Chapter V: Sailors of the Red Sea

The sailors of the Red Sea are practically all Arabians and their negro slaves. They generally give Jedda or a neighbouring port as their headquarters, though some are from Sinai in the north to Hodêda in the south. The Sudan coast is merely a portion of their beat, few vessels really belong to the country. The pearlers, too, come and go as they visit the reefs of the whole sea in turn.

The maritime Hamites are so very few and so rarely depend entirely on the sea for a living, but upon their animals also, that it is surprising to find that they are distinguished in any way from the country population. The difference may be expressed in the actual words of one of them. “You see that man riding a camel? He would think me a fool because I know little about camels, while I think him a fool because he might die of hunger by the sea-side, not knowing how to get even clams (_Tridacna_) to eat.”

“When these people from the hills come down here and we offer them rice they look at it and say ‘That is worms (? maggots), we don’t eat worms.’”

They are skilful sailors of their little dug-outs and readily learn the management of larger vessels, but very rarely go with the Arabians away from their own coast. No boat building is done even in Suakin, the country being devoid of timber, though repairs can be effected there.

The coasting vessels of the Red Sea are “dhows” or as here named “sambûks” (see Figure on pages 60 and 62, and Fig. 36, Plate XVIII). Several kinds are distinguished by separate names, e.g. a rather small type is known as a “gatira,” but all are essentially the same. They are both beamy and deep, with long overhanging bow and a square stern. There is little keel apart from the depth of the boat itself and they are not good at beating to windward. They are quite open, such decking as there is at bow and stern being merely for convenience in managing sail and rudder, not built with the idea of protection from a sea breaking aboard.

Fig. 37. Rigging of a _sambûk_]

The rig is a single lateen sail of cotton canvas, which in a boat over 50 feet long is of great size. A mizzen mast is stepped, but the mizzen sail is only used under the very best of conditions. I have often asked the headman of one of these boats why, on starting out with a light breeze at 6 o’clock in the morning he did not set his mizzen, and have been told that, as he knew the breeze would freshen about 10 a.m., it was not worth while. They are excellent sea boats and will stand a great deal of bad weather. Despite the extreme clumsiness of the rig and the apparently haphazard way the numerous half-naked sailors tumble over one another and yell like Babel when anything has to be done, they are cleverly handled. When travelling in them I have sometimes seen situations calling for an extreme nicety of manipulation to avoid an accident, manoeuvres which were carried through with skill and coolness by men who, placed in an English boat, would seem both clumsy and mentally unbalanced.

_Plate XVIII_

Besides the clumsiness of the lateen rig with its huge single yard, the primitive blocks and tackle used necessitate a large crew. One of my boats, 50 feet long by 10 feet beam, requires a crew of nine, and the headman considers this too few. Generally all passengers join heartily in the hauling

and yelling, which (especially the latter) is necessary to raise the great yard. Two thick ropes, named the Fêsha, attached to the yard pass through rough sheaves at the mast head, the other ends being both attached to a hanging pulley block of four sheaves or more. Through the sheaves of this hanging block pass the halyards, which, running through a block at deck level form a tackle by which the hanging block and the “fêsha” ropes are hauled down and the yard of course rises. In practice there are two halyards, both passing through the same hanging block, as there is not room for the whole crew to haul at a single rope. The cordage is all made of coconut fibre and there is no standing rigging, all stays and the “vang,” or stay to the yard, being moveable and set up with simple tackles. They may be made very useful in hauling heavy goods aboard when loading.

There are two principal disadvantages of this lateen rig which call for special skill. The first is that at the end of each tack in a head wind you cannot “go about” in the ordinary way but must fall away from the wind and wear round. In an ordinary fore and aft rigged vessel this operation would involve gibing, the sail going over with a violent bang which would be extremely dangerous in a high wind, especially where the tack of the sail is fixed down forward of

(_From a photograph_)]

the mast. As this sail has no boom gibing is avoided by letting go the sheet and carrying it and the sail forward while the tack is unfastened and brought aft, both meeting at the mast, so that the sail is practically furled. The long yard, being balanced by its suspension at the mast head, is brought to a vertical position, the sheet carried forward of both it and the mast and so round to its new position on the other side and carried aft. As there is no tackle[33] on either sheet or tack the boat is so steered as to help these movements and the sail does not draw until the sheet is made fast. It is to facilitate the movement of the heavy yard from one side of the mast head to the other that the mast slopes forward so markedly. The operation is ingenious and calls for good seamanship, especially in a strong wind and heavy sea, when any fault might result in great force being unexpectedly applied to the rigging with awkward results. Just as this is the reverse to our gibing so, instead of carrying weather helm, the vessel falls off from the wind instead of luffing if left to herself, and where the steersman of a fore and aft rigged vessel would luff to a big wave or strong squall the Arabian falls away. As there is but one sail, a large part of which is forward of the mast while the deepest part of the keel is aft, it is impossible to have any of the sail set when at anchor, and so the anchor must be raised, sail set and way got on the vessel almost simultaneously, indeed the sail must draw as soon as it begins to rise and the yard is not at the mast head till some distance has been travelled. Similarly on coming into harbour the sail is lowered completely, long before the anchorage is reached.

Like most sailors of the warmer seas the Arabs are amphibious. For instance, the order is given to carry out an anchor away from the vessel, which is to be moved by hauling on the anchor rope. If the distance is not great and the depth inconsiderable the sailors will consider it less trouble, instead of lowering a canoe in which to carry out the anchor and rope, to throw them overboard and then go after them with a run, a yell and splash, to the sea bottom, where two or three men seize and run with the anchor a few yards under the water, come up for a breath of air while others go down, descend again and carry the anchor another stage, until the anchor rope is fully extended. Generally when the anchor goes overboard at the end of the day’s journey one or two of the crew go down after it and work it nicely into the mud. Similarly in getting an anchor up if it is caught in the coral, instead of manœuvring the boat to loosen it in the usual way a man goes down to see what is the matter, and either loosens it or directs the operations of those in the boat. How would an English yachtsman regard diving after his anchor? Not as an everyday occurrence, but as an adventure of a lifetime.

To the Arab sailors such a voyage as from Bombay to Aden, and on through the whole length of the Red Sea, must be an adventure like that of a voyage of Ulysses. As to the old Hero so to them all accidents are due to the personal intervention of God, or of good and evil spirits, and there is no dividing line between fact and legend. Distances, which for us have so dwindled, remain for them enormous. I have myself spent as long over a voyage of a hundred miles, anchoring each night in yet another desolate creek or “khor,” as over the whole voyage by steamship from Marseilles to Port Sudan. At that rate 1000 miles in a _sambûk_ would be almost equivalent to a circumnavigation of the globe in a modern vessel. But what a difference! In the latter case, to the passenger deck chairs and novels, to the officers methodical routine and the keeping the running correct as per time-table, in the former ceaseless personal effort, at frequent intervals the direct pitting of oneself against the chances of the sea, the winds and waves, reefs and hidden coral pinnacles, the everyday hardship often aggravated by the rarity of the points at which water and food may be procured. Rarely are two days alike, and the date of the voyage’s close is, as they would express it, known to God. And adventures everywhere, the calling at strange little desert towns, the outer fringe of even Arabian and Turkish civilisations, islands and harbours unknown to the outer world, wild peoples, communities living apart, connected with the world only by some rudiments of their common faith, savages even to the Arab sailors. There is too, even yet, the chance of meeting pirates, or of a windfall or ruin resulting from some smuggling adventure. I would that they could be conscious of the poetry of it all. To them the glory of the battle is but the hardship of everyday life, strange scenes and places only the possible failure to procure provisions or the chances of being robbed by petty tyrants. At least it is a life that makes real men, men who must have learned some communion with the God of Nature and the Sea.

_Plate XIX_

The Hamites are skilful sailors of their small boats and of the little dug-out canoes in which pearl fishing is done. These measure about 16 ft. in length with a beam of 18 in. to 2 ft. For a short distance weather seems to be of no consideration to them; one sees canoes tearing along under full sail, the steersman busy throwing out[34] the water with his spare hand, while the other occupant hangs to the mast which threatens to be carried away by the wind at every moment, and leans as far over the side as he can to prevent her capsizing. I know several cases of men travelling eighty to a hundred miles along the coast in such canoes, partly on the open sea and partly on the shallow water over the reefs. One instance is particularly remarkable, a bent old man, practically blind with age, appeared, having travelled from the next village to the north, eighty miles away. His only companions were two particularly irresponsible-looking little boys, whose ages I should estimate at 8 and 10. I enquired how he managed the boat seeing he was blind. “The boys tell me to luff or bear away and I do as they say” he replied, as if that were quite a simple, safe, and easy method of travel.

Pearl fishing is carried on by the Arabs all over the Red Sea by means of vessels of every size from the smallest, carrying four men and a boy, to the largest with a crew of twenty or more. Frequently the captain is a patriarch, the crew being largely his family and connections, with a few negro slaves or ex-slaves.

The _sambûk_ carries as many canoes, dug out of solid tree trunks, as it can, up to half the number of the crew, and the actual fishing is done from these canoes, the large vessels being merely means of transport and eating and sleeping places.

On reaching the fishing-ground the _sambûk_ anchors, under the shelter of a reef, perhaps miles out to sea, or perhaps near some islet or sandbank. The canoes with which it is loaded are launched and two men paddle away in each. Though both can dive they go in pairs distinguished as “captain” and “paddler,” the former being chosen for good eyesight and skill in distinguishing the pearl shells from the weeds, sponge, and stones among which they grow. A bad captain “sees every stone as a shell” which results in waste of energy in useless diving. He examines the sea-bottom by means of a “water telescope” (Arabic “Maraya,” a word also applied to mirrors, among other things), a paraffin tin with a glass bottom. The glass is pressed on the surface of the sea, thus flattening out ripples and giving a smooth surface through which, in this transparent sea, objects can be clearly seen at a depth of from twenty, thirty, and sometimes even sixty feet[35]. So the canoe is slowly paddled over the sea until a shell is sighted, when the canoe is manœuvred into the proper position, and the diver descends and secures it. The business is not generally a simple dive and return, though that is a clever enough thing to do without upsetting the canoe. In the case of not quite fully-grown oysters the creature is attached to the bottom by a very strong silky green cable, and I have watched the diver plant both feet firmly on the bottom, and wrench and twist at the sharp-edged shell with both hands for some time before it would come away.

The average duration of a long dive is 90 seconds, two minutes being the longest I have seen. To one in the boat counting the seconds waiting for the reappearance of the diver this seems a long time, and doubtless the exaggerated reports of divers staying under water for five minutes have thus arisen. Two minutes of considerable exertion under the pressure of 30 ft. of water is surely a sufficiently remarkable feat. The greatest depth to which a naked diver descends is thirteen fathoms, equal to seventy-eight feet.

_Plate XX_

The captain only dives for an hour or two in the morning, after which he saves his eyes for finding the shells which his paddler secures. These men, whether Arabs of the _sambûks_ or Hamites who go out from their villages in canoes, dive without any apparatus at all. A few negroes descend by a weight and cord in likely places where the water is too deep to see the bottom, on the chance of coming across shells. The Hamites ridicule them for using this method, but so far as I can see their results are just as profitable. Two or three large shells seem to be considered an adequate reward for a day’s great labour.

The provisions for a _sambûks_ cruise of six months are of the simplest, sacks of dûra corn and a barrel or two of the brackish warm water of the desert wells. Stones for grinding the corn, a big cooking-pot and a basin or two are the whole equipment. The fire is kindled on a box of sand. A sheep kept alive until a feast day, is sometimes seen on board, but coffee is the one luxury. It is a terribly hard life. Think of coming in from a day’s work of diving and paddling a canoe under that blazing sun to a meal of tasteless dûra porridge, sometimes a little fish, burnt rather than cooked[36], and warm brackish and dirty water, eaten probably without shelter from the sun, or at best under a scrap of flimsy cotton, here set against a sun which blazes and scorches rather than shines. Well have they earned their night’s rest, yet what a bed is theirs, a surface of hard wood without even the flatness and smoothness of the plank bed of a prison cell.

Though sharks occur and are sometimes common in the Red Sea, a native does not look round for them before going overboard, though if one should be seen, diving is over for the day. To one locality, named Shark Island, divers will not go for fear of these beasts, but diving is continually going on in a bay where several sharks are captured each year. I have only heard of one fatality, in which case a man’s feet were taken off and he bled to death after regaining his canoe.

Fishing is done by running a net round a shoal of fish, by throwing-net, hook and line, trolling with a scrap of white rag or sheepskin with white wool left on, and by spearing. The latter method alone is peculiar to this coast so far as I know, so the former need but scant mention. The throwing-net is circular, about twelve feet in diameter, made of fine string with small mesh. The circumference is weighted with small pieces of lead. In use the fisherman grasps the centre of the net and folds the rest over his arm carefully, after wringing out excess of water. He then walks cautiously along by sandy shallows, looking for the ripplings, invisible to foreign eyes, which indicate the movements of fish. On seeing these, bending double, he creeps up as cautiously as possible until near enough to throw. This is done very suddenly and with a circular motion, so that the net spreads out parachute fashion in the air and descends vertically upon the fleeing fish. The fisherman kills any that are enclosed by biting their heads through the meshes of the net before removal. The fish thus captured is generally a species of mullet about the size of a herring, and excellent on the table. Its native name is El Arabi, i.e. the Arab. The method is of course only possible in shallow water with a sandy bottom, but such ground occurs at the head of all the harbours, so the throwing-net is much used. I have seen two men returning from fishing with festoons of “Arabs” covering their whole bodies, but such good luck as this is not common.

Hook and line fishing is the same here as anywhere else. The favourite baits are “sardines” and pieces of the flesh of the giant clam (_Tridacna_) or of the big whelks (_Fusus_, _Murex_, and _Strombus_), all of which are as easily obtained as lug-worms or mussels at home. Clams’ flesh is the commonest, and anyone interested in curio-collecting should ask a fisherman to keep for him the pearls found in them. As the clam shell is an opaque white, so are the pearls, which, though consequently valueless, are as much true pearls as those formed by the lustrous pearl oyster.

“Sardines” are known even to the natives by this name, but are a small species of anchovy of the sardine size. At certain times they collect, presumably for breeding purposes, into shoals in the shallow water so dense as to form black patches 10 or 20 yards across, from which it is easy to collect a bucket-full in a few minutes by means of a sheet. They are kept alive by the fisherman allowing his canoe to be a third full of water in which they swim until thrown overboard to attract fish, or impaled on the hook as bait.

The number of species of fish thus caught is large and the greater number are very good. The best are several species of _Caranx_ known as “bayâda,” some of which attain to a great size, sometimes four or five feet long, but the smaller are better for eating. The most peculiar is perhaps the “abu sêf” or “father of a sword,” a most appropriate name. It is ribbon-shaped, three feet long or so, back and belly quite straight and flattened from side to side, in fact just the shape of a sword blade. Further, its sides are of the most dazzling whiteness, brighter than any silver, and its ferocious teeth and vigorous movements bring the terror of a sword to all the smaller fish.

The nets and spears bring in the greatest variety of all, the brilliant blue, pink, and green species of the parrot-beaked _Pseudoscarus_, which actually eat coral; the queer bladder-fish, in which also the teeth are fused up like beaks, which can blow themselves up like footballs, in one species (_Tetraodon hystrix_) thus erecting the hundreds of fearful spines into which its scales are modified; the box or coffer fish, the skins of which are quite stiff and bony and cover square bodies, which in some species have horn-like spikes pointing forward over the eyes; file fish (_Ballistes_) which feed by crunching up shellfish (including pearl oysters) with their powerful jaws; in fact enough variety of strange habits and shapes and colours, striking by their brilliance or interesting by their resemblances to the inanimate environment of their possessors, to fill another book (were half known) or stock a museum.

Besides fish of ordinary size the larger species, such as rays and sharks, are generally captured by spearing. Nowadays the spear is a piece of round bar iron, half an inch in diameter, a rough unbarbed point at one end and with an eyehole, to which a line is attached, at the other. It is twelve feet long, and quite small fish may be impaled upon it in twenty-four feet of water. Its use is often combined with pearl fishing. Should the captain see a fish the spear is handed to him as he leans over the side of the canoe, and he watches the fish through the water glass in one hand, the spear being held in the other, with perhaps half its length in the water, more or less according to the depth. The canoe being rightly placed, a sudden jerk sends the spear shooting downwards, and more often than not the fish is impaled at the first attempt; so little splash is there, that it is often possible to throw it several times without driving the fish away altogether.

There are in most tropic seas certain gigantic rays or skates, whose horizontally flattened bodies are like a huge square, ten to twenty feet across. One corner is the head, eyes above, mouth underneath, the two side corners are fins, while to the fourth is attached the tail. This is a strange thing for a fish, being like a whip-lash, say 6 feet long, provided at its base with one or more erectile spikes four to six inches long, sharp and barbed all along each edge, and further very poisonous. The natives of both Zanzibar and the Red Sea assure me that even in the case of the smaller species, to tread on these spikes is death. Hence the common name of the family, Sting Rays. It is interesting to note that these dangerous implements are used purely in self-defence. All species are conspicuously coloured, one being yellow brown with large bright blue spots, another black with round white spots. The largest are black, and so conspicuous on the sandy bottoms they frequent that none but the most unteachable animal, human or otherwise, can incur the dreadful penalty of careless interference with them. Otherwise the animals are perfectly harmless, living on shellfish which their small but powerful jaws can crush up[37]. Yet so impressive is the size of some species, so ghostly the appearance of a vast black living shadow rising from the blue depths under the boat, and so queer the formation of the head in some, that they are universally known as Devil fish. And for all their harmless diet and their warning colour which considerately advises that one interferes with them at one’s own risk, I join in hearty approval of their opprobrious name.

_Plate XXI_

As is so sadly true of most marine organisms, we know far too little of their habits. What is the reason for the strange leaps they make into the air, falling back on to the water with a thudding splash that can be heard a mile away? It is usually done by night, a circumstance that adds to the strangeness of this sudden obtrusion upon our minds of the existence of a scarcely known world beneath the water, which we, in our preoccupation with our own half of the world, had almost forgotten.

So much for the prey, now to its hunting. They occasionally appear on the surface, two or three pairs swimming together, the black point of the side fin appearing above water, now on this side, now on that. On one occasion I was out in a small sailing boat with three or four canoes of pearl-divers, and as the fish when chased went down wind, we were able to follow, spread out in a long line so that whichever vessel saw the prey could signal to the others. We thus kept the chase going for an hour or more, striking with fish spears repeatedly, but as these are not barbed, and as in all that hundred or more square feet of body the brain and heart occupy but a few square inches, the spears may go through and through, and be withdrawn again when all the line has been run out, with no appreciable damage to the animal. So on this occasion we made no capture, but the hour’s chase over this silver sea with glimpses of mystery beneath was a pleasure to remember.

Another chase, also without capture, was stranger still. I found a pearling canoe moving over the dead calm sea with no visible means of propulsion. On reaching them I found they had made fast to a fish and dared not play the line attached to the spear for fear of its breaking away. Looking down into the blue with a water glass one saw the dim shadow of one of those monsters, _Pristis_ by name, half shark, half ray, in which the snout is prolonged into a beak, into the sides of which are set formidable teeth, an object frequently exposed for sale in curio shops as the sawfish’s jaw. This was one of the largest species of the genus and must have been ten to twelve feet long without the toothed snout.

We seemed to be in a dilemma; hauling upon the line would almost certainly withdraw the spear before the fish would be near enough for further attack, and the canoe had already been drifting about for two hours or so. However I understood that there was some hope of capture if the beast could be induced to approach shallow water, though I was left to wait and see the bold plan which was in the natives’ minds. By dint of careful manœuvring we at last approached a reef, when one of the sailors unrove the boat’s rigging and made a running noose with which he actually dived to the bottom, braving the six feet of two-edged saw, to slip the noose over the monster’s tail! I, watching in safety from above, saw one of the finest diving feats imaginable, the man with the noose swimming to and fro, following the slow beats of the gigantic tail, watching his opportunity. Alas, as might have been expected, the monster was startled, a sudden wriggle and he disappeared, carrying the spear with him.