Page 151 - Arabian Studies (V)

William Leveson Gower
in the Yemen, 1903

Eric Macro

About twenty years ago there came across my desk in Whitehall a
report of a journey in the Yemen which interested me greatly
because, as a veteran Yemen watcher, I knew that it had never been
published. Indeed it had not been mentioned in any commercial or
official publication, confidential or otherwise, and the only
published reference to the journey was a brief reference in The
Times fifty years after it had taken place. I was able to preserve this
report and only now, three-quarters of a century after the event, is
it being published. In itself it was no extraordinary journey, its
main interest lying in the circumstances surrounding its inception
and the career of the gallant, aristocratic and latterly eminent
gentleman who made it. In this commentary I have kept Leveson
Gower’s spelling of place names.

During the opening years of the twentieth century the political
situation at the southern end of the Red Sea reflected French,
Italian, British and Turkish interest in this area. The British had
been consolidating their position in Aden since 1839. The French
and Italians were firmly entrenched in Djibouti and Eritrea respec­
tively and the Italians were extending some influence into the
Yemen. Ferdinando Martini, a pioneer explorer of Eritrea, became
Governor in 1898 and served in that capacity for nine years. He
enlisted Yemenis into his colonial army and sent them home with a
bounty and a good word for Italy. These three European countries,
as a result of the introduction of steam navigation and, later, of the
opening of the Suez Canal had gone to considerable trouble to
establish coaling stations or revictualling ports on the shores of the
Red Sea.
For years the Turks had fought a rearguard action in the Yemen
where tenaciously they held on to that rebellious possession. North

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