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Nicholas Stanley-Price

with locals? The restrictions on private aviators came to an end in the immediate
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post-war period when Britain, acting as a de facto protecting power for the Trucial
States, signed the intergovernmental Chicago Air Agreements. As partners to this
agreement, British-controlled airfields had to open up access to foreign airlines and
to allow private aviators to land without prior permission. In the next few years
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Iraqi Airways, Gulf Aviation and, briefly, KLM were among the airlines that showed
interest in serving Sharjah. Flights nevertheless were sporadic and the oil companies,
in particular, used their own or chartered aircraft to reach the Trucial States.

The quality and cost of Rest House accommodation
How much justification was there for Weightman’s comments, made in February
1940 and quoted earlier, about “the extremely uncomfortable Rest House at Sharjah”?
Since the start in 1932 Imperial Airways had enjoyed glowing reports from its
passengers about the surprising comfort of the Rest House, even from those who had
been staying in luxury hotels on previous night-stops of their journey. The airline, in
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its own publicity material, naturally reprinted only the favourable accounts published
in the press by its passengers; but it is difficult to find adverse comments in other,
independent sources. Standards at Sharjah would have fluctuated as superintendents
came and went, some better equipped than others to manage a guest-house. After
Colonel Loch visited with his wife in 1937, he told the regional manager that the
place was much improved and the superintendent (Alistair Thomson) that he “had
worked marvels with the Station”.
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The stay that so enraged Weightman fell into the period of handover from Imperial
to BOAC. World War II had broken out, a new superintendent (Nelson) had been in
post for only two months, and he immediately had to contend also with a local, low-
level war being fought in the vicinity of the Rest House. Weightman must have felt
vindicated in his criticism of what he had described as “fifth-rate accommodation”
when reading the report of another visitor only a month later. The British Ambassador
in Baghdad (Sir Basil Newton) spent one night at the Rest House, which he found
adequate, considering the material available and the usual uncertainty about such
stations’ permanence. But if it were to continue operating, he hoped “something
more worthy” could be provided. The Ambassador’s confidential comments were a
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little unfair, based as they were on a single night’s visit made in wartime. To him, the
sanitary arrangements appeared unnecessarily primitive, given that fresh water had
been discovered. But the fresh water laboriously conveyed to Sharjah’s Rest House
and stored in a cistern was sufficient only to meet limited drinking, cooking and
washing needs (Fig. 4). O’Shea confirmed that in 1945 there was still no running
water at the Fort. 41

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