Page 8 - Liwa18-E

Nicholas Stanley-Price

House. Nevertheless, the Foreign Office in London warned that more staff and
passenger accommodation at Sharjah would be needed. Various options were
19
under consideration: making internal alterations to the Rest House, adding another
storey, building a second extension or even erecting ‘timber and asbestos shelters of
dormitory design’. The first option was selected, of building extra rooms along the
central ‘spine’ of the 1939 extension. In the event, these were occupied by Indian staff
20
members. Either as part of the same operation or, more likely, later during the war,
a narrow doorway was opened in the external wall of the new extension to the fort,
presumably to facilitate movement in and out, but it also reduced the impregnability
of the building. (Fig. 2).
21
In conclusion, although precise figures are not possible, the number of rooms
available at the Rest House was consistently higher than the number of passengers
needing them. There was therefore plenty of spare capacity. It was policy to keep
rooms available in case of an emergency, caused by adverse weather conditions or
mechanical failure. But there is no known record of the Rest House not being able to
accommodate all the passengers on the ground. Moreover, on the scheduled services
of the 1930s and 1940s, there were frequent days on which no flights were expected
and hence no new guests requiring accommodation. In other words, the Rest
22
House, comfortably equipped so as to ensure a high standard of living in this remote
spot, could easily accommodate guests other than the airline’s overnight passengers.

Guests other than stopover passengers
The guests who used the Rest House fall into two main categories, distinguished by
whether or not they had to settle a bill for their stay. Non-paying guests were stopover
airline passengers, including those who had to extend their stay because of schedule
changes, due to weather conditions or damage to aircraft. The published schedule
23
was often disrupted for these and other reasons such as local disturbances. For
instance, in February 1940 the Dubai–Sharjah ‘war’ led to landplanes being stopped
from landing at Sharjah and flying-boat services at Dubai being adjusted accordingly.
But the following month, the emergency situation following the disappearance in-
flight of the HP42E Hannibal and the subsequent search for the missing aircraft
24
saw overnight stops re-introduced at Sharjah. In January 1945 a raid by Beduin on
the Rest House happened to coincide with the presence there of twenty passengers
from a Sunderland flying-boat which had force-landed at Dubai that afternoon. On
25
such emergency occasions passengers had already paid an all-inclusive fare for their
journey and the airlines had to assume the additional expenses (other than for drinks,
for which passengers paid in cash before departure). Those whom the airlines hosted
for publicity purposes would also have stayed for free, for instance, the journalists and
artists who extolled the British role at this remote airfield and the makers of films such
as Air Outpost (1937).
26

8