Robert Moresby - Survey of The Red Sea and Its Hazards

Survey of The Red Sea and Its Hazards

Between 1829 and 1833 Robert Moresby completed a full survey of the Red Sea with HMS Palinurus and HMS Benares. Moresby began his survey in the north, first in the two Gulfs and along the Arabian coast south to Jiddah, then north-south down the African coast. However, his Sailing Directions for the Red Sea, published in 1841, charts the Sea from south to north. Every detail is noted, not only reefs, harbours and anchorages but also provisions, the essential water (often awful) and fuel supplies. A fuller and more graphic narrative of the upper half of the survey is contained in Lieutenant J.R. Wellsted's account, in the second volume of his Travels in Arabia (1838). Wellsted had joined the Palinurus in 1830. The reefs were mostly surveyed from local boats with local pilots.

This survey was an arduous task and the ships suffered. The Palinurus had been forced to return to Bombay in 1830 for refitting after surveying the Gulf of Suez, while the Benares had to be sent back in 1831 in a shattered state, the leaky tub caught forty-two times on coral reefs). "This heated funnel of reef-bound sea" as Moresby referred to it, took its toll on the surveyors; "great dangers and privations were inseparable from such a service", Moresby noted. The summer months were particularly punishing when temperatures reached the high 40°s and the Benares seems to have been especially vulnerable. It was rare for the full complement of officers to be functioning and Elwon himself was frequently ill. In 1833 the assistant surveyor, Lieutenant Pinching, died of smallpox off Aden where he was buried.

Starting from Suez, as the nearest point to Cairo for those crossing Egypt by the Overland Route, Moresby worked a system of triangulation down each shore. At Suez itself he noted, "provisions are plentiful and good—oranges, pears, apples, plums in season. And there were plenty of fine cabbages!" In the Gulf there were some nasty spots whose names indicate the hazards—Moresby Shoal for instance, and Felix Jones Patches. Another danger spot was the Daedalus Shoal at the entrance to the Gulf of Suez, which has a light on it to this day.

Moresby also surveyed the Gulf of Aqaba, a narrow deep waterway between high mountains that funnels high northerly winds. It was such winds, so frequently mentioned in the Sailing Directions, which the steam engine was supposed to overcome. The six-kilometre-wide entrance, at the Straits of Tiran, was bad enough—wrecks are strewn over the rocks there even today. In the Gulf itself on one occasion the Palinurus was blown off her anchorage three times and only managed to stay put with fifty fathoms (90 m) of chain on each of two anchors.

Wellsted describes Moresby on one occasion springing up the rigging to spot reefs which everyone had declared were just wash from clashing tides; they lowered anchors to three fathoms but the vessel swung round and suddenly there was no bottom under the stem at eighty fathoms. In Wellsted's opinion four years in the Red Sea was nothing like as bad as 150 kilometres in the Gulf of Aqaba. On shore the crew helped locals repair their boats and Moresby going for a walk along the beach was accosted by fishermen whose boat had been thus mended, who insisted on his accepting a present of two sheep and a bag of dollars.

Heading out of the Gulf and down the Arabian coast a particular danger spot was Zabarga Island (also known as St John's or Emerald Island because of ancient peridot mines); Palinurus was caught in a fearsome gale and only avoided being driven on to the rocks by hooking a kedge anchor on to a hole in the reef. "An uncomfortable night was spent by all."

Moresby always records the availability or otherwise of fuel, provisions, water, attitude of locals: availability of water was sometimes dependent on their being able to roll the ship's casks to and from the source. Onshore reception was variable owing to the long tradition of piracy in the northern end of the Red Sea. Moresby warned that "should a ship touch at any part of the Red Sea not frequented by Europeans (for water, etc.), great caution ought to be adopted, to guard against treachery from the various predatory tribes inhabiting the borders of the sea."

The coastal plain had been devastated earlier in the century by Wahhabi puritan Muslims from Central Arabia followed by an Egyptian invasion — none of this good news for non-Muslims. At Sharm Ghabur ('sharm' meaning a channel through the reefs in the local Arabic), where Muslim pilgrims traditionally donned their pilgrim's garb, "water and wood were cheap, and dates excellent, but the bedu were not to be trusted. They were feared throughout the sea for ferocity and treachery," writes Moresby, "so that it is dangerous to land on that stretch of shore."

During the survey of the Red Sea Robert Moresby was smitten by intermittent fevers. Finally Moresby returned to Bombay in 1833, exhausted by four years of surveying. Meanwhile the valiant HMS Palinurus sailed on to survey the southern coast of Arabia under Captain Haines who would later become the first British official in charge of the Protectorate of Aden.

The Red Sea charts of Moresby and Elwon were drafted by chief draughtsman Felix Jones to a scale of one inch to the mile (in the trickier parts, ten inches to the mile), and published in 1834.