Page 131 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition

No reason for panic. A bundle-boat like ours was the safest craft
we could wish to be on at a moment like this. Ropes and reed
bundles might be torn to bits but would protect us from being
beaten to death against the reefs. Thank heavens we were not
heading for the surf on the coast in a plank-built boat; then we
1 would all have been in the utmost peril. Now our proud ship was
probably doomed, or at least would have to be rebuilt. And this
even before it had been put to a fair test. Certainly both we and the
ship would have been much safer if we could see something around
us. We were like eleven blind men. How could we swim between
reefs or jump on to rocks when we could not even see our own
hands or feet without lamps?
There was obviously one thing to try: slow down as much as we
could. Then we might delay our crash landing until dawn, and also
hit the rocks less violently.
‘Throw out the sea anchor!’ It was hanging ready on the bridge
floor under my feet.
The sea anchor was nothing but a semi-floating canvas bag to be
trailed in our wake. It was a simple device used on sailing vessels to
keep either the stern or the bow turned into the wind when sails had
to be lowered in a storm: a long conical bag without a bottom.
The sea anchor went overboard and acted as a most effective
brake. In fact it reduced our speed of drift so effectively that we
began to notice that all the lights from the island remained in the
same spot. And so did the blinking from the lighthouse behind us.
Never had I seen a sea anchor function so marvellously as this. With
our high stern turned to the wind and waves we just hung as if fixed
in the sea. Little did we realise in the black night that the choppy sea
around us was so shallow that the canvas bag had caught the
bottom. Instead of floating just below the surface as it should, it had
bobbed up and down in the wave troughs digging up mud until it
was full and heavy and grabbed a good hold in the bottom mire.
The lights we saw here and there at long intervals all along the
invisible coast were yellowish and feeble. They all seemed to be
from kerosene lamps like ours. They certainly came from scattered
houses or huts. We were close enough for our own lights to be seen
from the shore, so I sent a few sos signals towards land with
flashlight. But no reply. To the left over Failaka the black night sky
reflected the barely noticeable glow of a distant modern city:
Kuwait, thirty miles away. We heard the sound of an aeroplane
passing above the clouds.
On behalf of the consortium, the bbc had equipped us with a tiny
no