Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/231

 CHAPTER XX

PIRATES OF THE PERSIAN GULF

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.