The Tigris Expedition

by Heyerdahl, Thor

  the place, whether a bay or a coastal islet, was totally lost, and all we had to guide us was that, as the httle dhow left, never to come back, Said had steered with a course southeast.

  There was no need for Tigris to call at Sirri; this island had lost its charm for us anyhow, once we saw all its oil installations and hangarlike buildings. But neither did we see any reason to escape hke Said. We had no visa, but nobody would suspect that smugglers or spies would sail the gulf in a reed ship, so we ventured into the cahn water on the south side of the island and sailed very close along the sheltered shore. The sudden silence of the sea, and the abrupt end to the violent pitching and roUing, left us with a comfortable feehng of theatrical unreality, and we lowered our voices as we seated ourselves on the benches along the plank table when Carlo called us to dinner. Fried fish roe with biscuits and hot soup of dried fruits were enjoyed seated in oilskin jackets while the last drizzle died away. What sceneryl Calm sea, rising clouds, a long row of lamp lights very close to oin: portside, as if we were sailing slowly down a river, and on the other side violent red flares everywhere, as if the world was on fire along the horizon, particularly in the direction we would be heading. Occasionally, we thought we could still see the mast-top Hghts of the dhow, but in the early morning it was gone. With Rashad on board.

  The peaceful hours in the shelter of Sirri were few. As we passed, the wind came around the mountains with redoubled force. The swells rose bigger and wilder, as if to take revenge for omr attempt to escape their grip. We began to feel the steering bridge wobble as the ropes stretched and the many pieces of wood became loosened in their joints, where bound together or lashed to the reeds. The orchestration of crashing seas and grinding superstructure again became deafening. The thick hardwood block serving as a fork for the portside rudder oar spht; it first began to gape and snap at our bare feet, and then threatened to come all apart and let loose the thick oar shaft that would hammer the whole stem to pieces. Carlo was straightway on the spot like a cowboy with his lasso, and with Yuri's help the gaping block was noosed and trapped motionless inside a network of rope. All the wriggling parts of the rebellious framework on the stem gradually fell quiet like passive prisoners. In our battle with the seas during recent days neither reeds nor palm

  stalks had been damaged or lost, but two broad hardwood boards we had tried to lower at our side to reduce leeway broke at midlength like chocolate bars. Our growing agony was the disappearance of Rashad and the dhow. The compact bundles of Tigris gave us a feehng of complete security in any sea. But how would the old dhow take this weather? The night fell on us again.

  Our own immediate concern was the jimgle of red flares blocking the road ahead and growing in threatening magnitude as we approached, as if we were heading for a battlefield. As the black night sky began to fade toward dawn, so did the intensity of the flares, but we knew they were there and the chart showed a vast area closed to all traffic due to oil installations. We had to steer north of it into a narrow passage between another oil field and an island surroxmded by reefs. North of all this again was the main shipping lane, which we had to avoid at all costs.

  We entered the problem area shortly after midnight, when we first saw flashes from several hghthouses and then the contours of an island with a big burning flare that came up close to oiur starboard side. We were making terrific speed, and at that time could still see a small top lantern and red running hght in front of us which might well have been from the dhow. With a defective engine it could not possibly go very mudh faster than ourselves, with a strong wind that turned increasingly in our favor. As I was called to take over my night watch at 2 a.m. I was surprised to find Norman's berth empty; it was not his watch yet, but I heard his voice on the bridge. Detlef was sound asleep, convinced like me that steering involved no problem with this good wind and the hghthouse coming up far ahead of us seen early enough for the helmsmen to avoid collision course. Outside the cabin I unmediately realized that something was wrong either with our position or with the chart. The sky was pitch-black on our portside, with no Hght flashes as there should have been. All fibbed lights and flares were on our starboard side, but there were several ship hghts to be seen on our portside. Could a current have pulled us north of the whole barricade of oil fields and too close to the shipping lane?

  On the bridge I found Norman with three of the other men eagerly discussing the chart. Something was obviously wrong, or at least different from what we had expected.

  "What has happened, Norman?"

  "I had to alter course, we were going by the wrong lightl"

  Norman had been lying resdess on his mattress inside the airy cane wall when he heard agitated voices from the bridge. It was Tom, Asbjom and Norris in a confused discussion from which it sounded as if they saw more hghts than was to be expected from the chart. Norman had rushed up on the bridge to find us headed for the reef. The island hghthouse was out, and the one we were steering by was flashing the wrong signal.

  "TTie safest thing we could do was to sheer off to the north," said Norman. "We squeaked by the reef with about a mile to sparel"

  Of all the oil flares we saw, only one appeared to be in the right position, the others were not as plotted on the chart, or not shown on the chart at all. We soon passed them one by one, and although none of us quite seemed to understand just what had happened, it was clear enough that Norman's alertness and quick action had saved us from the reefs. We agreed that we seemed somehow to have bypassed all the obstacles on our starboard side; in some inexpHcable way the reefs and all had been marvelously out-maneuvered, so we permitted ourselves to turn farther to starboard and set our course at 80°, straight for the Hormuz Strait.

  Just before sunrise the v^dnd went mad. It turned more westerly, with violent gusts, and the sea was as chaotic as one would normally expect it to be only where there is interference from reefs or currents. We had just discovered some strange formations on the portside far in front of us, and we strained our eyes to understand what they could be. Through the binoculars in the twihght they looked hke crazy casdes from Arabian legend, with white foam from an angry sea shooting up along ramparts and towers. We also got a ghmpse of a tiny speck that came and went on the horizon in that same area, probably our dhow with Rashad on board. Then we had to throw aside our binoculars and turn all attention to ourselves and our own ship. A sudden treacherous gust of wind, helped by a twisting wave, unexpectedly threw us side on to the weather and before the sail could be adjusted or the unfortunate helmsman could get us back on course, all the devils in the universe seemed to thunder down upon us. From a coiu-se of 80° the bow danced around, past 0° to 340°, and within seconds all hands were on deck in a terrible fight to regain control of oiu: vessel. The wind threw itself upon the rigging and bamboo walls with a violence not yet experienced on this voyage. The thick sail battered with a force that

  would lift any man oflF the deck, and loops and rope ends from sheets, braces and leech Hnes whipped left and right and struck at everything on board. Like savages we clung to the canvas and ropes, and in the mad fight that followed the wooden block that held the portside topping hft spht asunder and the yardarm with the sail sagged to port. The flapping and slashing sail had to come down quickly before all the rigging broke. But the loops of the halyard, normally easy to loosen, were under such pressure where they were wound around the bridge railing that no combination of men was able to unfasten it, and the canvas, flapping in fury on a slanting yardarm, had to remain up at the mercy of the storm. I gave thanks that this was our smaller sail and not the giant we had rejected.

  I stole some seconds to look for the strange structures ahead of us while the battle raged on deck, bridge and cabin roofs. There they were. But the dhow was gone and we saw it no more. The ghostly castles in the blue haze were much closer now and caught the first hght of a breaking day. In one place was a huge platform resting on round pillars, tall and thick like towers, like a castle upside down. Two other formations were q
uite different; they really looked like mosques or oriental castles, filled vdth masts and spires, even houses. We did not know if they stood on reefs or shallows or were anchored and afloat, but the sea that ran densely white-capped everywhere was really wild, trying to climb the columns and ramparts of these solid impediments. During our desperate fight we could see that we would drift clear to the south, avoiding collision, even if we failed to straighten out our sail and regain control of the steering. But these manmade obstacles were clearly quite new, for there was no sign of them on our chart; therefore we did not know what more might lurk beyond. At this time two gigantic tankers crossed in front of us, and a third passed along our side. Too big to roll like us, they spht the swelling seas into white geysers that rose high up their bows. We had no such geysers striking our bundles, otherwise cabins and all would have been washed overboard. But we danced about hke a duck, preventing the seas from getting any sort of grip on us. Our only dangers were land or ships.

  It was Carlo's moimtain-climbing fingers that eventually loosened the jammed rope while half a dozen of the men hung with all their body weight on the halyard to reduce its drag on the knot. Deep imprints of the twisted rope were left in the wood of the

  bridge rail as the halyard was untied and the sail came down. Norman replaced the broken block, and, with HP lashed onto the waving mast top, the sail came up again at an adjusted angle, enabling the two helmsmen to turn Tigris onto course. Breakfast porridge was now consumed standing, as the choppy sea sent heavy spray into cups and pots left unguarded. A single wanton cross wave managed once to chase across from side to side between the two cabins, sweeping everything off the table and leaving us all drenched to chest level.

  If the little spot we had last seen ahead at sunrise was our dhow, it was not heading for the Hormuz Strait, but for some part of the Arabian shore farther south. With this westerly wind we were now in a perfect position to sail for the Hormuz Strait but we could not abandon Rashad penniless among unknown sailors. We turned more southeasterly, in the approximate direction taken by the dhow.

  This was a desperate situation: the sea was now so rough that the two helmsmen had to pay the utmost attention to every wave and deviating wind gust in order not to lose steering control once more. We trailed oiur red buoy aft in case anyone should be washed overboard, but each of us had a personal lifeline tied around the waist, with strict orders to lash the loose end to any part of the rig or superstructure except when in a safe location inside the basketry walls of either of the two cabins. A six-foot shark came for a while to play seemingly in a friendly manner with the dancing buoy. It was the first big fish we had seen in this area apart from some tall, sharp fins that on a few occasions had emerged from the waves aroimd us, resembling those of swordfish.

  By midday we found ourselves for the first time in a terribly polluted area. Small clots and large slices of sohdified black oil or asphalt floated closely packed everywhere in a manner that clearly testified to recent tanker washings. But the black tar soup was all mixed with bobbing cans, bottles and other refuse, and an incredible quantity of soHd, usable wood: logs, planks, boards, cases, grids and large sheets of plywood. One such sheet carried a deadly yellow snake as passenger. All the wood was smeared and clotted with oil from the seas that tossed it about. None of us had ever seen pollution this thick out of sight of land. The contrast to the rest of the guH was so marked that it made us fear that some marine disaster had occurred. No local dhow would wiUingly dispose of all this pre-

  cious timber, nor would a dhow probably carry such quantities of crude oil on board. Only with difficulty did we avoid coUision with some of the heavy logs and beams that rose like torpedoes on the waves. The smaller ones we could not dodge. Never had we raced this fast with a raft-ship. Detlef measured our speed as more than four knots.

  Time and again we lost steering control but were able to return onto course. The moment the sail threatened to flap the hehnsman on the leeward side of the steering platform had to manage the tiller with a single hand and use the other to pull sheet and brace until the sail turned back into the wind. Palms and fingers were scored and bhstered by rope. Carlo and Yuri could hardly open their fists; they were invariably called upon when rope fighting was at its worst.

  Attentive to the rigging, and searching for the dhow, we were racing ahead at full speed when we heard Asbjom's calm voice from the steering bridge: "Look, what is that? Is it a cloud?"

  The sky was blue above us, but there were white cloud banks along the entire horizon ahead. Cloud banks, but what the devil did we see above the clouds? I grabbed the binoculars and what As-bjorn had asked about jumped clearly into view. For a moment I could hardly beheve my eyes. Above the cloud banks, raised above the earth, was land, like another indistinct world of its own. SoUd rock was sailing up there, still so far away that the lower parts seemed transparent and did not even reach down to the clouds; the upper ridge seen against the clear sky was of a different shade of blue. What we all were staring at seemed far too high up to be real. Were we heading for the Himalayas? Was this an optical distortion, a Fata Morgana?

  Our navigation chart had given us no warning of what we were to see. It showed nothing behind the coasthnes. Land masses were all equally white. We were so tuned in to the low profiles of the Iraqi plains and the mudflats and Hmestone shelves we had so far seen in the gulf area that we were not mentally prepared for a spectacular sight like this. We dug out of our boxes a land map of Oman. It showed that this Arabian dagger, with the Hormuz Strait at its tip, rose steeply to an elevation of 6,400 feet above the gulf. This was what we saw ahead of us. The whole peninsula was a lofty mountain chain with rock walls dropping almost perpendicularly into the sea on the gulf side that we were now approaching.

  Detlef had just measured a record speed of almost five knots. But when we saw what kind of land we had before us we instantly threw the rudder oars over to try to turn away from the coast while there still was time. We had clearly come much farther south than we ought to have done while trying to keep up vidth the dhow. They had an engine, and had possibly turned still farther south to find a suitable port. Calculations made by our two navigators on the basis of wind and leeway convinced them that we were already so far down from the tip of the peninsula that we had to go in to the coast somewhere; we would never be able now to make our way straight for the Hormuz Strait. But where could we sail in? It became an ever greater puzzle to guess where the dhow could have sought shelter. With an engine it could get into any tricky inlet. But our charts showed no harbor on this coast, no settlement, not even a single hghthouse. There was no kind of beach or landing place, and nowhere even to anchor, for the tall cliffs fell straight into a deep, turbulent sea.

  The map showed only a single shght indentation where Said might have taken Rashad and the other men in among the vertical cliffs to get the shelter needed for making their repairs: Ras al Shaikh. It would seem to be a most inhospitable cove between rock walls, to judge from the skyhne we now saw. We were soon to find out. We had to clear Ras al Shaikh on our way up to the final cape marking the entrance to the Hormuz Strait.

  The mountains were still far away, although near enough already to take the form of real rocks, first rising out of the sea and then piercing right through the cloud belt. We no longer approached this coast voluntarily. We ignored the few remaining pieces of driftwood and had no time to look for pollution; we had to try to save our own sldns. A raft-ship like Tigris could better than any other vessel surf-ride onto beaches or banks, even be tossed safely up on a reef or a rocky shore, but no craft could tackle vertical walls.

  It was time for Norman's scheduled radio contact with coastal stations. We now had to report the disappearance of Rashad and the dhow, and give our own estimated position alongside the empty rock walls of northwestern Oman. Bahrain Radio was calling us, but too many strong voices were on the frequency for anyone anywhere to pick up Norman's call. Our whereabouts remained as unknown to the rest of the world a
s that of the dhow to us and, presumably, as that of Tigris to the dhow.

  We were fighting our way up the coast, taking the weather in athwart, but we were also getting ever closer to the cliffs we wanted to avoid on the starboard side. A more forbidding land I had never seen: sky-piercing in every sense, and yet not even scrub or a green tuft of grass to brighten up the sterile ascents. A petrified desert tilted on end. The stormy weather struck these waUs head on, and assaulting seas were violently rebuffed and rebounded with full force for many miles, stirring up a chaotic turmoil of tossing and leaping waves of a treacherous kind never encountered in the free ocean spaces. How utterly illusory it was for armchair anthropologists to beheve and teach that pre-European voyages were possible only so long as the navigator could hug a mainland coast, and that ocean crossings were impossible before the days of the Spanish caravels. Nowhere is the sea worse and the problems more acute than where rocks are or where waves and currents encounter shores and shallows. To hug a coast can be the most demanding task for any primitive voyager. Ancient seafarers must have felt like us in similar situations, unless they were far better prepared. Never have I or my companions been tormented by more problems when traveling on primitive craft at sea than when we have struggled to clear the last mainland capes to get into the open ocean, or when upon an ocean crossing we have approached land on the other side. To hug this Arabian peninsula gave us not the slightest feeling of security. On the contrary, it was quite a nightmare, from which we would have wished to wake and find ourselves safe in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Out in the boundless ocean we never had to give any thought to the fact that we rushed ahead with no chance to stop our race until all winds died down.