IOR/L/PS/5/487, ff 484-495

This item comprises copies of enclosures to a despatch from the Government of Bombay Secret Department to the Secret Committee, Number 59 of 1856, dated 12 August 1856. The enclosures are dated 6 July-8 August 1856.

The enclosures comprise communications between Brigadier William Marcus Coghlan, Political Resident in Aden, and the Government of Bombay, regarding their efforts to suppress the trade in enslaved persons in the Red and Arabian seas and Persian Gulf regions, notably the following:

• The desire to clearly define the powers of British vessels with regard to seizing ships sailing under the Ottoman flag, given the inability of Indian Navy officers to cite the Secret Treaty between Britain and the Ottoman Sultan as justification for any acts of seizure
• The question of how to proceed regarding the seizure of vessels sailing under the flag of independent Arab ‘chiefs’ who do not have agreements with Britain, such as the rulers of Maculla and Shuhr [Mukalla and Ash Shihr], or those who may be vassals of the Imam of Muscat and who may therefore come under the provisions of Britain’s treaty with the Imam
• The Government of Bombay’s intention to refer to the Secret Committee and the Home Authorities the question of obtaining a more effective instrument from the Sublime Porte [Ottoman or Turkish Government] and a clearer definitions regarding the powers of the Indian Navy
• Coghlan’s correspondence with Captain John James Frushard, Senior Naval Officer, Aden, and Senior Lieutenant G N Adams, Officiating Senior Naval Officer, Aden, regarding the searching of vessels for enslaved persons within Turkish ports, including: notification to Frushard of the Secret Treaty and suggestion that a vessel of war be kept in the harbour of Perim Island to watch the Straits of Bebel-Mandeb [Bab el-Mandeb] for ‘slave vessels’; a report from Lieutenant Walker, Indian Navy, Commanding the HC [Honourable Company’s] schooner Mahi asserting that in his experience most of the strait cannot be seen from a ship’s mast head at Perim, relating his searches of ships at Mocha, Mussowah [Massawa] and Hodeida [Al Hudaydah], and reporting the objections of the Governor of Mussowah to a foreign ship searching vessels under his jurisdiction; the desire of Raffaello Barroni, Agent to Walter Chichele Plowden, HM Consul in Abyssinia [now Ethiopia], to have a vessel stationed at Massowah and Adam’s view that this is probably because Barroni ‘imagines the political horizon about there rather dark’ (f 491); and Coghlan’s request to Adams that Walker should not search Turkish [Ottoman] vessels in Turkish ports as it is likely to give offence, and to wait for a clear code of instructions from the authorities in England and Bombay.