Early English adventurers in the East (1917)/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
The English in the Persian Gulf
Portuguese supremacy in the Gulf challenged—Goa, the Portuguese capital in the East—Sir Robert Shirley, the Shah of Persia's ambassador—English open a trading factory in Persia—Shah Abbas's hatred of the Portuguese—His gift of Jask to the English—Ruy Freire de Andrade, the Portuguese commander, conducts a fleet to the Gulf—Portuguese ultimatum to the Shah—Action between the Portuguese and the English off Jask—English fleet under Captain Shilling drives off the Portuguese—English fleet under Captains Blyth and Weddell, assisted by a Persian land force, attacks and defeats Portuguese at Kishm—Baffin, the Arctic explorer, killed in the fight—Surrender of Ruy Freire—Ormuz attacked and occupied—Downfall of the Portuguese power in the Gulf
ALL the time that English and Dutch were contending in deadly rivalry in the Eastern Islands, the historic fight against the Portuguese had been proceeding practically without interruption. Though heavily beaten, with some of her best centres of trade captured, her commerce crippled and her prestige shattered, Portugal fought on with all the energy of despair. Driven out of the Eastern seas by Dutch ships she concentrated her resources on the defence of her possessions in India. These were still a splendid heritage worthy of a mighty effort. The capital, Goa, on the West coast, was "no mean city." It sheltered a large and opulent population drawn from every part of the East. The great Cathedral of Bom Jesus with its magnificent shrine of St. Francis Xavier would not have disgraced a European capital, and it was only one of many superb religious structures of which the city could boast, for the Inquisition, then in the plenitude of its awful power, cast an unholy lustre over the settlement. Men in whose veins the most aristocratic blood of Portugal ran gave to the local society a distinction uncommon in an Eastern settlement. On all hands were evidences of refinement and luxury, and of the splendours of a powerful seat of government. Even to-day, when Goa is little more than a heap of mouldering ruins, it is possible to realize in the survivals of the past something of the dignified life which was once lived in this the earliest scene of European colonization in India. And Goa, of course, was only one of several important possessions which Portugal then owned in this region. In Southern India were Cochin and Cannanore and farther South was the beautiful island of Ceylon which the Portuguese dominated from strongly fortified bases at Colombo, Jaffnapatam and elsewhere. Away northward in the Persian gulf were Ormuz and Gombroon, the latter the modern Bunder Abbas, both centres which in their day had been the seats of a great trade. It is with the two last-named settlements that the narrative has now to deal.
At a very early period after their first visit to Surat, the English had turned their attention to the Persian Gulf trade. At that time Europe, owing to the glamour of old associations, entertained an exaggerated idea of the possibilities of the route through the Gulf as a channel for the prosecution of Eastern trade. Its historic past was certainly a great one. From a very remote era it had been used as one of the main ocean highways for the transit of the produce of the East to the West. In the Middle Ages the Venetians had obtained their supplies of spices from vessels which had made their way up to the head of the Gulf and transferred them there either to caravans or to other craft which navigated the Euphrates to a point far in the interior easily accessible from the Mediterranean. The Portuguese when they went to the East took prompt measures to make themselves masters in a region which had so many famous traditions as a commercial centre. In the absence of effective rivalry at sea they were able to get into their own hands the entire overseas trade and to exercise a large control of the commerce of the whole of Southern Persia. When the English made their appearance in the Indian Ocean, Portuguese supremacy was unchallenged, and it seemed unchallengeable.
Fitch's narrative had thrown a good deal of light upon the position occupied by the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf, and other information had been gleaned from representatives of the Turkey Company who penetrated to Persia from Constantinople, but the actual inspirer of the East India Company's earliest Persian venture was probably Sir Robert Shirley or Sherley, a gentleman adventurer who for a good many years in the opening of the seventeenth century figured on the diplomatic stage in Europe as ambassador to Shah Abbas, then ruler of Persia.
Robert Shirley's career supplies a curious and interesting page in the history of the early English adventurers in the East. Like so many of his class, he was a scion of a noble English family who had been driven abroad to seek his fortune by a pure love of excitement and change. He had originally gone to Persia in the train of his brother, Anthony, who after a period of buccaneering in Portuguese possessions in the Cape Verde Islands and the West Indies, had conducted an unofficial mission to the Shah with a view of enlisting the Shah's co-operation with the Christian princes against the Turk. Anthony's self-imposed misaion had ended in failure, and he had returned to Europe in the earllest years of the seventeenth century, leaving his brother behind in the Shah's service. Robert Shirley was a man of resource, and soon won his way to favour by the measures he introduced for the reorganization of the Persian army on European lines. In 1607 he had practically adopted a Persian domicile by marrying the daughter of a Circassian noble who was one of the Shah's principal officers. Henceforward his interests were closely identified with those of his adopted country.
In 1608 Robert Shirley was employed by the Shah on a diplomatic mission to the Court of King James. His appearance in London in Persian costume with his wife also wearing Oriental dress, created a mild sensation. He had a friendly reception at Court, which is the more surprising as Anthony Shirley had given an immense deal of trouble by his unauthorized diplomatic exercises, and the name of Shirley consequently was one which had no very pleasing sound in official ears at the period. Not only was the King very gracious to him, but Prince Henry paid him special honour by standing godfather to the son born to the ambassador during his sojourn in England.
After a prolonged stay in his native country, Shirley returned to Persia in 1615, only to receive from his royal patron instructions for a fresh mission to Europe—to Portugal and Spain in the first instance and later to England. For nearly thirteen years he represented the Shah in Europe, and he then set his face once more towards Persia, but on presenting himself at the Shah's Court he was told that the Shah had no further use for his services. Intensely mortified at his unfavourable reception, Shirley sickened and died. His remains were in the first instance buried under the doorstep of his house at Teheran, but at a subsequent period the body was exhumed and taken by his wife to Rome, where it was buried in the Church of Santa Maria della Scala, the convent attached to which she had entered on quitting the East.
In his picturesque way. Sir Robert Shirley was a veritable citizen of the world, but he always had a warm corner in his heart for his native land, and as often as opportunity offered without detriment to his own position pushed her interests. When Richard Steele, with a companion, John Crowther, was on his way through Persia to Europe from India in 1615, he procured for him a cordial reception from Shah Abbas, who readily granted a firman for trading purposes. It was not, however, until 1617, when the East India Company sent out Edward Connock as factor to develop the Persian trade, that any practical steps were taken to turn to account the favourable prepossessions which the Shah, through the influence of Shirley, had formed of the English.
Cormock was well received by the Shah, who appears to have regarded him in the light of an ambassador from James I, an illusion which the enterprising merchant did nothing to dispel. At the interview at the palace after the inevitable letter from the monarch and the equally inevitable presents had been presented, Shah Abbas called for wine, and taking a deep draught from the large bowl which had been handed him, drank his Majesty's health, dropping upon his knee to emphasize the compliment. He wards told Connock that he was welcome, that the King of England should be regarded as his elder brother, for he dearly esteemed his friendship, and that he would grant the English Jask, or any other port they might desire, with full freedom of trade. Finally an arrangement was completed by which the Shah contracted to deliver to the English from 1,000 to 3,000 bales of silk annually, at a price of from 6s. to 6s. 6d. per pound.
The curious blending of regality and commercial enterprise which is revealed in this transaction is typical of a state of affairs that prevailed throughout a great part of Asia at this period. In many countries the sovereign had an absolute monopoly of the trade, and it was death to any of their subjects to enter into independent commercial relations with foreigners. The system was almost universal in Further India and Indo-China, and though in India the lordly Mogul did not deign to soil his hands with actual trading operations, he was keenly alive, as we have seen, to the importance of keeping a tight hand on all commercial operations.
Shah Abbas's readiness to grant concessions to the English was prompted far more by his hatred of the Portuguese than by any genuine desire to assist Sir Robert Shirley's countrymen. Here, as elsewhere throughout the East, the Lusitanian yoke galled terribly. With their mastery of the sea, the Portuguese were able to set a rigid limit to Persian trade from the Gulf ports. They used their power with such ruthlessness that no vessel was able to enter or leave the ports in the Shah's territory without their licence. To all intents and purposes the coastal territory of the Shah was Portuguese, though they actually occupied only Ormuz and one or two other places in the Gulf.
The gift of Jask to the English in these circumstances was a somewhat interested piece of generosity. The Shah's obvious design in making it was to embroil the English with the Portuguese. He doubtless hoped that if the representatives of the two nations fell to fighting he might in the end come by his own again. Whatever his motive may have been, the effect of his favours to the English was precisely that indicated. The Portuguese took the alarm immediately they found that the East India Company was sending its ships to the Gulf, They foresaw in this new intrusion another and possibly a mortal blow to a trade which had already been reduced considerably from its former splendid proportions to almost insignificant dimensions. They accordingly nerved themselves for a big effort to oust the intruders.
In the spring of 1619 an expedition composed of five large ships was dispatched from Lisbon to the Gulf under the command of Buy Freire de Andrade, a brave and capable commander who had done good service for his country. Information of the departure of the fleet was transmitted to India by the English Company with the consequence that the authorities at Surat sent a powerful force into the Gulf in 1619 for the safeguarding of their trade, a measure which served the immediate purpose of ensuring due protection to English interests that year.
Meanwhile, in Persia the plot was decidedly thickening. The Portuguese ambassador at his final audience of the Shah took up a line of studied insolence. He demanded firstly the restitution of Gombroon and other territory recently occupied by the Persians, claiming that they belonged to Ormuz, and secondly, the exclusion of all other European powers from Persian ports.
Shah Abbas was greatly incensed at the nature of the demands that were made upon him. With passionate gestures he tore up the letters of recall presented to him by the ambassador and roundly declared that instead of restoring what he had already taken, he would drive the Portuguese from their factory at Ormuz. To accentuate his contempt for the practical ultimatum which had been delivered to him, he gave orders forthwith for the preparation of a firman granting the sole trade in silks to the English. There was now but a step to be taken to get into the region of actual warfare.
Upon the English fell the first serious blow in the contest. In November, 1620, Captain Shilling arrived in Swally roads with two ships, the London and the Roebuck'. Two other vessels of the same fleet, the Hart and the Eagle, had at an earlier period of the voyage been detached to proceed to the Gulf and were at the time well on their way to their destination. As soon as Shilling realized from the news which he gathered at Surat the danger which threatened from this division of his forces, he made all haste to follow the Hart and the Eagle. He came up with the ships in due course, and the reunited fleet made for Jask with the full determination of the commander to assert the English right to trade, even if he had to fight for it.
About the middle of December the Portuguese fleet was encountered off Jask, lying close in shore. Lack of wind delayed the engagement for a couple of days, and then a gallant, but unsuccessful, attempt was made to burn Ruy Freire's flagship. After this there was a lull in the operations, which lasted until December 28, when issue was joined in earnest. The brunt of the fight fell for a time upon the London and the Hart, the other two ships being becalmed some distance away. In spite of the odds against them the two English ships held their position, and in the end, by a well-sustained cannonade, inflicted such severe punishment upon the enemy that they were put to flight. All four English ships joined in the chase, which was continued well into the evening when, as the supply of ammunition was running short, the order was given to return to Jask,
Honours decidedly rested with the English. A superior Portuguese fleet had been driven off and the way had been opened for English trade in circumstances which were calculated to impress the Persians with the superior fighting qualities of the new aspirant for commercial favours in the Shah's dominions. The victory, however, had not been won lightly. Amongst the wounded on the English side was Shilling, who early in the action received a bullet in the shoulder as he was directing operations from the half deck. He lingered for some days and then expired, to the great grief of his men, who recognized in him a skilful and kindly leader. The dead commander was given an imposing funeral at Jask. Thereafter the English fleet set sail for Surat.
At the close of 1621 another English fleet of five ships, under the joint command of Captains Blyth and Weddell, was navigating the waters of the Gulf. In the interval which had elapsed since the departure of Shilling's fleet the situation in Persia had markedly changed. The Persians, encouraged by the success of the English operations, had besieged Ormujz, and the Portuguese, in retaliation for Persian hostihty, had laid waste the coast and burnt all Persian shipping that came in their way. On the whole the Portuguese, with their command of the sea, had, so far, a distinct advantage in the struggle.
Not unnaturally, in the circumstances the Persians hailed the advent of the English fleet with delight. Their hatred of the Portuguese was intense, and they realized that in the English they might obtain an ally whose assistance would be invaluable to them. Without loss of time they made overtures to the English commanders for co-operation, offering substantial inducements in the shape of trading concessions and backing their requests for assistance with the argument that as the fight with the Portuguese had been precipitated by the favour shown by the Shah to the English the latter were in duty bound to stand by them. The Persian appeal had a warm advocate in Edward Monnox, the chief English factor in Persia, who had come down to the coast on his recall by the Company, and who had brought with him a strong impression of the supreme importance of making a bold bid for the reversion of the position which Portugal had so long maintained in the Shah's dominions.
Neither Blyth nor Weddell was eager to take upon himself the burden of the great responsibility of joining the Persians against the Portuguese. It was one thing to resist an unprovoked attack and quite another thing to enter a conflict in which the Company had no direct interest and that as an ally of an Asiatic power. And quite apart from considerations of moral expediency there was the danger to be faced of taking the offensive against the well-equipped vessels of Ruy Freire's fleet. A reverse would be disastrous to the Company's position in the Gulf, and it would seriously imperil the whole fortunes of the English in the East. Probably, if left to themselves, the two commanders would have found some excuse for non-compliance, but Monnox was at their elbow in their councils, and his zeal for a Persian understanding eventually carried the day.
An agreement of a far-reaching kind was, as the upshot of the negotiations, arranged between the English and the Persian commander. Amongst the conditions were: (1) that the spoils should be equally divided; (2) that the yield of the customs at Ormuz, when taken, should be shared in future as between the two nations, the English being for ever customs free; (3) that Christians captured should be at the disposal of the English; and (4) that the Persian commander should pay half the cost of the detention of the ships.
As the first diplomatic instrument concluded with Persia this agreement has special interest. It shows that British rights in the Persian Gulf are no modern bogey reared to warn off inconvenient rivals, as has sometimes been represented abroad, but have an ancestry going back three himdred years to an episode in which Englishmen rendered definite and valuable services to the reigning Shah.
Some days after the seal had been put to the document embodying the foregoing terms, the English vessels appeared off Ormuz and found the Portuguese fleet, consisting of five galleons, two small ships and a number of frigates, riding at anchor under the guns of the castle. The Portuguese were in too strong a position to be attacked with any hope of success, and they showed no disposition to come out into open water, where the conditions would be more equalized. The English commanders, therefore, decided to devote their attention to the adjoining island of Kishm, where the Portuguese had built a fort, and were conducting a not unsuccessful fight against a large body of Persian troops which had been sent against them. Blyth and Weddell were the more disposed to make this transfer of the scene of their operations as they learned that the garrison at Kishm was under the direct command of Ruy Freire.
The appearance of the English fleet off Kishm had an immediate effect. Before a shot had been fired, Ruy Freire sought an accommodation. Monnox, who was sent ashore to arrange matters, found the Portuguese conmaander willing to surrender if he could obtain an assurance of the safety of the lives of the Persians who had assisted him. Ruy Freire, on being told that the English could not interfere with this matter, gallantly replied that rather than hand his allies over to the tender mercies of the Persians he would die with them. Nor could he be moved from this determination by a promise subsequently obtained from the Persian General that their lives should be spared.
On the failure of the negotiations, the English ships commenced a bombardment of the fort, but the range proved too great to make their fire effective. To remove the drawback five guns were landed and mounted as close to the walls of the fort as practicable. They were in charge of William Baffin, famous in the annals of Arctic exploration for his bold enterprises in the then little-known region of the Frozen North. The fire was maintained from these pieces with such excellent results that a breach was soon made in the defences. Unhappily, Baffin, who had exposed himself a good deal in his anxiety to achieve successful results, attracted the attention of some Portuguese sharpshooter. As he was in the act of aiming one of the guns, he was shot in the stomach and died almost immediately. His is another example of the life of a navigator of distinction sacrificed on the altar of patriotism in the East in those early days when the history of English influence in Asia was in the making.
Ruy Freire speedily recognized that his position had been made untenable by the land battery which the unfortunate Baffin had so skilfully directed. Tendering his submission, this time unconditionally, he was escorted with his brother officers to one of the English ships, much to the disappointment of the Persians, who had hoped that they might have secured possession of the person of the eminent captive and so have been able to grace their triumph in a manner which would have appealed to the native imagination.
As soon as the joint occupation of Kishm had been arranged, the English fleet sailed across to Gombroon to prepare for the larger task of attacking Ormuz. There was a splendid audacity about the contemplated operation which would have appealed to a Nelson or a Howe. The city was defended by a strong fort occupying a position at the end of a narrow spit of land, the approach to which was completely covered by the Portuguese guns. Apart from the land defences there had to be reckoned with the Portuguese fleet, which was in every way superior to the English force. The Persian alliance, no doubt, was a counterbalancing advantage, but the experience of Shah Abbas's troops gained at Kishm had not been of a character to justify undue reliance on their prowess. Moreover, the conditions were such that the principal fighting would necessarily have to be done on the seafront of the city.
The English commanders appear to have been from the first fully confident of their ability to carry the attack to a successful issue, for they deliberately weakened their force by despatching one of their ships, the Lion, to Surat with Ruy Freire and his fellow-captives. They doubtless reckoned on the moral effect of their victory at Kishm and on the confusion which would necessarily be caused by the enforced withdrawal of the Portuguese commander and several of his principal officers. Possibly they had definite information as to the inability of the defenders to make anything like a vigorous stand against a combined attack. However they may have been influenced, they formed, as events proved, a very accurate estimate of the situation.
In conjunction with the Persian commander a plan of campaign was drawn up by which the city was to be attacked from the land side by Persian troops, while the English assailed it from the sea. The operations opened on February 10, with the transport to a point on the island of Ormuz in the rear of the city of a large body of Persian troops under the command of Imam Zuli Beg. Almost simultaneously the English ships commenced to bombard the fort and the Portuguese shipping at anchor near it. The attack continued intermittently until the 24th of the month when the San Pedro, the largest of the Portuguese galleons, was set on fire, and in a short time destroyed. A Persian attack on the town made a few days previously had been repulsed, and the land operations had somewhat flagged in consequence. But under the stimulus of the episode of the 24th both allies threw themselves with great ardour into the combat. One after another the Portuguese ships were battered to pieces by the English guns and closer and closer the Persians drew their lines.
The position soon became for the Portuguese a desperate one in view of the failure of provisions and the impossibility of receiving any succour from Goa. Fearing an assault on the city which would lead to a general massacre of the inhabitants by the Persians, the Portuguese on April 23 surrendered to the English commanders. To avoid ill consequences the garrison, which numbered, with women and children, 3,000, were shipped to Muscat and Suhar, with the design that they should be despatched from thence, as opportunity offered, to Goa.
Thus, appropriately on St. George's Day, this famous stronghold of the Portuguese fell into English hands. In its later years, Ormuz had been under a shadow, in common with the other Eastern possessions of Portugal, but it still had upon it the marks of the greatness which it had borne when it was one of the principal entrepôts of Eastern trade in the Middle Ages. Travellers who visited it at the time make mention of its splendid churches and mosques, its bustling streets, and its noble houses, furnished with all the luxurious accessories of the refined Western civilization of the age. Viewed from the sea it presented an appearance of magnificence uncommon in an Oriental port at that period. All this has since vanished like "the baseless fabric of this vision." To-day if you go to Ormuz you will find in the place of the spreading city, with its 40,000 population, a miserable settlement of 500 nomads, encamped on a sterile, rocky expanse which was once the famous seat of Portuguese power. A portion of the fort and a lighthouse, of extraordinarily solid construction, are the sole mementoes of the century-long Lusitanian occupation.
The capture of Ormuz was something more than an incident in a protracted struggle for trade supremacy. It constitutes one of the signposts in the history of British influence in the East. The blow inflicted was a fatal one as far as Portuguese ascendancy in Persia was concerned, and it exercised an enormous effect in hastening the downfall of the Portuguese power in the East as a whole. On our side, as will be demonstrated, it led directly to the planting of our flag on an unassailable basis in India. Further, it created for us that direct interest in the Persian Gulf which some Continental diplomats at this very time are compelled to take into serious account in prosecution of their plans of commercial and political development in the East. All credit, therefore, to the gallant Blyth and his excellent colleague Weddell, who in the true spirit of patriotic enterprise went into this difficult venture on their own initiative, and who, by their energy and skill, carried it to a successful conclusion at a loss of no more than twenty English lives.