Page 193 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

was not in Bahrain during the diving season and he writes from
hearsay, so some of his facts arc incorrect. He gives the population
of Bahrain as 30,000, and the number of dhows in the pearling
fleet as ‘several hundred’. The present population is 180,000 and
thirty years ago, when the industry was flourishing, over 20,000
men in some 500 diving dhows set forth from Bahrain to the
pearl banks every year, and produced a catch which was worth
about .£r,500,000 sterling.
The diving industry and the methods of diving, which have
been described by many ancient and modern writers, have changed
very little throughout the ages. Some of the dhows belonged to
the captains who sailed them, others were owned by merchants
on shore. The profit from the sale of each boat’s catch was
divided in fixed proportions among the captain, the divers and
the pullers, the last being the men who pulled up the divers from
the sea bed when they came to the surface. In theory the system
was a fair one, but many abuses crept into it. The merchants
charged exorbitant interest on the money which they put up to
finance the dhows and the captains charged heavy interest on the
money which they advanced to the divers, who were irrespon­
sible and improvident, and always in debt. Once a diver became
indebted to his captain he was virtually a slave and could be
handed over to a shopkeeper or to another captain in payment of
a debt, being compelled to refund a large proportion of his
earnings every season. When lie died, or was too old to dive, his
sons, if he had any, inherited the debt and had to dive for their
father’s captain. Tavanier, writing in the 17th century, says
‘divers get no advantage from their labours, if they had anything
else to employ them, they would quit the trade’. Conditions
changed when some thirty-five years ago, the then Shaikh of
Bahrain, the grandfather of the present Ruler, introduced far
reaching reforms throughout the industry which at the time were
strongly opposed, but afterwards appreciated.. The Diving Law,
which was promulgated by Shaikh Hamed was afterwards adopted
by other Gulf Shaikhs. Under the new laws, rates of interest
were strictly controlled by the Government, debts could not be
inherited and each diver had an account book, checked by
Government diving clerks, showing his indebtedness to his
captain.
Divers use no mechanical apparatus; they descend into the sea
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