Page 11 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

the possibility of a Euphrates Valley Railway and completed the telegraph network
which linked London with Bombay. In 1857 Kemball was highly commended by the
Governor General of India for his contribution to the Persian campaign and in 1866
he was knighted and subsequently promoted General. In 1873 he was selected to
accompany the Shah on a state visit to England but presumably was not responsible
for that potentate’s upsetting the staff of Buckingham Palace by rejecting all the beds
in favour of sleeping on the floor. In 1875 he was employed on the Turco-Persian
Boundary Commission which he left to become British Commissioner with the
Turkish army on campaign in the Balkans. When war broke out between Turkey and
Russia he was sent to Erzurum as Commissioner and, although on one occasion he
had to gallop flat out for 25 miles hotly pursued by sabre-waving Cossacks, his
energy, bravery and cheerful character made such an impression upon the Turkish
officers that thirty years later British visitors were still receiving affectionate
messages to transmit to him. He died in 1908.
Another Assistant Political Resident and updater of Warden, but a man who did
not reach the highest post, was Herbert Disbrowe. He started his service in the Gulf
in 1852 and was Assistant to Felix Jones at Bushire during the Persian war of 1857;
from Jones he absorbed the old Gulf tradition of minimal interference on land as long
as the peace was kept at sea. In January 1863 he became Political Agent in Muscat
This appointment coincided with the arrival in the Gulf as Political Resident of
Colonel Lewis Pelly, an immensely ambitious and active man, anxious to make a
name for himself. Pelly felt that positive measures should be taken to develop the
area, almost as if it had been a normal British colony. In addition to this political
difference, he and Disbrowe seem to have conceived a personal antipathy towards
each other, quarrelling with gusto for seven years. Disbrowe refused to regard himself
as Pelly’s subordinate and continued to correspond directly with Bombay despite a
stream of angry orders that he should report only through Bushire. However in Muscat
he did useful work in spreading the telegraph network. He was away from Muscat
from 1867 until 1869, returning just as the revived Imamate under Azzan ibn Qays
seized power. Azzan headed a strongly conservative movement, opposed to Oman’s
increasing involvement with the non-Islamic world. After an early favourable impres­
sion, Disbrowe came to regard the new regime as fanatical and dangerous to British
interests and subjects - even Hindus were compelled to clip their moustaches in the
;
way deemed orthodox by the ulama. It was obviously a difficult time and the visiting
Admiral Colomb was told by his interpreter that Azzan was ‘plenty soldier - plenty
mosque. Big Padre, plenty Bible - he look out for God. Bazaar nobody smoke, Azzan
put him in chokee. No wear him silk - no drink him grog.’ Disbrowe broke off relations
with Azzan and was ordered by Pelly to restore them. Disbrowe then bombarded
India with letters denouncing the ‘ignorance’ of Pelly, his conspiratorial methods and
his rudeness. After a while the Viceroy came to the conclusion that Disbrowe was not
‘gifted with tact, temper and good judgement’ and recalled him in January 1870.
The last of our military contributors also served as Agent in Muscat, on which he
wrote a piece included in this volume, but was evidently a far less prickly character
than Disbrowe. Atkins Hamerton of the Bombay Native Infantry was stationed on
Khaij Island in 1839 and was sent from there to Sharjah, from which he became the
first European to visit Buraymi. The account that he wrote was still regarded as
relevant during the dispute over the ownership of that Oasis a century later. He went
on to Sohar where he said ‘a wild beast could not have been regarded as more odd
than an Englishman who had been to Buraymi’. Hamerton was appointed Political
Agent in Muscat in 1840 and in 1841 he accompanied Sayyid Said to Zanzibar, where
he spent the rest of his life, dying en poste in 1857. He obviously won the trust of the
Sayyid, drafting his correspondence with the British Government and helping him to
establish an administrative machine. In 1854, when Said had reached a great age, he

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