SOMETHING ABOUT DHOWS
Timber--Navigation--The dhow and the slave trade--Dhow captains.
There is no good timber on the Somaliland coast. The wood from
which our dhows are built is imported. By far the best comes from
the famous forests of Witu and Malindi on the British East African
coast. This latter, called Bamba Kofi by the natives of Witu and
Lamu, is nowadays very rare and worth its weight in gold. The work
put into the dhows is rough and good. There is never any hurry or
rush in their construction, and the only tools used are the adze,
the brace and bit, the saw and hammer. The boats are painted with
the brightest colours procurable, but at a pinch porpoise fat and
lime make a passable substitute for paint.
We have no monster craft like the Basra dhow, carrying two thousand
packages of dates, such as was wrecked off Berbera some years ago.
The biggest boat we have, and we are indeed proud of her, barely
carries her three hundred sacks of rice, and boasts no compass. Her
captain does not require one; he knows the fourteen stars of the
hot season and the fourteen stars of the cold season, each of which
he will tell you is seen for thirteen days or nights only. As for
NUT and THURAYA in the cool season, AKIL, KALEH, SHOLE, SUOD, and
SUHAIL, though they be of the twenty-eight stars used by dhow-men
to steer by when they are in the heavens, beware! High winds may be
expected. "And if it is so dark that you cannot see the stars?" I
once asked a dhow captain. "Unless we are dangerously near to the
shore, or there are reefs about, we just go on. One can't get lost
in the Gulf of Aden."
But often dhows do get lost in the Gulf of Aden; and I mean it in
the literal sense. A few years ago the Zeila dhow, _Sahalla_, in
charge of an Arab named Mahomed Hussain, bound from Berbera to
Zeila with mail, a cargo of one hundred bags of jowari and thirteen
passengers from Bulhar, capsized about four miles out to sea at
half-past three of an August afternoon. Three men and one woman were
drowned, and several persons clinging to a mast were in the sea
for three days. A small boy seized the tail of a sheep and clung
on until the animal dragged him ashore. As a rule sheep are poor
swimmers, but luckily for the youngster, who could not swim, this
beast was an exception.
In years gone by Zeila dhows saw exciting service in the slave
trade, but the old dhow captains are naturally reticent concerning
any part they may have taken in it. Even the ex-slaves, all of
whom profess to be devout Mahomedans, prefer to keep secret, if
possible, the story of their adventures and release. According
to the jail-master, who is one of the latter, he was nothing but
the adopted son of a slave-master, who spent much of his time in
teaching his protégé the intricacies and mysteries of the true
faith. He holds such a good position nowadays, does our jail-master,
that people are charitable enough to forget that he was once "only a
slave and a heretic." Human nature is like that.
In the old records, which I am never tired of reading, there is a
copy of a statement, made on oath, twenty-five years ago by two
slaves who made their escape from an Assab pearling dhow working
on the Arabian coast. In the dead of night they slipped away with
the dhow's one and only boat, and were lost for days. In the last
extremity of thirst and hunger they made Perim. From thence a kindly
British Resident sent them on to Zeila, where they told a tale of
such brutal ill-treatment at the hands of their late masters, that
it called forth the practical sympathy of the officer-in-charge, who
helped them in every possible way. One of these men is dead, and the
other has become one of our leading petty traders. It would be
considered by this latter to be the height of bad form to rake up
the old story concerning his past. He likes to think that the older
generation has almost forgotten his humble origin, and that the
younger may in time come to believe that his children are descended
from one of the old Arab sheikhs, to whom all respectable Zeilawis
are related. I wonder if they are?
[Illustration: A NAKHODA (CAPTAIN) AND HIS FAMILY.]
The dhow captains are ever ready for an adventure, and, until
recently, many came their way. Towards the end of 1916 a number of
German secret service men, who had been endeavouring to stir up
trouble for the allies by interfering in the politics of the ex-King
of Abyssinia, Lij Yassu, and even of the Mad Mullah, determined to
leave Africa, as fate was against them. One of these men walked
from Abyssinia, and keeping to the French and British Somaliland
border approached the coast, where he had arranged with the captain
of a dhow to pick him up and take him to Arabia. But the Zeila and
Djibouti police were on the look out, and acting on "information
received" the dhow was arrested. Shortly afterwards the despondent
German was only too glad to give himself up at Djibouti. His chance
of escaping to Arabia was hopeless, and he was a lucky man to have
reached the coast alive. Others of his ilk did not succeed in doing
so, and it is on record that one of them perished miserably of
thirst in the bush.
Nowadays, thanks to the British Navy, slave-running and gun-running
are "industries" of the past, and the dhow captains, whose hearts
are still unchanged, confine their activities, in the illegitimate
line, to landing a parcel of silk or cloth at night when the coast
is clear. A party of conservancy sweepers has even been known
to find, hidden in the garbage that strews our beach, a parcel
of firearms landed by some fire-eater who is now repenting his
venture in Berbera jail. The dhow men unanimously agree that life
is becoming decidedly dull. That it is still sweet is sometimes
brought home to them as they fight their open craft through the
sudden storms that often take them unawares in these waters; or
when, as has been known to happen, a dhow laden with live stock has
a hole knocked through her bottom by a restless bullock. The hole
has been stopped with the clothes torn from the backs of the crew,
and the water that found its way in, and threatened to send all
hands to the bottom, bailed out by desperate men armed with bowls,
scoops, cups, and any other utensil that came to hand. For, be it
known, our Arab and Somal sailormen never dream of danger, and when
danger comes it always finds them unprepared, but, full of fight
whilst they consider there is a chance. When they realise they must
face the worst no vain regrets are wasted on might-have-beens. They
humbly bow the neck to fate, and, like their fathers of old, comfort
themselves with the thought that what is to be will be--"Inshallah."