Page 32 - Arabian Studies (V)

22 Arabian Studies V
affairs of Arabia and the Gulf, and subsequently to the Court of
Directors in London. Many of the surveys were published and thus
reached a wider audience, but others remained in manuscript
among the Company’s archives. Not all of these reached the stan­
dards achieved by Lieutenants Wellstcd or Whitclock but collec­
tively they provide a significant contribution to our knowledge of
the area in that period and a number of them contain information
of considerable individual interest.
The Marine Miscellaneous series in the India Office Records
(IOR:L/MAR/C) includes several unpublished reports and surveys
specifically undertaken in connection with steam navigation and
the study of the relative feasibility of the Red Sea and Euphrates
routes to India. Among the most interesting of these are the reports
of Lieutenant Wyburd located in volume 570.
William Henry Wyburd was bom in 1808 and joined the Bombay
Marine as a cadet in 1823.3 During the next four years he served on
the Ternate, Antelope and Nautilus until 1827 when he resigned
and spent two years living among mountain tribes in Persia. In
1829 he was re-instated and became master of the Company’s
steamer Hugh Lindsay which had been recently constructed on
Malcolm’s orders as part of his plan for a steam line from Bombay
to Suez. Wyburd, however, always seems to have found his naval
duties somewhat tedious and in July 1831 he wrote to the Super­
intendent of the Indian Navy asking for permission to explore the
province of Najd, justifying his request with the comment that he
had ‘often been led to observe the little knowledge we possess of
that part of Arabia, inhabited by different Tribes composing the
Wahabbee Sect, with the Minor Branches of which we are in the
habits of daily intercourse’. It was unfortunate, he added, that the
Government should have such an inadequate knowledge of the
area, especially at a time when geographical exploration was being
pursued so ardently in Europe. His request was supported by his
superior officer and sanctioned by the Government of Bombay on
the grounds that ‘it must always be of use to acquire some know­
»i
ledge of a people whose restless habits and bold enterprises may at
some future period throw impediment in the way of that most
desirable object, a regular communication between England and
India by the Red Sea; and it is of great importance with a view to
the security of our intercourse with Arabia to obtain accurate intel­
ligence of those fanatics [i.e. Wahhabis] who are evidently again
rising in strength and power’.4
In August 1831 Wyburd set out from Bombay for Muscat from
where he intended to penetrate the interior. Finding this impossible
because of the political situation in Oman he sailed to Bandar