Memoir of the Career of Thomas Edward Rogers [‎38r] (75/118)

Later I was allotted one of the Cutch-built dhows which the Royal Indian
Navy had begun to use as a kind of Q boat for observing dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. and other sail
traffic entering and leaving the Gulf at its widest part south from the Indian
border with Persia. I had a mixed Arab and Persian crew of five, one of whom
was in charge of the auxiliary engine. The dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. had a fair range with our sails
supplementing fuel supplies and only once were we becalmed - a rare event in the
windswept Gulf. We lived on simple supplies of rice and dried shrimp or other
fish and excellent unleavened Persian bread. Once we stopped a dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. south of
Jask and found aboard two brothers, notorious pirates and slavers who had been
long wanted by the Persian authorities. There were slaves and smuggled goods
below decks. Like some man of war of an earlier age we escorted our prize into
port at Bandar Abbas where a grateful Governor said he would bring the male
factors to justice. When we later inquired about the case we were told that
orders from Teheran were still awaited but that in the meantime the prisoners were
short of food. It was the custom of the country that prisoners were fed by their
relatives or those who brought them in. In response to the Governor's strong
hint we fell in with custom and sent a bag or two of rice and wheat.
I believe there had been a good many years since a British warship had in
fact acted on our treaty rights to seize vessels and their cargo found to be
engaged in piracy and slavery. The putting down of these two activities had been
among the main objectives of the British presence in the Gulf, the other two being
the strategic need to protect the approaches to India and the prevention of gun
running to the North-West Frontier Region of British India bordering Afghanistan. . It was an unexpected chance of the war that
our small unarmed dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. should have at last filled the permitted but rarely
exercised role of a British warship.
I was in continuous touch with the local authorities on a variety of matters:
movements of the Anti Locust Unit, shipments of locally tinned sardines for the