Persian Gulf was always unpopular with seafarers

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 46

Persian Gulf was always unpopular with seafarers

JOHN LESLIE

The Persian Gulf is today one of the world’s really “hot spots,” with tanker traffic daily threatened by the Gulf war escalation. But long before this, no seafarer had ever been heard to declare he enjoyed the Persian Gulf, all 75,000 square miles of it, stretching from the Gulf of Oman up to the Shatt-el-Arab River, gateway to Basra, and especially during the unpleasant southwest monsoon from June to October. Even 40 years ago, when post-war peace uneasily reigned — August, 1947, to be exact — this is how the writer saw it in a letter home to New Zealand: "This is the Persian Gulf, my second visit. I have blown the sand out of my cup and saucer and am writing this on a ‘hot spot;’ khakishorted, sandalled, turbanned with a wet towel in my watch below. My cabin is like an oven. It is a foretaste of Hades.” From memory, August at the monsoon’s tail end was about the worst period. In the Strait of Hormuz, known as Tanker Alley, one perspired incessantly, and gasped for dry air. In fact, breathing was like imbibing a hot sand blast. Any breeze was illusory and made by the movement up the Gulf of our inward-bound, 10,000-ton tanker, in ballast, with high freeboard. It reminded one of a kitchen oven with the door left open. In the shade, the thermometer idled at 102 deg. Farenheit. Humidity was the keynote. Bodies glistened with perspiration. ' Routine salt tablets (very necessary) from the dispenser seemed negligible as an antidote. We never heard of ice water then, or air conditioning. I watched an engineer drag his weary, saturated, glistening body from the oven below and “hang himself out to dry,” temporarily as an escape from the engine room. It was about 130 deg. Farnenheit below. The Red Sea even at its worst bears no comparison with the miserable soul-destroying Persian Gulf. Nowhere in the world do I recall such a

place as the Gulf with its first shock of dry solar intensity as one leaves the Gulf of Oman for the furnace within. Alice Springs is hot, dry and arid but a luxury compared. Bare, arid, forlorn rocky islands, some bearing lighthouses and maybe a tree or two, for all the world like scarecrows, punctuate the vessel’s inward passage. A light rippling of the watery sheen creates the illusion of a welcoming zephyr, hardly enough to blow a postage stamp across the deck. High above, a ball of fire — bright, merciless and pitiless — mocks the antics of shipboard humans as they “frizzle” on the hot plate. Awnings generously spread like parasols at a garden fete give mere token relief. Fresh in all our minds was the death of a Muslim seaman some hours earlier from heat and heart stroke combined. Neither ice pack to the head nor hot poultice to the feet prevented his ultimate demise — an emaciated, undernourished native from south of Bombay. Death finally came swiftly. Later, in the dark and relatively cooler hours, Ebrahim Kachoo was wrapped in a big red ensign and, accompanied by recitation from the Koran, was reverently cast overside into the glass-like waters of the Gulf. Disciples of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the then new Pakistan, that is how our crew marked their Dominion status abroad this vessel. “Plenty more men, Bombay-side, sahib, plenty more men.” It was the Serang speaking with the fatalistic but practical acceptance of his kind. Life and death were just events to him. He was not being irreverent. If the Persian Gulf is like an oven the Shatt-el Arab River passage upstream to Abadan, then the world’s greatest petroleum refinery, was like a furnace. More of that later. However, long before leaving the Gulf, one strained one’s eyes in the haze and deceptive visibility to alter course a few degrees from time to time to let an outward-bound

tanker pass with a belly full of precious petroleum, deep laden for Europe, the Far East, the United States, Australia or maybe New Zealand. American, British, Dutch, Scandinavian and other tankers stood out. Japanese and German tankers were conspicuous by their absence because they had suffered great wartime losses of shipping, being the vanquished enemy. Even then, American tankers predominated and although this great nation had its own crude, and it seemed like carrying coals to Newcastle, she was dragging every barrel of petroleum fuel out of the Gulf that time and her expanding fleet would carry, as a great reserve, long-sightedly. From the Principality of Bahrain and from Abadan poured this lifeblood of nations. No European would tolerate, in those days at least, life in this oasis of sun, sand and stagnation were it not for the incalculable wealth that grat nations were drilling, cracking and refining and finally transporting 24 hours a day and the high wages one would earn for being there. Occasionally, a large cumbersome Arabian craft with dirty lateen sails would straddle our track. A spoke of gyro wheel and she would fall clear on either side of our huge hull. Skirting her close, one noticed the dirty white raiment and dusky faces. Europeans with mental apathy classed all these vessels as dhows — not strictly true. Their crews stared back at us with the stoicism of ages, indifferent, probably more comfortable than we were, accustomed to the climate, the Gulf, and the lifestyle of their ancestors. These craft had various names, sizes, characteristics, and engaged in divers trades. Often they showed no lights at night unless in danger of being rammed. With the abate-, ment of the south-west' monsoon, the larger ones would venture seaward via the Gulf of Oman to India and East Africa, or skirt the badly charted Arabian coastline into the

Red Sea. From the Euphrates and Gulf harbours they would carry on their post-monsoon voyages dates, rice, carpets, skins, metal ware, and so on. Our shipmaster was rather overweight. He sweated profusely, clad in shorts and sandals and flicking a wet towel about aimlessly. He looked sulky but was not alone in that. The Gulf does that to people, unless native to the place. Prickly heat makes it even worse and is a great boost to insomnia. Everyone feels the heat: too hot to worry, too hot to converse, too hot to argue. People wander about in an almost endemic state of vexation but mostly silent. Their visible, pained resignation expresses one thought; “The sooner we get out of this hell-hole the better.” Even in the Gulf we still carried a “hangover” of Port Said flies, a hardy breed cunningly concealed in clothing, wardrobes, contemptuous of mothballs or flyspray, and all this reinforced by sandflies to make it just a little more trying. Normally after clearing port flies are blown seaward, but not these brutes. Bahrain in my memory was just a few loading berths in a shimmering, probably shark-infested sea. Tanker crews see little of a port’s attractions, except at places such as Lyttelton where the installation is situated near the town. The crews are never long in port anyway, and usually miles from civilisation when moored at the berth. Tanker life in those days was like being in jail or in a monastery with long hours, short leave, cut off from the best things in life, although some better-class companies allowed the carriage of wives for officers, at certain times. Today, of course, everything is much better except for the Gulf war which has probably ended all that. It was a life without radar, television, air conditioning, swimming pools, and a few more things but in my case it was but a brief period of seafaring. And so to Abadan, thethen “spiritual home” of the tanker. There was a mental condition called

“Abadan blues” but this did not seem to affect our Muslim crew, of dark skins: Serang, Tindils, Cassabs and Seacunnies or Goanese Christians (Roman Catholics) from Marmagoa, the latter catering staff only, formerly Portuguese subjects. After all, they were glad to be employed at all. Labour was plentiful and cheap, and still is in that area. From these humble, quietly unobstrusive people one could learn lessons in deportment and good manners. But a last word for Abadan, then a mighty refinery, a pivot of power politics, as the Gulf is today. This great river port was created by the AngloIranian Oil Company and built out of the desert. In this artificially created place the main preoccupation of its mostly imported technical, predominantly male population, mainly whiteskinned, was “keeping cool.” They could swim in various swimming pools provided, drink cool beer at the clubs, and they could keep out of the heat in their comfortable airconditioned brick houses with shrubs, shady trees and sometimes modest lawns. The Shatt-el-Arab River is broad and yellow and flanked by date palms, and in that waterway one really learns what dry heat is like. The Shatt-el-Arab is a confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates and is near the cradle of civilisation. In those days there were hundreds of solo males in Abadan, all employed by the great consortium. There were locals, too. For a girl seeking a boy friend or a woman a husband Abadan was overflowing with lonely bachelors. There were married couples also. No seafarer likes the Persian Gulf. I can think of nothing worse, and today, with all the violence escalating there, it would be about the last place one would choose to go voluntarily. If more New Zealanders could see the Persian Gulf they might better appreciate what they have here, a paradise by comparison.