PIRACY 9a 



the harbour. He knew a Kamortan, thirty-five years of age, 

 who recollected eight vessels which had been cut off there in that 

 manner. 



In 1833, a Cholia vessel was cut off in the false harbour of 

 Nankauri (Expedition Harbour) and everyone murdered. In 1844, 

 Captain Ignatius Ventura, from Moulmein, commanding the Mary, 

 anchored on the north side of Teressa at two o'clock, and an hour 

 later he and his crew were murdered. In the same year, Captain 

 Law met the same fate on Kamorta. In 1845, a vessel, having 

 taken in part of her cargo at Kachal, sailed to the false harbour 

 at Nankauri to complete, and all hands were murdered.* 



" While I was at Kar Nicobar," Captain Gardner writes in 

 l857,t "two vessels were cut off at Nankauri, the crews massacred, 

 and the ships plundered and scuttled." In 1840, the Pilot, South 

 Sea whaler, was cut off there, and the captain, mates, and twenty- 

 five men murdered ; the third mate, surgeon, and seven men 

 escaped to sea in a boat.:|: In 1844, the cutter Emilia visited 

 Nankauri, and her captain was murdered within an hour of 

 landing, but the boat escaped. 



Piracy in the Nicobars came to an end with the occupation 

 of Nankauri Harbour by the Indian Government in 1869; but 

 two years previous to that it had been necessary to send there a 

 a British punitive expedition, on account of the atrocities com- 

 mitted by the natives. A notification of the event was made by 

 Captain N. B. Bedingfield, who commanded the expedition, in 

 the first of the Port Registers entrusted to the Nankauri natives. 



"TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. 



" Whereas the natives of these islands have been guilty of 

 several acts of piracy ; the crews of no less than four vessels 



* Pere Barbe, Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, vol. xv. 



t Singapore Review, vol. ii. 



% "Some Malays, who were at the Nicobars at the time, afterwards stated 

 that the Pilot was attacked because the crew had tried to get hold of the native 

 women ; but those of the landing-party who escaped in the whaleboat, although 

 attacked on shore simultaneously with the ship, tell a very different story." 

 — Vide Asiatic Journal, 1841. 



