivals, agreed to combine in resisting
piracy in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. It
was from this time that the beginning of the Indian Navy came
into being.
From the middle of the 18th century, the Joasmi tribe, whose
chief town was Ras al Khaima, north of Muscat, were the leading
pirates. They were firmly established in their fortified towns on
the Pirate Coast, and they held Kishm Island and Linga on the
Persian littoral, thus controlling both sides of the narrow straits
at the entrance to the Gulf. The only place which they failed to
dominate was Muscat, whose rulers steadfastly opposed them,
first alone, then with British support. Even when piracy was at
its height, those who suffered from it acknowledged that the
pirates had ‘some noble traits’, and that, in spite of their ‘unrelent­
ing ferocity’ they respected ‘the persons and virtues of females’.
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