Page 113 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

Foreign Interventions and Occupations of Kamaran /. 103
machine guns; and two 15-pr guns’ were embarked on the Empress
of India in Aden harbour. ‘Of these a half company of the 109th,
together with one section machine guns, to be placed on Zukor,
ditto on Hanish and the rest on Kamaran’.105 Three days later the
landings had successfully taken place. On Kamaran the population
and European officials on the island welcomed the British landing.
The eight principal Turkish officials found on the island were
taken to Aden, and a temporary military administration was
established under Major Feliowes as Chief Political and Military
Officer. Richardson, formerly vice-consul at Kamaran and al-
Hudaydah was made Political Assistant.106
Indeed, British apprehensions concerning Italian aspirations to
the eastern shore of the Red Sea and the adjacent islands were not
unfounded. Sir R. Rodd, British Ambassador to Rome, reported
on a small minority of Italian ‘nationalists’ who were ‘endeavouring
to demonstrate that the Yemen from its geographical position
opposite the Italian colony [of Eritrea] should become a sort of
Italian reserve to be exploited commercially and in fact regarded as
an eventual sphere of influence’.107 The Foreign Office shared these
fears: ‘Here and in India we always regard with suspicion Italian
contentions in the Red Sea ... and we have no intention of
allowing them under any pretext to get over to the eastern
coast. ... It was on account of the danger from Italian aspirations
that we hoisted our flag, nearly a year ago, on some of the islands
in the Red Sea in order that we might be able to say that we had a
claim to them in case anybody else—such as Italy—should
endeavour to appropriate them. ...’,08 The British occupation of
Kamaran was, then, undertaken less as a hostile action against the
enemy Turkey, but rather to prevent an ally from gaining
influence.
Britain established a blockade along the eastern coast of the Red
Sea to prevent supplies getting through to Turkish ports. In the
southern Red Sea only the Idris! port of Midi (for which Jlzan was
later substituted) was exempt from the blockade. Foreign govern­
ments were informed by Britain that their dhows plying to Midi
were to report to the Port Officer at Kamaran: any vessel
transgressing this order would be detained.109
Britain reactivated the quarantine station in 1917 as a result of
the inefficiency of King Husayn’s quarantine arrangements at
Jeddah.110 The next year the quarantine station was closed, but,
from 1919 until its transfer to Jeddah in 1956, the quarantine
station at Kamaran was administered by Britain.
With the end of World War I there arose the thorny problem for
Britain of the sovereignty of former Turkish possessions in Arabia.