'History of the Indian Navy. (1613-1863).' [‎363] (404/590)

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HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY.
363
Seawright and Brucks, and the officers and men of the Hon.
Company's Marine, employed on this service, have been spoken
of in terms of high commendation by the Major-General, and
also by Commodore Collier, whose established reputation and
experience of the qualifications that distinguish the Naval
profession, renders his testimony to the character of the Bombay
Marine of peculiar value in the estimation of the Governor in
Council." The Governor-General in Council, in publishing the
despatches of the military and naval chiefs, on the 21st of
January, 1820, issued a General Order, concurring in the praise
bestowed by the Bombay Government, and, on the 21st of
March, 1820, on the return of the Expedition to Bombay, the
Governor in Council issued a General Order highly eulogising
the services of all arms, and expresssing the thanks of his
Government.*
The fleet were now employed visiting all the Joasmi ports on
the coast, and destroying their war-vessels and blowing up
their forts; thus Jezirat-ul-Hamra, Ejman, Amulgavine,
Shargah,t and several other places, were visited and reduced to
a condition of impotence, but no resistance was encountered
anywhere.
On the 8th of January, 1820, a General Treaty of Peace was
concluded at Ras-ul-Khymah between Major-General Sir
William Grant Keir, on the part of the British Government,
and nearly all the chiefs of the maritime tribes of Arabs in the
Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , by whom it was subsequently signed at different
times and places. The sole purpose and scope of this treaty
was the entire suppression of piracy, and the adoption of such
* Bj an order, dated Bombay Castle, 17th of February, 1827, the military and
naval forces engaged in the operations against the Joasmis in 1819, were informed
that the Court of Directors The London-based directors of the East India Company who dealt with the daily conduct of the Company's affairs. , by despatch dated the 12th of April, 1826, directed
that, " in addition to the prize property realised by agents," the " full valuation
of all boats captured and destroyed by the forces," including the moiety legally
accruing to the Company, together with interest at six per cent, per annum from
the 30th of September, 1820, making a sum of 266,625 rupees Indian silver coin also widely used in the Persian Gulf. , should be paid
to the captors. " John Company," though mercantile in his condition, was
assuredly, on some points, more lordly than his " Imperial" successors, and such
liberal conduct offers a striking contrast to the view, perhaps legally admissible,
entertained by the India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. on the Banda and Kirwee prize case, which has
given rise to so much protracted and expensive litigation.
t Sharjah, in Persian, or Shargah, as the Arabs call it, the most important
town on the coast, contains a population of about ten thousand. Five miles to
the north-east is Aymaun or Ejman, a small place of about one thousand two
hundred inhabitants, who during the season send nearly one hundred boats to
the pearl fisheries. Amulgavine, or Amalgawein, stands about twelve miles to
the north-east of Ejman; the old town was deserted after its destruction in this
year, and the people now reside at Libini, a thriving place having some one
thousand five hundred souls, and sending seventy or eighty boats to the fisheries.
Jezirat-el-Hamra is a fort and town ten miles south-west by west from Bas-ul-
-Khymah, built on an island formed by a khor or inlet. The pirate coast was
supposed to end at Debaye, a town of the Beni Yas tribe, having about one
thousand two hundred inhabitants, distant seven miles from Shargah. From
Debaye to Abu Thubi, the capital of the Beni Yas, the coast stretches in a south
west direction a distance of sixty-seven miles.
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