The Year of Taba’a (The Great ‘Sinking’)

The Arabian Gulf (aka Persian Gulf, but the Arabs of the region, including me, will not call it that off course!), is mostly known around the world for its oil fortunes. But, like other places, it had its share of disasters, both natural and man-made: wars (naturally!), earthquakes (in Iran), plane crashes, and storms.

This post is about a disaster of the last kind: the great sea storm of 1925. People in the gulf call it the “Taba’a” (the ‘sinking’) because when it happened, it sank almost all the ships in the gulf. In Arabic, a “Taba’a” also means a “print” or an “imprint”. The “Taba’a” catastrophe was imprinted for decades on the gulf people’s minds and souls.

In the third decade of the twentieth century, the gulf states economy was still impoverished. It was based on pearl diving, palm cultivation, and fishing. Devastating storms were not a frequent event in the generally calm waters of the gulf, but they were not unheard of either. There were several “sinkings” other than that of 1925, like the “Kuwaiti’s sinking” when in 1871 Kuwaiti trading ships where stormed and sunk while they were on their way back from Muscat and India just before reaching the Straits of Hormuz. Other “sinkings” happened inside the gulf waters in 1910, and in 1916.

The “sinking” of 1925 was by far the most devastating. Bahrain, the island in the middle of the gulf, lost about 5,000 of its population that night (its total population was less than 80,000!).

On a quiet September night in 1925, the pearl diving season was coming to an end with only two days left for the ships to sail back to the shore. Early that night, all the ships have taken their positions on their designated “dives”. The crews were preparing for their pearl diving rounds first thing in the morning.

It was a full moon and the sea was so quiet, as one survivor remembered. Many sailors stayed awake on the decks chatting and resting in what appeared to be a pleasant night. Little after midnight, the weather changed suddenly. A strong wind blew accompanied by heavy torrential rain. The sea roared beneath the ships taking them by surprise. Everyone on board ran for cover. Just a few moments afterwards, every cover blew away. The ships, which were stationed close to each other, started twirling hysterically in the sea and crashed into each other.

The screams of sailors fighting the monstrous waves and calling for each other, mixed with the groans of those injured by the ships wreckage. Their outcries of prayers and supplications to God, in which they deeply believed, were lost in the thundering noise of the sinking ships.

The mayhem lasted for a little over half an hour. When the storm finally waned down, ships from neighbouring ports rushed to the scene to rescue the survivors. It was said that 80% of the ships on the gulf water that night sank, and even the ships that did not sink sustained great damage.

In the morning, the sea surface was crowding with dead corpses. The scores of torn naked bodies floating in the water were the inscription of the brief catastrophic event. The survivors returned to the shores severely injured and traumatised.