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??? PLs Robux

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I’m not using this I don’t want to cheat

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The record is made up of 1 file (22 folios). It was created in 5 Jun 1929-18 Apr 1935. It was written in English. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers.

Transcription
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Content

The file contains a paper entitled 'Vocabulary of diving terms', giving a list of terms for types of divers and persons related to diving, and descriptions of four diving systems; notes on advances and payments; notes on accounts; list of general terms relating to diving; miscellaneous notes on diving; correspondence between the Political Resident A senior ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul General) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Residency. in the Persian Gulf Historically used by the British to refer to the sea area between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. Often referred to as The Gulf or the Arabian Gulf. , Bushire (Lieutenant Colonel Cyril Charles Johnson Barrett), and the American Consul in Baghdad, dated 1929, in which the Resident strongly advises the Consul against an American firm sending a pearl fishing ship to the Persian Gulf Historically used by the British to refer to the sea area between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. Often referred to as The Gulf or the Arabian Gulf. , stating that the pearl fisheries had been conducted from time immemorial by the inhabitants of the Gulf coasts, and any interference by outsiders would be strenuously resisted and attended with considerable risk; press cuttings, 1934-1935; and note on levy recruits' diving debts.

Extent and format

1 file (22 folios)

Arrangement

The papers are arranged chronologically from the front to the rear of the file.

Physical characteristics

Foliation: The foliation system in use appears in a circle in the top right-hand corner of each folio. There is a second, uncircled, foliation sequence by which some of the folios are numbered (with gaps) 1-8, 18-19, 35-37, and 78-79 (folios 2-21).

Condition: Folio 21 is torn at one corner and some text is missing.

Written in

English in Latin script
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'File 10/6 Pearl diving and pearl trade: Correspondence re:' [‎2r] (3/44)

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Information about this record Back to top Open in Universal viewer Open in Mirador IIIF viewer The record is made up of 1 file (22 folios). It was created in 5 Jun 1929-18 Apr 1935. It was written in English.

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This is a commercial, but has some cool shots of pearl diving.

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When you think of Arabia today, you think of oil, and unimaginable wealth. But less than a century ago, oil had yet to be discovered. The region was poor and one of its main sources of income - pearl fishing - was about to be killed by cheap competition and the intransigence of colonial administrators, writes Matthew Teller.

"Yusuf was ready to dive. He took his basket, holding it by the rim, and [twisted] one leg about the rope with the stone. Down he went, down, down. I could watch him drop three, four fathoms. Then he was gone."

So wrote Australian explorer Alan Villiers, describing a pearl-diving expedition off Kuwait in 1939, in his book Sons of Sindbad.

"How long he was down! There was silence aboard. [Then came] a slight tug [on the rope] and the tender was hauling in fast, hand over hand. It was a long time before I saw any sign of Yusuf, deep below. A smudge became the blurred outline of a man.

Round the Bend

A series of tales from the days when Britain ruled India and the Gulf, told with documents newly digitised by the British Library
The diplomat who said 'No' to Saudi oil Love to Patrick The ultimate hardship posting When British diplomats ran the Gulf
"Here he came, breaking water at last. His basket first, well-filled with oysters, then his old head with an arm thrown up to shield his water-tired eyes from the glare of the sun. He blew once, like a whale."

Villiers knew he was lucky to see, and photograph, the last gasps of an industry - pearl-diving - which had sustained Arabia's coastal communities for generations.

Since the 1920s Japanese cultured (artificially produced) pearls had flooded the world market, their cheapness and abundance fatally undercutting Arabia's labour-intensive harvesting of natural pearls from the oyster banks beneath the warm waters of the Gulf.

Pearl-diving was incredibly taxing. A diver would coat his skin in oil, plug his ears with cotton wool, don leather sheaths on fingers and toes for protection against razor-sharp rocks, hang a rope basket around his neck and seal his nostrils with a nose-clip.

Holding a heavy stone tied with a rope, he would sink to the oyster-beds, as much as 60 feet (18m) down. An assistant on deck pulled up the stone while the diver scraped oysters off rocks with a knife, storing them in his neck-basket.

When his lungs could take no more, he tugged on a line and was hauled up to the surface to recover. This would be repeated perhaps 30 times a day, with divers pooling their oysters on deck for opening under the captain's watchful eye.

Between May and September hundreds of wooden ships headed out to the oyster banks from Gulf towns including Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi - all, then, small fishing harbours. Crews of divers, pullers and apprentices lived on board in incredibly cramped conditions for weeks at a time.

Sea shanties from that era are kept alive by the old pearling families. British Library ethnomusicologist Rolf Killius recorded one particularly bluesy, evocative session in Qatar in 2013.
British Library curator Mark Hobbs contributed original research for this article.
Everyone was in debt. The divers were advanced money by their captain against a share of the boat's profits; if one year was bad, they would begin the next in the red, with debts accruing year on year. The captains were in debt to pearl merchants, who loaned money to finance voyages - and the merchants were frequently in debt to buyers further up the chain.
Round the Bend Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. is a series of tales from the days when Britain ruled India and the Gulf, told with documents newly digitised by the British Library. You can explore the archive yourself.
High demand from India and Europe kept the trade going. In 1865 Bahrain - the centre of Gulf pearling - reportedly made a profit from pearls of around £30m in today's money. At its height, in 1904-05, the industry was worth more than £100m.

Yet pay and working conditions remained terrible, as ruling families and the colonial power, Britain, resisted ideas of modernisation. They seem to have feared that new ways of working would bring social instability.

Refusing to allow technological innovations such as deep-sea diving suits, Britain spread the idea that - as diplomat Hugh Biscoe wrote in 1930 - "anyone using artificial aids for diving incurs great risks".

Such intransigence killed off any chance of the Gulf competing against the new cultured pearl business, long before the outbreak of World War Two. A generation lived in desperate poverty - until large-scale oil production, from the 1950s, suddenly changed everything.

Click here to see the original of the vocabulary of diving terms. Alan Villiers' photographs, in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, can be seen here.

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When you think of Arabia today, you think of oil, and unimaginable wealth. But less than a century ago, oil had yet to be discovered. The region was poor and one of its main sources of income - pearl fishing - was about to be killed by cheap competition and the intransigence of colonial administrators, writes Matthew Teller.

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http://bit.ly/2meRL7e