Printed for the use of the Foreign Office. March 1888. CONFIDENTIAL. Further Correspondence respecting the Lighthouses in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. [In continuation of Confidential Paper No. 5337.] No. 1. Board of Trade to Foreign Office.-(Received December 22.) Sir, Board of Trade, London, December 21, 1886. WITH reference to previous correspondence on the subject of the proposed lighting of the coast in the neighbourhood of Cape Guardafui, and especially to your letter of the 30th November, 1885, I am directed by the Board of Trade to transmit herewith, to be laid before the Earl of Iddesleigh, copy of a letter which they have addressed to the Treasury making certain proposals with reference thereto; and I am to suggest, for the consideration of the Secretary of State, whether it is not desirable that these proposals should be communicated to the foreign Governments named in the margin,* and their attention drawn to the response made by them to a Circular issued by the Earl of Derby in 1877, when they (with the exception of Belgium) agreed to the principle of a tax on ships being levied to meet the expense of placing and maintaining a light off Cape Guardafui. I have, &c. (Signed) Inclosure 1 in No. 1. Board of Trade to Treasury. HENRY G. CALCRAFT. Board of Trade, London, December 20, 1886. Sir, I AM directed by the Board of Trade to acquaint you, for the information of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, that for many years they have had under their consideration the question of lighting the coast in the neighbourhood of Cape Guardafui, at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden. Representations as to the necessity for this light have from time to time been made to the Board of Trade by the Secretary of State for India, and by Associations and others interested in the shipping trade in the East, and the Board of Trade are satisfied that a light for Cape Guardafui is a pressing necessity in the interests of British trade, and that, when established, it will be of service to foreign ships no less than to British ships using the Red Sea route. The Board of Trade also desire me to state that the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty have stated that a light placed at Cape Guardafui will be of service to ships of the Royal Navy. In correspondence which has already passed the fact that foreign ships would also derive benefit from such a light has not been overlooked, and so long since as 1878 * Austria-Hungary, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. B [492]
