Page 53 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

prctcr, and describes the meeting with the pirate Chief. The talk
was carried on in the open street, the Chief and the Englishmen
sitting on the ground. The Joasmi Shaikh was ‘a small man,
apparently about forty years of age, with an expression of cunning
and something particularly sarcastic in his smile*. Behind him
stood his bodyguard of fifty men, armed with muskets, swords
and shields. He was given until noon on that day to comply with
the British demands.
Unfortunately, however, the weather was bad, and because the
anchorage was dangerous, the squadron of four ships went out to
sea before the ultimatum expired. They crossed the Gulf to
Kishm Island and returned to Ras al Khaima some days later. A
letter was then sent to the Shaikh, explaining why the British
ships had so suddenly departed and extending the ultimatum for
a further period. The Chief’s reply was an insolent refusal to
comply with the British demands and a suggestion that he would
send his own representatives to treat with the Government in
Bombay.
The ships then opened fire on some pirate dhows which were
anchored near the shore, but the dhows were too far distant for
the gunfire to be effective. Guns from the town replied with
slightly more success, for one of the shots carried away part of the
sail from a British ship. ‘At least three hundred shots were dis­
charged from the squadron, not one of them seemed to have done
any execution.’ The ships then set sail leaving the pirates per­
forming jubilant war dances on the shore, ‘and thus ended the
wordy negotiation and the bloodless battle’. But there was one
casualty. An unfortunate European in one of the ships, who was
seriously ill, ‘was so much agitated by the sound of the discharge
of the first gun, that he fell back and expired’.
Emboldened by the fiasco at Ras al Khaima, the Joasmi engaged
in piracy with renewed vigour. They had good reason to believe
that the British, in spite of their superior ships and armaments,
were incapable of resisting them. This was the position in the
Persian Gulf when Captain Francis Loch, in command of H.M.S.
Eden, sailed from Plymouth in the summer of 1818, bound for
the Persian Gulf, to take part in the final expedition against the
Pirate Coast, which once and for all put an end to piracy.

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