Oil-rich Omanis back author’s Sinbad venture

Press, 25 November 1982, Page 21

Oil-rich Omanis back author’s Sinbad venture

By

KEN COATES

The English author, Tim Severin, must have been born under a lucky star. When he hit on the idea of building a replica of an ancient wooden Arab sailing ship, and sailing it to China along the legendary Sinbad the Sailor route from the Middle East, he sought help from the oil-rich Sultan of Oman. Severin outlined his plans to find the right timber and skilled workmen to build his copy of an ancient Arab ocean-going vessel, without a single nail — the hardwood timbers to be tied together by an antiquated roping

method. To his astonishment, the Sultan offered to pay the cost of the entire project.

This included a 6000-mile voyage — across the Arabian Sea to India, then to Sri Lanka, across the Indian Ocean to Sumatra, through the crowded Malacca Straits, and finally up through the China Sea to Canton.

In an age of unemployment, recession, cuts, and shortage of capital, Severin really thought the world of the Arabian Nights still existed.

With the backing of Sultan Qaboos, the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture agreed to pay the entire cost of building the ship and the voyage. Even today, more than a year after finally arriving in Canton and having written a book about the spectacular project, the author cannot tell how many hundreds of thousands of dollars were poured into the voyage. “It just wasn’t my concern,” he says. . The buying .of specially selected logs in India, paying timber merchants for moving the logs by elephant, buying specially made coconut rope, and housing, feeding, and employing shipbuilders skilled in ancient craft, all were attended to on the spot by a representative from the Omani Palace.

Just why this Oxford Uni-versity-educated young man

was able to turn the key on such munificence is partly explained by the fact that the new oil-rich of Oman are still very much bound up with their past. “The Omanis do not welcome being considered as a recent phenomenon,” Severin explains. “They have a long and proud culture, and basically they did this for themselves.

“Normally in the Middle East, life depends on Western high technology, whether it is drilling for oil, or training Omani pilots to fly jets. “But on this voyage, the Omanis showed us. Without them we could not have got the ship to Canton. Here was something they were very good at." In Oman, Severin found a strong nostalgia among the shining new cities and sealed highways for the traditional way of life before the oil boom. And new merchant princes now immersed in new technology and driving Mercedes and Rolls Royces come from families which flourished for centuries as shipowners and shipmasters. The other reason why the Sultan was willing to trust Severin and back his project, was because the author had already written “The Brendan Voyage.” This was about his Atlantic crossing in an oxhide boat, similar to the type used by medieval Irish sailors, an exploit that made headlines around the world.

High Omani officials gravely watched a film of the hazardous voyage in which Severin narrowly escaped death and destruction before they came to a decision. Severin sailed his leather boat — a copy of that used by the early Irish saint and explorer, St Brendan, to North America . from the west'of Ireland/Even before he finished that undertaking,

he was planning the journey to China via the Indian Ocean and onwards to Canton.

Severin began his travelling even while an Oxford undergraduate, leading a team by motor-cycle along the Marco Polo route, through Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, to the Chinese border.

During his post-graduate research, into medieval travel, he traced the source of the Mississippi by canoe and launch. He has also travelled widely in central America and sailed a sloop from England to Turkey with his wife and small daughter.

The idea behind the Sinbad voyage stemmed from Severin’s. conviction that the adventures of Sinbad in the Arabian Nights were based on the exploits of the Arab sea-faring merchants who plied the ancient spice route to the East.

Navigating by the stars, the early sea captains returned with tales of adventure and riches from the East. They spread Islam as they went, and all the way to China Moslem communities remain to this day.

Their stories became the embroidered stuff of the Sinbad tales and Severin concluded that the most likely home port for the legendary adventurer lay in the Persian Gulf.

To recreate the oceangoing ship of the time, the Englishman had to be sure what the early Arab ships looked like. He got the answer from sixteenth century Portuguese manuscripts which included drawings of vessels with planking “sewn” together by coconut fibre rope. Helped and financed by two high Omani officials, he went to the Malabar coast of India where he, kept merchants guessing as he personnally selected suitable trees

for felling and shipment to the Omani port of Sur. Shipwrights and ropeworkers were recruited in India and flown to Oman. They were even fitted out in bright green uniform shirts and housed in an old mansion that had once belonged to an Omani merchant. “We laid the keel of the ship on January 1, 1980 and sailed on November 23,” Severin recalls. “In less than a year we built by an antiquated method, fitted out, tested, gathered a crew, and then set out to sail one fifth of the way around the world.” Even the tools used were antique. Most of the shaping was done by hammer and chisel, and the bending of the

planks by a laborious method of heating with steam. Severin’s fame as a shipbuilder spread, and wealthy Omanis drove to Sur to view the sailing ship that belonged to the nation’s history. Named the Sohar, the vessel honours the ancient trading port of Sohar on the Batinah coast, once the most prosperous city in. Oman. It is a ship of which the merchants of the time themselves would have been proud. It is built of teak-like Indian hardwood called aini, and construction was careful and meticulous. . Timber joints fitted perfectly and were further strengthened by sausage-like “pythons” of wadding, made from coconut, and lashed into place by cord. The holes

on deck, including the cook, to lend a hand heaving on the ropes. The coconut fibre rope binding the planks together held throughout the 6000-mile voyage that took" seven months and a half. In spite of heavy seas and violent tropical storms, the only real damage was sustained by the mainspar, which broke, and by the rudder clamps after a sudden storm in the China Sea. For a month, tfie sailing ship lay becalmed. The crew scorched in the tropical sun, their water supply dwindling and food running out. A surprise catch of sharks relieved the food problem, and rainwater was collected during heavy squalls to replenish freshwater tanks. Un-

for the fibre ropes were sealed with more fibre and when the timber swelled in the seawater, it sealed the small gaps between the joints. The Sohar’s mainsail, more than 266 sq. metres in area, bore the crest of the Sultanate. The ship averaged 90 kilometres a day and three knots. The leisurely pace was perhaps just as well for it took 10 to 12 minutes to change tack — moving the boom, weighing a tonne, by block and tackle from one side of the mainmast to the other. A 10-man Omani crew did much of the heavy sailing, but when it came to moving the boom, it was all 20 hands

til they reached the port of Sabang, off Sumatra, the crew lived on fish, dates, rice, and water. Pirates, just as commom today as in past centuries, were another hazard. “We had heard true and alarming stories of yachts vanishing,” Severin says. “Vietnamese boat people had been attacked not once, but several times: children were thrown overboard and women raped.” The Sohar was not attacked, but it did stop to give food and medical help to a launch carrying hungry Vietnamese. Any marauding pirates would have .wondered what they had struck with the Sohar. The Omani military

authorities told one of the crew, Peter Dobbs, a former member of the British Parachute . Regiment, that he could take, whatever he liked from the armoury. : The ship had three Kalashnikov assault rifles, Browning pistols and ammunition, and tear gas grenades. The Sohar sailed, into Canton on. schedule and was given an enthusiastic welcome by a delegation from the Chinese Government and Ministers from Oman. Throughout the voyage, the two nations had been brought into diplomatic contact for the first time in centuries. At the end of the voyage, says Severin, the crew knew their job so well that he did not need to shout orders — only make a hand signal or

nod. “It was magic. They had done it all hundreds and hundreds of times before.” Severin had two New Zealanders on board. One, Bruce Foster, who now lives at Lyttelton, went with him to India before the ship was built, and sailed on the first leg. “He is one of the best photographers around,” says the author, who has included a number of the New Zealander’s colour pictures in his book. The other New Zealander who sailed from Muscat to India was Dave Tattle, a collector of scientific specimens. A documentary film on the voyage has been produced, and this has been offered to New Zealand Television. >-.

“If, after having read my book, readers say'they know something more about Arab seafaring, more about the sea route to China,/and the background to the Sinbad stories, then it will be worth while,” Severin says. “From the point of._ylew.of the Sultanate of Omaij, ; the people there are delighted — they have done what they wanted to do,” Although the ship had some modern aids, Severin is adamant they were only for safety. There was an amateur radio, life jackets, life raft, and a sextant. “We did use a medieval instrument for navigating, but needed'the sextant as a check,” he adds. The Sohar was sailed to

Hong Kong, and then put on a steel cradle for shipment as deck cargo on a big freighter bound for Muscat. There the vessel has been mounted on a stone plinth and is floodlit.

Severin left for . Oman last week-end to talk about the distribution of the documentary film, discuss improving the display of the ship, and meet old friends. Already he is planning to

research yet another journey. But he will not say whether it is a land or sea voyage. “I have to be absolutely sure that the project is worth four years of absolutely unrelenting effort,” he says.