ARAB PIRATES. 
373 
cording to a well-authenticated calculation, in the middle of the year 
1809, sixty-three large vessels, and eight hundred and ten of smaller 
sizes; together manned by near nineteen thousand men. This force 
was increasing; the pirates, in a fleet of fifty-five ships, of various sizes, 
containing altogether five thousand men, had, after a fight of two days, 
taken the Minerva, and murdered almost all the crew: in the next 
month a fleet of seventy sail of vessels, (navigated severally by num¬ 
bers rising from eighty to one hundred and fifty and two hundred 
men) were cruizing about the Gulph and threatening Bushire: and 
the chief of Ras al Khyma (the Roselkeim* of the text, p. 44,) whose 
harbour was almost the exclusive resort of the larger vessels, had 
dared to demand a tribute from the British government, that their 
ships might navigate the Persian Gulph in safety. Our forbearance 
was now exhausted, and an expedition was sent from Bombay, under 
Captain Wainwright, and Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, of His 
Majesty's sea and land forces, to attack the pirates in their ports. 
The first object was Ras al Kliyma. The armament, after a short 
siege, carried the place by storm, destroyed all the naval equipments, 
and sparing the smaller vessels, burnt the fifty large ships which the 
harbour contained. They proceeded to the ports of the Arab pirates 
on the Persian coast, and completed the destruction of all their means 
of annoyance. They then attacked Shinass, one of their harbours on 
the Indian ocean. The defence of this place was most heroical ; and 
was conducted indeed for the Joasmees, as was subsequently learnt, by 
a favourite and confidential general of Saood Ibn Abdool Uzzeer, 
the chief of the Wahabees . When on the third day of the siege, the 
few survivors were called upon to surrender, they replied, that they 
preferred death to submission ; and when the towers were falling round 
* It is not clear that Egmaun is rightly placed in the text, p. 44. Our late expedition 
has furnished us with a knowledge of the Persian Gulph, which will rectify many import¬ 
ant errors. The coast from Khor Hassan is said to have been laid down forty-eight miles 
too much to the south. 
