September October November 2010 Signals Number 92 The exhibition Sons of Sailing with the sons of Sindbad Sindbad – the photographs of Alan Villiers in our South Gallery owes much to the Alan Villiers the Australian Arabist research of Australian writer Grace Pundyk. She has helped to restore Villiers to his rightful place among the leading Western writers about the Arabian world, such as Gertrude Bell, T E Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger.

It was the caption of the photograph that that really stood out. The caption initially caught my eye. I’d been doing my identified the photographer as an usual lunchtime rummage in the archives Australian by the name of Alan Villiers. of the Kuwait Oil Company, where I was It was dated 1939. And while the editor of its English-language quarterly, handsome sheikh and relaxed diplomat and had come across the book Kuwait by were certainly a telling portrait of the the First Photographers. It wasn’t that old, political alliances of the time, all I kept published two years previously in 1998, wondering was, ‘What was an Australian but the photos it contained captured doing in Kuwait in the 1930s?’ a bygone era, a time before oil wealth Alan Villiers, born in in brought rapid transformation to this tiny 1903, made a name for himself as a state. There were buildings made of coral, maritime adventurer in the 1920s and 30s. Bedouin families selling brushwood in the His passion for sail and the sea led him to town square, old men fishing from tiny sail the world in the last of its fleet of tall watercraft made of the spines of date ships. Shorebound after an accident palm fronds lashed together, waterskin- on a Finnish , a job as a journalist laden donkeys trudging through the on The Hobart Mercury allowed him to shallows, rows of dhows towering behind discover his great flair for writing and them. Every image fascinated me and photography. He would publish a whole I took a longer than usual lunch that day library of books and numerous articles to study the book further. on his travels and voyages, which would The photographers were mostly the include a voyage to the Antarctic usual suspects – the British ‘travellers’ and voyages as part-owner of a four- (read political agents, diplomats or spies) masted steel barque, Parma, carrying exercising some Imperial muscle in the grain from to Britain. Selling her guise of desert redemption. But it was for a profit he bought his own three- the eye behind the lens of this one masted ship, renamed her particular photo, of British political agent and during 1934–36 made an epic voyage Major A C Galloway lounging with around the globe. The circumnavigation’s Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad bin Jabir route was inspired by the voyages of Al-Sabah aboard the sheikh’s steam yacht, , but Villiers the writer drew as much inspiration from the ship’s Polish-British namesake. Villiers’ decision to travel to Arabia in 1938 was borne of the certainty that left: Alan Villiers with friends in Kuwait, 1939. ‘I’m the one with the cutlery,’ he wrote. he was living through the last days of sail. Having recorded the last of Europe’s tall above: A deep-sea boom under full sail off the southern Arabian coast, augmenting her lateen ships, he wanted to document the sailing mizzen and settee mainsail with a jib flying traditions of pre-industrial cultures before from a demountable bowsprit. they too disappeared. The Arabian dhow All images lent by National Maritime Museum, and its voyages on the monsoon winds Greenwich UK was his first choice from a long list

14 Signals 92 September to November 2010 Signals 92 september to november 2010 15 of journeys he’d identified for such be a ripping sea-dog yarn but also a great Having recorded the a project. ‘There were still large fleets,’ classic of Arabian travel, a rich study he wrote in The Set of the Sails, ‘quietly of the ways of life, politics, governments, last of Europe’s tall going about their share of the world’s sea- ancient and modern trade, people and borne trade in the Indian Ocean and the cultures at the western edge of the old ships, Villiers wanted waters of East Asia … and I proposed Indian Ocean world. It ranked, as far to document the to make an exhaustive survey of the types as I was concerned, with Wilfred of ship and the trades I came across, and Thesiger’s famous Arabian Sands, which sailing traditions of to photograph and make films as records.’ it predates by a decade and a half. This wider survey, however, was not And it’s the only book of this genre pre-industrial cultures to be. With a world war on the horizon – travelogue and ethnography – to have before they too Villiers managed just this one trip. at its centre the seafaring Arabs. Nevertheless, his choice was an important Yet amazingly the book had long been disappeared one as Villiers himself said: out of print and, it seemed to me, was ‘It seemed to me that having looked far in danger of falling into obscurity. and wide over 20 years of a seafaring It was this realisation that propelled lifetime, that as pure sailing craft carrying what became my campaign to restore on their unspoiled ways, only the Arab Alan Villiers to the recognition he remained making his voyages as he deserved in the field of Arabian studies. always had, in a wind-driven vessel sailing I packed up my belongings in Singapore without benefit of engines. Only the Arab and moved to the UK where I took up still sailed his wind ships over the free a scholarship to do a Masters in Arab Gulf sea, keeping steadfastly to the quieter Studies at Exeter University’s Institute ways of a kinder past.’ of Arab and Islamic Studies. The focus for Of course, back in the year 2000, my thesis was, of course, Villiers and his in that dusty archive in the middle of an Arab dhow voyages, but I also wanted oily desert, I knew none of this. In fact, to find a way of gettingSons of Sindbad when I came upon that first photograph, republished. I’d never even heard of Alan Villiers. The vogue for republishing Arabian It seems shameful to admit this now, travel narratives had so far been confined knowing what I do of this extraordinary to the better-known travel writers. man, and even more so that I, a fellow This celebrity cast of overland explorers Australian, came only to learn of him who have dominated the story of the through living in a distant country, one West’s discovery of Arabia and its peoples that has long remembered the man for the included those writers, travellers, contribution he made to recording their archaeologists, and influencers of British own culture and history. But life is never Imperial policy Gertrude Bell (Arabian linear. And all we can do is navigate its Diaries 1913–14) and T E Lawrence kaleidoscope of journeys, seemingly (Seven Pillars of Wisdom). There was random but always interconnected, the naturalist, political officer and adviser as they unfold in time. of Saudi royalty Harry St John Philby Eventually I left Kuwait for Singapore (The heart of Arabia) and one of the few to embark on a new life. Various other women to travel through the Arabian projects ensued but I just couldn’t let go deserts, Freya Stark (The Southern gates of this Alan Villiers fellow. I had to know of Arabia). Wilfred Thesiger crossed more. A trip back to Australia to read Arabia’s Empty Quarter in the late 1940s, through his Arabian journals, held at the extolling his love for the desert’s space, National Library of Australia, revealed silence and cleanness in Arabian Sands. that Villiers had travelled aboard All were intimately linked with British a Kuwaiti-owned and crewed boom, political power in the Middle East. or large trading dhow, called the Bayan, Yet as far as I was concerned Villiers, which Villiers freely translates as the too, deserved to be included in this A-list. Triumph of Righteousness. This journey Why, then, had he not been recognised? commenced in the Yemeni port of Aden It seemed to me that his focus on the following a route that Arabia’s mariners sea was the main obstacle. For a start, top: Alan Villier’s genial host Captain Mansur had been making from time immemorial; it was not the purifying voyage of (centre) and crew of zarook Sheikh Mansur, around the Arabian peninsula and down personal redemption across a barren on which the Australian writer made his first the east coast of Africa, returning at the desert, accompanied by noble asil (‘pure’) Arabian voyage, from Aden to the Arabian port change of monsoon winds next season. Bedouin escorts, that was commonly of Jizan on the Red Sea in 1938. I also learned that he had written an associated with Arabian travel narratives. right: A two-masted trading dhow known as account of his journey, Sons of Sindbad, Villiers’ sea journey followed a well- a baggala undergoing hull maintenance at Kwale published by Hodder & Stoughton, travelled, centuries-old route, entirely Island off the coast of Tanganyika (Tanzania). It was one of the last of these deep-sea dhows, London, and Scribners, New York, unexotic and unromantic in its everyday their lavish stern galleries believed to show the in 1940. This turned out not only to humdrum routine and at odds with the influence of early Portuguese explorers’ ships.

16 Signals 92 September to November 2010 Signals 92 september to november 2010 17 ‘Only the Arab still journeys taken by his desert counterparts. hailed from a colonial frontier – just like His description of Bedouin passengers the Arabs, who had seen Britain assert sailed his wind ships undermines their fabled desert nobility. its power over them in the guise of Aboard the Triumph of Righteousness they ‘protection treaties’. Neither he nor the over the free sea, are simply poor and homeless refugees, Arabs were colonisers; both were keeping steadfastly fleeing famine and hardship and hopeful travellers. And, unlike his British writer of starting afresh in distant lands. counterparts, Villiers was an independent to the quieter ways Certainly, the sea has long played traveller with no political affiliation to a vital role in the lifestyles, politics, empire. It is an interesting juxtaposition, of a kinder past’ economies, history and traditions of this therefore, that his journey was by sea. diverse region. Yet for devotees of The wide scope of Villiers’ interests, Arabian travel it has been regarded not not only in sailing but also in the so much as ‘other’, but as ‘nowhere’, that economics of the dhow and pearl trades, in-between, borderless space to be and the social conditions of those engaged endured in order to get from A to B. in them, lifts the book out of the niche of Viewed this way, Villiers’ story is set sailing memoirs and certainly places it literally off the map. By substituting the squarely within the larger genres of travel seas for the desert, it was as if he had writing and ethnographic study. He was, automatically disqualified himself as in a real sense, the Wilfred Thesiger of the an authentic Arabian traveller. Arabian Sea, and such a claim is based not Not that he’d have cared. Villiers was just on his writings but also, like as modest as they come, with an attitude Thesiger’s, on his photography – the so wholly lacking in superiority, with that subject of the Australian National Australian instinct for a ‘don’t imagine Maritime Museum’s current exhibition. you are any better’ inclusiveness, that it Villiers, who died in 1982, bequeathed is no wonder he was so respected by his his entire photographic and film fellow crew members and by passengers collection to the National Maritime alike. Of course, his skill as a seaman was Museum in Greenwich, UK. Photographs paramount in his ability to write this first- taken on voyages such as those on the hand account of life aboard dhows, and majestic tall ships Grace Harwar, Herzogin to contribute to the workings of the ship. Cecile and Parma had long attracted wide It also contributes to the way that Villiers, attention through his many successful like Thesiger, travelled among his books, not only for their subject matter companions as an equal. At first critical but also for the spectacular beauty of their of some of their methods, he soon came composition. to appreciate their knowledge, which he In the first edition ofSons of Sindbad, conceded was often superior to his own. 50 photographs were published and as In fact, Villiers celebrates the dhow part of my research I decided to take a trip sailors’ extraordinary toughness and to Greenwich to view these images at first stamina and their ability to do without hand. What I found exceeded my on unbelievably slender means. expectations. For the small, dark room But I also believe that in addition to his I was directed to contained not just 50 but seamanship it was his Australianness that hundreds of photographs, as well as helped align him with the Arabs. His negatives and contact sheets, from his upbringing in a working class milieu, for Arabian journeys. Villiers himself had example, is reflected in his native hostility scrawled detailed captions on the back to letter-of-the-law bureaucratic controls, of many of them. Stored haphazardly which made him sympathetic to his Arab in boxes and paper bags, the collection seafarers as they struggled with British had clearly been forgotten, hiding in the officialdom in colonial ports. And his shadow of Villiers’ more celebrated tall- inclination to support the underdog, that ship photography. particularly Australian tendency to make I sifted through this treasure, of heroes of noble failures, shines through Kuwait’s dhow sailors, of the ports along in his attitude to the sailors, one of whom the routes of his voyages, of Kuwait itself he describes as ‘such a thorough and its people, and of the pearl-divers scoundrel, so absolutely without pretence, of the Arabian Gulf. Here were images so genuinely and wholly what we call bad of a time now past, when the wealth that that I rather admired him’. would ensue from the discovery of oil In many ways Villiers mirrored was still something unimaginable for this Crew of Triumph of Righteousness climbing and Australia’s position at the time, desert state. Kuwait had enjoyed no working aloft on the massive main yard. This was an independent colony still tied to the natural resources of its own, not even the deep-sea trading boom that was home to Empire but not quite established in its fresh water. Over the previous two Villiers for six months in 1938–39 during a voyage on the old Indian Ocean monsoon trading routes own identity. Villiers, as an Australian, centuries, however, its rulers and people from Arabia to East Africa and back to Kuwait. may have been loyal to Britain, but he also had drawn on their strategic location and

18 Signals 92 September to November 2010 Signals 92 september to november 2010 19 Sons of Sindbad was unearthed at Greenwich. We agreed to work on the project together. And so, a great classic of with the assistance of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, Villier’s Arabian travel, a rich wife Nancy and his son Kit, Sons of study of the ways Sindbad was republished by Arabian Publishing and released in the UK in of life, politics, trade, 2006. Villiers’ insightful and unique Arabian travelogue was back in print. people and cultures At the same time the National at the western edge Maritime Museum, Greenwich, published Sons of Sindbad – the photographs, of the Indian Ocean a spectacular, large-format pictorial account of his journey using some 150 of Villiers’ previously unpublished photos. Captioned with extracts from Villier’s original work and with an introductory essay by William Facey, myself and Kuwaiti maritime historian Dr Yacoub Al-Hijji, the book was voted in The Times traditional skills to turn their barren state Top 5 Photography Books for 2006. It is into the foremost Arab dhow port in the some of these photos that make up the Gulf. In 1939, when Villiers was there, current exhibition at the Australian dhow trade and pearl diving were still National Maritime Museum. crucial to the economy, but the country I often think that it was Alan Villiers was at a crossroads. Tradition was slowly himself who was steering the course of giving way to modernisation. Villiers this voyage I’d been on. With the identifies as much in one of his captions: publication of the books and my MA ‘To the Bedu, the camera may still be tucked under my arm, I left the UK. a strange and fearsome thing, and he My first port of call was Yemen. It was stares at the Basra bus with amazement. to research a chapter for my book, But the townsman may be on leave from The Honey Spinner, but I was also keen the University of Cairo… Camels provide to make a pilgrimage to the places Villiers Grace Pundyk is an Australian-born writer some meat as well as transport.’ experienced. I wasn’t disappointed. whose work has taken her to the Middle Sunsets at Mukalla with its tiny fishing In both his photography and his East, Europe, South-East Asia, India and boats rocking in the harbour, dhow writing, Villiers captured a moment Africa. She has sailed in small dhows in Kuwait’s maritime history not long repairs in Hudaidah … even at Ma’alla and dived for pearls in the Persian Gulf. before it was lost forever. The Beach, Aden, now with concrete pylons Her MA in Arab Gulf Studies, published photographic collection was gold, and industrial shipyards, I could sense by the Gulf Research Center, Dubai, is called and more than worthy of being released the vanished years of the 1930s. Sea Change: Alan Villiers and the subversion from its storeroom captivity. Then, after an almost 10-year absence, of the Arabian travel narrative. I continued my research and studies I returned to Australia. I chose to live in at Exeter. Part of this included putting , or perhaps Tasmania chose me. Sons of Sindbad is at the Australian National together an exhibition of some of these It was yet another parallel for me and Maritime Museum until 17 October 2010 photos, at the urging of the Institute Mr Villiers. He began his writing career and at the Maritime Museum of Tasmania of Arab and Islamic Studies’ director at The Hobart Mercury, set sail for 27 January–27 February 2011. This exhibition Professor Tim Niblock, and through the from the port of Hobart, and is supported by the National Collecting generous sponsorship of the Kuwait as a young man sailed the island’s coastal Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, Embassy in London. However I was still waters in Tasmanian timber ketches. an Australian Government program aiming no nearer to getting Sons of Sindbad Few others can claim to equal Villiers’ to improve access to the national collections republished. Then one night, some contribution to recording and for all Australians. months later, I attended a screening of a popularising maritime history. Sons above: An official of the British colonial 1920s film of the first crossing of the Empty of Sindbad, however, and the hundreds of government of Tanganyika (Tanzania) Quarter, that vast desert made infamous photographs Villiers took during his year- checks the mangrove-pole cargo bound in Thesiger’s Arabian Sands. It was here long journey with seafaring Arabs, go well for treeless Kuwait. that I met William Facey, owner of beyond purely maritime history and join right from top: Recaulking the hull planking Arabian Publishing – the man who had the classics of Arabian travelogues and The new edition of Alan Villiers’ original Sons with oakum made of shredded coconut fibre compiled and published Kuwait by the ethnography. It seems fitting for these of Sindbad is on sale at the museum’s retail soaked in oil. First Photographers, the book in which images to be on their own journey now. outlet The Store. So too are Sons of Sindbad Women come to buy dates and other goods I’d spied that very first Villiers photograph. More importantly, it is fitting that they – the photographs by Grace Pundyk, William from the waterfront. Facey told me he’d been considering have finally reached Australian shores Facey and Yacoub Al-Hijji, published by the Boatswain and sailors on Triumph of republishing Sons of Sindbad for some and will travel on to Hobart when this National Maritime Museum Greenwich 2006, Righteousness sing and drum their ship into time. I told him of my research on Villiers exhibition closes at the Australian and Kate Lance’s biography Alan VillIers Mutrah harbour, Oman, at the voyage’s end in May 1939. and the archive of photographs I’d National Maritime Museum.  Voyager of the Winds (UNSW Press, 2009).

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