The Tigris Expedition

by Heyerdahl, Thor

  Rashad declared his paint dry; we tied the new colossus to the new yardarm and would be ready to depart as soon as we got this important renovation on board. When the canvas was folded to the wood, it took all eleven of us to hft it oflF the ground. My skepticism grew into clear disapproval. It seemed as heavy as an elephant. It began to dawn upon me that we had acquired a white elephant. "This is crazy," I shouted to Norman. "It will break our mast." Norman wiped his perspiring forehead. Poor man, he had been struck again with an inexplicable fever and was ill for the fifth day in a row. He admitted that the sail was too heavy. He had told Detlef to order the thickest cotton canvas the Hamburg sailmakers had, but had never realized they had anything this thick. We managed to drag ourselves in procession with our burden to the edge of the mole alongside Tigris, which was down below. "How shall we get it on board?" **We'U have to hoist it across with the halyard." "But how can we get the dam thing past all the backstays?" Norman, to my amazement, only scratched his blond hair. I needed no more to realize that we really had a white elephant. And a big one. Norman, always so meticulously exact and foresighted in any planning, had planned a sail that would make Southampton University applaud in approval. But neither he nor I could see how to get it on board. While we all stood there in a line, suggestions rained from left and right and even from the spectators behind us. We could pass behind the stays if we pulled one end in from the stem. No, not that way, but from the bow. No, we could loosen all portside stays and let the yardarm under while someone held the masts. We could leave it alongside, outside all stays. We could, in fact, do many things. But we would be wedded to an unmanageable monster out at sea.

  I felt that I was really losing my temper. The situation was ridiculous. I was just on the edge of letting my anger show above aU the confused shouting when everybody down the line put on a Sunday-go-to-church expression and lowered their voices. It was not the emir who arrived, but Norris with his baby. He had shpped his part of our common burden into the hands of Khalifa and came sneaking up with his sound camera.

  I took a brutal decision on the spur of the moment: "Let this white elephant down. We are going to sail without it. We might get it on board here in port, but how the devil are we going to handle it in a storm at sea? The mast will rip oflF before we find a place for it on deck. All aboardl Were offl"

  Chapter 6

  WE GAIN CONTROL OF TIGRIS

  w.

  E unfolded our good sail in the mythical waters of Dilmun and felt as if we had opened wings and taken off with the freedom of the air. The bow was once more as sohd as a bird's breast, with every feather in place. The sail was perfectly set to catch the wind and gave us an uplift we could feel, a thrilling sensation known only to the winged species, ghders and sail sportsmen. The days of being towed had been hke bumping in a truck off the road on punctured tires. Now we barely seemed to touch the soft waves, ready for takeoff in the manner of the moon ship we had seen hfting from the sea Sumerian style.

  This was exciting. Real fun. Norman ignored his fever and beamed with joy. We stood with a tiller each on either side of the steering platform, twisting the long slanting logs that ended in oar blades, and confirmed with satisfaction that for the moment our vessel responded marvelously to oiu: maneuvers.

  We were eleven men as free as man can be. Free as the seagulls that accompanied us. Neither they nor we had any preconceived itinerary. Nobody expected us anywhere. We had no fixed port of caU, no cargo to dehver. Free, except for one Httle snag.

  Unlike the seagulls, who know no boundaries, our freedom ended where land began. We had to get out of this gulf to secure the unrestricted freedom of the boundless ocean. But the outlet of the gulf was a needle's eye. Would we be able to hit it?

  The winter wind had long since returned to its normal course and blew in full force from the north. A perfect wind to sail a reed ship from Iraq to Bahrain. But after Bahrain the whole gulf curves at a right angle and we had to steer west northwest to hit the needle's eye, out into the open ocean. We could hardly expect a following wind to turn with us up to the outlet of the gulf. Today, as in Sumerian times, this was the one leg that really demanded navigation.

  The gulf, when seen in correct proportions on a globe and not distorted on a flat world map, is the size of England and Scotland combined, and shaped like a stomach, with a single entrance and a single exit. We had entered by the throat, coming down the Shatt-al-Arab at one end, and were now heading for the tubelike exit, the Hormuz Strait at the other. Just there the Arabian peninsula stretdies out a long dagger that points from south to north, which would have struck the bulging belly of Asia cross the straits but for the coast of Iran, which withdraws in a deep inflection before the dagger's tip, thus creating the extremely curved and tricky passage between the landlocked gulf and the free ocean outside.

  There was more to it, as we rushed merrily ahead over the waves, than defying the main wind direction and getting out through a narrow neck, flanked by rocks and dotted with islands. The Hormuz Strait is renowned for its incredibly dense shipping traffic, with tankers and merchant vessels from all over the world rushing through in both directions, making it an extremely hazardous playground for small sailing vessels. Rightly or wrongly, we had been warned that this narrow passage represented the busiest shipping lane in the world, and our pilot chart showed it as a marine autostrada with one lane reserved for incoming and the other for outgoing traffic. All seemed well organized for superships chasing through at full speed with radar and automatic steering, but apparently the security for smaller vessels of wood or reeds was not up to the same standard. The captain of a Norwegian supertanker told me that, patroUing the ship one early morning, upon entering this strait, his watchman had discovered a dhow sail hanging from the

  bow. Nobody had seen the dhow itself, nor did they ever hear a thing about its crew.

  With Khahfa as interpreter, Norman and I had repeatedly visited the dock for small ships at Manama, speaking to the owners of the many motor dhows. There were some small boats coming from Oman to fetch bottled water and other cargo from Bahrain, and one of the dhow captains said there was a narrow passage, sheltered from the Hormuz Strait shipping lane by some rocks, where they used to pass to avoid the busy thoroughfare of the fast big ships. He agreed to pilot us through if we followed in his wake. There was no need to be reckless when there was every reason for precaution, and as we set sail outside the tanker anchorage of Bahrain, an old and rather weatherbeaten dhow without mast was running in our company at shouting distance. Its black captain. Said Abdulla, looked more African than Arab, although he was from the sultanate of Oman. Rashad happily joined this mixed lot to serve as interpreter and haison between the two ships, roughly of the same size.

  Said had a compass, but no map. He did not set coiurse straight for our destination, the Hormuz Strait. What he did might reflect an old tradition, as he took a route apparently followed by all the dhows. As soon as we had passed a low, white sand island on our portside and Bahrain with all its ships had simk behind us, he set course for the tip of the Al Qatar peninsula, another long but blunt dagger jutting northward into the gulf from the Arabian side. Captain Said insisted we must hurry in order to pass Al Qatar before night. Norman consulted the Persian Gulf saiHng directions, and we could well understand Said's desire to get away. We read: "AU the villages on the northwestern coast of Al Qatar were in 1951 deserted and in ruins, having been sacked in recent years; a few fishermen sometimes camp temporarily among the ruins.*'

  We reached this northwestern coast of Al Qatar just as the sun set and night fell upon us. It did not seem deserted. We saw several lights along the shore on our starboard side and our experience of Failaka was fresh in mind. Captain Said made a speed of four knots, but the best we could do on our own on an eastward course with a north wind was two knots, so he insisted on towing us. But luckily his towhne broke and when he came back to tie us up again I refused. The danger of being towed by this reckless captain was greater to us tha
n any fear of Al Qatar, which was very far away.

  The moon was full, the sky was clear; it was great to be saihng on our own. But the north wind was biting cold and it felt fine to

  creep under a blanket when the dhow picked up speed and left us at peace with the wind and the natural rhythm of the waves.

  We had been told by Said to steer from Ras Rakan, the north-em tip of the Al Qatar peninsula, toward Halul Island, which was supposed to be hi^ and to have a Hght tower. I was sound asleep when the steering watches woke me up. The Hghts from Al Qatar were gone but the silhouette of the dhow was back with us and Rashad shouted that Captain Said now insisted that we must be towed. I was surprised and refused blankly, as the steering watches confirmed that we were making precisely the course Said had determined. We now learned that the proposed tow was not for our sake. The sea was too rough, and the old dhow could break to pieces because it had sprung a leak and was being pimiped out continuously. Its motor could not go as slow as we were sailing, and if it went in circles the big waves would hammer the huU to pieces. If it had us in a tow, we would steady the dhow and keep the motor working at a proper speed. Captain Said refused to continue unless he had us in tow.

  This was a bizarre situation. Now, when we were at last able to sail as we wanted, our pilot was upset because we did not let him tow us. In the moonhght we could see the dhow rolling badly, and Rashad confirmed that Tigris looked like a sturdy mole compared with the frail cradle he was on. Their pump was running continuously. Their lifeboat seemed even less secure than the old dhow itself, but Rashad insisted on fulfilling his liaison mission. Clearly, Said would feel safer with our sturdy raft-ship lashed on astern, but fearing to be sent back to Rahrain alone he agreed to honor the original arrangement. We sailed on in triumph, independently.

  Except for some wooden crates and other flotsam the sea appeared surprisingly clean; I had expected it to be much worse in the gulf. In the early afternoon the dhow had not been seen for hours when HP shouted from the steering platform that he saw a strange white box floating right in front of the bow. Next moment we felt a violent jerk throughout the ship. HP completely lost steering control and Tigris swimg around, with the sail and the long loose loops of the guide ropes hammering and snapping at all and everything. In a few chaotic seconds our ship had come to a dead stop; it was as if we had been caught by a giant fishnet in the middle of the sea. And that was just what had happened. We saw a thick, red nylon rope encircHng us like a sea snake as the white box began dancing and then vanished beneath the waves. Others could now be seen bob-

  bing up and down on the waves. We never saw the net they held. Like a Tarzan, Detlef leaped to the side and swung himself overboard, hanging in the stays, and with his sheath knife he cut the thick rope that held us captive and threatened to rip the reeds apart. We had no other choice to save our vessel and its rudder oars. The red snake lost its tremendous grip; dead and powerless it floated up on the wave crests beside us and let Tigris pass as HP regained steerage. Hanging alongside with goggles Detlef could detect no damage to the bundles.

  A few hours later Tigris was surrounded by real sea snakes, some red as the nylon rope. For a couple of days they dominated the sea around us. Horrible-looking creatures embelhshed with the most gorgeous colors. Most of them floated sleepily over and between the waves at our side, like severed bits of rope about the length of a common adder. Others imdulated independently of the waves; they swam on the surface with all the attributes of real snakes. And they are real snakes. Twenty such marine species are known in the area where we now found ourselves and in the Gulf of Oman immediately outside the Hormuz Strait. Nineteen of these species have a deadly bite. But they are drowsy and hardly ever attack. The different lands are distinguished by their great variety of color and design.

  I was prepared for their presence, but the first one I saw happened to be wriggling on the surface right beside our reeds just as Detlef threw a rope with a canvas bucket over the side and hfted it above his head for a refreshing shower. The snake was not in his bucket but Detlef thought it was when I shouted a warning, and he almost fell overboard before seeing the snake twisting where he had just filled his bucket. Brown on its back, yellow under, with black zigzag designs on its sides. The next we saw was yellow with black spots, and some were bright red. For days no one dared to take a bath or a bucket shower before checking the water for the infinity of snakes that ruled the surface throughout this area.

  That night, when I crawled out of the cabin to take over my midnight steering watch, I found Tigris surrounded on all sides by hghts, as if in port. On one side was a lighthouse flashing on and off, and behind it in three different places the night sky was colored deep red from the reflection of some very large invisible flares. On our other side, and very close, was an oil flare brightly burning, illuminating our sail and the starboard walls of our cabins. A fully lit ship closely crossed our wake, and far ahead we could stiU see the

  mast light of our dhow. It was suddenly much warmer. Few stars, but the moon, still almost full, danced madly about above the sail on either side of the masthead. We had reached Halul Island and were now maneuvering through a network of oil fields. Detlef estimated that we had been sailing at well over three knots.

  We barely escaped severe coUision with the dhow next morning when two hissing seas threw both boats down into the same trough. The dhow had come back to inform us that they now had trouble with the pump and wanted to alter course to put in at Sirri Island for repair.

  We searched our gulf map imtil we actually found an island with that name, close to the Iranian side. We were now obliged to force our reed ship still closer into the wind and rejoiced when our wake showed us that, in spite of leeway, we ought to be able to get there. But a rather absurd discrepancy arose in the estimated time of arrival: Captain Said said we should be there by sunset, whereas our own calculations showed that our earliest possible time of arrival would be in the late afternoon the following day. Violent disagreement. Neither party yielded. Said had the experience; we had the map. Nevertheless we sailed on more or less in company, the dhow sometimes disappearing far ahead of us and sometimes far behind.

  Then the dhow caught up with us and once more danced dangerously close to the reed bundles in the turbid seas to let Rashad shout a panicky message: We had a wrong course for Sirri Island; we were steering much too far north into the wind; we could fall oflF comfortably since the island was much more downwind to the east than we were steeringi This offended the professional pride of our two good navigators; Norman and Detlef both showed me that their course and estimates were correct. We suspected that Said had lost all sense of direction from continuously running around the horizon in circles.

  Just as we expected, no land was in sight by sunset, nor when the sun rose next morning. It must have been a chagrin to Captain Said, who now gave up further arguing and followed peacefully in oxnr company, mostly far behind. This night we had again sailed between some oil platforms, just as our navigators had predicted. The rolling throughout the night had been terrific and we had to let down canvas in front of the portside cabin opening because the spray was whipping in over the side bimdles. Rashad

  shouted, as the dhow ventured up to us after sunrise, that they now had a problem even with the rudder. We wanted him to return to us, but he was keen on sticking it out.

  As the Sim passed the zenith at noon, Sirri was to starboard of our bowl There was even plenty of room for leeway.

  Slowly a rather low but hiUy island rose into view. In the afternoon the island grew big. We saw offshore rocks rising hke castle ruins stormed by frothing white seas. We even saw some low land with big trees and, less attractive for us, some enormous buildings and oil installations ashore.

  By this time the dhow had come up alongside with Rashad shouting: "This is not Sir island! This is the Persian island of Surril Said told you all the time that you were heading too far north 1"

  Complete confusion. Further map reading on Tig
ris in the pouring rain. Spelling shouted back and forth in Arab, Enghsh and German. Surri island? There was no such island. This was certainly Sirri Island, and it did belong to Iran. But with Said's and Rashad's new pronunciation and controlled speUing it appeared that Captain Said had wanted to go to Sir island, not Sirri. And there was an island mapped as Sir Abu Nu'air in a completely different direction, quite near the coast of Oman. Said recognized that full name, and stressed that that was where he had wanted to go.

  For us this island was a favorable position from which to sail with better wind straight for the Hormuz Strait. We could go in to Sirri together and have the damage to the dhow repaired there. But no thank you. The mere thought of being in Iranian national territory made Captain Said desperate. He had no Persian flag. He had no documents permitting him to sail in Persian waters.

  We had a Persian flag, he could borrow it, we said. But no use arguing; Said did not have time even to listen. He now confessed that there was something wrong with his engine too, and his water tank was leaking. We were not in the Arabian part of the gulf; this was a serious matter. And before we had a chance of reaching any kind of agreement the dhow, with the defective pump running, water splashing in the hull and the rudder damaged, put up full speed downwind in a direction far south of the Hormuz Strait. We shouted that we had now to head for the Hormuz Strait and no other destination. Through the roar of the sea we thought we heard Rashad's voice instructing us that we had to make a rendezvous somewhere on the Arabian mainland north of Dubai. The name of