Page 94 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

spent several weeks in the Eden, were loath to leave the ship.
‘They showed real good feeling and heart at leaving us.’ They
were probably sorry to return to the life of a junior pirate. When
they left, they were given presents by Loch, and a letter was
written in Arabic, by ‘the old Jew’, who was a passenger in the
Eden from Bombay to Bushirc, stating that the things which they
had been given were their own property.
After spending some days beating along the Arab and Persian
coasts, the Eden arrived at Bushirc on January 23rd. There she
found a convoy of ships at anchor, waiting to proceed to Muscat,
where preparations were being made for the expedition against
the Pirate Coast. For the next few weeks, the crew were em­
ployed in caulking and painting the ship and in repairing and
refitting the rigging. The next place which Loch visited was
Bahrain.
It was two years since the British had first made contact with
the Shaikhs of Bahrain. In 1816, Bruce visited the islands, where
he had a friendly reception, and obtained the agreement of the
Shaikhs to a ‘Treaty of Friendship’, but as he had no authority
from his Government to make such a treaty, it never came into
force. Bruce might have learned a lesson from this, but that he
did not do so was shown by the second unauthorised treaty which
he made with the Persian Governor of the Province of Fars, at
Shiraz in 1822, which led to his downfall. In this so-called treaty,
which referred to various matters concerning the Persian Gulf,
he described Bahrain ‘which has always been subordinate to the
Province of Fars’, a statement which was completely untrue.
The unauthorised treaty was immediately repudiated by the
British Government, and Bruce was removed from his post for
having attempted to carry out negotiations with Persia without
the sanction of his Government. To this day, the ‘Treaty of
Shiraz’ is one of the main arguments which is put forward by the
Persian Government to support her claim to the ownership of
Bahrain. Bruce was an officer of the East India Company s
Marine. According to Loch, who got to know him very well,
he was originally sent by the Bombay Government to the Gulf
to investigate the possibility of developing some ancient copper
and sulphur mines on the Persian Coast a few miles from Cape
Kenn. In 1808, he was dealing with commercial matters at
Bushire and, by the time that Loch knew him, he was Resident.
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