The Tigris Expedition

by Heyerdahl, Thor

  The modest leeway we made confirmed the sinister prediction of our navigators from the moment we saw land: we would confront the cliff walls before we were able to clear them all the way back up to the latitude of the Hormuz Strait. The wind was too northerly again. In the agitated backwash from the cliffs we were repeatedly lifted up and turned around 40°-5o° on a conical surge before sliding down into the next trough, completely off course, with all hands on deck and roofs in another desperate battle with canvas and ropes. There is nothing like common danger to weld men of all ages and ways of life together for conamon survival. Confronting perils together one never thinks of nationaHty or differences of upbringing. None of us beheved he could benefit at

  the cost of the rest or impress others with reckless bravery; it is successful teamwork that counts in achieving a victorious outcome of a struggle. Anyone acting otherwise becomes like a drummer trying to play a symphony without the conductor and the rest of the orchestra.

  As the rocks drew nearer the spirit and determination of aU on board was exemplified by Norman when he shouted in triumph. "Hurrah," he cried, "we are defying the windl" His observation was borne out by the red buoy towed astern. It revealed the degree of leeway and showed the direction of our true progress through the water. Clearly we would have done better with bigger oar blades or more leeboards, but even so we advanced a few most important degrees into the wind that now filled the sail shghtly from forward of athwart. This triumph was enough to maintain the fighting spirit. Yet we all could see that land was stiU coming our way. We could not even get it away from the bow, unless we turned completely about and headed for the Arab emirates. The cliffs we had all the way along our starboard side ended in a cape that barely projected beyond our dancing bow. If we turned farther into the wind to try to clear the headland our sail would flap and we would lose all steerage way. My only hope was that these conditions would change when we came stiU closer to land. The elements themselves would be forced to change course the moment they hit the lofty cliffs. The current would be turned parallel to the coast instead of against it, and be compressed to gain in speed, and so would the wind when striking the rocks at sea level. The only opening in the compact wall was the Hormuz Strait, way up at the tip of the peninsula. If nature was forced to follow such an escape route, we would be dragged along too.

  We continued our ill-fated course, confident that we could improve upon it and turn to safety closer to land. We were close enough now to see the foot of the precipices where they feU into the frothing surf, yet there was no sign of the dhow between us and land. At one place, two small white houses appeared as if painted on the rock wall near sea level. They seemed deserted, if ever meant for people. No sign of any kind of life between us and the rock. I wrote in my diary:

  The coast is scaringly close now. The two helmsmen have difficulties riding the huge waves on steady course. From my

  Captions for the following four pages

  33. We sail north to Pakistan, reach the snake island of Astola and follow the limestone cliffs of the Makran coast toward the former realm of the Indus Valley civilization.

  34. Ashore on the desert sands of Ormara bay women hurry away; their homes are of plaited mats.

  35. Young and old in Ormara hay. The man sleeps in a vaulted hut and the woman uses a scale, both of the types used from Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley four or five thousand years ago.

  36. The ruins of Mohenjo-Daro, major city of the long-lost Indus Valley civilization which suddenly emerged about 2500 b.c. and as mysteriously disappeared about a millennium later.

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  Captions for the preceding four pages

  ^7. Mohenjo-Daro, contemporary with Sumerian civilization, had two-storied brick houses, streets with covered sewers and a perfect swimming pool, waterproofed with asphalt between the bricks.

  38. An Indus Valley reed ship incised on a Mohenjo-Daro seal. The building material must have been the same as in Tigris, as it was easy for the author and Norman to identify the vast quantities of reeds growing along the Indus as berdi, due to its very characteristic cross section.

  Sg. In the Indus Valley past and present thrive together. The Arab fort is from the eighteenth century, the carts below are identical with four-thousand-year-old ceramic models from Mohenjo-Daro.

  40. Departure from Pakistan and the continent of Asia. Norman and Yuri hoist the sail; we study our maps at the dining table as we are now able to navigate and pick our oum course.

  cabin comer the view through the bamboo-framed door opening is no longer one of burning flares, ships and chasing seas, but one big, continuous mountain side. The slanting late-afternoon light on the cHffs brings out vertical folds and furrows closely matching in cheerless shades the gray and somber evening sea with veils of froth on the combs. It seems to me that we are traveling across the sterile screes of a naked highland plateau, the barren rocks rising vertically above us to still higher summits. Yet we are now desperately trying with two oars to force ourselves to 52° to avoid wreckage against Ras al Shaikh, the first of the capes blocking our way up to the Hor-muz Strait. With good luck, with westerly winds and probably northbound current along this coast, we have a chance to make it—haxely—inshrAllah!

  Soon after, at 4:45 p.m. shipboard time, I made a note that the sun had just set. We had by now sailed eastward into another time zone and were almost ready to set our watches an hour on. We began to see several ships' hghts outside us. The somber cHflFs turned into ever darker shades, with a single star twinkhng above them. Night fell on us as a full blackout, just as we coasted northward excitingly close to clifE walls coming out like giant draperies from Ras al Shaikh. This was the only place we could imagine that Rashad might have come with Said in search of shelter. We maintained an intensive lookout for any outline of house or ship, for any glow from lamps. From the cabin roofs we waved our own lamps and flashed signals with, our torches. No response.

  No lighthouse on this cape. No spark of Hght of any sort. Nobody could be there. The httle we could make out from shadows discerned on the black rock walls justified the hostile impression left from a distance in daylight. It would be suicide for us to venture in between the dark mountain draperies to follow the curving canyon indicated on the chart, even if it possibly offered a sort of narrow shelter with a precipitous overhang on all sides. If the dhow had ventured in there, one might think they would have managed to place a lantern on the cliffs to show us their hiding place. At a speed of two knots we passed the narrow entrance and left the cape, Ras al Shaikh, behind.

  I crawled into the cabin again and made another entry in the diary. Our time was only 5:30 p.m. but it was pitch-dark. Now we

  had no idea where our lost companions could be. Captain Said must have taken a completely different course from what we had assumed. There was no other place to look for them between here and the Hormuz Strait. We were rolling so desperately, sailing barely into the wind in the coastal surge, that I got more shadow than hght from the tiny petrol lamp swinging from the ceiling and almost hitting my head, and I made a note that although I sat on the floor with widespread legs in an attempt to keep my balance while writing, I would fall over unless I clung with one hand to the cane wall. Nothing could be left loose on board. Hanging on the wall, my binoculars swung out and hit me in the jaw. Shirts, jackets and trousers hanging from bamboo rods on walls and ceiling performed a synchronized show, like a ghostly army of robots doing morning exercise together with clockwork precision. All swung at the same moment, in the same direction, at the same angle. Towels and underwear, buckets and baskets, lamps and watches, all rose from the wall together and swung together, right and left, forward and aft, until they flopped back against the wall in a conamon
clash.

  Finding it impossible either to sit or to kneel inside the cabin I crawled out with my lifeline and fully appreciated Norman's acrobatic skill when I heard him shouting to us from the top of the swaying mast that he saw light flashes ahead. So far they were only rhythmic reflections in the sky of revolving beams from some distant hghthouse that would soon rise above the horizon on the port-side of the bow. Detlef shouted back from the bridge that it must be the hghthouse on the other side of the entrance to the Hormuz Strait. We now had to keep it to starboard in order to clear the last, invisible cape of the Arabian peninsula, but later we had to turn at a sharp angle and keep it on the portside as we swung into the open strait.

  By now the wind had started noticeably to turn more westerly, fulfilling our wildest hopes. I was convinced that the flow of the sea beneath us had also been turned by the impassable rock barrier and was forced to follow the coasthne in our direction. The strain on the rudder oars had been so strong that the portside fork began to gape again and threatened to burst Carlo's ropes. To reheve part of the violent pressmre before a catastrophe occurred we summoned all men aft and puUed the heavy oar shaft up until a quarter of its blade was out of the water. The tiller of this oar could then no longer be reached from the floor of the steering platform, and a new

  form of maritime acrobatics had to be introduced just as the rolHng was at its worst. The starboard helmsman had to be in charge of the normal steering and shout up to the man on the portside tiller each time assistance was needed from this second and now most cumbersome oar. In the dark Carlo was to do the proper steering and I chmbed up on the bridge rail to reach the other tiller, while slackened woodwork joints bit and shrieked like angry cats in their lashings, and special care was needed not to get a finger or toe caught. With one foot on the cabin roof and the other balancing on a narrow plank tied on outside the bridge rail to steady the oar, I saw nothing but a dancing glow from a lamp Asbjorn had hoisted to the swinging masthead. I knew that even with a flashlight there would have been nothing to see below me but black water, nor anything to grab but the tall oar shaft, which was never firm because I myself turned it with the tiller I clung to. It constantly jammed, because it was raised out of position, so with my hfehne around the shppery shaft, I needed both hands to push or pull the tiller which I clung to for support, whenever Carlo yelled for a fast turn of my oar.

  At the time it was hard to see the comic aspects of this crazy nocturnal rope dancing. A Sumerian would have depicted himself as standing bfindfolded on the back of a bouncing gazelle. But then the hghthouse danced into sight as a bright spark in front of us. Carlo shouted in triumph that he could see it on his side of the sail. Soon it swung so far out on his side that even I could see it from the portside, which meant that by this time we had turned Tigris so far away from the shore that all land was now on the starboard side. Under ever more stars we could discern a lofty skyline of jagged crests and pyramids that no longer seemed to come nearer. We were winning. We made it without leeway.

  From then on I forgot that I had any problem in keeping my balance, I just concentrated on keeping the bright spark visible as much as possible from the starboard side of the sail. What was left of the two hours' steering watch passed with the grand feeling of galloping through a starht sky on a winged Pegasus that wiUingly let us decide the course. Then Gherman and HP came fumbling their way up on the bridge to take over the unconventional steering. We began to see ships' Hghts everywhere. We ourselves were hardly visible to others. Norman had improved this insecure situation by digging out of his personal case a battery-driven flashhght that sent out bhps at intervals when he hung it up in the mast. In this wind

  the cheap local fuel in our kerosene lamps produced more soot than Ught. To us the masthead bhps looked professional and to others must have seemed more impressive than a faint lamp glow, but Detlef assured us it meant nothing in nautical terms. For that very reason he admitted it might serve as a confusing sort of scarecrow to any vessel coining too close.

  A couple of fixed hghts, as from houses ashore, suddenly turned up very close to our starboard side, and the rotating beams from the hghthouse were now clear and strong, circling the sky just ahead of us. Detlef was in charge of navigation. Norman came down from the mast, having tied ghttering strips of tinfoil to stays and cabin walls; these, as distinct from reeds, bamboo and wood, should show up on radar. We were heading at full speed with limited control, and with no way to stop, straight into the double lane of the world's busiest shipping channel. There was no dhow to show us the unofficial passage somewhere behind and between the closely packed islands of the cape.

  Never on any sea had we seen so many brilliantly Ht ships in motion at the same time as appeared around us at the moment when Detlef ordered a sharp 90° turn to starboard and the men on the bridge sent us into the main traffic lane of the Hormuz Strait. We inmiediately received a violent air stream straight at our back and were pressed into a wind funnel between two opposed capes of the same continent, a sort of Asiatic Straits of Gibraltar. The current must also at this time have run like a river out of the gulf. Our speed past the tip of the Arabian dagger was the fastest we had ever experienced with a reed ship, and the black mountain silhouettes at our side were changing from one minute to the next. With this speed Tigris responded to the shghtest touch on the tillers and we raced in between the superships, which thundered around us as if we were all of a kind.

  Things went almost ridiculously well, and with double steering watch and both navigators alert on the roof, Carlo and I could steal a few minutes' snooze before we were back at the steering oars for our next turn at 2 a.m. It was usually enough to crawl inside the square door opening to imagine oneself in a low jimgle hut far from the sea. The atmosphere of cane and bamboo was highly unmari-time, but most relaxing. Winds and waves were immediately left behind as the concern of those still on deck; inside was a neutral zone of peace and rest, even if the crests of the billows peeped at us

  through the door opening ahnost within reach of a hand. That night was rather special. As I crawled in to stretch out on my mattress beside the door I was as happy as a boy experiencing for the first time the berth by the window of a night train, lying on my side to watch illuminated ships and black mountains passing by hke railway stations in the Alps. Gone was the threat of shipwreck and collision; we were traveling as if on a double-tracked railway line.

  I was awakened by Detlef crawling over my legs heading for his own berth. "We've made it," he said. "We're outside." It was half past midnight and the night was at its darkest, still young. We were outside? I crawled to the starboard door opening and lifted the canvas cover that someone had rolled down to shut out the many passing hghts. It was an unforgettable change of scene. Beautiful. Impressive. The roUing had ceased and the sky was full of stars over vaguely moonht rocks and hillocks. These were at the foot of tall, wild peaks and mountain ridges, which together formed a fabulous landscape just beside our ship. Turning to the other side we were almost bhnded by the revolving beams from a nearby lighthouse that ht up the rocks of the island on which it stood while sweeping sky and sea. No whitecaps there. The sea was silent; we could hear ships right and left. No roaring wind or shrieking wood. Peaceful and idyUic. The hghts from the ships reflected romantically in the water, as in a sheltered Norwegian fjord. Tigris itself relaxed, from sail to steering bridge, after its record run.

  Our speed dropped down to two knots, then to only one. Norman had measured almost five knots in the Hormuz Strait, and to this should be added the speed of the current. We were indeed outside the gulf. We were already sheltered by the chffs of Oman, but soon discovered that a powerful current still held us in its grip and dragged us away from the Arabian peninsula. We turned still farther to starboard, and the speed dropped to half a knot as we sailed southward into almost complete shelter of the same Arabian dagger that had seemed poised to cut us to bits a few hours earher, when we struggled northward, in the very opposite direction, along
its windward edge.

  "Boys, we've navigated I" was the jubilant exclamation from Norman as we unfolded our chart under a flashhght on the cabin roof to take a decision on what to do next. We now had endless possibilities. And one single problem, but it was a major one. The way into the Indian Ocean lay open ahead of us, but behind us, deep in-

  side the gulf, we had lost Rashad. We had absolutely no idea where the wretched dhow might have gone. Our best guess now would be that Said had steered for one of the tiny Arab emirates. The wind was feeble but perfect for us to get clear of land and steer out of this gaping Gulf of Oman into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. But we could not abandon Rashad, the youngest and therefore probably least experienced of us all. His parents would despair if we had to send a message that we had **lost" him and had no idea as to where he could be found.

  The dhow belonged to Oman and had to come through the Hormuz Strait to reach its home port in the capital of Muscat If it kept away from the shipping lanes it would have to steer in between or very close to the Oman rocks. Our best hope was to wait in sheltered water where we were far enough from the coast to be safe from the rocks in case of changing winds, and yet no farther out than to be able to see every vessel coasting close to land.

  We lowered the portside steering oar back into position, adjusted loose ropes, and had very easy steering, with much of the night still ahead of us. While the others returned to sleep. Carlo and I were back on the bridge sharing the 2 A.M.-4 a.m. watch, and we agreed that this was the most beautiful moment any of us had ever had at sea. The soaring peaks and rugged mountain silhouettes that sheltered us made an unbehevably impressive setting. They were even more picturesque from this side, their profiles designed to dehght the senses, and they stopped the wind and calmed the waves they had so wildly agitated on the other side. To be back on the bridge in these transformed siuroundings was like a happy dream after a turbulent nightmare. We had succeeded in escaping through a hole in a fence; the walls of the gulf were behind us. We were in another world now, a world with different waves, another wind. Somewhere outside us was the monsoon area. The monsoon blows regularly across the Indian Ocean as if set in motion by clockwork, turning like a pendulum to move in opposite directions every half year. The winter monsoon blows from northeast, from Asia to Africa; the summer monsoon from southwest, from Africa back to Asia. Ideal conditions for primitive craft.