Early Mail Transport in, and from, the Gulf 1798-1939 – ابتدای انتقال نامه در خلیج از سال 1798 تا 1939 میلادی – تاریخ بوشهر (ابوشهر یا Bushire)

سلام. جنبش آزادی بخش ابوشهر یک مطلب ناب و تاریخی به شما تقدیم می کند! امروز می خواهم در مورد خط تلگراف و اصطلاحا Air Mail برای شما بنویسم که نقش بوشهر (ابوشهر یا Bushire) نیز در آن آمده است. بگذارید برایتان خلاصه بگویم. یک خلاصه از تاریخ بوشهر تا جنگ جهانی دوم برایتان گذاشته ام. کلیک کنید تا خلاصه تاریخ بوشهر را بخوانید. وقتی آن را بخوانید متوجه می شوید که:

1. دفتر کمپانی هند شرقی بریتانیا از سال 1763 در بوشهر دایر شدو تقریبا می توان گفت دو-سوم از تجارت بوشهر مربوط به کالاهای انگلیسی بود!
2. همزمان British Residency نیز در بوشهر ایجاد شد که به تقریبا به مدت 180 سال بوشهر مرکز فرماندهی (Headquarters) انگستان در کل خلیج فارس محسوب می شد.
3. بریتانیا بعد از جنگ 1857 در بوشهر شروع به احداث خط تلگراف از لندن تا کلکته نیز نمود. این خط تلگراف یکی از لندن تا برلین تا تهران تا اصفهان تا شیراز و سپس به بوشهر بود و دیگری خط تلگرافی بود که از لندن به سوی بغداد می رفت و سپس به بوشهر می آمد. کلیه این خطوط سپس به دریا می افتادند و به بندر جاسک می رفت و سپس به هند می رفتند. تقریبا 40 درصد از ترافیک تلگراف خلیج فارس از بوشهر بوده است!
4. بریتانیا سیستم ناوبری دریایی اش نیز در بوشهر احداث کرد تا به هدایت کشتی ها در خلیج کمک کند. اصطلاحا یک قطب نمای دریای خاص بوده است.
5. از آنجایی که بوشهر مرکز فرماندهی بریتانیا محسوب می شد در نتیجه افراد مهمی همچون Cox (سیاست مدار زیرک انگلیسی یا پدر استعمار ایران) و Sykes (فرمانده پلیس جنوب SPR) و Lorimer (نویسنده کتاب اطلس خلیج و دریای عمان) و … سال ها در این شهر زندگی می کردند! جالب است که آقای Lorimer حتی مرگش در بوشهر بوده است.

پس تا اینجا متوجه می شوید که نقش بوشهر بسیار مهم بوده است.

حالا می خواهم جزییات این طرح را برایتان بگذارم:

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برگرفته از:

National Center for Documentation and Research, 2013 Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Volume 5 • Number 10 • December 2013

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عناوین مطالب (در ادامه عناوین با قرمز مشخص شده است):

1. Early Mail Transport in, and from, the Gulf 1798-1939

2. Writing the General Treaty: Anne Thompson and the British Expedition to the Gulf, 1819-1821

3. The British India Line in the Arabian Gulf, 1862–1982

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نویسندگان:

*Editor-In-Chief: Dr. Abdulla El Reyes , Director General of the National Center for Documentation and Research

*Deputy Editor-In-Chief: Majid Sultan Al Mehairi

*Managing Editor: Dr. L. Usra Soffan

*Editorial Board  Dr. Jayanti Maitra Farhan Al Marzooqi Saeed Al Suwaidi

*Editorial Secretary: Nouf Salem Al Junaibi

*Design & Layout: Mohamed Adel

*Advisory Board: H.E. Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh (Adviser in the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Deputy Chairman of Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) and Board Member of National Center for Documentation & Research) – Prof. Mustafa Aqil al- Khatib (Professor of Modern History-Qatar University) – Dr. John E. Peterson

Historian and Political Analyst: Dr.  Muhammad  Sa’ad  al-  Muqaddam Assistant Professor of Modern History  Sultan Qaboos  University – Dr. Sa’ad Abdulla al- Kobaisi Assistant Professor of Anthropology UAE University

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شروع ماجرا که شامل 3 بخش است و عناوین با قرمز مشخص شده است:

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Early Mail Transport in, and from, the Gulf  1798-1939

Douglas N. Muir

Introduction

Communication is the lifeblood of society and trade. In this age it is instant emails or phone messages. In the past, over any distance, it was largely by post. In the Gulf it was trade and external political requirements which first brought demands for a postal service. This was the thread which bound the area together, or – perhaps better

• the spine which connected it with the outside Yet any such service clearly depended on transport and until the 1920s that had to be by camel overland through the desert or, more normally, by ship overseas. Even when properly organised and regular services came into being these were quite slow.

With the coming of organised transport also came the founding of local postal agencies. The rise of one depended on the other, but for many years there were very few agencies serving the whole Gulf. It also took a long time for mail to arrive, especially if a weekly, or fortnightly, steamer had just been missed. Transit time to Bombay was up to 14 days.

Almost nothing has been published on the subject of mail transport in the Gulf. Even the magisterial volumes of documents reproduced and edited by Anita Burdett under the heading “Communications and Transport”, despite the title, do not touch on sea mails or overland routes, only referring to airmails. This paper is intended to remedy that gap, as far as is possible.

Early days

For the very early period details are hazy and documentation scant. Although the East India Company had maintained ships in the Gulf to safeguard trade and the route from Britain to India through the 17th and 18th centuries, communication with the outside world was irregular. It was not until 1 January 1798 that packet ships were established between Bombay and Basra (and thence overland to Europe). Packet ships here were vessels conveying mails, goods and passengers at regular intervals, and at this time clearly sailing vessels. They were to provide a monthly service, though with extremely high charges, as was common at that time. Postage was to be paid on delivery at the extortionate rate of 10 rupees a single letter “weighing one quarter of a Rupee”. For those weighing more than that the cost was 15 rupees, rising to 20 rupees.1 Users were requested to write their letters in duplicate because on arrival at Basra one bag was forwarded via Aleppo and another via Bagdad to reduce any losses as far as possible. There cannot have been much  demand.

The route from Basra to Aleppo was served by a dromedary post under the supervision of an agent of the East India Company. Thence to Constantinople (and thus beyond) was by horse. This desert post was closed in 1833, being superseded by the sea route via the Red Sea. The current of history would eventually bypass the Gulf as a main route between Europe and the Indies and beyond for almost a century.

For several years Thomas Waghorn, of the Bengal Pilot Service, had been campaigning for a steam service from Britain via the Mediterranean and the Red Sea which would shorten the long journey round the Cape of Good Hope considerably. Sir Francis Freeling, Secretary to the British Post Office, described him as “a very old friend of ours and rather a troublesome one.”2

A steam vessel, the Hugh Lindsay (411 tons, built in Bombay), made experimental trips from 1833 from Bombay to Suez and proved that this was a practicable proposition. So, the whole question of steam navigation to India was now examined by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and Waghorn was one of those giving evidence.

Dated 14 July 1834, the Committee’s conclusions were, in essence, that experiments with steam vessels should continue in the Red Sea route and that the Euphrates – Gulf route should be tested, subsidised to the tune of £20,000 a year. “By the joint use of these two routes a regular monthly service could be established between England and India throughout the year.”3 Colonel Francis Chesney was put in charge of the survey of the Tigris and Euphrates and in 1837 he proposed that the Government of India re-open the desert post and establish a line of steamers to run fortnightly between Bombay and Basra.

With this in mind, new British rates of postage were officially documented in Acts of Parliament and detailed Treasury Warrants. The Gulf is first mentioned in 1837 and this was repeated in 1840. Letters of a single sheet, or later up to half an ounce, were to be charged 1s extra for transit either through the Red Sea or the Gulf.4

Between 1836 and 1840 the Hugh Lindsay made at least three trips from Bombay to the head of the Gulf with mails from India for Britain.5 The reverse trip for the mails in 1837 was described as follows:

The mails go to Beyrout in  Syria  by  the  Falmouth  packet,  &  are sent to Hit on the Euphrates by the Consul at Damascus. From Hit they are conveyed to Mahommra below Bussorah [Basra], under the superintendence of Mr Hector (late of the Euphrates expedition). Here they were put on board the Hugh Lindsay, steamer, on 13 May, but she not being ready for sea 4 days were lost at Mahommra & some additional hours at Bushire.6

This was hardly satisfactory as a regular service and so in 1839 the East India Company “sent out to Busra three iron steamers for use on the Tigris, specially constructed for river navigation, and a letter service was established between the Vice-Consulate at Busra and the Consulate General at Bagdad.”7 The use of steamships was critical as it offered the promise of much greater regularity, being less dependent on weather. These steamers were the Nimrod, Assyria, and Euphrates, but they were withdrawn towards the end of 1842 and the service via the Gulf “withered” as a result. From this it can be seen that the main route was to be by the Red Sea.

From late 1835, after the Malta steam packet had been extended to Alexandria, Waghorn had established a connecting overland service from Alexandria to Suez and agreed additional charges for this with the British Post Office. This service lasted at least until 1841.

In 1839 the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company gained the mail steamer contract from Falmouth to Alexandria. By 1841 it had added Oriental to its name, becoming the P & O with the contract through to Bombay. To inaugurate this service the steamer Hindostan (2,018 tons) left Southampton on 24 September 1842 to operate out of Calcutta, via Galle and the new coaling station of Aden, to Suez. This then became the normal route.

Figure 1. P & O’s steamer Hindostan leaving Southampton to inaugurate the mail contract via the Red Sea (National Postal Museum postcard)

Mail from the Gulf had to join up with this main artery by circuitous routes.

In 1843-44 the dromedary post was re-established across the Syrian desert from Bagdad to Damascus, and from Damascus via Beyrout communication was maintained with Constantinople  and  England, and except when opportunities occurred for the despatch of mails by sea to Bombay by an Indian Navy vessel, letters from Bagdad and Busra for India were sent by the desert route via Damascus and Beyrout through Egypt; and from Bushire via Teheran and Alexandria.8

First Steamships & Postal Agencies in the Gulf

It was not until 3 March 1862 that the Secretary of State for India wrote to the Government of Bombay to say that he was “willing to sanction the establishment of a line of steamers for postal purposes between Bombay and the … Gulf calling at Karachi, limiting the number of annual trips to eight.”9 The Bombay Government then invited tenders for a mail service between Bombay and Karachi (and vice versa) twice a month to connect with the arrival of mails from England via the Red Sea, commencing on and after 1 July that year. At the same time there should be a mail service eight times a year between Bombay and the Gulf via Karachi (and vice versa). These contracts were then undertaken by the British India Steam Navigation Company (B.I.) and a regular six-weekly service was established between Bombay and Basra. In 1866 the service was made monthly.

This is according to an official postal memorandum dating from 1888.10 On the other hand, the official history of the shipping company, published much later in 1956, states that the original 1862 service had “started bravely enough in 1862 on a fortnightly basis” – which seems less likely. That later history went on to say “the service became intermittent for a while and was often enough completely suspended for months on end during periods of bad weather and extreme recalcitrance on the part of the people ashore.”11 A third source agrees with the initial six-weekly service but states that it became fortnightly in 1868 and weekly in 1875.12 Other routes served by the company included Bombay to East Africa and Calcutta to Rangoon.

As a result of the new mail service, regular or otherwise, small post offices were established in Bushire and Muscat, both opening on 1 May 1864. The head postal establishment for the Gulf was that at Bushire. These agencies came under the control of the British Indian Post Office in Bombay (later Karachi) and internal Indian postage rates were charged, with Indian stamps being sold. Both were full post offices, though that at Muscat was later downgraded to the status of a Sub Office. There being no Persian post office at Bushire, that agency also delivered letters in the town and surrounding area and there were also mails to the interior.

Shortly afterwards, further postal agencies were officially opened, generally subordinate to the British Political Officers in the particular town. On the Persian coast sub post offices were opened experimentally at Bandar Abbas and Linga on 1 April 1867. Both became fully established relatively soon after their foundation. In Turkish Arabia offices were established at Basra and Bagdad on 1 January 1868. These offices were connected by the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company mail steamer on which Indian postage stamps were also sold.

That same year, 1868, saw a sub post office being opened at Guadur (on the route of the telegraph line and a port of call for the steamers) on 12 April. There were no more formal establishments until the 1880s when an office was established at Jask, again a station on the Indo-European Telegraph line (1 September 1880), and Bahrain (1 August 1884). However, Bahrain already had a limited service from 1875 when the local agent for the steamship company performed some of the tasks of a Sub Postmaster. For an allowance of Rs 15 a month he dealt with unregistered letters only, making up bags for Bushire and Bombay. Equally, for some years prior to the establishment of a recognised post office at Jask, the Assistant Superintendent in charge of the Telegraph station had performed the functions of a postmaster in an informal way. A mail bag was exchanged with the Karachi post office by the mail steamer.13  Thereafter, the tasks continued to be undertaken by a telegraph clerk.

The mail steamer service had started in 1862 and it was only gradually that postal agencies were established, and not for every port. In the meantime, for ports without a post office, a B.I. officer acted as postmaster on board ship. Letters were collected by recipients from the B.I. Agent’s office. There was also a letter box on board the steamers where letters could be posted and presumably Indian stamps were also available.

Letters were also taken by small local boats to the mail steamer ports of call. The first steamship did not visit Bahrain until the summer of 1869. Before that the British Resident in Bushire and his Agent in Bahrain sent their correspondence aboard dhows and the occasional naval ship. The journey of 120 miles took two days for a dhow with a favourable wind.14

B.I. Contract Extended in 1875

Dated 14 April 1875, a new contract was agreed with B.I. with revised, extended sailings to the Gulf and with several more ports of call. The service of B.I. Line No. 9 now included Guadur, Jask, Bandar Abbas, Linga, Bushire, Fao and Basra as contract ports of call, with Bahrein optional. Steamers were to be of not less than 700 tons gross register, with engines of 100 horse power. (Table 1) The time allowed between ports, and the minimum stay in them, were all specified in detail.15

Table 1 1875 Line No. 9.

Once a week starting from Bombay on fixed days.

Ports to be called at or as near thereto as the steamers can with safety approach	Distance from port to port	Time allowed for the runs from port to port at 7½ miles an hour	Minimum period of stay at ports
	Miles	Hours
Bombay
Verawal*	192	25½	3 hours of day-light
Porebunder*	65	8¾	3
Mandavie*	148	19¾	3
Kurrachee	182	24¼	One day of 24 hours
Guadur	311	41½	3 hours of day-light
Muscat	189	25¼	6
Jaskh	140	18⅔	3
Bunder Abbas	130	17⅓	3
Linga	120	16	3
Bahrein*	246	32¾	6
El Katif*	61	8¼	3
Bushire	171	22¾	One day of 24 hours
Koweit*	158	21	3 hours of day-light
Fao	85	11¼	3
Mahommerah*	37	5	3
Busreh	21	2¾	Two days or 48 hours
And back by the same route

One other service was also specified in the contract, though of less importance, from Aden once every four weeks. (Table 2) However, this may only have been a proposal or, if it ran, for a short duration only. Spellings of names in all the tables are as in the original sources, as is the terminology. Places marked * were optional ports of call.

In 1878 the contract was renewed for the weekly service with Muscat, Guadur, Jask and Bahrein still remaining fortnightly ports of call. “The steamers put in to Bahrein only on the voyage up the Gulf. On the return journey, mails from Bushire, &c., for Bahrein are dropped at Linga and picked up by the next up steamer.”16

Table 2 1875 Line No. 10.

Once every four weeks starting from Aden on fixed days.

Ports to be called at or as near thereto as the steamers can with safety approach	Distance from port to port	Time allowed for the runs from port to port at 7½ miles an hour	Minimum period of stay at ports
	Miles	Hours
Aden
Maculla*	280	37¼	3 hours of day-light
Muscat*	950	126¾	6
Kurrachee	480	64	Two days or 48 hours
Bunder Abbas*	648	86½	3 hours of day-light
Linga	120	16	3
Bahrein*	246	32¾	6
Bushire	179	23¾	One day of 24 hours
Busreh	195	26	Two days or 48 hours
And back by the same route

Steamers employed

All the steamers employed by B.I. were built on the River Clyde in Scotland, then a great hub of engineering and shipbuilding, and travelled out to India under their own steam (after November 1869 via the newly opened Suez Canal). Some were specifically built for the Gulf service; others were used on many routes over the course of their careers.

The waters of the Gulf were treacherous for navigation. They were poorly charted with few natural harbours, and the weather could suddenly change. In the official files there is much talk about necessary navigation buoys for guidance. As a result there were many instances of steamers grounding. Although required for the mail service they also carried passengers and other cargo.

One such steamer, especially built for the service, was the Busheer (617 tons net, 792 tons gross) in use from 1864 to 1891. She was built by J. Aitken & Co. of Glasgow and launched on 12 December 1863.

Unlike the larger ships, the BUSHEER had been designed with a shallow draft to enable her to get nearer the land at her namesake port and other similar shallow places at the head of the … Gulf but even with this feature she still had to anchor some distance out for passengers and cargo to be lightered ashore in local craft.17

She was scrapped in 1891. Other ships are also known from this period including the similar-sized but short-lived Umballa. Built in 1875 (840 gross tons) by Caird & Co. of Greenock, she is known to have left Bombay on 21 September 1879 and on 10

October she was in the Gulf near Jask (a postal inspector died on board there).18 In 1880 she was sold to a Dutch East Indies company and left the Gulf trade.

Few ships can be definitely assigned to mail transport in the 19th century. It is likely, however, that all B.I. steamers carrying cargo to Bushire or Basra also carried mail, no matter how intermittently they sailed.

Revision of Services, 1903

A thorough revision of the B.I. contract took place in 1903, and with a few alterations this was to last until 1938. All vessels now started from Karachi, though linked with a connecting service to Bombay. There was now an express mail service (or Fast Mail) calling at very few ports to Basra and two Slow or Subsidiary services calling at a series of extra ports on either side of the Gulf. Precisely which ports in 1903 is not clear as the surviving timetables date from a 1913 renewal of the contract, when there were a series of proposed revisions.19

Table 3. 1913 Line No. 12 – Fast Mail

Once a week starting from Karachi and Busreh on fixed days.

Ports	Distance from port to port	Time allowed for the runs from port to port at 13 knots an hour
	Knots	Hours
Karachi
Muscat	470	36¼
Bushire	605	46½
Mahomerah	170	13¼
Busreh	55	4¼
And back

Table No. 4: 1913 Line No. 13 – Subsidiary Mail Line A Once a fortnight starting from Karachi and Busreh on fixed days.

Ports	Distance from port to port	Time allowed for the runs from port to port at 13 knots an hour
	Knots	Hours
Karachi
Guadur	261	26¼
Muscat	230	23
Jask	136	13¾
B. Abbas	135	13½
Henjam	55	5½
Linga	63	6½
Bahrein	246	24¾
Bushire	175	17½
Mahomerah	170	17
Busreh	55	5½
And back

Table No. 5: 1913 Line No. 13 – Subsidiary Mail Line B Once a fortnight starting from Karachi and Bushire on fixed days.

Ports	Distance from port to port	Time allowed for the runs from port to port at 13 knots an hour
	Knots	Hours
Karachi
Pasni	190	20
Charbar	183	18½
Muscat	146	14¾
Jask	136	13¾
B. Abbas	135	13½
Henjam	55	5½
Linga	63	6½
Dubai	79	8
Bahrein	309	31
Bushire	175	17½
Koweit	160	16
And back

The express service is easy to understand; the slow “Subsidiary” services less so. The fast service, running once a week, called only at Muscat, Bushire, Mohammerah and Basra (now numbered Line 12). A slower service (Line 13) ran fortnightly, but separated into two branches. One branch served the main Persian ports and Bahrein going to Basra; the other also called at the Persian ports, but then Dubai and Kuwait, starting at Bushire. By 1913, this provided between two and four vessels a fortnight visiting Dubai, Linga, Bandar Abbas and even the new port of call of Henjam (despite having no post office), but only one vessel in the same period at Kuwait. This was the subject of a strong complaint by Captain Shakespear, the legendary British Political Agent at Kuwait.20 He also complained frequently at this time about the late arrival of the mail steamers.

The revised mail steamer schedule resulted in new British postal agencies in both Charbar and Henjam on the Persian coast, both established in the existing telegraph offices in 1913. With mail ships now calling regularly at Dubai a postal agency had been opened there officially on 19 August 1909, the B.I. Agent acting as Postmaster, though again some service had existed since August 1906. Kuwait did not gain a regular post office until 1915, Shakespear’s protestations notwithstanding.

Now we are on safer ground identifying ships. For 1907 there is a list of all shipping which called at Gulf ports.21  This provides a snapshot of transport activity. Extracting B.I. ships from that listing indicates which ships would have carried mail and an analysis of the data, with additional information about some of the named ships, enabling us to identify at least some of the mail transports and allocate them to the fast or slow services. (Table 6) Although built much earlier, all ships had varied careers and can only definitely be stated to have worked passages in the Gulf after 1903.

Table 6: B.I. Ships in the Gulf, 1907

Ship Name	Net Tons (Gross)	Year Built	Builder	No. of Trips
Kola	510 (1,192)	1890	A & J Inglis, Glasgow	15
Kasara	505 (1,195)	1890	Ailsa Shipbuilding Co, Troon	11
Dumra	762 (1,695)	1894	A & J Inglis, Glasgow	13	[fastest]
Dwarka	759 (1,650)	1894	A & J Inglis, Glasgow	13	[fastest]
Madura	1,273 (1,942)	1874	Scott’s, Greenock	9	Slow mail
Bulimba	1,607 (2,503)	1899*	A & J Inglis, Glasgow	8
Waroonga	1,619 (2,503)	1899*	A & J Inglis, Glasgow	7	Slow mail
Goalpara	1,359 (2,114)	1883	A & J Inglis, Glasgow	7	Slow mail
Nuddea	1,944 (2,964)	1883	William Denny, Dumbarton	4
Nerbudda	1,961 (2,977)	1882	William Denny, Dumbarton	3
Africa	1,302 (2,030)	1874	William Denny, Dumbarton	2

*year bought by B.I.

From this it can be seen (given the number of trips) that the smaller, faster ships would have been employed on the express service while some of the larger vessels are known to have worked the Subsidiary services. Names were generally allocated to the ships alphabetically, after localities in India. Thus, the Kola, Kasara and another ship not listed for 1907 the Katoria, were all loosely connected “K” ships built between 1887 and 1890. (Figure 2) The Nuddea and Nerbudda were sister ships (“N”) as were the Dumra and Dwarka (“D”). (Figure 3) Apparent exceptions to this, the Bulimba and the Waroonga, were originally used on Australasian routes and so bore Australian names. They were bought by B.I. in 1899.

Figure 2. Kola on trials 1890 (courtesy University of Glasgow Archive Services, Adamson and Robertson collection, GB0248 DC101/213)

Figure 3. Dumra on trials 1894 (courtesy University of Glasgow Archive Services, Adamson and Robertson collection, GB0248 DC101/349)

The Katoria moved on to the fast mail service after 1903. Later she was down-graded to the subsidiary service. Speed of most ships was between 11 and 13 knots; that of the Dumra and Dwarka, the fastest, was 15 knots. All were taken out of commission either just before or immediately after World War I.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I there was a proposal from B.I. for a small steamer service to run between Bahrein, Katif and Qatar. The paddle steamer Amarapoora was suggested. This had originally been built as the Tigris (192 gross tons) but was bought by B.I. in 1905, but this proposal seems to have come to nought.22

World War I and after

In early 1914 the British India Steam Navigation Company amalgamated with P. & O. but it retained its own identity and its mail contracts were unaffected. But with the coming of World War I later that year, initially only in Europe, its ships were immediately requisitioned. They were needed to transport Indian troops to the battlefields. Soon afterwards the war was extended to Mesopotamia. As a result the mail service became very irregular. Most ports did not even have a monthly service. Eventually, storeships servicing the troops in Mesopotamia brought mail on a monthly basis but at Dubai private unspecified arrangements were made.23  Regular services were not restored until after the war.

By 1921 the Fast and Subsidiary Mail lines were again in operation, the Fast operating weekly from Bombay via Karachi, Muscat, Bushire, Mahomerah and Basra. The Subsidiary worked from Bombay on a weekly basis via Karachi, Muscat, Bandar Abbas, Henjam, Linga, Bahrein, Bushire, Kuwait, Mahomerah to Basra. It also visited Pasni, Guadur, Charbar, Jask and Dubai fortnightly.24

Overland and in the Air

During all this time there was also communication overland across the desert, organised or otherwise, but very little survives in the way of documentation. The only reference I know to any regular system is that by the German traveller, Hermann Burchardt, who travelled in January 1904 by camel from Hofuf on the Arabian coast to the garrison in Doha in the company of the “Sayi”, whom he described as a messenger (Bote in German) carrying letters and messages there about once a month. Mail arrived at Hofuf from Bahrain by steamer once a week.25 Interestingly, the earliest item of franked mail known sent to Qatar, also dating from 1904, was to a member of that Turkish garrison. However, despite being directed via Bahrain it never arrived – it is marked “No postal communicat[io]n for Gattar”. (Figure 4) This is rather surprising. That this letter did not follow the same path is strange. The only explanation seems to be that either the service was unofficial or the British postal authorities in Bahrain did not know of its existence. There were doubtless other local services which have left little or no trace.

Figure 4. 1904 Qatar letter undelivered (courtesy Jakob von Uexkull)

Afفer the war, in November 1923, a new overland route was opened up obviating the need for mail from Britain to the Gulf to go via India. A weekly service by motor transport was established between Haifa in Palestine and Baghdad in the recently created Kingdom of Iraq. It was run by the Nairn brothers, Norman and Gerald, from New Zealand. Cars used were American Buicks and Cadillacs which could cope best with the hard terrain.26  (Figures 5 & 6).

Figure 5. Map of the Nairn Brothers overland route

Figure 6. One of the Cadillac cars used on the overland route c. 1924

An extra 3d fee was required to be paid on each letter but the service cut the journey time from London to Baghdad from 24 to 9 days. It was advertised by the British Post Office as serving mails for Iraq and the Gulf.27 The first mail from London was dispatched on 22 November.

By this time the main competition was that of airmail.

The starting point of the development of the Empire air mail services may be said to have been the utilisation, by arrangement with the Air Ministry, of R.A.F. service flights between Egypt and Iraq in 1921, when it was decided that these flights, which were undertaken as part of the ordinary military training, should be run at regular fortnightly intervals and that they should be used for the conveyance of mails.28

The route of these flights went via Rutbah Wells where it met up with the overland Nairn Transport. (Figure 7) It was marked on the ground by a deep furrow ploughed by RAF personnel all the way from Amman to Bagdad. This could be seen at considerable altitude and guided the pilots. A series of different De Havilland and Vickers aircraft were used.29

Figure 7. An R.A.F. flight carrying mail, grounded in the desert c. 1924

In 1922 an exhaustive enquiry was made by the British Civil Aviation Advisory Board which went into the technical and financial aspects of airmail from Britain to India and made a series of recommendations on preliminary steps. The route should be surveyed; the necessary ground organisation prepared; and “very full” experiments should be carried out. By 1925 there was an agreement for the establishment of a fortnightly service between Egypt and India. The route was then surveyed by Alan Cobham in a De Havilland 50 aircraft.

At the same time the service from Cairo to Baghdad was extended to Basra but had to stop there because of political difficulties with Persia which prevented flights over that country. The first mail for this fortnightly service was accepted in London on 6 January and mail arrived in Basra nine days later where it could connect with the mail steamer services. From 14 April the service became weekly.

It was not until Easter 1929 that all the difficulties were resolved and regular flights through from London to Karachi could be instituted. The first flight of Imperial Airways left Croydon, then London’s airport, on Saturday, 30 March.

The flight was a series of hops with a change of aircraft at various points. Through the Alps the mail was carried by train and then by flying boat over the Mediterranean to Alexandria. From Alexandria the mail was transferred to a three-engined De Havilland Hercules type aircraft for the remainder of the journey to Karachi. It arrived on 6 April, a journey lasting seven days. (Figure 8)

Figure 8. De Havilland “Hercules” type aircraft inaugurating the airmail service 1929

A detailed list of the flights indicates just how arduous and difficult these were:30

3 hours, 25 minutes	Alexandria to Gaza
7 hours, 30 minutes	Gaza to Baghdad
3 hours	Baghdad to Basra
2 hours, 40 minutes	Basra to Bushire
3 hours, 50 minutes	Bushire to Linga
2 hours, 20 minutes	Linga to Jask
3 hours, 30minutes	Jask to Guadur
3 hours, 40minutes	Guadur to Karachi

As can be seen, flights were originally down the Persian coast of the Gulf and this was shown on sketch maps of the route published in advertising leaflets by the British Post Office. (Figure 9) Postal agencies in Persia had closed in 1923, those in Iraq in 1919.

Figure 9. Sketch map of the original airmail route from a Post Office leaflet, 1929

In August 1932 Imperial Airways Ltd informed the British Post Office that it was changing its route in the Gulf. “This will mean that instead of calling at Bushire, Lingah and  Jask,  we shall  be  calling  at Koweit,  Bahrein  and  Sharja.”31 Shortly afterwards it provided a new timetable but pointed out that for the moment it would not call regularly at Kuwait. (That did not occur until December of that year.) The service would commence on 1 October from London and 5 October from Karachi.32 (Figure 10)

Figure 10. Sketch map of the revised airmail route, 1932

From 1 October 1932				From 5 October 1932
Saturday	dep	London	arr	Tuesday
Wednesday	dep	Baghdad	arr	Friday
Wednesday	arr	Basrah	dep	Friday
Thursday	dep	Basrah	arr	Thursday
Thursday	arr	Bahrein	dep	Thursday
Thursday	dep	Bahrein	arr	Thursday
Thursday	arr	Sharja	dep	Thursday
Friday	dep	Sharja	arr	Wednesday
Friday	arr	Gwadar	dep	Wednesday
Friday	dep	Gwadar	arr	Wednesday
Friday	arr	Karachi	dep	Wednesday

By this time the aircraft used was the new Handley Page HP 42E “Hannibal” type, the four craft being named Horsa, Hadrian, Hanno and Hannibal. (Figure 11) This route was later accelerated and extended and became twice weekly from 30 December 1934.

Figure 11. Handley Page “Hannibal” type aircraft, 1930

Complications arose because this missed out Dubai, where there was a postal agency, but substituting Sharjah where there was none. Proposals to open a post office at Sharjah were not in the end successful. Mails to Bushire were also now slower, being offloaded in Bahrain to catch the Slow Mail. Letters despatched from London on the Tuesday would take between five and seven days, those despatched on the Saturday between eight and nine.

From 1937 Empire class flying boats were introduced and their main port of call in the Gulf became a mooring off Dubai rather than the land aerodrome at Sharjah. Then, in February 1938, the Empire “All-Up” airmail scheme was extended to the India route with four services a week to and from Calcutta.

For the Sea Mail contract the Government of India paid Rs. 2¼ lakhs (Rs 225,000) per annum to the British India Steam Navigation Company; a flat rate of Rs 2/- per lb was paid for all airmails carried between one sub-post office and another or to India.

Fast Mail Steamer Service Discontinued

With the institution of airmail services there was no longer a need for the Fast Mail steamer service. When the B.I.S.N. contract was renewed in 1938 this fast service was discontinued and only the slow line maintained.

There were two branches starting from Karachi and Basra on fixed days once a week with calls at Guadur, Charbar, Jask, Linga, Dubai and Kuwait. However, weekly programmes alternated once a fortnight. (Table 7) The average speed was now only 9 knots.33

Table 7. 1938 Line No. 6A

Ports	Distance from port to port	Time allowed for the runs from port to port at 9 knots an hour
	Knots	Hours
Karachi*
Guadur	260	29
Muscat	233	26
Jask	131	14½
B. Abbas	134	15
Dubai	130	14½
Bahrein	268	29¾
Bushire	180	20
Kuwait	159	17½
Khoramshahr	130	14½
Basrah	22	2½
Khoramshahr	22	2½
Kuwait	130	14½
Bushire*	159	17½
Bahrein	180	20
Linga	244	27
Bunder Abbas	107	12
Muscat	245	27¼
Karachi	470	52¼

* The Company is required to provide a steam launch at Karachi and at Bushire,  respectively.

1938 Line No. 6B

	Knots	Hours
Karachi
Pasni	192	21⅓
Charbar	175	19½
Muscat	147	16⅓
Bunder Abbas	245	27¼
Linga	105	11¾
Bahrein	244	27
Bushire	180	20
Khoramshahr	173	19¼
Basrah	22	2½
Khoramshahr	22	2½
Bushire	173	19¼
Bahrein	180	20
Dubai	268	29¾
Bunder Abbas	130	14½
Jask	134	15
Muscat	131	14½
Charbar	149	16½
Guadur	120	13½
Pasni	71	8
Karachi	192	21½

By that time a variety of airlines served the Gulf including K.L.M. and Air France, all carrying mail.34 Parcels, of course, would still largely be carried by steamers.

Conclusion

Communication, transport and the foundation of post offices are all inter-linked. The history of the Gulf area before World War II (and the subsequent explosion of oil exploration) cannot be understood without a realisation of the time it took for letters to get to their destinations and the methods by which this was achieved. Two revolutions provided much greater regularity in service – the advent of steamships in the middle of the 19th century and the coming of airmail in the 1920s and 1930s.

Note on Sources

Those references with the prefix IOR are files held in the India Office Library in the British Library, London. Those with a POST prefix are files in the British Postal Museum & Archive, London. I am grateful to Khalid Omaira for access to the 1888 memorandum and other sources, and also to Dr Geoffrey Eibl-Kaye.

Endnotes

1. Way, W. Dennis “British Post Offices in the Persian Gulf ” The American Philatelist May 1956, pp557-62
2. POST 29/27 Indian mail ser Steam Packet service via Suez Canal, Part 2 29 December 1832; see also Sidebottom, J.K. The Overland Mail 1948.
3. Sidebottom, K. op cit pp59-60
4. Victoria, Cap. LXXVI. An Act to impose Rates of Packet Postage on East India Letters, and to amend certain Acts relating to the Post Office. 17th July 1837; 1 & 2 Victoria Cap. XCVII. An Act for imposing Rates of Postage on the Conveyance of Letters by Packet Boats between Places in the Mediterranean and other Parts. 14th August 1838; Treasury Warrant dated 22 November 1839 regulating the Duties on Postage.
5. For details see: Hammond Giles, The Hon. E.I.C’s Steamers of 1830-1854 1995, Appendix II pp 101-112
6. Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle 25 September 1837, quoted in Tabeart, Colin Admiralty Mediterranean Steam Packets 1830 to 1857, 2002, p217
7. O’Shea, F.B. “Memorandum on the British Indian Post Offices in the Persian Gulf and Turkish Arabia” 1888, p2
8. Ibid
9. Ibid
10. Ibid p14
11. Blake, G. B.I. Centenary 1856-1956 1956, pp 100-101
12. Laxon, W.A. & Perry, F.W. I.: The British India Steam Navigation Company Limited. 1994, p11
13. O’Shea, F.B. op cit p36
14. Silverstein, Adam Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World [date] pp114-5
15. IOR/L/PJ/3/1116 N 136: Contract between the Secretary of State for India and the British India Steam Navigation Company Ltd.
16. O’Shea, F.B. op cit p14
17. Laxon & Perry op cit p38
18. O’Shea, F.B. op cit p6
19. IOR/L/PS/11/52: [containing] Persian Gulf – Mail Service during the War. Spellings of place names have been retained from the original sour
20. I 2 January 1913. From Captain W.H.I. Shakespear, Political Agent, Kuwait to Sir
21. P. Cox, Bushire; 17 February 1913. Shakespear to the Postmaster-General, Bombay
22. Editor; Burdett, L.P., The GCC States: National Development Records: Communications and Transport 1860-1960, 1996. Volume 5 – Shipping in the Persian Gulf 1907 pp 157- 161
23. Correspondence quoted in Burdett, L.P. (Ed.) The GCC States: National Development Records: Communications and Transport 1860-1960. Volume 1 Bahrain, Qatar 1996, pp687ff
24. IOR/L/PS/11/52: op 1 June 1917. Telegram Director, Royal Indian Marine, Bombay to Quartermaster General in India, Simla.
25. Laxon & Perry op cit pp21-2
26. Burchardt, Hermann “Ost-Arabien von Basra bis Maskat auf Grund eigener Reisen” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde Vol. 21, pp 305-22, 1906.

POST 33/1262A Iraq and Persian Gulf: overland mail route, trans-desert motor service between Haifa and Baghdad, Part 3 The Desert Mail: Across Syria from Beirut to Bagdad General Motors Export Company, New York 1925
British Post Office Circular, 21 November 1923.
POST 50/8 Imperial and foreign air mail services, development since
Hill, R. The Baghdad Air Mail 1929
“By Air Mail to and from India” S Martin’s-le-Grand July 1929 pp176-181
POST 33/4795: Air mails – service with India and Australia 26 August Imperial Airways to J.F. Greenwood, G.P.O.
I 28 September 1932. UPU circular No. 6541/263. Service postal aérien Grand- Bretagne-Inde britannique. Modifications. Horaire.
IOR/L/E/9/828: Agreement between the British India Steam Navigation – the Governor General for the Conveyance of Mails. Revised Contract. 1939
IOR/L/PS/12/4101: Steamer arrangements in Persian Gulf 20 June Krishna Prasada, Deputy Director General, Postal Services, Simla to Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay

---

Writing the General Treaty: Anne Thompson and the British Expedition to the Gulf, 1819-1821

Penelope Tuson

Abstract

When the famous British naval expedition, under Major-General William Grant Keir, set out from Bombay in November 1819, with orders to re-establish maritime power in the Gulf waters, it was accompanied by Captain Thomas Perronet Thompson of the 17th Light Dragoons who was appointed Arabic Interpreter to Keir. Unusually for the time Thompson took with him his wife, Anne, and their small son. Anne came ashore at Ras al-Khaimah and later at Muscat and she recorded her observations and opinions of the military and naval actions together with more intimate, and rare, descriptions of domestic life on the coast. Most surprisingly, she later claimed to have written out all the copies of the ‘General Treaty’ signed between January and March 1820 by the Shaikhs of the Lower Gulf.

Thomas Perronet Thompson was a prolific author and both he and his wife corresponded not only with each other but also with family members and friends in England. Their personal and published papers supplement the official archives in Bombay, London and elsewhere to provide a fascinating, and sometimes alternative, account of a short but eventful period in British-Gulf relations.

Introduction

On 8 January 1820 Major-General William Grant Keir and the Rulers of the Lower Gulf region signed the General Treaty, establishing a ‘lasting peace between the British Government and the Arab tribes who are parties to this contract’.1

The General Treaty, together with the Preliminary Treaty which preceded it, laid the foundations of the strong and mutually beneficial relationship which developed between the Gulf Shaikhs and the British in the nineteenth century and beyond. The Treaties, and the events which led up to them, are well-known and have been written about and researched extensively by historians from widely differing perspectives.2

Keir was accompanied on the expedition by Captain Thomas Perronet Thompson of the 17th Light Dragoons, who, as an Arabic speaker, acted as official Interpreter and played a considerable role in the drafting of the treaties. Thompson, unusually for the time, brought with him his wife Anne and his four-year old son, Charles.

Anne’s participation in the enterprise was remarkable but has been only marginally recognised. In a letter to her brother, written at a later date, she described her unpaid but important diplomatic secretarial duties:

If you are desirous of knowing the office which I held in the expedition, I beg leave to inform you that it was that of Political Secretary. I used to think it was rather hard that the Military Secretary should wear a cocked hat and Saxon plume, and get 400 rupees a month to boot, while I had nothing – but thus is merit rewarded. All the copies of the Treaty signed, sealed and delivered to the different chiefs were in my hand-writing.3

That Anne should have been so closely involved in diplomatic negotiations is extraordinary in itself. Moreover, her experiences and observations of the entire enterprise, during which she chose to accompany her husband and remain with him, even in areas of military and naval conflict, are unique for their time and place. Memoirs and accounts of Western ‘diplomatic’ wives in the Gulf region are usually associated with the period from the late nineteenth century when Political Officers’ spouses such as Belle Cox and Emily Lorimer began to play serious roles as ‘incorporated’ wives and partners to their husbands. Before then accounts of British military and political wives in the Gulf are sporadic and anecdotal. Anne’s journey to India and the Gulf also coincided with the development of the overland route to India and a new literary appetite in Britain for travel memoirs by women describing their adventures en route and their experiences of the ‘hidden’ lives of their ‘Eastern sisters’. Anne’s views reflect the consistency of attitudes displayed in these early women’s travel writings.

The Governor and his Wife

Thomas Perronet Thompson’s upbringing and career is richly documented in both official British government archives and in his own voluminous personal papers.4 Born in Kingston upon Hull in 1783 into a radical Methodist family, Thompson was educated at Cambridge, where he studied mathematics. He subsequently joined the navy but transferred to the army in 1806 and took part in campaigns in South America. In 1808, on the recommendation of Wilberforce, he was appointed the first Governor of the British colony of Sierra Leone, where his attempted economic reforms and his sympathies for local society and culture resulted in his recall after only two years. Throughout his time in Africa he wrote lengthy letters to his future wife, Anne Elizabeth (‘Nancy’) Barker, with whom he shared and tested his intellectual and moral passions. ‘My dearest Nancy’, he wrote before he left England, ‘in what strange passages these epistles of mine convey to thee; astronomy, philosophy, religion, politics, and now and then a little of the awkwardest love that I daresay ever man exhibited.’5

On Thompson’s return to England, the couple eloped and married, against the wishes of their fathers. In March 1811 they secretly left Anne’s home town of York, after Thompson had romantically thrown stones at her window and given her a pistol while she waited alone in a dark street for the coach in which they travelled to London. Soon afterwards Thompson returned to the army, leaving Anne and their first child, Lucy, in the care of her parents. In action in Spain during the Peninsula War, he began to study Arabic in his spare time. Encouraged by his brother Charles who had served in Egypt, he believed it was a language which would be useful because it was so widely spoken. Furthermore, while in Sierra Leone he had developed an interest and a sympathy for Islam and still corresponded with some of his many Muslim friends there. He continued to pursue his language studies after transferring to India in 1815, now with Anne by his side again. Three years later he was writing to his commanding officer asking for leave to visit Baghdad to learn Turkish in addition to Arabic, adding that he had been ‘induced to wish to exchange to India principally by the hope of being able to acquire the knowledge of some other of the Oriental languages which are founded on the Arabic’.6 He told his wife that India, and the mercantile projects of the English, wearied him:

If only we could get to Bagdad and learn some Arabic, and teach the Sahib [their son Charles] to say some, I should be exceedingly content to get back to England … But I have a grief of going back with nothing accomplished, but what is done by every body that comes out here to find rupees…I utterly tire of living in this manner…7

Thompson’s request for language study in Baghdad was turned down but when the naval expedition to the Gulf was being planned in 1819 Keir picked him out as a substitute for Bombay’s first choice of interpreter, George Forster Sadlier, who had been sent to Dara‘iya to liaise with Ibrahim Pasha. ‘Two years ago I wanted to have some opportunity given me of improving in Arabic’, he wrote, ‘and now … when I have forgotten the little I ever knew, they talk of drawing me into an office which I am sure I never said I was fit for’.8 Two months later, Thompson, Anne and their little son sailed for the Gulf, carrying with them a radical, non-conformist outlook which would inform his diplomacy and politics and her cultural encounters with local people.

The Expedition to the Gulf

Keir’s forces, comprising around three thousand troops, sailed from Bombay early in November, in a mission mainly directed at Qawasim ports and vessels in the Lower Gulf, traditionally viewed by the British, although now contested, as ‘piratical’ and disruptive to peaceful (in particular British-Indian) trade.9 During their first operation against Ras al-Khaimah in early December, Anne and her son stayed on board the East India Company cruiser, Orient, waiting for news. Thompson recorded his first impressions of the Sultan of Muscat, Sayyid Sa‘id b. Sultan, ‘a handsome fair-spoken gentleman of thirty’ with whom, during the following year, both Thompson and Anne would develop a mutually sympathetic relationship.10  Ras al-Khaimah, under the Qasimi Shaikh Hasan b. Rahma, was fiercely defended, but finally surrendered on 9 December in spite of sorties against British lines, in one of which women were said to have taken part .11 After the fall of Ras al-Khaimah, a British force moved northwards to the smaller hill fort of Dhaya, inland from Rams and also stoutly defended by the Wahhabi Shaikh Hasan b. ‘Ali. Shaikh Hasan told Thompson, who was again acting as Interpreter, that his trust was in heaven, that the people stood only in defence of their religion and the worship of the true God, and that it was better they should die for their religion than live without it’. Thompson replied, with an unquestioning confidence in British power and culture, that ‘their religion was not by any means the thing in question, and that there were many signs that it was the will of heaven that we should be stronger than they’. He thought they had been offered ‘the most liberal terms, and such as in a military view they had not the least right to expect’. He also thought Keir had shown himself to be an honourable and humane soldier and politician:

… I sincerely hope that the expedition will be highly creditable to the General conducting it, as he certainly deserves the highest praise both for his military conduct and his humanity. He has met with great opposition from the Navy, who have no idea of treaties, or of anything less substantial than an oak-plank. He has however persevered; and I hope he has laid the grounds for the pacification of the … Gulph, and the introduction of a gallant race of men, the Wahabees, to an improved commercial intercourse with other nations … You will, I think, be amused to hear that I am just as popular with the Wahabees as ever I was in Sierra Leone.12

With the fall of Dhaya on 22 December the hostilities came to an end and work began on drafting a permanent treaty. Anne was at last able to go ashore and from her tent next to that of the captive and guarded Shaikh Hasan b. ‘Ali she was able, in a limited way, to communicate with him. She later recalled his dignified behaviour and the religious fervour he had expressed in his conversations with herself and her husband:

One of their chiefs, in a sort of hill-fort, was summoned to surrender to the English, and a representation was made to him of their superiority of force and the impolicy of resistance. In his reply he said “That he knew his strength bore no proportion to ours; but that if we were strong the Lord was stronger, and in Him was his trust … That if we would let them alone in their hill-top, they would continue to worship God; and that this was their desire”. This stern old puritan was a sort of apostle of the Wahabees, and had been the means of converting the inhabitants of a great part of the coast to the reformed faith. After he was made prisoner, he might be said to be in some measure part of our household. His tent was adjoining to mine, and during the night I used to hear his Wahabee spirit pouring itself out in fervent prayer, and in the day-time in what I conceived to be a word of exhortation to the people about him. And truly he needed all the spiritual consolation that his devotion could obtain; for of the things of this world he seemed to remember only that he and his people were captives. You never saw such a “wild- born falcon with clipt wing”.13

In spite of a confident belief in the justification of the British operation against men whom they viewed at the very least as carrying out illegal attacks on British and Indian sea traffic, Thompson and Anne were cautiously admiring of Wahhabism which reminded them in many respects of their own disciplined religious background.

Anne described the ‘Wahabees’ as ‘a race of devout robbers’ but by circumstance not by profession: ‘They fish, both for food and pearls, and cultivate dates; piracy was only a save-all. In their manners they are simple, straight-forward and manly; in their habits independent, and moral and religious’.14

Among Thompson’s personal papers there exists a fascinating bundle of documents in Arabic, together with correspondence with a language specialist at the British Museum, Dr E.Haas, who had been asked to review them after Thompson’s death. Dr Haas said he found some of them ‘rather curious’:

such as the one in which the enemy, in the midst of some business questions, suddenly enter upon a long argument on the true faith, declaring that they would always stand by the Prophet and expressing unfeigned contempt for Christianity. This certainly looks as if Missionaries had arrived with the troops, and that the Arabs began to be afraid of something more than the political influence of foreigners! One little scrap of paper merely asks ‘what the English mean by suddenly firing when it was understood that there should be an armistice?15

Missionaries were not part of the expedition but both Thompson and his wife carried Bibles with them and certainly seem to have engaged in discussions on religious belief.

The General Treaty was signed by Hasan b. Rahma and the Shaikh of Jazirat al-Hamra on 8 January and three days later Shaikh Shakhbut b. Dhiyab of Abu Dhabi signed on behalf of his son, Tahnun, having pragmatically requested to be included on a voluntary basis even though never having been involved in any acts of piracy. Hasan

1. b. ‘Ali signed on 15 January and was subsequently released from captivity by the British, together with his follow The other signatures were added later in the month. Anne claimed that ‘all’ of the copies of the treaty were in her handwriting, although this would be difficult to substantiate with certainty.

Thompson summed up his leading role in the treaty negotiations in a long letter to a John Smith, a friend and British Member of Parliament. As a result of his experiences in Africa, he was particularly proud of his involvement in the treaty:

… After the fall of this place and the neighbouring fortress of Zyah, the spirits of the Arabs appeared to be completely broken, and it became desirable to bind them by some kind of Treaty. As I was the only person who could communicate with them, I had an opportunity of collecting the Wahabee and other chieftains, and framing in concert with them the project of a treaty. When the project was presented to the General [Keir] he did me the honour to accept it without alteration. As it is not yet ratified, and is therefore only a treaty inchoate, it might be improper to give the contents…

Mrs Thompson is with me, through the kindness of Sir Wm. Keir; and I hope she has not been useless, though she does not coalesce very readily with Arab habits’.16

Whether or not she was unable to ‘coalesce’ with the Arabs, as her husband claimed, Mrs Thompson was eager to assert her ability to provide a personal and uniquely female view of Eastern society which would counterbalance some of the overblown Western ‘Orientalist’ fantasies which many male travel-writers continued to produce. Since Mary Wortley Montagu’s ‘Turkish Embassy Letters’ had become widely available, many women travel-writers had seized on the claim that women could provide an intimate corrective to the wilder fantasies of Western male travel-writing, largely because of their ability to access women’s quarters and domestic spaces.17 Many Westerners travelled out to the East armed with copies of one or another translation of the Arabian Nights as their introductory reading. Even the soldier and radical Thomas Perronet had taken a copy with him to the Gulf and when he had first landed in November 1819 had written to Anne, on the Orient, asking her to send ashore his copy of ‘the “Arabian Nights”, a tea-kettle, some wine, brandy and his old boots’.18 Anne Thompson seems to have measured her experiences against a different fictional portrayal of Eastern fantasy, the narrative poem, Lalla Rookh, published in 1817 by the Irish poet, Thomas Moore.19 A ‘monument of romantic orientalism’ it ran into several editions and was later described by its publisher, Longman, as ‘the cream of the copyrights’.20 The Gulf, or the ‘Green Sea’, as Moore calls it, is rich with ‘gentle skies and breezes fair’, nightingales and ‘thickets of pomegranate’ while the Princess and her ladies, adorned with rich brocades, jewels and perfume, fill their days with dancing and poetry.

Anne, writing to her brother in April 1820 from the now-abandoned women’s quarters of Hasan b. Rahma at Ras al-Khaimah shatters the fantasy in one paragraph:

Here am I (where shall I not be next?) sitting in what was formerly the Hareem of Sheikh Hassan ben Rahma, the chief of Ras al Khyma …We are in the very midst of the scenes of Lalla Rookh, not two days’ sail from Bahrain’s groves of palm, and but a few hours from Kishma’s amber vines.

… You say that we shall perhaps be in some measure able to judge of the truth of Moore’s descriptions. What strikes me on the subject is that if Moore had visited the scenes of his poem he would never have written it. Here is almost all that he describes, but the impressions you receive from reading his poetry and from viewing the reality are totally different. In his descriptions all is fresh and blooming and luxurious and perfumed and spicy. In the reality, all is faded and dirty and mean and dusty and fishy … In short, so far as I can judge, Moore’s outline is strictly oriental and displays infinite knowledge of the manners and habits of the eastern world, but his colouring

• his beauty and softness and feeling and sentiment and deliciousness – is all from the W21

Thompson, she added, now in command of the occupying force, had been digging ditches and preparing defences in case of an attack. The heat, in April, had been ‘very tolerable … but we are told terrible stories about what is to be:

Even the Arabs tell us that it is impossible to remain in Ras al Khyma during the hot months, and that they used at that time to leave it and go into the date groves; and they likewise confirm the story about lying in water, which I see is quoted in Lallah Rookh; they say that they fill holes in the ground with water, and sit in them. However, I have not much dread of the heat, and do not expect to suffer so much from it as I did from the cold a few months ago. Thompson has been making a model of what he imagines to be a ‘wind tower’, and we are going to try to have one constructed on the top of our house, to try to ‘win a breath from heaven’ during these heats. You can have no conception of the intense glare of the sun here. It is bad in India, but nothing to this. The number of people who are blind or one-eyed proves the effect it has upon the sight. You hardly ever see an Arab with sound and perfect eyes.

Thompson, appointed ‘Political Agent for all matters connected with the Arabian Tribes’ eventually received orders to relocate to Qishm island and complete the demolition of Ras al-Khaimah. When they sailed in July 1820 in the intense summer heat, Anne recalled the horror at sea and on shore. ‘The atmosphere seemed absolutely on fire’, she wrote, ‘there was no air to breathe, and I was burning with fever. I recollect the appearance of the horizon all in flames. The last boats had come off, and they had set fire to what remained of the town. Thompson says he thought he was in the infernal regions’.22 Thompson, Anne and their son were all seriously ill and were advised by the Company surgeon to go directly to Bombay. By the time they reached Muscat, however, they were well enough to return to Deristan on Qishm island. Thompson subsequently became involved in the notorious and disastrous expedition against the Bani Bu ‘Ali in Oman for which he was court-martialled and publicly reprimanded. Anne, who had accompanied him to Oman reluctantly stayed with her son on the Ternate at Sur. She was, as always, supportive and sympathetic.  ‘This is very sad’, she wrote to him, ‘I think the worse thing that ever befel us … My poor Thompson, how dreadfully you have suffered in every way’.23

The Female Gaze: Domestic Life and Cultural Difference

Thompson’s ill-considered decision to embark on the Bani Bu ‘Ali expedition was to some extent influenced by his admiration for the Sultan of Muscat, Sayyid Sa‘id b.Sultan. The mutually sympathetic relationship between the Thompsons and the Sultan, together with their wider interest in the culture and religion of the Lower Gulf, introduces a separate parallel story and a perspective which has largely been ignored in the factual accounts of the period…

On returning to England, Thompson became involved with the radical philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, and in 1823 he contributed an article on currency exchange to the first issue of Bentham’s newly-founded journal, The Westminster Review. In January 1826 the journal published a review of Lieutenant James Baillie Fraser’s account of his journey to Muscat and to southern Persia to meet the Prince-Governor of Fars.24 It included a lengthy and anonymous piece by Anne Thompson, which begins with some general observations on the Gulf and a criticism of Moore’s poem but continues with a vivid account of domestic life in the women’s quarters in the Sultan of Muscat’s palace.

Introduced as a ‘novel and peculiar source’, the anonymous Mrs Thompson’s account is presented as a confirmation of Fraser’s work but as having an additional, particularly female, quality and an ability to illuminate hidden spaces. In company with almost all contemporary women’s travel writings, it is given weight and respectability by a reference to Mary Wortley Montagu:

As there are not many opportunities of viewing the domestic manners of the Mohammedans through eyes like those of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, no apology will be required for the insertion of the following original observations and reminiscences, collected from a residence in the … Gulph at a period a little anterior to the journey of the author. In many parts they present remarkable confirmations of his accuracy; and on the interior of oriental families they contain information to which none but a female traveller could have access.

Moore’s fantasies are dismissed at the outset:

No circumstance relating to the … Gulph is more remarkable than the degree to which the descriptions given of it, without perhaps any intentional inaccuracy, have led to ideas remote from the truth. Moore, in the beautiful scenery of Lallah Rookh, has hardly introduced a gem or a flower without the authority of some traveller of repute … There are banks of pearl and palmy isles, groves of pomegranate and amber vines; but the effect of the original is sadly different from that of the picture. In the description all is fresh and fair and fragrant; in the reality all is scorched and faded and dusty…Nothing can be more unlike than the Green Sea of travellers and poets, gemmed with fairy isles, glittering with pearl and fresh with scented gales – to the veritable … Gulph with its wild and barren shores, withering in an atmosphere which seems to threaten destruction to all that has life.

Anne’s text provides her readers with the usual mixture of sympathy and prejudice, intimacy and disgust. Like her feminist and non-conformist near-contemporaries, Florence Nightingale and Harriet Martineau, she is fascinated by women’s domestic lives and detailed in her descriptions of them; but at the same time she is repelled by her own vision of ‘heat and dust’, poverty and deprivation. Nightingale and Martineau have both been criticised for their self-righteous outrage and controversial cultural prejudices. Yet like Anne Thompson, their sympathies lay with more with the dominated than the dominant and they were both, in their writings and their activities, thorns in the side of their own ruling class.25 Anne Thompson’s description of houses in the Gulf is an example of this complicated mixture of admiration and cultural superiority:

I do somewhat value myself on my intimate knowledge of the domestic elegances of the … Gulph. The best are terrace-roofed, and consequently admit the greatest part of the rain that falls, which however is not much… In the houses of the Sheikhs there is a raised floor or chamber of dais, with a wind-tower over it. Of the apartments, the most ornamented are those appropriated to the ladies. These are covered with Persian carpets, and the white-washed walls furnished with shelves loaded with china basins and cups. The furniture consists of large wooden chests which contain the wardrobe  and  ornaments, sometimes very  rich,  of the inmates. Add proper proportion of yellow slippers, little Persian looking-glasses, pots of antimony strewed here and there, and all smelling of the same overpowering perfume, and you will see a … Gulph boudoir. But these are only the houses of the great. The rest are huts of the smallest size that can hold a human being…cats and blear-eyed children, and now and then a woman peeping through two holes in a black mask, and looking like a mummy straggled from its case.

The Westminster Review article is most interesting for Anne’s long account of her visit to Muscat and the domestic quarters of her ‘very good friend the Imam’, Sayyid Sa’id. Both she and Thompson regarded the Sultan with respect and admiration. ‘I take him to be a mirror of hereditary sovereigns’, she wrote, ‘legitimate, orthodox and friendly to repose … possessed of personal bravery, considerable liberality of mind, and great courtesy of manners’ which gave her the idea of what is conveyed by the English term ‘gentleman’. ‘I think he was this, as completely as nature could make; and was altogether a princely person’.

After coffee and sherbet served in silver cups and saucers, followed by another sort of sherbet flavoured with rose-water, the Sultan ‘spoke very feelingly upon the fatal effects of a plurality of wives in filling the house with factions and disputes’. He then proposed she should visit the harem, where the ladies were curious to see her. To her surprise, the Sultan accompanied her:

He conducted me up a broad staircase to the top of the house, where in a small apartment covered with a very handsome Persian carpet was seated his wife, surrounded by a crowd of women of all nations and complexions. She rose to receive us; but of her beauty there was no opportunity of judging, as her face was concealed by an embroidered mask, and her figure by a quantity of cumbrous drapery. From the chin to the waist she was literally cased in jewels. Her garments were red bordered with gold, and she had an amber-coloured Cashmere shawl thrown over her head, which, as the heat of the day increased, she exchanged for a very beautiful one of thin purple muslin with a rich border of gold.

After an ‘excellent’ breakfast ‘in the arrangement of which the Imam took a very active part’, with cups and plates ‘of handsome English china’, Sayyid Sa‘id departed and the women became less formal and talked ‘with great volubility’. An old Persian lady who was of the party immediately laid aside her veil but the Arab women retained their masks, ‘notwithstanding my request to be favoured with a sight of their countenances. They were very curious in examining my dress and the old lady I really feared was proceeding to undress me’. In an incident reminiscent of Mary Wortley Monatgu’s famous visit to the baths at Sofia, the ladies invited Anne to bathe, an unexpected politeness which she suspected was a ruse to ‘extend their examination of my garments’. When she asked what they did all day and if they read, she was told by one of the servants who spoke Hindustani and acted as interpreter, that they simply ‘sat’. Afterwards the Sultan collected her and took her to meet Arab and Persian women at the house of his Minister, who were all eager to meet her and all ‘riotously mirthful’. Her hostess, the Persian wife of the Minister was not veiled. When Anne was better acquainted with the Arab ladies she paid another visit and persuaded them to take off their masks (although some of them covered their faces with their hands). Then she was disappointed because, of course, they simply looked ‘ordinary’. Although she was determined to appear pragmatic and dispel Orientalist fantasies, she was not entirely immune to the Western fascination with the mysteries behind the veil.

Finally, referring to Fraser’s book, Anne concludes with enthusiastic praise for Arab society, reinforcing her admiration by noting the striking ‘contrast between the free Arabs and the enslaved Persians’. Quoting Fraser and his travels in Persia, a country

oppressed by despotism and the ‘fawning and cringing of slaves’, she admires the Arab way of life for its simplicity and egalitarianism:

… then turn to the Arabs, and see, as I have seen, the chief in the midst of his people, receiving them with a patriarchal embrace, and sitting down among them without other distinction than the voluntary marks of respect which the affection and esteem of his subjects may prompt. One of the most striking peculiarities of Arab manners is the footing of equality upon which all ranks and conditions seem to associate together. Sovereign and subject – master and servant – sit together, and eat and converse together, on terms of the most perfect cordiality; and yet good order and subordination seem as well established as if they were guarded by all the etiquette which is elsewhere thought necessary for their preservation. On board an Arab ship, this national characteristic is especially remarkable, from the contrast it presents to the marine usages of Europe. Instead of the stiff etiquette of a European cruiser, all is equal and all things in common…

While I am on the subject of Arab virtues, I think I may add those of friendliness and kind-heartedness. At sea, in particular, I have lived much with Arabs, and have often been left alone among them; and in all situations and circumstances, I never experienced any thing but the greatest civility and kindness…In harbour I used to have conversazioni of the Arab officers; who delighted exceedingly in tea. Theology and witchcraft were, I think, the most frequent topics.

The Overland Journey

Anne Thompson’s accounts of domestic life in this part of the Gulf are unique for their time. With the development of the overland route from Europe via Suez and the Red Sea, more Western female travellers, en route to India with fathers, brothers and husbands, were taking in the sights and recording them in published accounts. Most of them, however, confined their observations to fleeting visits on stopovers in Egypt or in Red Sea ports. A few years after Anne Thompson, for example, Anne Elwood published a description of women she met in al-Hudaydah and Sarah Lushington walked freely around Mocha and was impressed by the politeness of the townspeople:

The people in the streets were inoffensive, and allowed me to walk without molestation, when there might have been some excuse for a rude indulgence of their curiosity, as only two European ladies had ever been seen at Mocha before. Were an Arab female, in full costume, to make her appearance in Hyde Park, I suspect she would not have to speak so favourably of the courtesy of John Bull.26

Anne Thompson experienced the overland route on her return journey from the Gulf. After his court-martial in Bombay, Thompson’s regiment was ordered back to England and he requested permission to go home via Egypt, travelling with his wife and son on Arab vessels and crossing the desert on camels to Thebes where he bought a sphinx of black granite from a Frenchman.27 The family had a letter of introduction to one of the most famous and unconventional British female travellers of the period, Hester Stanhope, now living in the foothills of Mount Lebanon. Hester was a cousin of Thompson’s commanding officer, Lincoln Stanhope who had told him that they would find her ‘delightful’. However, they failed to meet her because the first part of their journey had taken too long.28 They might have had an interesting conversation on the subject of Wahhabism and Saudi expansionism, on which Hester regarded herself as something of an expert. In a letter to the botanist, Joseph Banks, written in 1813, she claimed to have learned much from local bedouin and from a group of Wahhabis whom she had met in the Syrian desert and who had given her information on ‘a country we know little about’.29 Anne Thompson, from the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, might have given Hester some equally useful information on Saudi influence there.

In London both Thomas and Anne continued to involve themselves in radical liberal politics.30 Jeremy Bentham asked Thompson to translate his Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code into Arabic. Thompson. who claimed to ‘know more of it [Arabic] than almost any man in England, not professional’ was nevertheless wary, hoping that Bentham would be ‘not so long-winded in his Principles as he is sometimes’.31 After his father died in 1828 he resigned from the active list of the army and bought the Westminster Review which he used as a mouthpiece for his opinions on domestic reform issues. He stood successfully for Parliament as Member for Hull and later for Bradford. In 1857 he delivered a speech during a debate on the rebellion in India (‘Indian Mutiny’) in which he argued that ‘the most important part of the question, the breach of military faith and honour with the soldiers of the Native Indian Army’ had been ignored. There was ‘an audi alteram partem [Listen to the Other Side] which ought to be, and would have been brought forward if an opportunity had been given’. There had been a ‘compact with the men who enlisted in the Indian Native Army, that they should not be molested in their religion’ and this had been broken by the harsh punishment meted out to the sepoys who had refused to use the new Enfield rifles with greased cartridges.32

Thompson has been described as ‘a relentless critic of empire throughout his public career’, both anti-colonial and anti-racist.33 Towards the end of his life he also took up the cause of women’s suffrage. He died in September 1869. Anne died two years later. Both he and Anne spent a short time in the Gulf but their writings present a nuanced and illuminating version of an eventful, and sometimes notorious, period in Anglo-Gulf relations.

Endnotes

1. Manuscript and printed copies of the Preliminary and General Treaties exist in several locations, for example Treaties and engagements in force on 1st January 1906 between the British Government and the Trucial Chiefs of the Arab Coast [printed Arabic and English], British Library, India Office Collections: IOR:R/15/1/735.
2. The earliest general account of the period was B.Kelly’s Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795-1880 (Oxford 1968), the result of meticulous research in the archives of the East India Company and British government departments in London, although now re- garded, sometimes unfairly, as presenting an overwhelmingly ‘imperial’ perspective. At around the same time Lt-Col H. Moyse-Bartlett published a more specific account of the British expeditions of 1819-21 in The Pirates of Trucial Oman (London 1966). More recently both of these accounts have been challenged by Sultan Muhammad Al-Qasimi in The Myth of Arab Piracy (London 1986) and by Charles Davies in The Blood-Red Arab Flag. An Investigation into Qasimi Piracy, 1797-1820 (Exeter 1997).
3. Anne Thompson to her brother, Tom Barker, quoted by Moyse-Bartlett, Pirates of Trucial Oman, p.112, and also by T.Perronet Thompson’s biographer, G.Johnson in General T.Perronet Thompson, 1783-1869. His Military, Literary and Political Campaigns, London 1957. Anne’s role in the treaty negotiations was also highlighted in an article in Aramco World Magazine (‘From Pirate Coast to Trucial. Britain’s “General Treaty with the Arab Tribes of the Persian Gulph”, 1820’ by John Brinton, vol.24, no.6, November-December 1973), a copy of which is held by Hull University Archives, DTH/2/29, together with manuscript Arabic and English copies of the Treaty.
4. Thompson’s personal papers, including his own and his wife Anne’s correspondence, are held by Hull University Archives (Hull History Centre, Kingston upon Hull, UK) and in Leeds University Library, Department of Special A large number of the papers were destroyed in 1874 in a warehouse fire in London. However, Thompson’s son and first biographer, General Charles William, collected copies of his father’s letters from relatives and his unfinished work was taken up by his niece Edith, whose volumi- nous drafts are also in the Hull University collection and were subsequently explored and reprinted by Perronet Thompson’s more recent biographer, L.G.Johnson (General T.Perronet Thompson). The most important sources in the official East India Company and British Government archives now in the British Library in London include files in the records of the Political Residency at Bushire (IOR: R/15/1) and extensive material in the Bombay Proceedings (IOR:P) and the Political and Secret records (IOR:L/P&S).
5. T.P.Thompson to Anne Barker, March 1808, Johnson, General T.Perronet Thompson, p.31.
6. Hull University Archives, DTH/2/1: correspondence between Thompson and Lt-Col the H Lincoln Stanhope, regarding Thompson’s plan to learn Arabic and Turkish; letter from Thompson, Kaira, 5 November 1818.
7. Johnson, General T.Perronet Thompson, p.94, letter dated August
8. Hull University Archives, DTH/2/3 General Orders, Bombay Castle, 29 Oct 1819: Cpt Thompson, of HM 17th Dragoons, appointed Arabic Interpreter to Keir’s expedition un- til Cpt Sadlier of 47 Foot joins the force; Moyse-Bartlett, Pirates of Trucial Oman, p.105.
9. The details of the progress of the expedition can be traced in detail in Kelly, Al-Qasimi and Davies, cited in note 2, abov
10. Letter dated 5 December 1819, in Johnson, General T.Perronet Thompson, p.96.
11. Davies, Blood Red Flag, quotes the diary of F.E. Loch, Scottish Record Office.
12. Letter dated ‘Before Zyah’, 20 December 1819, and letter dated Ras al-Khaimah, 18 January 1820, to John Smith P., Johnson, pp.96-98.
13. The Westminster Review, vv, Jan-April 1826, pp.205-206, see below, note 24.
14. Westminster Review, p.205.
15. Hull University Archives, DTH4/16, Arabic correspondence and correspondence with Dr Haas at the BM: Letter from Dr Haas, dated 30 June 1870.
16. Letter to John Smith, 18 January 1820, note 12 abov
17. See Tuson, Penelope, ‘Scholars and Amazons: Researching Women Travellers in the Ara- bian Gulf ’, Liwa, v5, no.9, June 2013, pp.21-24, and Travelling to Better Purpose. West- ern Women Writing about the East, 1716-1916, Oxford: Studies in the Arcadian Library (forthcoming 2014),
18. Moyse-Bartlett, Pirates of Trucial Oman, p.106.
19. Moore, Thomas, Lalla Rookh, an Oriental Romance,
20. Geoffrey Carnall, ‘Thomas Moore’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004-13.
21. Letter from Anne Thompson to her brother, Rev Thomas Barker, dated Ras al-Khaimah, 25 April 1820, Moyse-Bartlett, Pirates of Trucial Oman, Appendix
22. Anne Thompson[no date or recipient given], Moyse-Bartlett, Pirates of Trucial Oman, p.130.
23. Letter dated 17 November 1820, Johnson, General T.Perronet Thompson, p.109.
24. ‘Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan, in the years 1821 and By James B.Fraser, Author of “A Tour in the Himala Mountains,” &c. London 1825’, Westminster Review, vol.v, Jan-April 1826, pp.202-248.
25. The strongest and most hostile critic of Florence Nightingale is Melman, Billie, Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718-1918, London 1992, who concludes (p. 310) that the ‘cultural smugness and ethnocentrism’ in Nightingale’s writing (as well as that of Harriet Martineau) ‘borders on racism’. On Nightingale and Martineau see also Tuson, Penelope, Travelling to Better Purpose, and The Queen’s D An Anthology of Victorian Feminist Writings on India, Reading 1995.
26. Elwood, Mrs Colonel [Anne Katherine], Narrative of a Journey Overland from England, by the Continent of Europe, Egypt and the Red Sea, to India; including a Residence there and Voyage Home, in the Years 1825, 26, 27 and 28, 2 v, London 1830; Lushington, Mrs Charles [Sarah], Narrative of a Journey from Calcutta to Europe, by way of Egypt, in the years 1827 and 1828, London 1829.
27. Johnson, General T.Perronet Thompson, p.113.
28. Lincoln Stanhope to Thompson, 25 December 1821: ‘I do not envy you a little the prospect of meeting a person you will find so delightful’). General T.Perronet Thompson, p.113.
29. Letter from Hester Stanhope to Sir Joseph Banks, Latakia, dated 7 July [1813], Arcadian Library,
30. On Thompson’s subsequent career and involvement in the British domestic reform move- ment see Turner, Michael , Independent Radicalism in Early Victorian Britain, Westport and London 2004.
31. Thompson to his father, June 1821 and 14 October 1823, Johnson, General T.Perronet Thompson, pp.113 and
32. Speech delivered in House of Commons, 27 July
33. Turner, Michael , ‘Raising up Dark Englishmen: Thomas Perronet Thompson, Colo- nies, Race and the India Mutiny’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol 6, 2005.

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The British India Line in the Arabian Gulf,  1862–1982

Michael Quentin Morton

Abstract:

Originally conceived as a service to deliver mail between the main ports of the Arabian Gulf and India, the British India Steam Navigation Company (also known as the British India Line or the BI Line) plied its trade in cargo and passengers in the region for 120 years. The ships of the line were cameos of their age, their passengers a representation of their times, their cargoes a reflection of a changing world. The author considers the company’s history in the light of primary sources and academic research and concludes that its ships were more than simple caricatures: they facilitated the evolving commercial ties of the region, impacted on traditional shipping patterns and affected  the hierarchy of local  ports. While  the line was originally the subsidised product of an imperial drive to improve communications, it was founded on commercial principles and made a significant contribution to the development of the Arabian Gulf.

Introduction

Although the East India Company set up factories in Bandar Abbas (1631) and Basra (1635), British influence in the Arabian Gulf grew slowly. In 1763, a Political Residency was established in Bushire to administer British affairs, but the government of India was reluctant to intervene in the Gulf until repeated attacks on shipping forced its hand. A series of maritime truces strengthened ties between Britain and the Gulf sheikhs, but Britain’s policy was determined primarily by its interests in India. Russian influence in Persia and Egyptian ambitions towards the region ensured that there was an enduring British interest in the Gulf.

In the first half of the 19th century, the growth of trade between Great Britain and India and the requirements of the British Empire accentuated the need for efficient communications between London and Bombay. This was before the days of telephone and telegraph, television and internet, when letters would take weeks to travel between the two. The traditional route, via the Cape of the Good Hope, favoured by sailing ships but taking six months or more, was being challenged by two quicker routes, one passing through the Red Sea and the other, known as the Euphrates Valley route, through the Arabian Gulf.

Fig. 1: A map showing the Red Sea and Euphrates Valley routes between London and India.

In 1834, a parliamentary select committee in London recommended that a steamship route via the Red Sea should be opened up without delay, and that the practicality of the Euphrates Valley route for steam navigation be explored.1 But the Chesney expedition (1835–7) to test the navigability of the Euphrates River had mixed results and, with a coaling station secured in Aden in 1839, the Red Sea route became the preferred one. The idea of a regular steamer service through the Arabian Gulf fell into abeyance.2

The British government had a strong interest in perpetuating and expanding the mail routes but, for the private operator, mail steamship services were rarely profitable. The cost of coal, maintaining unreliable steam engines and employing skilled engineers to fix them, made their ships expensive to run; but government subsidies for mail steamer services could help to offset these costs.3 In 1855, Scottish businessman William Mackinnon (1823–93), secured a contract for a regular mail steamship route between Calcutta and Rangoon and, the following year, the Calcutta & Burmah Steam Navigation Company Ltd was duly registered in Glasgow with capital of £35,000.4 Mackinnon was an advocate of modern screw (propellor-driven) steamers, which were more efficient for long sea journeys than traditional paddle steamers, and used them on his company’s routes.5

Essential to Mackinnon’s success in expanding his shipping business was his close business relationship with Sir Henry Bartle Frere, a prominent member of the India

Governor-General’s Supreme Council.6 Frere had a particular interest in a steamship service between India and the Arabian Gulf. He belonged to a group of prominent military and political figures that supported the Euphrates Valley route. In January 1862, when Mackinnon visited him to discuss his proposal for an Arabian Gulf steamship line, he found a receptive audience.7

Fig 2: Sir William Mackinnon, the founder of the British India Steam Navigation Company. (source: National Portrait Gallery)

The birth of the British India Line

In the summer of 1862, upon confirmation that contracts for a Bombay–Karachi and Bombay–Basra mail run had been awarded to his company, Mackinnon changed its name to the British India Steam Navigation Company Ltd (also known as the British India Line, or BI). Although there was a board of directors in the United Kingdom, local management retained wide-ranging powers and Mackinnon, Mackenzie & Company, based in Calcutta, operated as BI’s managing agents. A six- weekly mail service to the Gulf began in February 1863, running from Karachi to Gwadar, Muscat, Bandar Abbas, Bushire, Basra and ‘any intermediate port required by government’.8 According to a BI handbook of 1866, there were additional stops at Lingah and Bahrain. The Gulf service was one of eight that year.9

BI was also assisted in its endeavours by the British Resident in the Gulf, Colonel Lewis Pelly, a protégé of Bartle Frere. Pelly, who owned a small shareholding in the company, enthusiastically advised BI on trading opportunities, while the company provided the Residency in Bushire with communications and logistical support. He considered the Gulf trade capable of ‘indefinite development’, but his grandiose plan for a deep-water port on the Musandam Peninsula came to nothing. Not only did it fail to find political favour in Bombay but it was impossible for workers to live there for very long: the peninsula is one of the hottest places on Earth, and a telegraph station established there in 1862 was abandoned after only four years.10

Meanwhile, a London to India steamship service via Suez had evolved. In 1840, the Peninsula and Orient Line Service (P&O) began services from London to Alexandria, and via Suez to India four years later. In 1858, a railway was opened between Alexandria and Suez, followed by the inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869. It was now possible to travel the entire route by steamship. The Euphrates Valley route still had its supporters, but the Red Sea route had won the day.

The opening of the Suez Canal was a game changer for the shipping companies. Mackinnon was quick to see its potential: the BI steamer India, for example, was the first steamer to arrive in London with a cargo of Indian produce via the Suez Canal. Ominously, the vessel was returning to Britain for a refit—many of BI’s steamers were old and ill-equipped to meet the challenges that lay ahead. An increase in steamship trade brought an increase in the demand for coal and a rise in prices; BI with its inefficient steamers could have been severely disadvantaged. However, through the judicious use of stock-piled British, Bengali and Australian coal, the company avoided a crisis, and prices fell after 1874.11

Mackinnon responded to the new era in other ways: he devised a strategy to open up new routes to London, effectively redirecting goods that had previously been routed through Bombay. Between 1870 and 1888, a  network  was  established  between East Africa, Aden and the Arabian Gulf. A London to Gulf line, via Karachi, was inaugurated in 1870, suspended during 1871–2, and began again as a BI enterprise in 1873.12 BI traded in London through its agents, Gray, Dawes and Company. In 1865, this firm established Gray, Paul and Company in Bushire and, in 1869, Gray, Mackenzie and Company in Basra, both acting as shipping agents for BI steamers sailing between India, the Gulf ports and Europe. In the event, the London to Gulf line proved to be unprofitable, causing the company to rethink its operations: the London–Karachi– Basra run was replaced by a London–Karachi–Bombay run in 1878, so that BI passengers wishing to travel from London to destinations in the Gulf had to connect at Karachi. By 1874 BI owned a 35 steamers in the East, approximately 45,000 tons in all, and provided relatively rapid, comfortable and reliable passenger services. Despite being a coastal service, the Gulf line was part of an extensive network: BI ships connected India to South East Asia, the Far East, the Arabian Gulf, Britain, East Africa and Australia. The BI service to Basra linked with Lynch brothers’ steamers for the journey upriver to Baghdad.13 These two companies came to a similar arrangement for the Karun River, where the Lynch brothers began operating in 1888.

Although the carriage of mail was an important part of BI’s commercial activities, the line also provided cargo and passenger services. A passenger travelling in a cabin at a cost of about £20 (about £2,000 today) from Bombay to Basra could expect their meals to be included. BI ships also accommodated passengers on the quarter deck with a bed on the poop deck at just over half the fare. It appears that the proportion of Western passengers was small, the majority being local merchants and labourers in search of work. Horses, ponies, bullocks, sheep and goats were included in the cargo, with shippers providing fodder for their animals. In view of the different currencies handled on board ship and by agents ashore, BI developed its own banking services, as well as carrying substantial amounts of currency on board their ships for delivery to the Gulf ports.14

In the 1880s, Mackinnon’s main focus was on developing his interests in East Africa, but ambitious plans to extend British influence in that region were not supported by Whitehall; and the death of Bartle Frere ended the close relations that Mackinnon and his partners had enjoyed with the government of India.

Fig 3: Map of the Arabian Gulf, showing BI’s main and subsidiary ports of call.

The impact of steamships on local shipping

The presence of foreign shipping in the 19th-century Gulf inevitably brought challenges to the sovereignty of local rulers. In this context, the so-called acts of ‘piracy’ in the region, attacks on shipping which led to the British bombardment of Ras al-Khaimah in 1819, have been interpreted in a different light, namely as acts of self-defence against an East India Company intent on suppressing the competition.15 The later appearance of steamships in the Gulf can be viewed as the next phase of this foreign encroachment, with even more damaging effects on local trade and shipping.

The first steamship in the Gulf was the paddle wheel INS Hugh Lindsay, which appeared in 1838 and ‘caused no small sensation by her novel appearance and evolutions’.16 The real impact of steamships was rather more invasive, however. As they became involved in trade, so steamships disturbed the equilibrium of local shipping. The mercantile families of the main trading centres of Muscat and Kuwait could not match the resources of the steamship companies. They lacked the type of ocean-going vessels that might carry cargo and passengers in the manner of a modern ship, and the capital to invest in them. Apart from rare voyages—such as that of the Sultanah, an Omani vessel that visited New York in 1840—there was no history of sailing to Western ports, and no organisation to underpin a profitable steamship service.17

The Gulf had a long tradition of coastal trading, reaching as far as the ports of India and East Africa. Sailors relied on their own knowledge rather than modern navigational aids. In 1940, Alan Villiers wrote: ‘Every man in the ship knew those waters: there was none among them who had not been sailing for at least ten years. Nejdi [the captain] knew every bank, every overflow, every low sanded point.’ The Arab captains knew the coastal routes and were saddened by the decline in Arab navigation, which they blamed on ‘cut-throat’ competition from Western shipping.18

There is no doubt that steamships affected the traditional dhow-based trading system, the long-distance Arab trading routes as well as the intra-Gulf ones. They disrupted, but did not destroy, the dhow trade, creating a ‘dualism’ of systems. While steamers carried imports and exports to and from the main Gulf ports, dhows were used for connecting and trading with remoter parts, and for carrying materials such as tiles and timber. As well as local traffic, there remained a few profitable long-distance routes for the dhow traders: in the late 1930’s Kuwaiti merchants were still investing income from their date plantations to finance the construction of dhows for the deep- sea trades to Africa and India.19

The competition for steamer services in the Gulf, 1864–1914

In his report of 1870, Pelly described the arrival at Muscat of a Turkish merchant steamer, the Babylon, the first in an intended line from Constantinople to Basra.20 This was one of seven steamers that were eventually run under the Turkish flag by the Oman-Ottoman Company, but the line suffered from bad management and the ships from poor maintenance.21 In 1889, a group of 32 Hawasi notables, including merchants, petitioned the Ottoman authorities to operate two ships between Uqair and Basra in order to improve trade and communication but these plans came to nothing due to a lack of funding. Shipping on the Tigris and Euphrates was unreliable and dogged by disputes between the Ottomans and British over navigation rights. The Ottoman port of Basra remained in a poor condition, a situation that would not be remedied until the British occupied the area during World War I.22

Fig 4: Shipping on the Shatt al-Arab, 1916.

(source: Gertrude Bell Archive Newcastle University, code W_002)

The period saw a huge increase in Gulf shipping. In 1871, less than 5000 tons of steamer ships had entered Bushire; by 1889 the figure was 115,000; by 1911, it was 319,000 tons. In 1913, more than 4,000 ships with a total tonnage of over two million called into Persian ports. There was a Persian line running two ships under the British flag, a Turkish line and assorted tramp steamers, an Austro-Hungarian service, a French and then a Russian one, all sailing the Gulf at various times. In 1911, the Arab Steamer Company (ASC) was launched by Arab and Indian Muslim merchants in Bombay, with a Gulf businessman as managing director.23

In 1906, much to the alarm of British officials, a German company (Hamburg- Amerika) commenced sailings to the Gulf. The Basra agent for this firm, and backer of its attempt to compete on the Gulf shipping routes, was the influential Robert Wönckhaus and Company, which was deeply involved in Persian trade.24 But there was a limit to German encroachment; according to the French vice-consul at Bushire,

1. Vadala, the Germans failed to supplant the British prestige in the Gulf because of Britain’s ‘preponderant influence’ with the Arabian sheikhs.25

Even so, increased competition was bound to affect British shipping. The opening of the Suez Canal was followed by a drop in freight charges from London to Bombay from £2 to £1.25; the arrival of foreign ships saw the first-class passenger fare for Bombay to Basra fall from 390 to 200 rupees. In time, foreign companies would erode Britain’s shipping primacy in the Gulf: while British ships accounted for 90% of shipping in 1909–10, it was down to 75 percent (12.75 percent of the balance being German) by 1914. For the Mackinnon group, Gulf trade was sluggish in the 1880s. Figures for British steamers entering Gulf ports between 1873 and 1885 show that BI’s share of the shipping trade dropped, from 84 percent to 61 percent in Bandar Abbas and from 62 percent to 44 percent in Bushire. Nevertheless, BI remained the leading Gulf steamer service both by the reach and frequency of its services.26

Perils of the Gulf

Although ‘piracy’ had been largely suppressed by the mid-1800s, there were still sporadic incidents. On 13 June 1872, the BI ship, Cashmere, on its regular run from Bombay, was anchored at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab:

The night had been moonlight, but at midnight all was dark. The secumee, or native quartermaster, had just struck two bells (one o’clock) when an Arab boat dropped alongside with five inmates, who scrambled onto the after gangway. The quartermaster asked them what they wanted, and their response was that they wished to take deck passages.27

Once aboard, the intruders drew swords and went about seizing the ship. A violent struggle ensued with crew members grappling with armed men:

While this…was going on two more boats had slipped alongside, and their occupants, numbering 60 or 70 men, swarmed up the forward gangway, and took possession of the deck. All this was the work of a second or two. Those on the poop saw the forms of men enveloped in the long Arab cloak moving about in the darkness, and now and again the fiery glint of a tulwar [sword] could be seen.

The men escaped with the ship’s cargo of gold to the value of 42,000 rupees, having killed an Indian engine room hand and wounding several members of the crew. The Turkish authorities caught two of the crew, following a rudimentary identity parade on dry land:

One fellow was picked out at once by Bradford, the [ship’s] carpenter, and the donkeyman, who were all certain that he was one … The carpenter was especially sure of his man; for it so happened that he was looking out of a place where he himself could not very well be seen, and he saw a few inches from him this same Arab ‘coolie’ helping himself to plunder.

The remainder were apprehended by the sheikh of Mohammerah, who retrieved most of the stolen gold, while the outstanding balance was reclaimed in compensation from the Ottoman government. Many years later, as a mark of the company’s appreciation, BI ships were still firing a salute to the sheikh as they sailed past his palace.

Another peril was the sea itself. Dhow navigators had a wealth of knowledge but, for the British, the Gulf was relatively unknown. From the first survey in 1820, areas of the Gulf were surveyed, culminating in an Admiralty chart of 1860 that showed the principal ports and islands of the Arabian Gulf.28  Yet, without modern navigational

aids, captains found that the Gulf required careful navigation and storms could spring up unexpectedly. This happened to Captain Vivian Lockyer Wiles on the night of 21 April 1903 when his BI mail steamer, the Chindwara, grounded on Kais Island:

At midnight I took over charge of the ship. It was raining hard and blowing like fury. At 2.30am a sudden flash of lightning lit the land close to on the port hand. Of course I gave the necessary orders to keep her clear but her stern struck the beach as she was coming round. Luckily she only remained fast a few seconds but the shock woke everyone up and there was a great deal of excitement. A tremendous sea was running and had she remained fast the morning would have found her a total wreck.

In the event, Captain Wiles was honourably acquitted and the accident attributed to the storm and an ‘extraordinary set of circumstances’.29

In order to avoid some of the problems of navigation, BI established its own buoys, markers and lights in the Gulf; in 1911 the government of India purchased the buoys in order to pre-empt the German government from buying a share.30

Fig 5: The SS Chindwara, launched in 1879, carried 19 first-class and 1,104 deck passengers.

Powered by steam, her sails were only used to steady the ship. (reproduced by kind permission of P&O Heritage Collection http://www.poheritage.com)

West meets East

Although steamers brought  a  new  efficiency  to  shipping,  with  the  introduction of timetables to the Gulf, it was not easy to keep to a schedule: uncertain weather conditions, the enervating heat, quarantine regulations and a lack of reliable communications often conspired against the company. In 1896/7, the Political Resident complained about delays in mail deliveries to Bushire, caused by the time it took to load and unload cargo. Conditions in the port did not help, leading the local agent to warn that its shipping arrangements might break down ‘at any moment’.31

As we have seen, BI’s main ports of call on the way to Basra were on the Persian side of the Gulf. In the period 1862–1914, Bahrain remained a small port. Basra’s main exports were dates. From Bushire and Bandar Abbas came pearls and carpets and, from Mesopotamia and Persia as a whole, raw cotton, silk, wool, grain and horses and other animals. In both Bushire and Lingah, imports exceeded exports. As the opium trade grew, so did BI’s interest in it; in 1879 the company bought three new steamers in order to carry opium from Persia to Hong Kong.32

Until 1903, the mail run was a ‘fast’ weekly service calling in at the Persian ports on the way to Basra. In the winter of 1904–6, new turbine steamers able to run at 18 knots were introduced, but these were withdrawn because they were unable to push their way through the mud on the bar of the Shatt al-Arab, their small rapidly- revolving screws being quickly clogged; it was not 1926 that the bar was properly dredged.33 The fast service was supplemented by a ‘slow’ mail service which took 13 to 15 days and visited the smaller ports of the Gulf; Sharjah was added to the run.34

As the Shah’s government extended its control to the southern ports of Bushire and Lingah through tariffs on exports and imports, so the Persian shore became more attractive to the extensive smuggling network of the Trucial Coast and Oman, and less so to Persian traders who were increasingly drawn to Dubai. In 1904, Sheikh Maktoum II bin Hushur of Dubai persuaded BI to switch its main port of call in the lower Gulf from Lingah to Dubai, thus enhancing its status as a trading hub: goods from India were re-exported to Persia while goods to and from Buraimi and the interior were directed through Dubai. In 1905–6, 34 steamers visited Dubai, unloading some 70,000 tons.35

Before the advent of oil, however, economic conditions remained dismal in the Trucial Coast and Oman. They were alleviated somewhat by the pearling industry until its collapse in the face of competition from Japanese cultured pearls, which caused a slump in incomes from the 1920s. The Depression brought further hardships and accelerated the decline of the industry, leaving parts of the region in such dire straits that people had to rely on British handouts during World War II.36

With the oil boom, Omani families would send their young men to find work in the more prosperous states of the Gulf, which welcomed them. But the Trucial sheikhs, desperate to raise revenue in any form, were issuing travel documents to anyone who wished to go to those states to find work, irrespective of where they came from, bringing an influx of workers from India and Pakistan. In order to avoid the problems this caused, the Political Agency in Sharjah had to issue visas to Omanis in person— by the early 1950s, these numbered at least 27,000 per year.37

Economic and trading conditions shaped the hierarchy of Gulf ports, a process in which BI also played an important part; those ports on the company’s routes received greater benefits than those visited infrequently or not at all. Kuwait prospered at the expense of Basra, much to the alarm of the Ottomans; Manama benefitted from an influx of Persian merchants, who invested in the pearl trade, and from closer ties with Bombay and Iraq. There were indirect benefits, too: for example, more lighters were required to load and unload ships, leading to a boom in local boat building.38

Steamships helped to concentrate trade into a few entrepôts but, overall, shipping in the Gulf remained on a small scale during the pre-war period: compared with the £32 million’s worth of British goods imported into India in 1899–1900, only £2.5 million was imported into the Gulf in 1901–2. Profits on freight and passengers from Karachi to the Gulf between July 1901 and July 1902 were worth less than £15,000 in earnings to BI. Export cargoes from January to August 1902 shipped by BI steamers from Mohammerah, Basra and Baghdad only amounted to 10,703 tons.39

In 1914 BI merged with the P&O group of companies, creating a massive organisation of 201 ships with a virtual monopoly of shipping routes between London and the East. James Lyle Mackay, Lord Inchcape, the chairman of BI, became chairman of the P&O group; BI retained considerable autonomy within the group and still traded under its own name. At the centre of this corporate web was the original company of Mackinnon Mackenzie & Co, which served as P&O’s and BI’s operational ‘nerve centre’.40

Lascars

Although African and Asian labour had been used to crew the sailing ships of the early nineteenth century, it was the arrival of the steamship with its labour-intensive boilers and strenuous coaling operations that brought a substantial increase in their employment, and this practice continued well into the 20th century. Many BI ships were crewed by ‘lascars’, a generic term that referred to those who joined European ships at Indian ports.41 Various reasons were given for employing them in preference to British sailors, primarily their ability to work in a hot climate; and employing them obviated the need to repatriate British crews at the end of their two-year tours of duty. By the government of India’s Merchant Shipping Act of 1880, lascars were entitled to receive up to half the pay of British sailors. They were paid by an Indian agent known as a ghat serang.

Within the description of ‘lascar’ was an informal ranking based on regional lines:

deck ratings were often drawn from Indian fishing villages and referred to as the khallasis; engine ratings tended to be Pathan hill farmers from the north of Pakistan, and were referred to as the agwallahs, or firemen. Catering staff were from the Portuguese colony of Goa, known then as Goanese (‘Goan’ today). The lascars were headed by a serang, who often came with crew members from his village, and received a bonus at the end of a voyage, depending on how few of his men had deserted. The officers were mainly British, and their orders were passed to the crew through the serang. Meals were provided by vishiwallahs, of whom there were normally two, one to cater for Hindu and the other to cater for Moslem passengers.42

Fig 6: Agwallahs in the boiler room of a P&O ship in 1900 shovelling coal into a boiler in order to keep the fire burning. (source: Getty Images)

Between the wars 1918–39

After World War I, BI’s fast mail service in the Gulf was characterised by four ships, the so-called four ‘V’s—Varela, Varsova, Vita and Vasna. The company tended to name their vessels after places in the Indian sub-continent and ordered them to be built in groups, each ship in a group sharing the same first letter. The V-Class ships were built for the Bombay–Arabian Gulf mail run but were requisitioned for war duty in 1914. They served variously as hospital, transport and troop ships in the conflict before returning to civilian service. They were familiar sights on the mail run; the Vasna was known as ‘Queen of the Gulf ’.43 There were seven other ships, the ‘B’ class, which were ordered for the slow mail service; these included the Barjora, which was built in 1912 and saw service along the coast of East Africa in World War I before joining the Gulf run.

On the decks of these ships, cameos of onshore life were enacted. In 1922, for example, Ameen Rihani, a Lebanese American travelling to Bahrain on the Barjora, witnessed the scene on board:

One cannot understand the contempt an Arab has for sleeping in a bed, cooped in a cabin, until one sees the well-to-do among them make their little home on deck. The servants spread the rugs and cushions, setting the baggage—boxes and cans, bundles and bales—around the carpets to define their boundary in this little world of a day or a week; and a few feet away from the improvised majilis, the iron kitchen is installed. In ten minutes after they had come on board the fire is made—they carry their charcoal with them—and the coffee is soon served. It is a comfortable little home where the Arab in his robes, seated on his carpet and leaning against his cushion, is quite himself. To put him in a cabin below were a libel upon his estate— upon his heritage of the open sky.44

It was quaint picture, but times were changing and new ways of carrying mail and passengers were evolving. In 1933, an airmail service was established from the Sharjah airfield and in 1937 Imperial Airways began a flying boat service at Dubai Creek. An Empire Mail Service, whereby all first-class mail would be carried by air, further improved communication between London and the dominions: the mail traffic leaving Great Britain for India and Hong Kong reached around 500 tonnes in 1938.45 Air travel was price competitive with shipping, and much faster: an Imperial Airways flight from Dubai to Karachi cost Rs.145 and took only nine hours, compared with a 2nd Class BI fare of about Rs.120 and a voyage of five days.46

In the 1920s, many shipping lines, including BI, began to switch from coal to oil as fuel for their ships. Steam turbines could be designed to burn either oil or coal, and oil offered many advantages over coal, such as ease of storage, requiring less labour and being more efficient. The advent of the diesel engine further accelerated the changeover to oil. Existing ships such as the V-class vessels continued as steamers but new ships were built with diesel engines; steamers were prefixed SS (Steam Ship), and ships with diesel engines were prefixed MV (Motor Vessel).47

Fig. 7: The SS Varela. (reproduced by kind permission of P&O Heritage Collection http://www.poheritage.com)

After World War II 1945–1982

BI emerged from the war with reduced fleet, having lost almost half of its vessels during the conflict. The remaining pre-war stock was now antiquated, leading the company to order 14 new ships, which included the D-Class—the Dumra, Dwarka, Dara and the Daressa—to operate on the India–Arabian Gulf service. The V-class ships continued to run for a few more years. For the crews, the Gulf run in the 1950s was physically demanding with up to 20 ports visited in three weeks.48

Each D-class vessel was about 5,000 tons gross with relatively shallow draughts to assist them in navigating Gulf waters and a speed of 13 to 16 knots. Designed to carry cargoes of up to 6,000 cubic metres, the ships’ holds were partly insulated and air-cooled to allow fresh fruit to be delivered to the Gulf. The ships had cabin accommodation, and the capacity to carry a large number of deck passengers, mainly Pakistani and Indian labourers who were travelling to the region for work, Arabs travelling between the Gulf ports, and pilgrims travelling to and from Iraq. The ships’ capacity outside the monsoon months ranged from 1,537 deck passengers on the Dumra and Dwarka to 251 on the Daressa.49

It is said that, in the early days of the Dubai run, a boy was sent up a date palm to signal when the BI steamer came into sight. By the early 60’s, the only Gulf ports that had alongside berths were Kuwait, Khorramshahr and Basra. Apart from Karachi and Bombay, ships anchored at all other ports and passengers and cargo were embarked and disembarked from motorised dhows. These would be standing by as a ship approached the anchorages and then come alongside once she had anchored, sometimes before. Access was by gangway, so boarding could be a scramble as people vied for access and, of course, to claim a good spot to set up camp on the passenger decks.50

The growing importance of the Gulf in the world economy was highlighted when services were resumed from Basra to Colombo and thence to either Singapore, Hong Kong and the ports of Japan, or to Australia. As well as greater work opportunities and a rising number of migrants from southern Asia, the oil wealth brought new commercial ventures and new ports of call for the BI ships in the Gulf: a timetable of services issued in October 1959 shows BI ships visiting Sharjah, Dubai, Umm Said, Bahrain, Bushire, Kuwait, Abadan, Khorramshahr (formerly Mohammerah) and Basra.51 The boom also brought more business for BI’s agents in the Gulf, Gray Mackenzie, which operated tugs, barges, and lighters around the Gulf and, in the 1970s, became port managers and provided technical engineering services for the rapidly expanding oil business.

Fig. 8: Deck passengers on the Dwarka, 1979. (source: James Carter)

The Dwarka was the longest serving D-Class ship, and probably the best remembered of all the BI ships in the Gulf. Launched in 1946, the ship worked the Gulf route until she was scrapped in 1982. With the Dumra, Varela and Varsova, she played a major part in transporting refugees between Bombay and Karachi during the partition crisis of 1947.52 Otherwise, her voyages were unremarkable apart from two incidents. On the night of 29 September 1953, sailing from Gwadur to Karachi, a fight broke out on the afterdeck, resulting in the deaths of three crew members. On 19 June 1961, as she left Muscat for Karachi, there was a minor explosion in the No.1 hatch and one person was injured but the damage was minor and the ship resumed her voyage.53 The incident led the company to send an additional third officer as a security officer, but they were not trained for the task and were soon replaced by ex-colonial police officers ‘with whom you did not tangle’.54

Perhaps the most publicised incident involving a BI ship occurred on 7 April 1961, when the Dara had to leave Dubai in a hurry because of an approaching storm; it would have been too dangerous to stay in the port. There were a crew of 132 and 613 passengers on board, with 74 other people—shore officials, friends of passengers, stevedores and ‘hawkers’—none of whom had been able to disembark because of the deteriorating weather and the ship’s hurried departure.55 The following morning, there was an explosion on the port side of the ship on the upper deck. It blasted holes in the deck, bulkhead and casing, igniting a fire with heavy smoke. Although there were other ships in the area, which rescued 554 people, another 238 lost their lives—the exact number is not known because of the number of visitors on board. The ship was taken in tow but sank two days later. Today, a black and yellow buoy marks the spot where the wreck of the Dara lies some 30 metres beneath the surface, eight kilometres off the coast of Umm al-Qaiwain and about 37 km northeast of Dubai. The Dara’s replacement was the 8,000 ton Sirdhana, which had been a relief ship on the Gulf run.56

By 1965, the BI Line was advertising their ‘Bombay Gulf Service’ every seven days from Bombay and Karachi to Gwadur, Muscat, Dubai, Umm Said, Bahrain, Bushire, Kuwait, Khorramshahr and Basra, with a return every seven days.57 In the late 1960s, as a result of growing trade on the Arabian Gulf–Japan route, the company placed an order for new ships designed to transport heavy goods and materials for the oil industry: the Amra and Aska were each capable of handling loads of up to 300 tons. However, in 1971, BI’s cargo liners and most of its passenger/cargo ships were transferred to P&O General Cargo Division, and these two new ships passed into P&O ownership in 1973.58

Fig. 9: The BI ship, the Sirdhana, at the opening of Port Rashid, Dubai, on 19 November 1970 – she was the first vessel to go alongside. (reproduced by kind permission of P&O Heritage Collection http://www.poheritage.com)

Over succeeding years, in the face of growing competition, the Dwarka was left as the last remaining BI ship sailing the Gulf. In 1978, G.A. Hankin was the captain of the Dwarka. He was a veteran of the run, his ship was coming to the end of its service, and it was with mixed emotions that he gazed upon the modern scene:

In the Gulf there remain many hundreds of dhows, though most are motorised now. Giant tankers and modern container vessels rule the crowded waters of the Gulf. Dwarka seems like a lonely survivor of an intermediate period, and each time she passes through the busy shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, it is almost as though she is being crowded out by the monsters all around her. Presumably here, as elsewhere, the unromantic aeroplane will take over as the principal carrier of people once Dwarka eventually bids farewell to such a fascinating scene.59

His words said it all: the era of mass air travel, and container shipping had arrived; the construction of deep water ports allowed the larger vessels load and unload their cargoes in a modern dockside environment. There was a dwindling demand for slow voyages on small, ageing passenger ships, and the days of the BI Line were numbered.

The Dwarka’s last sailing was in 1982, bringing the company’s services east of Suez to an end. The other ‘D’ ships were sold or lost: the Dara sunk, and the Daressa sold. Although the Dumra was also sold, it continued sailing in the Gulf under the name of Daman. In the end, the Dwarka could barely make 12 knots at full speed and replacement parts had to be specially made and shipped out from England. In 1979 she featured in a BBC documentary and in 1982, shortly before she was scrapped, she appeared in Richard Attenborough’s film, Ghandi. She finished her days with ship breakers on Gadani Beach, Pakistan.60

Conclusion

Conceived as part of an imperial policy to improve communications in the region, BI became the leading steamship company in the Gulf. Its ships were at the center of things: before the advent of air travel, steamers were the preferred mode of passenger and cargo transport between India, the Gulf and the rest of the world. William Mackinnon’s strategy was always commercially driven, even when government shipping and railway subsidies were being proffered, since these would fund trading activities that otherwise would have been unprofitable.61 This ensured the company’s 120-year presence in the region.

As to the impact of shipping on the economies of the Gulf, BI’s arrival can be seen as part of a long-term trend of foreign encroachment contributing to the disruption of the dhow trading system and its relegation to local routes that steamers could not reach, and to cargoes they would not carry. Viewed from this perspective, the appearance of foreign shipping lines was not such a welcome development.

Although BI recognised Dubai’s growing importance as a trading centre in 1904 by making it the line’s main port of call in the lower Gulf, trade with eastern Arabia remained relatively small for many years. In the 1920s, the decline of the pearl trade damaged established trading centres, but the discovery of oil in the 1930s heralded a new age of prosperity. In the post-war years, BI responded by providing a fast weekly service with modern ships from Bombay to places such as Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.

Nevertheless, BI was unable to match the pace of change in the latter part of the twentieth century. As the Gulf opened up to the wider world, so BI was absorbed into the corporate network of P&O. In its twilight years, the line was a reminder of an earlier time when steamers ruled the Gulf; indeed, the Dwarka’s voyage to the breakers yard can be seen as the final curtain call for a bygone age. Today, much of the heritage from those days is preserved by DP World, an Emirati marine terminal operator based in Dubai, which has a team of curators to look after the extensive artefacts and archives of the P&O Heritage Collection.

Fig. 10: One of the last photographs of the MV Dwarka, taken at Bombay in 1982. The distinctive black funnel with two broad white bands was the BI Line’s trade mark. (photographer and copyright holder: Karsten Petersen)

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank James Carter, John Coulthard and Sir Robin Knox- Johnston for their kind assistance.

Endnotes

1. Report from the Select Committee on Steam-Navigation to India (London, 1834), pp. 3–4.

2. Chesney, Francis, Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition during the Years 1835, 1836, and 1837, (London 1868).
3. Stephanie Jones, ‘British India Steamers and the Trade of the Persian Gulf, 1862-1914’, The Great Circle, V 7, No. 1 (April 1985), pp. 23–44; Munro, J. Forbes, Maritime Enterprise and Empire: Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-1893, (Woodbridge, UK, 2003), pp. 35–6.
4. British India Steam Navigation Company’, P&O Heritage website: <http://www. poheritage.com/our-history/company-guides/british-india-steam-navigation-company> accessed 18 November
5. Munro: Maritime Enterprise and Empire, pp. 38–40.
6. Ibid, p. 46.
7. Ibid., pp. 48–50.

8. ‘Bengal, Our Coasting Trade’, Allen’s Indian Mail and Register of Intelligence for British and Foreign India, V XX, p. 758.
9. Jones: ‘British India Steamers’, p. 27–8.
10. I, p. 64; Pelly to the secretary of the government of Bombay, 10 July 1870, Allen’s Indian Mail, Vol. XXVIII, p. 970; Harris, Christine Phelps, ‘The Persian Gulf Subma- rine Telegraph of 1864’, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 135, No. 2 (Jun., 1969), pp. 169-90
11. Munro: Maritime Enterprise, pp. 123–4.
12. Munro, Forbes, ‘Shipping Subsidies and Railway Guarantees: William Mackinnon, Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean, 1860-93’, The Journal of African History, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1987), p. 216; Lorimer: Gazetteer (1915), Appendix K, p. 2439; Blake, George, BI Centenary 1856–1956 (London, 1956), pp. 59–60.

13. Blake, Centenary, p.
14. BI Handbooks, 1866–1885, National Maritime Museum (NMM), BI Archives, BIS 36/1.
15. Al-Qasimi, Sultan Muhammed The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf (London, 1986).
16. Lorimer, G., Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf , Oman and Central Arabia (Calcutta, 1908), Vol. 2, p. 232.
17. Broeze, Frank, ‘From Imperialism to Independence: The Decline and Re-Emergence of Asian Shipping’, The Great Circle, V 9, No. 2 (October 1987), pp. 74–5.
18. Villiers, Alan,  Sons  of  Sinbad  (London,  1940),  p.  270;  Walker,  Antony  Raymond, ‘Seaports and Development in the Persian Gulf ’, Durham theses, Durham University (1981), pp. 48–9: <http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7838/> accessed 15 October 2013.

19. Broeze, ‘From Imperialism to Independence’, p. 80; Villiers, Alan ‘Some aspects of the Arab Dhow Trade’, Middle East Journal (1948), V 2, p. 401.
20. Pelly in Allen’s Indian Mail, p. 970; ‘Persian Gulf: the ‘Arab Steamers Ltd’’, IOR/L/ PS/11/37, P4332/1912: 15 Apr 1912-26 Nov
21. Newman, Tom, ‘The Development of Steam Navigation in Mesopotamia: Lynch Broth- ers Limited’, IPC Newsletter, Issue No. 76, October
22. Anscombe, Frederick F., The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (New York, 1997), pp. 21, 55–90. Basra in the 19th century was under Turkish Ottoman control, but the small British merchant community was accustomed to trouble in the town and, when it became too serious, would evacuate to the comparative safety of Kuwait.

23. Pelly in Allen’s Indian Mail, p.
24. ‘Notes on the Economic Situation in the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamian Markets’, Captain George Lloyd, IOR/B/P&S, 11/59, B240,
25. Vadala, , Le Golfe Persique, (Paris, 1920).
26. Report on the Administration of the Persian Gulf and Muscat Political Agency, (Calcutta, 1873–1905); Issawi, Charles, The Fertile Crescent, 1800-1914 : A Documentary Economic History (New York 1988), pp. 259–61; Melville, , Fisher, William Bayne, Avery, P., Hambly, G. R. G. (eds), The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 7, p. 591; Risso, Patricia, ‘India and the Gulf ’, in Potter, Lawrence G. (ed.), The Persian Gulf in History (New York, 2009), p. 198; Jones, ‘British India Steamers’, pp. 28–9, 40–1; Walker: ‘Seaports and Development in the Persian Gulf ’.
27. ‘The Looting of the Cashmere by Arab Pirates’, Bombay Gazette, 20 June
28. ‘Admiralty Charts of the Persian Gulf 1869’, Islands and Maritime Boundaries of the Gulf 1798–1960, (Farnham Common, 1990), V 19, maps 3 and 4.
29. Hollingworth, B., ‘Sail, Steam and Seaplanes, Part 1: Up The Creeks with British India’. <http://www.merchantnavyofficers.com/sail.html> accessed 20 October 2013.

30. Busch, Briton Cooper, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1894-1914, (Berkeley & Los Ange- les, 1967), pp. 354-5.
31. Letters between the Political Resident, Bushire, and Gray Paul and Mackinnon Mackenzie, 1898, National Maritime Museum (NMM BIS/7/47), cited in Jones: ‘British India Steamers’.
32. Munro: Maritime Enterprise, p. 63; Jones, Stephanie, ‘The Management of British India Steamers in the Gulf 1862—1945: Gray Mackenzie and the Mesopotamia Persia Corporation’, in Lawless, Richard (ed.), The Gulf in the Early 20th Century (Durham, 1986) 38.
33. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, V 5 , p. 2443; Ferrier, Ronald W., The History of the British Petroleum Company, The Developing Years, 1901–1932 (Cambridge, 1982), BP History series, Vol. 1, pp. 450–1.
34. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, V 1 , p. 385; for discussions about Gulf routes, see ‘Steamer for Bahrain and Neighbouring Ports’, IOR/R/15/1/333 , 7 Mar 1914-22 Oct 1930.

35. Heard, Frauke, From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates (Dubai, 2004), pp. 191, 243–4.
36. I, p. 250.
37. Walker, Julian, Tyro on the Trucial Coast (Durham, 1999), pp. 69–70.
38. Fuccaro, Nelida, Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama Since 1800 (Cambridge, 2009), p. 78.

39. Jones, ‘British India Steamers’, p. 37,
40. Jones, Stephanie, Trade and Shipping: Lord Inchcape, 1852-1932 (Manchester, 1989), p. 113.

41. The word ‘lascar’ derives from the Persian lashkar meaning army or camp, the Arabic al-askar meaning guard or soldier; the Portuguese adapted the word to lascarim to refer to an Asian militiaman or sailor.

46. Jones, P., ‘Lascars in the Port of London’, Port of London Authority Monthly, February 1931: <http://www.lascars.co.uk/plafeb1931.html> accessed 22 November 2013.
47. Laxon and Perry: BI Laxon, W.A., Perry, F.W., BI: The British India Steam Navigation Company Limited (Kendal, 1994), p.
48. Rihani, Ameen: The Making of Modern Arabia (Boston, 1928), pp. 21–2.
49. Allaz, Camille, History of Air Cargo and Airmail from the 18th Century, (Paris, 2004), p. 99.
50. Stanley-Price, Nicholas, ‘Imperial Airways and the Airfield at Sharjah, 1932-1939’, Liwa journal, V 3, No. 6, December 2011, p. 34.
51. Headrick, Daniel , The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940 (New York,  1988),  p.  31.
52. Laxon and Perry: BI, p.
53. Shaw, James, ‘The Four ‘D’s of the British India Line’, Ships, January 1978: <http:// www.merchantnavycom/dwarka.html> accessed 15 October 2013.
54. Sir Robin Knox Johnston, email to the author, 31 October
55. Maritime Timetable Images: <http://www.timetableimages.com/maritime/images/ htm> accessed 23 October 2013. Sharjah silted up and had to be closed in 1954, be- ing reopened after dredging.
56. Laxon and Perry: BI, p. 133 53. I, p. 183.
57. Robin Know-Johnston, email to the author, 31 October
58. Shaw, ‘The Four ‘D’s’.
59. ‘A night of horror on the Arabian Gulf ’, The National, 2 April
60. Official Steamship Guide International, August 1965, V 68, No. 2, p. 92.
61. Laxon and Perry: BI, p.
62. Mackenzie, John, ‘Captain Hankin and the Dwarka’, Sea Breezes, December  1978: <http://www.merchantnavyofficers.com/hankin.html> accessed 16 October 2013.
63. Laxon and Perry: BI, p.
64. The mail shipping contracts were periodically renewed and then substantially reorganised in After World I, they were linked to the quantity of mail carried, reflecting a more commercial approach to the carriage of mail, Laxon and Perry, p. 11.