"تاريخ البحرية الهندية. (١٦١٣- ١٨٦٣)." [‎١‎١‎٠] (٦٢٢/١٢٩)

110
HISTORY OP THE INDIAN NAVT.
as the average for each commodore's service, instead of three
years, the period for which the appointment was made.
During this fifteen years, eleven lieutenants, two pursers, and
fifteen midshipmen, died, a large number considering how much
the cruisers were under-officered, while no less than four-fifths of
the remaining officers, were obliged to proceed on sick-leave to
Europe or the Hills, and in too many instances never suc
ceeded in wholly shaking off the Gulf fever. At the present
daj', the mortality and sickness in ships is reduced
almost to ordinary proportions, by their visiting the Gulf
chiefly at the healthy season, and remaining on the station less
than two and three years, as was the custom at the period of
which we are writing; and more than all, the salutary change
is due to the vessels employed being roomy ships or gunboats,
with awnings spread even when under weigh, and not small
sailing ten-gun brigs and eighteen-gun sloops, crowded with
men and guns, and forced perpetually to be at sea, owing to
the lawlessness of the maritime Arab chiefs.
From the above statistics of deaths in the various grades of
officers, it appears that not veteran commodores alone, but
many a fine, gallant youth, freshly arrived from England, has
found an early grave in the Persian Gulf, his high hopes and
generous aspirations untimely nipped in the bud :—
" The sea, tlie blue lone sea liath. one,
He lies where pearls lie deep ;
He was the lov'd of all, yet none
O'er his low bed may weep."
But, unhealthy as was the climate of the Persian Gulf, and
monotonous and dreary the life on that station, the younger
officers, who had no special ties binding them to their native
land, managed to enjoy themselves fairly well. At Khonee,
about twelve miles from Bassadore, the head-quarters of the
squadron, the officers had built a hunting lodge, and here they
kept horses and Persian greyhounds, with which they hunted
the gazelle. Then there were cricket-matches—and where will
not Englishmen get them up?—and fishing with the seine, and
turning turtle on a moonlight night; and when, occasionally,
a ship proceeded up the Shatt-ul-Arab to Bussorah, there was
glorious sport pig-shooting on the marshy banks of the river
above Marghill—and well does the writer remember it, and the
enormous porkers that rewarded the day's shooting. Again,
when visiting some of the Arab sheikhs, or governors of towns,
they would invite the officers to go out hawking, when they
always supplied the horses. Even at Bahrein, the hottest and
most dismal of stations, there was one resource, a beautiful
clear deep fresh-water pool—suggestive, perhaps, to the sufferer
from nostalgia, or depression, of a speedy and happy euthanasia.