blockade the Bab-el-Mandeb and prevent Indian merchant ships from entering the Red Sea most likely involved frequent use of Perim's natural harbour. By the time the Ottomans captured Aden from its local ruler in 1538, the Ottoman fleet was taking control of the Red Sea, maintaining firm control of the Red Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb and Aden until the 1630s when the Turks were expelled from Yemen and the south half of the Red Sea. A French naval squadron might have used Perim's natural harbour in the course of a punitive expedition against nearby Mocha in 1737. In 1799, the island was briefly occupied by the British East India Company in preparation for the invasion of Egypt. Perim under British rule In 1856, seeing the French-sponsored Suez Canal project as a method to promote French power at Britain's expense, Prime Minister Palmerston agreed to the occupation of Perim as one of many options to counter assumed French political and military ambitions in Egypt and the Red Sea. In December 1856, Lord Elphinstone, the governor of Bombay, wrote to the Resident of Aden that "on the subject of Perim, [..] we have been directed to occupy the island, and that it is the intention of Her Majesty's government that a lighthouse should be built there." He added that since the island had already been taken possession of in the name of the East India Company in 1799, it was considered as a part of the dependencies of India, and therefore no formalities of any kind was necessary. The Resident immediately proceeded to organize a small landing party for the peaceful occupation of the uninhabited island. The actual decision to occupy might have been precipitated by an unfounded report that the French, who were said to have been surveying the area for some time, had dispatched a frigate from Réunion to annex the island. The declared reason for the occupation, however, was the urgent need to erect a lighthouse at the entrance of the notoriously dangerous Bab el Mandeb and indeed, after much bickering about the location and other factors, an 11-meter high lighthouse was finally built and inaugurated on 1 April 1861. Despite the lighthouse's operation, the treacherous waters around Perim continued to claim many vessels. Perim was attached to Aden, itself a dependency of the Bombay Presidency, British India. For the next two decades, the only sign of British occupation was