'Zanzibar, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf' [‎45r] (7/8)

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7. The existing
difficulties and
troubles in the
Persiau Gulf.
Revival oy piracy.
uncertain basis, and, in my opinion, the offer as
now made would be best answered by a declaration
that the naval police of the Gulf has hitherto been
undertaken and maintained by the British Govern
ment, and that we have no intention to withdraw
from the obligations and duties incident to this
undertaking.
7. There can be no doubt that things are not
now managed in the Gulf of Persia with the same
promptitude and efficiency that they used to be.
So long as the Indian Navy was in existence, it was
the especial duty of that navy to have one or more
vessels always cruising there; and the Officers, who
were accustomed to the duty, and well experienced
in dealings with Native Chiefs, and quite competent
to settle, according to their own judgment and dis
cretion, petty claims and quarrels, were most useful
assistants of our diplomatic agents, giving them a
ready means of acting wherever there was an
appearance of trouble of any kind arising. At
present, the duties performed by the Indian Navy
have been undertaken by Her Majesty’s Navy, but
there is no roster of vessels told off for continual
service. For six months of the year the climate is
so unfavourable to Europeans that, except under
pressing necessity, no vessel is ever sent there.
The vessels that go have no Native crews, for boat
service under the tropical sun of the Gulf. The
Commanders and all their Officers are totally igno
rant of the languages spoken. They obtain from
the diplomatic agents interpreters or assistants,
through whom all their communications are neces
sarily made, and by whose advice they are, of
course, guided; but they are impatient to have
their cruise completed, and never can be zealous
agents for the maintenance of a maritime police.
The remedy for this,—and it is a remedy that must
be adopted, sooner or later,—is, to revert to the old
scheme of maintaining vessels of our own, adapted
to the service, and commanded by Officers, a large *
proportion of whose lives has been spent in per
forming the duty. There must be a regular routine
of service to be rendered by Officers of this de
scription, in order to make the maritime police of
the Gulf efficient. The suppression of piracy and
of slave dealing are duties repugnant to the feelings
and habits of the population, whose laws and whose
ideas countenance both. Unless, therefore, we
show ourselves continually in sufficient strength to
repress the disposition to resume the habits of their
fathers and grandfathers, we must expect to see
everything fall again into the same anarchy, and
life by violence, that prevailed when we commenced
our measures of repression at the beginning of the
present century. There is no nation but ourselves
that has any direct interest in maintaining the tran
quillity of the Indian seas. The duty falls upon
us, as the de facto sovereigns of India. We have
no rivalry or collision to fear from any European