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1.2  Seafaring in the region

There are a number of fragmentary indications of ancient seafaring around the shores of the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea from petroglphs of ships engraved on rocks in the eastern desert of Egypt; diorite statues statues brought from foreign lands and found in Sumerian sites; the presence in the ruins of Ur of artifacts cut from the shell of the Indian chank^[1] and Egyptian records of trading expeditions by sea.^[2]

One record of seafaring in the Persian Gulf occurs during the reign of Sargon (c.2370–2316 bc). An inscription on a statue attributed to Sargon recounts his victories over the Summerians and that ships from Dilmun were moored at Agade:

 

Sargon, King of Kish, was victorious in thirty-four campaigns and dismantled all the cities as far as the shore of the sea. At the wharf of Agade he made moor the ships of Meluhha, ships of Magan and ships from Dilmun

 

Inscriptions attributed to Ur-Nanshe, king of Lagash (c.2494–2465 bc) record the bringing of tribute from distant countries “by the ships of Dilmun” and that he had obtained timber from Dilmun.^[3] Stones on which inscriptions have been made record that Sargon’s son, Manishtusu, brought them back from an expedition “in ships from the mountain beyond the Lower Sea” a reference to the Persian Gulf and that his grandson Naran-Sin sent out expeditions to the coast lands of the Persian Gulf.^[4]

There is sufficient evidence to indicate that boats of one form or another were in use by 2500 bc, some 4500 years ago, if not earlier and that future archaeological work will not only bear this out but give us more evidence of the form of construction and their usage from which our knowledge of seafaring and trade routes, particularly those by sea, can be increased from the present fragmented sketches that we have today.^[5]

We have records that indicate the form of boat construction over the past 2,000 years and  one extraordinary example of boat constyruction some 4,500 years old.^[6] One of the main features of Arab dhow construction was that their planking was tied together or sewn with coconut fibre rope. This is mentioned by Pliny the Elder^[7] and is indicated in various 16th and 17th century illustrations.^[8] In 1980, Tim Severin built a replica of an Arab sailing boat to traditional designs and sailed it from the Sultanate of Oman to China. His exploits and the detail of the boat construction are given in his book, The Sindbad Voyage.

The Arab dhows rigged with the triangular lateen sail were less capable than the Portuguese galleons that appeared in the area in the early 16th century or other European ships that subsequently followed but they were adequate. The Chinese junks that voyaged from China to India and Arabia were flat bottomed and adequate but side-slipped when the wind moved and their sweep-like rudders were vulnerable in high seas. The European ships, stout, broad, square-sailed had deep keels in comparison to the dhows and junks allowing them to sail close to the wind and hold their own in a storm. However what form shipping took before these is not clear but one form was put forward by Thor Heyerdahl and named the Tigris Expedition. This modern expedition also gives us an insight into what seafarers may have faced in travelling through the lower part of the Persian Gulf.

Thor Heyerdahl’s Tigris expedition began on the 11 November 1977 in the Garden of Eden on the bank of a river that flows from Ararat, where Noah’s legendary ark once came to rest and ended in Djibouti on the 3 April 1978. Relying on a vessel constructed of reeds and a square sail it was an attempt to prove a sea route used by the Sumerians some five thousand years ago and took him down the river Tigris, through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz to Pakistan and Somalia. As Heyerdahl records having left Sirri, in the south-west part of the Persian Gulf, and set a course of 80° directly towards the Strait of Hormuz:

 

Just before sunrise the wind went mad. It turned more westerly, with violent gusts, and the sea was as chaotic as one would normally expect it to be only where there is interference from reefs or currents .... A sudden treacherous gust of wind, helped by a twisting wave, unexpectedly threw us side on to the weather and before the sail could be adjusted or the unfortunate helmsman could get us back on course, all the devils in the universe seemed to thunder down upon us. From a course of 80° the bow danced around, past 0° to 340°, and within seconds all hands were on deck in a terrible fight to regain control of the vessel. The wind threw itself upon the rigging and bamboo walls with a violence not yet experienced on this voyage. The thick sail battered with a force that would lift any man off the deck, and loops and rope-ends from sheets, braces and leach-lines whipped left and right and struck at everything on board. Like savages we clung to the canvas and ropes, and in the mad fight that followed the wooden block that held the port side topping lift split asunder and the yardarm with the sail sagged to port. The flapping and slashing sail had to come down quickly before all the rigging broke. But the loops of the halyard, normally easy to loosen were under such pressure where they were wound around the bridge railing that no combination of men were able to unfasten it, and the canvas, flapping in fury on a slanting yardarm, had to remain up at the mercy of the storm. I gave thanks that this was our smaller sail and not the giant we had rejected.

 

They continued to make some headway though loosing steering control from time to time and by midday Heyerdahl records:

 

The sky was blue above us, but there were white cloud-banks along the entire horizon ahead. Cloud-banks, but what the devil did we see above the clouds? I grabbed the binoculars and what Asbjörn had asked about jumped clearly into view. For a moment I could hardly believe my eyes. Above the cloud-banks, raised above the earth, was land, like another indistinct world of its own. Solid rock was sailing up there, still so far away that the lower parts seemed transparent and did not even reach down to the clouds; the upper ridge seen against the clear sky was of a different shade of blue. What we all were staring at seemed far too high up to be real. Were we heading for the Himalayas? Was this an optical distortion, a Fata Morgana? .... We dug out our boxes a land-map of Oman. It showed that this Arabian dagger, with the Hormuz Strait at its tip, rose steeply to an elevation of 6,400 feet above the gulf. The whole peninsula was a lofty mountain chain with rock walls dropping almost perpendicularly into the sea on the gulf side that we were now approaching. Detlef had just measured a record speed of almost five knots .... The map showed only a single indentation where Said might have taken Rashid and the other men in among the vertical cliffs to get the shelter needed for making their repairs; Ras al Shaikh. It would seem to be a most inhospitable cove between rock walls, to judge from the skyline we now saw. We were soon to find out. We had to clear Ras al Shaikh on our way up to the final cape marking the entrance to the Hormuz Strait .... We were fighting our way up the coast, taking the weather in athwart, but we were also getting closer to the cliffs we wanted to avoid on the starboard side. A more forbidding land I had never seen: sky-piercing in every sense, and yet not even scrub or a green tuft of grass to brighten up the sterile ascents. A petrified desert tilted on end. The stormy weather struck these walls head on, and assaulting seas were violently rebuffed and rebounded with full force for many miles, stirring up a chaotic turmoil of tossing and leaping waves of a treacherous kind never encountered in the free ocean spaces. How utterly illusory it was for armchair anthropologists to believe and teach that pre-European voyages were possible so long as the navigator could hug a mainland coast, and that ocean crossings were impossible before the days of the Spanish caravels. Nowhere is the sea worse and the problems more acute than where rocks are or where waves and currents encounter shores and shallows. To hug a coast can be the most demanding task for any primitive voyager. Ancient seafarers must have felt like us in similar situations, unless they were far better prepared. Never have I or my companions been tormented by more problems when travelling on primitive craft at sea than when we have struggled to clear the last mainland capes to get into the open ocean, or when upon an ocean crossing we have approached land on the other side. To hug this Arabian peninsula gave us not the slightest feeling of security. On the contrary, it was quite a nightmare, from which we would have wished to wake and find ourselves safe in the middle of the Indian Ocean…

My only hope was that these conditions would change when we came still closer to land. The elements themselves would be forced to change course the moment they hit the lofty cliffs. The current would be turned parallel to the coast instead of against it, and be compressed to gain in speed, and so would the wind when striking the rocks at sea level. The only opening in the compact wall was the Hormuz Strait, way up at the tip of the peninsula. If nature was forced to follow such an escape route, we would be dragged along too.… Never on any sea had we seen so many brilliantly lit ships in motion at the same time as appeared around us at the moment when Detlef ordered a sharp, 90° turn to starboard and the men on the bridge sent us into the main traffic lane of Hormuz Strait….^[9]

 

Heyerdahl’s account of sailing conditions between Bahrain and the Musandam on the southern side of the Persian Gulf is known to those familiar with the area and to the writer who was driven ashore on the same coast line by unpredictable and violent winds that arose without any warning. This account is all the more pertinent as recent archaeological work at at Ras al Hadd on the eastern tip of Oman and east of Hormuz strait has found traces of reed boats coated in bitumen and perhaps similar in design to that of Heyerdahl’s boat. Although the reeds are Phragmites, which grow all over the region, the bitumen has been typed to one or two sources in Iraq. The dating is 2500 to 2200 bc, based on stratigraphy and C14 from the site at Ras al Hadd.^[10] However there remains the question whether the boat was constructed locally and coated with bitumen from Iraq or whether the boat originated in Iraq.

The difficulties of navigation off the Emirates coast and the Musandam are also set out by Pliny who says that east of Bahrain navigation is not possible on the Arab side because of the rocks and by al-Idrisi ^[11] who says:

 

the Sea of Qatar is little frequented and much feared by sailors and travellers.

 

Although it is evident that most vessels sailing through the strait stayed to the north, there is a direct route through the Strait of Hormuz between the Quoins and Ra’s Musandam and al-Mas?udi^[12] who probably had first hand experience of the passage describes it:

 

‘Kusayr and ‘Uwayr and a third in which is no good, then Dardur known as Dardur Musandam called by the sailors Father of Hell,

 

al-Mas?udi then goes on to describe the terrifying sight of the waves breaking around the base of these black rocks void of vegetation or life. There are a few narrow passages at the northern end of the Musandam, such as Fakk al Asad, that offer tempting short cuts for vessels but which have fierce currents or tidal races and whirlpools known as Al Dardur (the whirlpool) and none but the most intrepid sailors used this route and then only the small ships, not those of the China trade according to other writers.^[13] However some boats did attempt to use this route and Thevenot records how:

 

some English one day, being half drunk and having good Wind, would needs in a frolick sail through that Channel, but so soon as they were got in, the Wind failed them, and they were in great danger of splitting against the Rock; however they preserved themselves with Fenders and Poles, but not without a great deal of trouble, and were sufficiently scared before they got out again: if it had blown hard, they must infallibly have been split.^[14]

 

Robert Everard, an apprentice to Captain John Crib of the Bauden when it sailed from London on the 5th August 1686 bound for Bombay, was in Madagascar when the ship he was on was boarded and the crew killed. Taken captive, he eventually got away on an Arab ship and made his way to Muscat. From Muscat, he sailed up the Batinah coast bound for Persia and gives the following account of what took place at what must have been Ra’s Musandam:

 

About a day or two before we came into Perfia, we went between the main and an ifland; and juft as we were thro’ , one of the Arabs took two handfuls of dates, and heaved one of his handfuls at the ifland, and the other at the main; and then hollowed and was glad they got well thro’.

Affoon as they got a little further, the tide run very strong, and fometimes the water run round; and it made round fo faft, that the oars fhe had in her could not keep her head to the tide; and as faft as they got her head to the tide, the water ran round about, and carry’d the boat round about for all their oars, and they could not anchor becaufe of the depth of water. At laft we had a ftout gale of wind, then we went right away before it; yet for all that, we could hardly keep her head to it; and if fhe took a yaw any way, fhe would run round about, and it would be a great while before we could bring her head about, and after all, had like to have driven amongft the iflands; but, thank God, at laft we got a good way off, and flood over for Perfia, and the wind run us over to the Perfia fhore in fix hours time.^[15]

 

Schoff, in his translation and notes of The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, states that Ras Musandam has been a sacred spot to Arabian navigators from time immemorial and that ceremonies were held at it to ensure safe passage. The sheer cliffs of the Ra’s Musandam are daunting to those in small sailing boats and the danger to small vessels increases with the variability of the winds and the tidal race even for those vessels fitted with motorised power. The evidence indicates that travel in the southern end of the Persian Gulf was to be avoided if possible and if undertaken then it was safer along the Iranian littoral. Arab navigation is considered at conderable length and in detail by Tibbetts in his book Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the coming of the Portuguese.^[16]