We have seen throughout this volume that there have always been certain geographical areas which have been favoured by pirates as their suitable sphere for roving. Madagascar, Malabar, the north coast of Africa, the West Indies—these and others have been the scene, not of one piratical incident, but of scores.
The Persian Gulf is to this day not quite the peaceful corner of the globe that undoubtedly some day it will become. It is still patrolled by the Royal Navy for various reasons, including the prevention of gun-running. Just how long the Persian Gulf has been navigated it would be impossible to say: but there is every reason to suppose that if the first kind of boat which ever floated was seen on the Tigris or Euphrates, the first sea-going craft was observed in the Persian Gulf. At any rate it is certain that the Arabians who occupy that peninsula which separates the Red Sea from the Persian Gulf were in the early stages of history the greatest navigators and seamen anywhere. Even right down to the Middle Ages, for scientific navigation, with the aid of those nautical instruments which were the forerunners of our modern sextant, there were no mariners who could find their way across the trackless seas so skilfully as these inhabitants of Arabia.
From time immemorial there have dwelt on the west side of the Persian Gulf an Arabian tribe named the Joassamees, engaged in maritime pursuits either in trading, or pearl-fishing, or as pilots to strange ships entering the Gulf, or else acting as pirates. For it was obvious to them that this last mentioned occupation held out much that was tempting. So the Joassamees began in a small way, pillaging the coasting vessels of the Gulf, and as they found their efforts in this respect were so successful they aspired to bigger things. We are speaking now of that fascinating period of the sailing ship which belongs to the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.
The reader will instantly call to mind those fine ships of the East India Company, so smart and similar to the ships of the Royal Navy in appearance, and so similar in discipline and actual build. Shortly before the close of the eighteenth century the _Viper_, a 10-gun East Indiaman, was lying at anchor in the Bushire Roads. (Bushire is a port on the east or Persian side of the Gulf.) In the same harbour there were at anchor also a few dhows. Up till now these pirates had never molested an English ship: they had confined their attentions to native craft, so no efforts had been made to deal with them.