Page 13 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

as his own engineering officer. In 1839 he was appointed Commodore in command o
the Gulf Squadron, the last to hold that office without being subject to the authority
of the Political Resident. He thus still had a measure of independence, which he used
to shell both Doha and Dubai after what had now become known as ‘maritime
irregularities’. Just before he died Brucks put all his vast experience into a hundred-
page report which is one of the most valuable in this volume.
The best-known of all the surveyors represented in this volume was, however, Felix
Jones. He was bom in 1813 and joined the Indian Navy at the age of 14. Soon he was
engaged with Moresby and Wellsted in mapping the Red Sea and with Haines along
the coast of Hadhramaut, actually drawing most of the maps. He was then employed
in surveying the Palk Strait and the coast of Ceylon before coming back to the Gulf
and gaining a considerable reputation during the Persian and Egyptian crises of
1839-39. In 1839 the East India Company sent out, by sailing ship around the Cape,
three iron river steamers in sections. They were assembled at Basra and Jones was
appointed to the command of one of them. His survey of Kuwait, printed here, was
one of the first results. He then worked with Lynch in surveying the Euphrates and
then with Rawlinson on the Turco-Persian frontier. He also mapped the route from
Iskanderun to Basra and drew the first plans of Baghdad and Nineveh. His reports
and maps later helped to inspire the famous irrigation engineer Sir William Willcocks
in his proposals to turn Iraq back into the Garden of Eden by harnessing its great
rivers. As captain of a river steamer, Jones had to act as administrator, diplomat and
judge, settling disputes between rival shaykhs, provisioning villages isolated by
floods or tribal fighting and being more effective than the Turkish officials. In 1846
he made a valiant attempt to take a steamer up the Tigris as far as Mosul but was
defeated by the strength of the river. In 1853 he went on a year’s sick-leave, taking
with him his latest series of maps which the India Office immediately lost While at
home he was asked to succeed Kemball as Political Resident, taking up the post in
1855. The next year he helped to negotiate an agreement between Persia and Muscat
which ended a series of quarrels about the status of Omani establishments on the
opposite shore of the Gulf. Then, stationed at Bushire, he was in the front-line during
the crisis which culminated in ‘Hippopotamus’ Murray, one of the most preposterous
Figures ever sent abroad to represent Britain, blundering into war with Persia over the
affairs of a dissolute princess. His position was complicated by the fact that a box
arriving from India and believed to contain an ultimatum proved to be empty and
Jones had no idea whether he was at war with the country in which he was stationed.
Called away on urgent business elsewhere, he returned to find British officers in the
bazaar at Bushire, enquiring about supplies for a possible invading army; they then
departed, leaving him alone and without orders for another nine weeks. When the
army did arrive, he had to provide the plans and itineraries which enabled it to
operate. He then had to cope with difficulties caused by both the military and naval
commanders shooting themselves in despair. When the war finished Jones had to
keep order in the Gulf when it appeared that the Indian Mutiny might destroy the
whole basis of British power. He maintained harsh discipline, heavily fining shaykhs
whose subjects misbehaved. There followed a crisis over Bahrain with civil war
between two claimants to the throne while Persia, Turkey and the Saudis were all
interfering in the hope of asserting sovereignty over the island. Later the Ruler
seemed bent on carrying on the war by sea but Jones seized his best war dhows and
the danger passed. In the summer of 1861 he signed a convention with Bahrain which
brought the island into the Trucial system and later that year, regarding Dammam as
a base for pirates, bombarded the town and destroyed the forts. While on leave in
1863 he was removed from office by Sir Bartle Frere, then Governor of Bombay who
was anxious to put his protege Pelly in the post Jones was harshly and unfairly
treated, unable to reply when Frere referred to his ‘numerous petty squabbles’
, some
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