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'"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE' [149r] (297/336)
The record is made up of 1 volume (168 folios). It was created in 1982?. 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 Documents collected in a private capacity. .
Transcription
This transcription is created automatically. It may contain errors.
147 -
setting out for the banks for some days beforehand where they would wait
until the opening date before commencing to dive, and those that sailed on the
opening date did so throughout the day and not all together. The return from
the dive was quite a different matter and several hundred boats would arrive
together off the Islands in one great fleet; a magnificent sight never to be
seen again.
The boats themselves varied considerably in size from small craft of thirty
feet in length to large vessels with an overall length of as much as eighty
feet. They were all made of wood Imported from Calicut and Veraval in South
India and none of them had any motive power other than their sweeps and sails.
The divers and the crew lived in the greatest discomfort for the four months
of the dive, sleeping in hammocks slung in the rigging or on the bare decks of
the vessels. Normally they remained at sea during the whole period being
provisioned by launches from the nearest town. The divers varied in age from
lads of scarcely sixteen to old men over seventy and all were 'skin* divers as
no mechanical diving apparatus was tolerated in the Gulf. Each diver when
working was looked after by a drawer on deck who was responsible for tending
the line which led down to the diver and for drawing up the weight with which
the diver speeded his descent to the oyster beds. Only occasionally was any
thing in the nature of clothing used other than the usual loincloth and this
was in waters Infested with small stinging jelly fish when a sort of tight-
fitting cotton overall was worn.
The divers were always in debt to the owners of the boats who made advances to
them at the beginning of the season. The divers' share of the profits was
seldom sufficiently high for these advances to be fully repaid and they con
tinued from season to season, mounting into formidable sums, the responsi
bility for the payment of which descended from father to son and could be, and
often was, a millstone around the neck of the whole family. The Bahrein
Government introduced special diving rules and laws designed to lighten the
burden of debt on divers and eventually the hereditary responsibility for a
diving debt was abolished. The Government set up also special diving Courts
where disputes between divers and owners and brokers were tried by experts.
In spite of all these well-intentioned efforts by the Bahrein and other State
Governments, it was a hard, dreary life with little profit except to the lucky
few, and I for one am glad that those days are past and the men are now able
to earn a far higher wage in a much less exacting and more healthy way.
About this item
- Content
This volume is a set of typewritten memoirs by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, a retired officer of the British Indian Army and the Indian Political Service The branch of the British Government of India with responsibility for managing political relations between British-ruled India and its surrounding states, and by extension the Gulf, during the period 1937-47. . Hickinbotham held various positions in India and in the Middle East, and these memoirs recount stories from his time in Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Quetta, Persia [Iran], Aden, Audhali, Bahrain and North Waziristan.
The memoirs were most likely completed in 1982-83; they cover the period 1927-1982, although most of the chapters relate to events from the 1930s and 1940s.
Hickinbotham writes not only about his official duties but also about various trips taken during periods of leave. Below is a list of the chapters, with a short summary of each:
- 'No Medals This Time' (ff 3-6) – details of an incident in Kuwait involving a dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. that caught fire off the foreshore at Shuwaik [Ash Shuwaykh]
- 'The Silver Coin' (ff 7-10) – thoughts on the use of the Maria Theresa thaler in Arabia
- 'The Golden Dagger' (ff 11-36) – an account of Hickinbotham's unofficial visit to Riyadh to meet Ibn Saud [‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Fayṣal Āl Sa‘ūd] in May 1942
- 'The Brass Pencase' (ff 37-53) – memories of a journey undertaken from Quetta to Europe via north Persia in 1927, travelling in a Fiat Tourer with Colonel T Nisbet (also referred to as the 'purple emperor'), on what Hickinbotham claims to have been the first trip taken by car from India to the Mediterranean
- 'The Bronze Boy' (ff 54-72) – reminiscences of weekends spent in 'Little Aden' (a rocky peninsula seven miles west of Aden), in 1938, and a later visit, in December 1961
- 'The Silver Letter Case' (ff 73-118) – details of a ten-day trip on the Audhali plateau in the summer of 1938, and a return visit, in December 1960 (the chapter ends with remarks on the situation in Yemen generally from the late sixties to the time of writing, i.e. 1982)
- 'The Agate Ring' (ff 119-144) – memories of travelling in Oman during the summer of 1940 and how this compared with Hickinbotham's last visit to the country in 1980
- 'The Pearl Tie Pin' (ff 145-151) – thoughts and anecdotes on the pearl trade in Bahrain
- 'A Point of View' (ff 152-157) – a story told to Hickinbotham, possibly fictional, of a pearl trader in the Gulf who lost his fortune and livelihood, and eventually his sanity
- 'Snakes Alive!!' (ff 158-161) – an account of a near-fatal encounter with a krite [krait] in Waziristan
- 'The Queen's Visit' (ff 162-168) – memories of the Queen's visit to the Aden Protectorate in 1954, where Hickinbotham was serving as Governor.
- Extent and format
- 1 volume (168 folios)
- Arrangement
The volume contains an index of chapter headings on folio 2, which includes some handwritten corrections and annotations.
- Physical characteristics
Foliation: the foliation sequence (used for referencing) commences at the first folio with 1, and terminates at the last folio with 168; these numbers are written in pencil, are circled, and are located in the top right corner of the recto The front of a sheet of paper or leaf, often abbreviated to 'r'. side of each folio. An additional mixed foliation/pagination sequence is also present in parallel between ff 3-168.
Condition: The original plastic comb binding ring has been replaced with a wider one to facilitate flat opening of the volume. Polyester film covers have been added to protect the first and last folios.
- Written in
- English in Latin script View the complete information for this record
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'"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE' [149r] (297/336), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, Mss Eur F226/13, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100094411639.0x000062> [accessed 16 June 2026]
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Copyright: How to use this content
- Reference
- Mss Eur F226/13
- Title
- '"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE'
- Pages
- 1r:168v
- Author
- Hickinbotham, Sir Tom
- Usage terms
- The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.