Unsolved Mysteries of the Sea

by Lionel

  Aeetes was not in the least happy about letting Jason have the Golden Fleece, but Aeetes’ enchantress daughter, Medea, intervened to help Jason carry out one or two of the seemingly impossible tasks that Greek heroes were inevitably asked to perform: these just went with the territory! Having coped with the bulls that breathed fire and kicked opponents to death with their brazen hooves, Jason took on the warriors who sprang from the dragon’s teeth. Medea’s next piece of assistance was to lead Jason to the Golden Fleece and give the dragon a powerful, magical narcotic while Jason seized the object of his quest.

  Jason’s dramatically successful voyage is more than mythology and legend: it’s a genuine and intriguing unsolved mystery of the sea. The Argonauts’ mythological twigs and branches grow from a sturdy historical main trunk. In ancient times, fleeces were placed in rivers in Crete to collect the gold dust from the water: hence the existence of more than one golden fleece. Some of these fleeces were probably exported from Crete to Colchis. There are some expert researchers who hypothesize that the epic voyage actually took Jason and his men along a number of Eastern European rivers, using what the Vikings were later to refer to as the Great Portage. It has also been conjectured that Jason got as far as the Baltic, where merchants would have become involved in the lucrative amber trade. The Argonauts could then have steered west and south, through the English Channel and back through the Pillars of Hercules into their own familiar Mediterranean waters.

  In Jason’s time the waters of the Black Sea were believed to have been much lower than those of the Mediterranean, but a number of contemporary oceanographers and marine geologists have put forward the theory that some kind of major seismic trauma allowed the waters of the Mediterranean to break through and lift the level of the Black Sea by ten or twelve meters. A number of underwater explorers have reported finding the remains of ancient settlements and many shipwrecks from classical times piled with ancient amphora that once held oil, wine, or rare perfumes. Many different seafaring cultures from the old world have left their traces there: Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Scythians, Goths, and Genoese, as well as early Turks, Russians, and Ukrainians. To the fearless and adventurous ancient Greek mariners the Black Sea was known as Pontos Axienos: the “Inhospitable Sea.” The Underwater Archaeology Research and Training Centre at Kiev University, together with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, produced a great many exciting and intriguing results when they conducted surveys of the Crimean coast as recently as 1997.

  Both Odysseus and Jason undertook memorable, audacious, and exhausting voyages that leave their actual historicity an intriguing unsolved mystery of the sea. Great as they were, however, the life and adventures of Sinbad — the famed sailor of The Arabian Nights — surpassed them both. Who was the historical Sinbad, and where did he really sail?

  Just as Chaucer set some remarkably accurate cameos of life in the fourteenth century into his Canterbury Tales, so The Arabian Nights contains at least as much fact as fiction. Its setting is as cleverly contrived as Chaucer’s pilgrimage, during which his wonderfully assorted characters — the Knight, the Miller, and the Wife of Bath — tell one another stories as they jog along to Canterbury.

  Scheherazade is the beautiful and highly intelligent young daughter of the Grand Vizier who serves King Shahryar. Having been bitterly disappointed and unhappy in a number of earlier matrimonial relationships, Shahryar has instituted a new policy of one-night nuptials followed by the queen’s execution in the morning. In spite of his reputation, Scheherazade marries him, but begs to have her younger sister, Dunyazade, with them in the royal bridal chamber. The girls had arranged that shortly after midnight Dunyazade would pretend that she was unable to sleep and would beg Scheherazade to entertain her with a story. Shahryar found himself also unable to sleep, and readily granted his royal permission for the story to begin. Scheherazade told the superbly exciting tales preserved in The Arabian Nights, and, like every good magazine editor retaining her audience’s loyalty with a series of cliff-hanger endings, she always broke off at the most exciting point in the tale. King Shahryar, anxious to hear the next enthralling episode, naturally postponed her execution again and again, day after day, until he finally fell in love with her and happily cancelled the decree concerning executing a new wife every morning. In the best folktale tradition, he and Scheherazade then lived as happily ever after as did Cinderella and Prince Charming. The loyal and helpful Dunyazade was probably recruited into Shahryar’s Royal Harem as well!

  Scheherazade was as brilliantly creative as Chaucer, and each of them fuelled a fertile imagination with shrewd and perceptive observations of the real life going on around them in the Southwark and Baghdad of their respective eras. Chaucer’s Shipman from Dartmouth knew every port from Carthage to Hull on the Humber, and in Chaucer’s eyes: “Hardy he was, and wise to undertake; With many a tempest had his beard been shake.”

  Scheherazade’s Sinbad (frequently spelled Sindbad) was cast in that same basic, realistic, nautical mould: the life-saving chronicles of her serialized Sinbad included the factual adventures of many a real marine adventurer. The mysterious seas that lay south of Asia and east of Africa were the setting for these adventures. In The Arabian Nights the stories are arranged as seven separate voyages — the significance of the numerologists’ favoured number seven again being inescapable, as with the old phrase “Seven Seas.” Scheherazade drew on her wide knowledge of Indian and Persian collections of ancient myths and legends of the sea, as well as ancient poems of marine adventures such as Homer’s works. These, together with the real exploits of contemporary sailors, form the three main strands of her work.

  The seven voyages are themselves supported by a sub-frame within the main structure of The Arabian Nights. Sinbad is now extremely rich and enjoying the leisure and pleasure of his luxurious home. A poor, very hard-working porter, also named Sinbad, writes a poem about how hard he works for very little reward. This poem reaches Sinbad the Sailor, who generously invites the poor man into his house, treats him kindly, and gives him gifts. Each day for seven days, the wealthy Sinbad tells the impoverished porter the story of one of seven great voyages. Chronologically, the seven voyages all take place during the reign of the magnificent Caliph Harun al-Rashid, meaning Aaron the Just, who richly deserved that title. A brief survey of Harun’s background sheds additional light on Sinbad’s many mysterious adventures.

  Harun was caliph from 786 until his death in 809. While he was young, the Barmakid Viziers ran the empire along with Harun’s mother. On the whole, they ran things very well: the state was powerful, prosperous, and tolerant. This was due in part to the flexible religious background of the Barmakids themselves. They had been Buddhists, then Zoroastrians, and had finally converted to Islam. Because of their Persian ancestry, they were regarded as foreigners within the caliphate and were accordingly less than popular with local nationalists and the conservative elite.

  As well as his sympathy for the poor, his concern with justice, and his general high level of statesmanship, Harun was a brilliant soldier — another Alexander of Macedon. While his father was still caliph, the young Harun led an army against the Eastern Roman Empire and was within a hair’s breadth of capturing Constantinople. He accepted an annual tribute of seventy thousand gold pieces a year instead, which was faithfully and regularly paid during the reign of Empress Irene. Her successor, Nicephorus, reneged on the deal, but discovered to his cost that the justice of a man like Harun cut both ways: Harun invariably kept his word, and expected others to do the same.

  It was also vitally important to Harun that his deputies and officers throughout the caliphate were faithfully carrying out his wishes to improve the living conditions of his people — especially the poor. With the same personal courage that made him such an invincible soldier, Harun dressed as an ordinary citizen and went around Baghdad incognito from time to time, chatting and listening perceptively. It was not surprising that such a man became a legend in his lifetime, a role model for oth
ers — and, especially in his generosity to the poor, a role model for Sinbad the Sailor, who was also a combination of courage, honesty, ability, and generosity.

  The story of Sinbad’s First Voyage begins with his own family situation: Sinbad was very much like the Prodigal Son in Christ’s parable. Sinbad’s father, a wealthy merchant, died while Sinbad was still a young man. Lacking experience, Sinbad spent money like water until there was almost nothing left. He then decided to try to recoup his fortune, sold what little remained of his father’s legacy, and took passage on a ship to Basra. He and the other merchants on board travelled from island to island, trading profitably as they went.

  Attracted by one particular island, they went across to it, rested, and then began lighting fires and cooking meals. Unfortunately for the merchants and sailors, the apparent island — despite its sandy borders and small palm trees — was a gigantic marine creature. It had been asleep, or in some form of suspended animation, for so long that waterborne sand had drifted around it, and vegetation had followed. The sailors’ cooking fires woke the enormous creature. Accounts of sailors mistaking vast, motionless, resting marine creatures for small islands are ubiquitous, and it is possible that it has actually happened on rare occasions. The survivors of such errors would have told and retold their stories in every port in the world. In Scheherazade’s account, several of the sailors managed to get back to the ship when the gigantic creature dived — but Sinbad was among those who didn’t. He was, however, miraculously saved by a wooden tub that drifted past him. Such tubs were often kept on deck to catch rainwater and to store fish caught by the mariners as they sailed in order to supplement the ship’s original supplies. Among religious crewmen, they also would have served for ritual washing. The largest of these deck tubs would have been an excellent buoyancy aid — more than ample to keep a man afloat. Sinbad’s emergency float finally drifted with him to an island, where he was very surprised to find a beautiful mare tethered near the beach. Shortly afterwards he discovered her groom, a servant of King Mihrjan. This man explained to Sinbad that the King’s finest mares were brought to this particular island in order to be served by the mysterious sea stallions. In Scheherazade’s version of Sinbad’s First Voyage, these strange horses came up from the water: another unsolved mystery of the sea.

  Historically, it seems more probable that they were perfectly normal stallions, kept in secrecy and seclusion on a remote but lush and fertile island within Mihrjan’s aegis in order to protect a particularly good bloodline. On the other hand, there is a mysterious echo in this part of the story of the secrecy connected with the birth of King Merovée, founder of the enigmatic Merovingian Dynasty. Myths and legends state that Merovée’s mother was either seduced or raped by an inexplicable sea creature referred to as a Quinotaur, which she encountered while swimming. In some versions of the legend she was already pregnant with Merovée at the time, and in some abnormal way the genetic codes of the embryo’s human father were augmented by those of the Quinotaur. For whatever reason, he was always known as “Merovée the Twice-born.” This particular unsolved mystery of the sea also harks back to chapter three, “Who Were the Water Gods?” in which the possibility of the existence of highly intelligent extraterrestrial amphibian visitors is explored.

  Good King Mihrjan welcomed Sinbad with warm hospitality when he and the groom returned to Mihrjan’s capital. In order to help Sinbad, the kindly king appointed him harbour master and registrar of shipping.

  There follows an episode that parallels the biblical account of Joseph’s adventures in Egypt: Sinbad’s ship — the one on which he had originally embarked for Basra — turned up in Mihrjan’s harbour. Just as Joseph’s siblings failed to recognize their brother, Sinbad’s old shipmates failed at first to recognize him. When his identity was acknowledged, Sinbad gave kindly King Mihrjan as rich a present as he could muster from the goods aboard the ship, which represented the profits of his trading prior to the problem with the sleeping sea monster. He continued to trade successfully all the way back to Baghdad and ended up far richer than he had been before he squandered what his father had left him.

  An interesting pointer to the accuracy and veracity of Scheherazade’s version of the Sinbad stories is her hero’s honest self-analysis and introversion. Despite his happy and luxurious lifestyle in Baghdad after the great success of his First Voyage, Sinbad becomes aware of his own wanderlust and his overriding need to visit new places, to have fresh adventures, and to trade overseas again — not just to make more money, but for the sheer pleasure of trading.

  It was this that set Sinbad afloat on his Second Voyage. After a successful and profitable start aboard a smart new ship, he and his fellow merchants reached a beautiful but uninhabited island. Sinbad ate well and then fell asleep in the warm sun. When he awoke, his friends had sailed without him. The Scheherazade version again reveals Sinbad’s humanity and naturalness. He sinks into deep despair, wishing that he had never left his safe and luxurious home in Baghdad. His pragmatism and common sense come to his aid, and he climbs a tall tree in order to get a broad idea of the island’s topography. From this vantage point, he sees what he thinks at first is the great white dome of a building in the distance: a temple, a palace, a mosque, perhaps? Action and curiosity now drive out the melancholy and depression; Sinbad sets off to investigate the great white dome.

  It turns out to be a vast roc’s egg, and within minutes of his arrival, the female roc comes home to cherish her gargantuan egg. The Scheherazade version mentions at this point that the roc is so huge that it eats elephants! Did the roc ever exist? Several interesting hypotheses have been put forward in connection with this unsolved ornithological mystery of the sea. The largest extinct bird of which traces were found on Madagascar was the Aepyornis maximus — but it was flightless and stood no more than four metres high.

  The famous Venetian adventurer Marco Polo comments on Madagascar and Zanzibar. Writing in the thirteenth century, he says that the people there referred to an enormous eagle-like bird of colossal size that was capable of picking up an elephant in its talons. Its technique was to lift its prey into the air and drop it from a height in order to kill it. There was at one time a species of dwarf hippopotamus on Madagascar. Is it possible that a predatory bird of enormous size might have been able to lift one of these? Is it also possible that a linguistic misunderstanding — and/or a confusion of one pachyderm with another — might have led to the dwarf hippopotamus being mistranslated as elephant? Marco Polo’s evidence supports Scheherazade’s version of Sinbad’s adventures with the roc.

  According to her account of his Second Voyage, the dauntless hero uses his turban as a safety rope and ties himself to the roc’s leg while it covers its ponderous egg with one huge wing. The roc eventually lands on a precipitous mountain peak where Sinbad unties his turban and alights safely. The area is full of dangerous snakes — and diamonds — and when he eventually makes a perilous descent, he has enough precious stones to buy a kingdom. He befriends a merchant — one of many who try to procure the diamonds by using animal carcases that the eagles pick up and drop among the precious stones. The merchants then frighten away the eagles and — if they’re lucky — pick up any diamonds adhering to the sticky meat. Because he has made such a lucrative haul of jewels while he was up among the perilous peaks, Sinbad generously shares them with one of the unlucky merchants, and in return he is taken back to civilization with his new friends, wealthier even than before.

  Afflicted by his old, insatiable wanderlust, Sinbad sets out on his Third Voyage. After a prosperous start, the ship is blown off course and reaches the Island of the Zughb where it is attacked by the small, hirsute, ape-like islanders. These fiercely agile opponents finally steal Sinbad’s ship and vanish in it, leaving the Baghdad merchants and their crew stranded on the island. After some time has passed, the marooned men explore the island and find a huge castle in the centre. Unfortunately, this is inhabited by an enormous, anthropophagous ogre, who begins dev
ouring Sinbad’s companions — just as the Cyclops dealt with Odysseus’s men. As in Homer’s Odyssey, the seafarers blind the cannibalistic giant, who returns with even more dangerous companions. Sinbad and his men take to the sea in a crude, makeshift craft. In Scheherazade’s version of this Third Voyage in The Arabian Nights, there is a direct reference to the men paddling furiously as the seafarers endeavour to put all the distance they can between themselves and the rock-hurling ogres of Zughb Island. But where was Zughb Island, and why does the Sinbad evidence reinforce the Homeric account so strongly? And why is there this specific reference to paddling as distinct from rowing?

  In the Hawaiian sea mysteries described in the next chapter, the petroglyph of a paddler is the symbol for strength. Although seagoing canoes off the east coast of Africa were paddled, the use of paddles rather than oars is associated very strongly with the Polynesian seafarers of the Pacific. Just how far did Sinbad and his companions sail before they encountered the aggressive, hirsute people of Zughb and the anthropophagous ogres on that island? Had Sinbad and his companions made their way westwards around the Cape of Good Hope, or out through the Straits of Gibraltar — known to them as the Pillars of Hercules? Nothing was impossible to such men.

  Their furious paddling eventually brings them to an island, only to find that the peril here is a gigantic serpent: far more deadly than the cannibalistic ogres from whom they just escaped. Sinbad, however, does escape, and is finally rescued by the captain and crew of the ship on which his goods had been left when he was inadvertently abandoned on the Island of the Roc. Before returning to Baghdad, however, he lists all the strange marine creatures he encounters in these wild and unknown waters. Among them he lists gigantic turtles, which — when the paddling references are also given their due significance — might indicate that they were in the South Pacific rather than the Indian Ocean or Arabian Sea.