Somaliland’s Assets By Dhow To Volcanic Aden‎‎

By John Drysdale

HOW, AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE, I asked myself in the fishing village of Lughaya, could British officers, about 120 years ago, have traveled on camel-back in heavy, military clothing over and over this blistering, humid coastal belt of Somaliland?

Astride a camel they wore black, knee-high riding boots and woolen breeches to their waistline, tunics of dark-blue surge buttoned up to their necks; they carried service swords, with metal-carved hilts, driven into shining, leather sheaths; Winchester repeaters were poised, ready for action, in their saddle-buckets; Colt Service revolvers were strapped to their waists; scarlet epaulets displayed their ranks; their heads were helmeted against the sun. To observe their advance along the dunes from afar, their helmets fluttered white and black ostrich feathers to stop potential enemies in their tracks.

With this distinguished-looking dress, albeit sauna-like in its propensity to generate dripping perspiration, British officers defended the sovereign rights of the British Empire. Not against poor fishermen on the beaches, but against powerful adversaries who had stumbled along parts of a very long Somaliland coastline from 1884 onwards. The British camel outriders would secure the British flag (the Union Jack), atop stunted acacia trees, which struggled to survive in the saline soil. There was not a vestige of petroleum then to excite anyone’s interest.

Why then did Britain, France and Italy, even the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, focus interest on this arid coast, towards the end of the 1880s? It was because the coast had sea ports that could generate trade with the vast hinterland of the Horn of Africa. The most formidable presence in the hinterland was the King of Kings of Ethiopia, King Menelik II. He and his huge territory, then known as Abyssinia, caught the eye of traders as soon as the Suez Canal was opened to international shipping in 1869. This flung open the hitherto closed doors of the Mediterranean Sea to direct access to the Red Sea and then on through the Gulf of Aden to the Far East. Apart from Abyssinian riches on the western littoral of the Red Sea, the rest of the Horn of Africa eastwards to the Indian Ocean belonged to autonomous Somali Clans and their respective nomadic territories?

The first to exploit these new and old waterways was the Khedeve of Egypt who had claimed Berbera in 1867, taking possession of Zeila in 1875 from where his troops marched inland to occupy Harar which was then on the borders of Abyssinia. Menelik had not yet captured it.

The Somalis, for their part, had assets to sell on large home-built wooden Arab dhows that swiftly plied their trade northwards across the deep waters of the Gulf of Aden to the volcanic coast line of Yemen. The Yemeni coast could hardly grow a blade of grass. There was no meat for the occupants. Labourless volcanic Aden was first occupied by the British in 1839 as the only suitable site in the Gulf for a coaling station, provided live meat could be brought over from Somaliland.

Steamships on their way to the Far East and back through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden needed to be fuelled by coal. More than that, the British soldiers guarding the coaling station needed meat to eat. The refrigeration of meat had not been invented. Live pedigree Somali sheep and goats were therefore shipped by dhow from the Somaliland coast to Aden. This procedure became even more imperative when the Suez Canal was opened, releasing thousands of steamships to ply between Europe and the Far East, through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Somaliland live meat was at a premium. It needed protecting. Little wonder Britain persuaded Somali clans on the Somaliland Coast to enter into protective agreements with Britain not to cede their lands to other nations. The British Somaliland Protectorate was virtually born in 1884 but its international boundaries were another matter.

Source: From Awdalnews Network

Home | Contact us | Links | Archives