Page 47 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition

The shopping tour ended with food and all daily requirements,
including jerrycans with drinking water for eleven men for three
months, trusting that additional supplies could be obtained during
the journey. We had tried, on an earlier occasion, to eat only what
people of antiquity could have stored on board their vessels. On the
Ra voyage we bought only such food as could be stored in ceramic
vessels and baskets, and all our water was kept in jars and goatskin
bags. In this way we had survived the voyage without any dietary
problem, so it was unnecessary to repeat the experiment. Even so,
on a reed-ship without electricity for a fridge there was a very
definite limit to what we could store on deck. Fresh meat, fruits and
vegetables would not keep, and even most canned foods would go
bad in temperatures such as we could expect before the start and
after. Nevertheless, there were tons of provisions and equipment,
sufficient to fill a forty-foot transport trailer, sealed after approba­
tion by the Iraqi Embassy in Bonn and prepared for the two weeks’
drive from the freeport of Hamburg to the very doors of the Garden
of Eden Resthousc in southern Iraq.
From Hamburg I flew to London to meet the representatives of
an international consortium of TV companies improvised for the
occasion by the bbc. After much brainwork, typing and retyping, a
thirty-one page contract was signed, obliging six television organ­
isations in Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the
usa to finance a reed-ship expedition by buying four one-hour
television programmes not yet filmed of an expedition not yet
undertaken. The contract was made more difficult by the fact that I
could only say where the voyage would start but not where it
would go nor how long it would last, as these were the questions we
sought to answer ourselves. This obstacle was overcome by the
wording that we should sail as far as the vessel could be navigated or
kept afloat above water. The American member of the Consor­
tium, the National Geographical Society and their television pro­
ducers, wqed, further insisted on sending with us their own
cameraman with a special camera, who should be free to record
everything and anything done and said on board. He would have no
duties but to film, even if the vessel sank. I agreed. We all signed.

5. A wooden jig was built to give correct shape to the ship and to
hold the reed-mat made by South American Indians to envelope the
forty-four bundles prepared by the Marsh Arabs.
6-7. Ship building on the banks of the river Tigris as in the days of
the pyramid builders.

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