Seafaring in the Arabian Gulf and Oman: The People of the Dhow by Dionisius A. Agius

Author:Dionisius A. Agius
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

7- The Crew of an Ocean-going Dhow

Did you go on board the būm, the sanbūq and the large shū’ī as I did?

I hoisted the sails against the winds in the dark(est) night1

(Verses from “Mudhakkarāt baḥḥār” [Memoirs of a mariner]

by the Kuwaiti poet, Muḥammad al-Fāyiz).

Safety on board a dhow was paramount as, in addition to the crew, the larger dhows carried merchants, traders and passengers (including women and children). When in the nineteenth century the British took control of the sea traffic in the Western Indian Ocean they wanted to make sure that navigators were competent to sail the ocean-going baghla and ghanja. So Arabian, Iranian and Indian navigators were issued with certificates by the British, who controlled the Gulf from its Mumbai (Bombay) headquarters, to ensure that they would use up-to- date navigational aids such as the sextant. But in spite of this, the medium and small-sized dhows were in the hands of traditional navigators, most of whom were illiterate and who preferred to be guided by the stars.

Most of the seamen (60%) I interviewed claimed to be of non-Arabian origin, Iranian, Baluchi, Indian, East African and others. Several of the former pearldivers I spoke to in Qatar were clearly of East African origin.2Practically all crew members were Muslim, a few were not. I found many of the seamen could not remember where and when they were bom. Some spoke of their fathers at sea and several seamen mentioned the perils of life at sea and the high death rate through disease, storms or the sinking of a dhow.

The crew of an Arabian Gulf and Omani ocean-going dhow were divided into a number of ranks. Briefīy, from the top down, the hierarchy consisted of: the skipper or master, often the owner of the vessel, who was in charge of the everyday sailing of the ship; the next senior officer was the pilot, who was responsible for navigation throughout the voyage; then came the boatswain, who was in charge of the ordinary seamen and passengers; the helmsman, who was in charge of steering the ship; followed by the carpenter. Amongst the experienced seamen were the bailers, look-out men, the cook and the cabin boy.

The terminology for each category and function could vary from the Arabian Gulf to Oman and to the Southern Arabian coast, some overlapped and others were used loosely, depending on the type of vessel and the number of crew on it. This chapter will look at the different ranks and duties of an Arabian crew on board an ocean-going dhow, looking also at the code of conduct in the case of the sea captain and navigator as dictated (theoretically) by Ibn Mājid in the late ninth/fifteenth century and how closely this is still followed.

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