FORTUNE’S WHEEL

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 103, 25 January 1933, Page 9

FORTUNE’S WHEEL

Anglo-Persian Romance WILLIAM KNOX D’ARCY His Famous Concession But for a chance consultation in a lawyer’s office in a sun-baked Australian town, the most extensive oil-field in the world would never have come under British control and the colossal enterprise known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company might never have existed (says a writer in.the “Evening Standard”) . William Knox D’Arcy, a bluff and hearty solicitor, concerned only with the little processes of the law in his small town, was drawn into the fabric of international finance by the curious weaving of fortune. His figure looms large to-day when his original concessions are being challenged by Persia. D’Arcy’s story beats fiction. He was born in Newton Abbot, Devonshire, in 1849, and in 18G6, when young D’Arcy was 17, and through Westminster, his lawyer father took the family to Australia. D’Arcy senior set. himself up as a solicitor in Rockhampton, Queensland, and his son eventually took over the practice. He may have dreamed dreams as he sat in his stuffy office, but it is certain that his imagination fell well short of what was in store for him. ■ One day in the late ’eighties a sheepgrazier client, one Sandy Morgan, dropped in to see him. Morgan owned a big ranch in the hills. He thumped down a lump of rock on D’Arcy’s desk and said: “What’s this stuff? There’s a whole mountain of it back of my place.” Mount Morgan. D’Arcy had a good look at the rock. He guessed that it was gold quartz. He sent it to Sydney to have it assayed. When the report arrived he knew that fortune was within his grasp. That was the beginning of the famous Mount Morgan mine, one of the world’s wonders in gold production. In exchange for his savings and his work as organiser, D’Arcy took a third of the capital stock of £1,000,000. The mine prospered. For the next ten years D'Arcy sat back in bls office chair, attended to the wants of his sheepowner clients, and watched his capital growing. That might have been the end of the story—Solicitor Makes Fortune in Mining Venture—but it was not. William Knox D’Arcy decided to wander round and see a bit of the world with his wife. He had made £lOO,OOO, and lie left instructions that a parcel of his shares (then worth £8 each) should be sold. The D’Arcy family went first to Egypt, then to Italy, then to Vienna. They took their time. In Vienna, D’Arcy happened to see an old copy of “The Times.” It contained an announcement that if he got in touch with his bankers In London he would learn something to his advantage. D’Arcy was in no hurry to answer It, but his wife insisted. When at last he came to London he found that, during his absence, the shares had risen to £l7, and he had £1200,000 to his credit. His first act —a sidelight on his breezy, generous nature—was to reimburse all his old friends who had sold out at a lower price. He divided £70,000 among them. . , „ , Unexploited Country. The life of a millionaire palled. D’Arcy felt an itch to get back to work and to put his capital to some use. For some unknown reason he decided to go back to the earth which had given him Ids fortune, and'to concentrate on oil. Again he had a chance meeting. This time with a young Persian named Kitabji, who told him about the oil seepages in the northern part of his own country. Although oil had been known to exist in Persia for many centuries, the country had been unexploited. Practically all the petroleum came from the United States, Russia, and the Dutch Indies. , Fired with enthusiasm, DArcy sent out a geologist to explore. The two ends of the 300 miles oil belt were found, and in 1901 D’Arcy, sure of his ground, received his all-important concessions from the Shah for the exploitation of natural gas, petroleum, and asphalt in the whole of Persia, except for the five northern provinces, for the next sixty years. Desolate, treeless hills and valleys which since the downfall of the Sassanian Kings had been left to the hyenas, the jackals, and the occasional passage of a nomadic tribe, were now penetrated. A camp was set up by the Maidan-i-Naftum, the Field of Oil, where, in ancient dams, trickles of oil had been collected from time immemorial and bartered by the wild tribesmen. Hard by were the ruins of Masjid-1-Sulaiman, the Temple of Solomon. To the eternal fires of this shrine the oil had been fed in the days of the Zoroastrians, the fire worshippers. The drills of industry broke the ancient peace. D’Arcy had organised his company to wrest another fortune. Immense difficulties faced him. Supplies had to be carried on the backs of donkeys and camels, and there was no adequate port. A pipe line had to be laid over the mountains. Difficulties Overcome. For two years the pioneers slaved. Bv 1903 the capital was low. D’Arcy had drilled £300,000 of his personal fortune into the rock, and there were onlv two small wells to show for it aIL Difficulties of finance began to face him. The Germans, awake to the importance of the concessions, began to make tempting offers and to exert pressure on him. He stuck out against foreign ownership. Help came from Lord Strathcona, head of the Burmah Oil Company, who organised another syndicate to work other parts of the-concession. Together the pioneers fought against innumerable difficulties. They blasted mule tracks across the mountains and laid the 150 miles of pipe line to the sea. They built railways, ships, wharves, refineries. In 190 S the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed, with Lord Strath; cona as chairman and D’Arcy as a director. The Admiralty had then seen the vital importance of oil fuel for the Navy. The greatest oil expert in the world. Professor (now Sir John) Cadman, was sent out to investigate the field. The result was that on August 10, 1914, six days after England-had declared war on Germany, the Royal Assent was given to the proposal to invest capital in Anglo-Persian. Today, the British Government has a ma-, jority holding of £7,500,000 in the company’s ordinary shares. D'Arcy died in 1917. He had seen his dream come true. The oil he hatl found and fought for was already a big weight in the balance of the fate of