The Tigris Expedition

by Heyerdahl, Thor

  We did not rise noticeably in the water by the few hundred

  pounds we had carried ashore. But we were in any case still floating incredibly high. So high that we could not bend over and grab passing flotsam or wash our hands, a fact which almost annoyed those of us who were used to raft-ships where we could do our morning toilet without the use of canvas buckets.

  As the heavy yardarm was hoisted to the top of the straddle mast our sail unfolded and the red morning sun seemed reflected in the big red sun on our sail. Ours rose behind a stepped pyramid. The real one rose freely above the misty sea.

  Great expectations. What we had expected was a strong wind from Iraq behind us. In the open gulf beyond the mudflats there was nothing to give shelter. But the wind was just not there.

  Strange. For this was the second day of December and during all the winter months a steady north wind was supposed to blow strongly from Iraq down the full length of the gulf. If we could, we wanted to call at the island of Bahrain, which would be almost on our way. Once they were able to import timber to build wooden ships, the Smnerians were thought to have had easy sailing away from their shores in the winter months, and could return with their cargo when the winds changed in the summer.

  But the weather of recent years seemed to have forgotten earlier habits. It was as if the age of the sailing vessels was gone anyhow. Indeed, the winter rains had surprised us by arriving at the Garden of Eden over a month too early. In Fao, the Arabs had warned us that during the last two years the winds had been crazy. And now we had a feeling of being stuck in displaced doldrums.

  We just had to accept the flimsy and feeble gusts we got and decide on a steering course. This was the place where we should have had some Sindbad-type with us. Until we had left the river I had hoped to find a dhow sailor who would join us, not just any old-timer from the gulf, but one who knew the tides and shallows close to the coasts. Such people were gone with the vdnd. The last vessels we saw in the river was a whole fleet of old gaily colored dhows anchored on the Iranian side, but every one of them had the mast sawn away and a motor installed instead.

  The Sumerian world had changed at sea as much as ashore. Sand had conquered their fields and cities and filled their navigation canals. Silt had changed their coastline by adding mudflats to their waterfront. And their open water was no longer a playground for many kinds of silent watercraft, ghding about propelled by oars and sails. Speedboats and supertankers had taken over. The clamor

  of motors and engines was everywhere. Independent of winds and reefs, Arabs and their neighbors and visitors coasted around oil installations and crisscrossed a network of modem shipping lanes. This once-peaceful area beyond the Mesopotamian coast had turned into the worst possible place for novices to fool about in, experimenting with a reed ship's steering.

  Certainly, we had to keep out of the way of others in the gulf. We had to sail away from this vast stretch of water separating the Arabian peninsula from the rest of Asia. The plan was to follow the Arabian side as close to shore as reefs and shallows would permit. There the main streams of big ships would not interfere with our free movement.

  Our two navigators had carefully studied the charts to find the best route beyond the traflBc and clear of oil platforms and islets. Norman suggested steering 135°. Detlef proposed 149°. But a voice from the top of the mast recommended that we first take a good look ahead. We did. The morning haze was still quite thick. But in the binoculars we detected ships at anchor wherever we looked. From left to right I counted forty and then caught sight of something almost frightening: a colossal and lofty oil platform with a supertanker moored at its side. I forgot to count further. There were masts everywhere out there. Some were almost invisible in the mist, and there were doubtless others beyond them still.

  No matter where we steered, we had to enter a chaotic forest of big ships, some anchored, a few slowly moving. As we approached, most of them turned out to be cargo ships. This was not only a filling area for tankers; it was the famous anchorage for all the ships waiting their turn to proceed up the river and dehver their cargoes to Iraqi and Iranian ports as far as Sindbad Island near Basra.

  The taU bow of a Japanese tanker emerged from the haze. Its mighty hull passed close to our stem. I was at one rudder oar, Yuri at the other. As the wind was too feeble to give us good steering control we had to struggle hard to avoid coUision even with anchored ships.

  Norman and Detlef agreed that the best we could do now was to keep a course close to Buoy 23, which I could barely make out in the mist as a red dot behind a cluster of ships.

  We began to observe a system in the chaos. The tanker channel and the fiUing station were now at our starboard side. There were only cargo ships at anchor on our portside. The wind was so feeble

  that it took us two hours to pass the ships and get within a hundred yards of the large red buoy. The number 23 could be seen painted on it in black. Our plan now was to hang on to it until we got a better wind. We were close. But then we noted we had been still closer a moment earher. There was no wind, but in fact we were drifting back the way we had come. The tide had changed. All the cargo ships began to swing around on their long anchor cables, turning their starboard sides toward us, their bows pointing away from the land.

  The sail gave us absolutely no help. It was quite clear that the tide was sending us back toward the river's mouth. The Shatt-al-Arab was sucking up water now. At this moment we saw something orange-colored being lowered from one of the anchored ships, about a mile away. It came straight toward us and turned out to be a strange kind of lifeboat. It approached us in complete silence. No motor, no sail and no oars. Never had we seen a boat like this. It was packed with husky men, most with bare chests and with bands around their foreheads. They sat facing each other from either side in two rows, rhythmically turning one long common crank handle. The handle obviously operated a propeller. No fuel. Rotating arms. Perfect teamwork. Like some undulating, crawling sea creature, all arms revolving together. All the torsos swung up and down at the same time. Then a head rose up in front:

  "Yuri! Yuri Alexandrovitch Senkevitchl'*

  They were Russians. They knew Yuri by his full name. Violent handshakings. Carlo quickly threw them a long rope, which Yuri asked them to tie to the buoy, which was now about three hundred yards away. They immediately resumed their seats and started their combined cranking operation, now steering for the buoy. They could not tow us but they carried our mooring rope. The longer the rope in the water the more drag there was on their progress. Carlo worked desperately to tie on more and more sections of rope, until there was no more, and to his dismay the last end shpped away overboard. We waved to the Russians to come back with all our rope but they only waved back in salute. They continued to crank as fast as they could for the buoy. Dead tired, they dragged the hundreds of yards of heavy rope to it, making the end fast. Then they signaled anxiously to us to start pulling in free rope. We were already far from our own lost end, so far that we could no longer read the number on the buoy.

  The Russians at first seemed quite bewildered. But not for long. We had at any rate no time to think of them or of the great length of lost rope. We had to prepare to run aground. To get ready our two small anchors. Our anchor ropes were not very long, but we hoped that one or both anchors would take hold before we became stuck on the mudflats. The bottom where we were drifting was only loose silt from the river. The ships out at the good anchorage had long chains that could reach bottom anywhere in the gulf. Fortunately there were neither reefs nor rocks awaiting us.

  "Look!" Norris on the cabin roof pointed to a big black cargo ship that had left its place among the others and came straight toward us guided by the orange-red lifeboat. They came right up to us.

  Minutes later we had one end of the lost rope line back again, with the other end now secured to the lifeboat, which in turn was towed away by the big ship. Straight back to the anchorage area.

  A short, tiiickset sea dog had led the wh
ole operation from the bow of the lifeboat. With a broad smile he asked for permission to visit our vessel. He jumped on to the reeds like a short-legged kangaroo and introduced himself as Captain Igor Usakovsky. Ruddy, jovial, middle-aged and in shorts, our visitor was in command of the ship we hung on to, the 17,000-ton Soviet freighter Slavsk of Odessa. He was as excited as a boy on a rocking horse when he felt the supple bundles under his feet and tried the stability of the lashed-on straddle mast and cane walls. He had to stand on our steering platform, lie dov^na on our cabin floor, and sit on our sewn-together benches. And then, before we knew it, we were all sitting around two long tables in Captain Igor's own ofiBcers' mess on board Slavsk, eating Russian Borshch and admiring the appetizing dishes piling up in front of us as weU as the two shapely blondes who brought them in. There were vodka, wine and Russian champagne. There were pork chops, meat cakes, cabbage-and-carrot salad and cheese with butter and fresh Russian bread. Captain Igor rose to speak; I did, we all did. Our host was a great speaker, humorist and big eater. His glass seemed open at both ends. He was born in Georgia, the son of a Polish nobleman who had joined the revolution. At the beginning of the evening he caUed me "Captain * but later he called me "Father."

  "Cheers, you are my father," he said each time he lifted his glass. I wondered if he could really take me for that much older

  than himself, until he added that he referred not to age but to experience. "Then you had better call me grandson," I retorted, well aware of my own status as a mere landlubber who enjoyed drifting about on prehistoric raft-ships, testing how long they would float. Captain Igor was a real sea dog. He had begun at an early age, whahng in Arctic waters. Later he had mastered big ships on all seas. We ended with the popular captain among his forty oflBcers and crew in the ship's spacious assembly room. The night air was filled with loud metallic music from a Greek freighter anchored as nearest neighbor. Time was surely long for all the hundreds of idle people stuck in this floating steel village. Some ships had been anchored there for over a month. Slavsk expected to wait another week or two before her turn came to proceed upriver to Basra.

  In the night mist we had fun cranking ourselves back to Tigris with the hand-propelled lifeboat. We had seen the regular motor launch of the Slavsk under repair on the deck.

  We crept into our sleeping bags in ample time before sunrise. It was still dark when I awoke, feehng a chilly draft on my face through the cane wall at my side. Wind. I woke the others. Windl Sleepily we tumbled to the sail and the rudder oars. Sleepily we discovered that for us this was the worst wind possible. Strong, but from the southeast. The very opposite to normal, and completely contrary to what we needed. We wanted to steer for the island of Bahrain, but that was exactly where this wind was coming from.

  All odds were against us. Yet we wanted to make a try rather than hang on where we were. Slavsk pulled us clear of the anchorage area, and we hoisted again the only sail we had, the thin downwind canvas. The proper tacking sail, with cringles and reinforcements, still lay in pieces on the cabin roof. It could never be hoisted unless we first got to Bahrain, where an experienced sail-maker could restore it. The problem was to get to Bahrain without it. But at least the thin downwind sail was bigger and gave us better speed.

  Compared with previous experiences, we certainly rode very high on the waves three weeks after launching. And with the big, light sail we moved with great speed away from the anchorage and the tanker channel. The wind increased. It turned even more southerly. The best we could do with the rigging we had was to take the wind straight in athwart and hold a course of 240°-250°. If we tried to do better we quickly lost leeway.

  The sea now ran white-capped everywhere and we saw neither land nor ships. With this course we were heading in the direction of Failaka Island, that lay in front of Kuwait. This was really good sailing and it did not yet take us totally off course. We had to get farther west anyhow in order to avoid the busy shipping lanes in the central part of the gulf. We had to get closer to the shores of Saudi Arabia. Before we came too close, the wind ought to change and resume its normal course, and, with the fine speed we were making, a good north wind should take us to Bahrain in four days.

  But the wind did not turn to its normal course. It blew ever stronger from the south and our speed westward increased. The fresh southerly dug up a choppy sea with deep and narrow troughs coming at us athwart and making us roU heavily. We had to straddle to keep upright on the wooden bridge. Some of the men began to get drowsy. Asbjom gave us a seasick smile and apologized as he crawled to bed in the forward cabin. The long mast legs began to jump and hammer. They were tightened to their shoes by Carlo.

  We saw a few porpoises but no other sign of life and kept on the same steady course westward in the direction of Kuwait. If this southerly wind were to last for some days we would have to drop anchor somewhere along the coast of Failaka Island and wait for a change of weather. Ancient navigators might have done the same. They lacked many modem conveniences, but were never short of time.

  With this wind there would be shelter on the north coast of Failaka. But our navigation chart showed no harbor or anchorage in that area. In fact it showed no details at all in the broad belt between the island and the mainland north of it, for this area was marked as unnavigable, due to unbroken shallows. But with our flat bottom, compact bundles and modest draft we could venture where others ought not to try.

  Norman searched for some information on that area in the Persian Gulf Pilot, pubhshed in London a year previously, and read aloud: ". . . this coast is rarely visited by Europeans. There are large tracts without villages or any settled inhabitants, and it is probably unsafe to wander away from the towns on the mainland without an armed escort."

  The wind blew stronger. Our speed increased. The day passed and the sun sank in the choppy sea ahead of us. It sank in the direction of Failaka Island and its shallows.

  We had not intended to sail so far west as this. We wanted to aim for the island of Bahrain but here we found ourselves heading for Failaka Island. It seemed like a trick of fate, for Failaka was a competitor with Bahrain among students of Sumerian traditions about the legendary Dilmun, and I had no objection to getting at least a passing ghmpse of the island before we left the gulf. We were now sailing in real Sumerian waters and no other island lay closer to former Sumerian ports. In the meeting at the Baghdad Museum the Iraqi scientists had mentioned Failaka several times. The great scholar Fuad Safar was inclined to beheve that Failaka was the important place referred to as Dilmun on the Sumerian clay tablets. In his opinion Bahrain was too far away.

  But as Tigris raced toward Failaka in the evening of our very first day, we asked oiurselves: Was not Failaka too close? Most scholars identified the legendary Dilmun with Bahrain, and that was a major reason why I wanted to go there.

  One thing was certain. I could inform my men that in the darkness ahead of us lay a barren speck of land wdth a remarkable story to tell about man's activities at sea since the earliest days of navigation. Somewhere ahead was a low sandstone island seven miles long and three miles wide, full of vestiges left by prehistoric sailors.*

  " Alexander the Great had personally named this island Ikaros when the Greek sailing vessels, built in the distant Indus Valley, came this way about 325 B.C. The now-barren island was still wooded then, and was conveniently placed for the Greeks when they conquered the gulf area. Although the mainland of the great country they named Mesopotamia lay nearby, they built a fort and a temple to their goddess Artemis on the tiny island. In a manner typical of Europeans even eighteen or twenty centuries later, the early Greeks considered themselves discoverers of any land they reached that had foreign gods and a different culture. Only modem excavations have been able to show us that, when Alexander the Great came to Failaka over two thousand years ago, the Simierians had been there over two thousand years before him.

  The Greeks who named the twin-river country and the gulf islands had never heard of Sumer. Sumer disappeared as
a political entity vidth the destruction of Ur about 2050 b.c. The Sumerians, their language and their cul-tiu^e were erased from the memory of man until their buried ruins with cuneiform records were uncovered and deciphered by archaeologists who thus brought the Sumerians back to life in the last century.

  Yet it was not until our own generation that archaeologists dug on Failaka Island and found that the continental Sumerians had been there too. And not only the Sumerians; before them the Akkadians, and after them the Babylonians. Although the never-ending sedimentation of silt from the rivers has since Sumerian times brought Failaka closer to the growing mainland of Iraq by a good hundred miles, the island had never been beyond the reach of continental cultures since the days when civilization was first established in Mesopotamia.

  The men on board Tigris knew that shortly before we set sail down the river I had gone to Kuwait hoping to visit Failaka. Their interest in what I had seen was clearly genuine now that the island seemed inescapable. In fact, on that visit to Kuwait I had never got as far as the island, although it was only a three-hour boat trip away from the capital. Failaka even had a small harbor with open entrance on the northwest coast, facing Kuwait, whereas all other coasts, including the east side, which we were approaching, were blocked by reefs and shallows. But before I foimd the ferry I called on Kuwait's Director of Antiquities and Museums, Ibrahim Al Baghly, who led me to the local expert on Failaka archaeology,

  I had read about Failaka for the first time in a book by the British-bom archaeologist GeoflFrey Bibby. He described how he and his Danish colleagues had dug up large numbers of potsherds and stamp seals from the many niins and re^se mounds on the httle island. The seals especially served as unmistakable fingerprints. They were incised with special symbols and motifs that linked them to specific areas and epochs of the outside world.