Page 80 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

Drama*, which was the name given to toy theatres, immortalised
by R. L. Stevenson in his essay A Penny Plain and Twopence
Coloured. Muscat harbour vividly brings to mind one of these
scenes, though it is difficult to recollect which of the plays it may
have belonged to. Possibly it was a scene from Black Eyed Susan,
which was played at the Surrey theatre in 1825, or it may have
belonged to Blackbeard the Pirate. The resemblance of the Juvenile
Drama scene to Muscat harbour suggests that the artist who
painted it perhaps saw the set of sixteen aquatints, which arc now
very rare, published in 1813 from paintings by Major R. Temple of
the 65th Regiment, illustrating the expedition against the Pirate
Coast in 1809, in which lie took part, including two views of
Muscat harbour.
At eleven o’clock on the morning after they arrived, Loch with
four of his officers and Adey, the Greek interpreter, went on
shore to pay their respects to the Sultan. As they rowed across
the bay, Loch remarked on the quantities of little fish in the sea,
which he said were similar to anchovies. When larger fish ap­
peared, they scattered in all directions, springing out of the water
into the boat. These fish are called ‘manchus’, in Arabic, and are
netted and dried by the Gulf Arabs for use as fodder for camels,
cows and donkeys. Though the cows have a regular diet of fish,
their milk has no fishy flavour, and when Loch was at Bahrain,
he described the milk which he bought there, as the best he had
tasted since leaving England. Sometimes the little bones of the
fish stick in the cows’ tongues and set up an irritation, the bones
then have to be removed one by one by somebody who is an
expert in this work, a tedious, painful operation.
The naval party landed at a wharf facing an open square in the
centre of the town, surrounded by two-storied houses. Here in
the evening, the merchants of Muscat used to sit and watch the
activity in the harbour. In other Gulf ports, the merchants and
shopkeepers would sit smoking their ‘hubble-bubble’ pipes while
they surveyed the scene, but in Muscat, even today, smoking in
public is forbidden, as it is in Saudi Arabia. Loch was met on
the wharf by Gaulaub, the Hindu agent of the East India Com­
pany. Muscat was the most cosmopolitan port in the Gulf and
there were many Indians trading there from Bombay and Guzerat,
as well as Persians, Arabs from other parts of the Gulf, Baluchis,
and a small community of Jews, all living and trading harmon-
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