PIRACY IN THE INDIAN ARCHlPELAGK), 
253 
equipage et Tun d’eux etait arme de 15 pieces de canon/ 
In 1847, as may be ascertained by reference to the pages 
of the Singapore Free Press , from 40 to 60 pirate prahus 
issued from Balinini, and ravaged a great portion of the Ar¬ 
chipelago, swept the Straits of Banka, burnt a village not far 
from Singapore, carrying off a portion of the inhabitants into 
captivity, and exchanged shots with a Dutch fortress on the 
coast of Borneo.* Eleven of these prahus were attacked by 
the H. C. Steamer Nemesis , and the largest of the number 
taken was judged by Captain Grey, Captain Wallage, and 
most of those aboard, to be eighty feet in length and to have 
fully a complement of eighty men. This prahu was unluckily 
burnt and sunk, during the action, after a desperate resistance, 
but a boat of the second class captured was about 70 feet 
long and 12 feet broad, and it was deposed by the principal 
persons present that the average number of the crews, was 
forty men to each of the eleven prahus, and that they each 
carried from 4 to 6 guns. The largest boat mounted an iron 
9 or 10 pounder besides 6 or 8 small guns, and the num¬ 
ber of rifles and muskets as well as the skill of the owners in 
their use, was proved by the list of the killed and wounded in 
the English boats. This is a cool appeal to facts. In the 
years 1775, 1811,1843, and 1847, the description of the larger 
pirate prahus agrees, and we have the clearest, fullest and 
purest testimony, that piracy is of the most daring and dan¬ 
gerous character, and with such vessels how could it be 
otherwise, and yet the writer in the Examiner says, it is not 
formidable, a mere nuisance, a sneaking piracy. 
The exaggeration in the statement of the number of pirate 
prahus, which the writer of the Examiner ridicules so se¬ 
verely, we shall soon dispose of, by a second appeal to facls, 
and we premise that be they pirate ships, or pirate prahus, or 
even “ the herring boats” of the writer, that they are very 
numerous, and therefore very formidable, from the number of 
men employed in this trade of destruction. 
Sir Stamford Raffles in addressing Lord Minto writes,— 
“Of the numbers of the Lanuns it is difficult to form at 
present any particular estimate; I apprehend, however, they 
cannot in any way be estimated at less than 10,000 fighting 
men/' From the number of men we may judge the number 
of prahus, and we shall have a fleet of 100 Lanun boats, 
each carrying 100 fighting men, with the Pangeran Anom, 
and Assing Basil,f in their two small ships. And this is the 
* TUii fact is stated in the Jav i Courant, an official paper, 
f Aising Raiil cat oft the ship Malacca, 
