Page 431 - Green - Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook. 2nd ed

410 Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook, Second Edition
peninsula, and the crossing to North Africa where these nomadic pastoral- ists adapted and became formidable pirates.
It is, at times, tedious to read the Euro-centric writings of authors who extol the achievements of 16th century Europeans who ‘discovered’ the Indian Ocean! Who brought, it is claimed, nails to the poor souls who built sewn boats. The fact that people were trading across the whole of the Indian Ocean when these Europeans were painted in woad and building log boats is quietly forgotten. More time is spent on discussing whether the Chinese did or did not reach America when there is so much evidence that the Poly- nesian people explored and discovered the whole of the Pacific. Across this stage, the oceans of the sea, people sailed in boats. Maritime archaeology seeks to find out who these people were and why they were there.
By reading Villiers Sons of Sinbad we learn that in the late 1930s the Arabs trading from the Persian Gulf down the East African coast had lost the art of deep sea navigation and were simply coasting. But what sailors they were! Villiers describes his arrival in Zanzibar in the dhow the Triumph of Righteousness:
Meanwhile our sailors continued to sing and there was such a banging of drums as I never heard before . . . They sang so much that they could hear no orders . . . Now we were off the anchorage, our keen bow slicing through the sea. “Lower the mainsail!” suddenly from Nejdi [the nakoda or master]. No answer from the mariners, singing more lustily than ever, hearing nothing else. “Lower the mainsail!” Hamid bin Salim [the muallim or mate] screamed, rushing to the break of the poop. “Lower the mainsail!” Still no answer from the mariners singing away: no answer and no obedience. The ship was charging at the assem- bled moored vessels . . . There were fifty Arab ships swinging there. We could see the faces of some Persians in the nearest Boom watching with mild interest. I wondered why they did not fear for their lives for it looked as though we should be charging into them within ten seconds. I reckoned without Nejidi. He excelled at such seamanship as this.
Villiers goes on to describe the eventual lowering of the yard, the vessel careering into a gap in the raft of vessels, and crew members jumping over- board with lines that were used at the last moment to check the vessel’s way.
She was coming in so quickly and she had so much way—for she was a ship of near 150 tons, and she still had more than 100 tons of cargo—that the sudden checking of her way . . . Nejdi, using these checks brilliantly, and very rapidly, eased his big vessel through the gap and alongside the Indian, bringing her there so quickly that the maneuver was accomplished almost as soon as I could per- ceive its aim.
No amount of archaeology could tell that story, but it does emphasize that archaeology is all about people, not just little bits of pottery, a pile of