1^8 CHALLENGER 



but a large sea-going hydrographic unit, and the Iraq Petroleum 

 Company applied to the Admiralty for assistance in this matter 

 at just about the time that the Hydrographer, now Admiral Wyatt, 

 was completing his post-war survey plans for this area. Challenger 

 was in fact on her way to the Gulf and was at this time carrying 

 out a survey of the Daimmiyat Islands before proceeding to carry 

 out surveys off the Trucial Coast ; so that it only needed a directive 

 to her to give priority to that part of the coast directly south of 

 Doha where it was hoped to find a channel leading into the 

 sheltered deep water south of Fasht al Arrif reef. 



Captain Sam Southern was now in command of the ship and 

 he had with him several old Challenger officers. The First Lieut- 

 enant, who had been in charge of the ship during her recent refit, 

 was responsible for the great amount of useful additional gear the 

 ship now carried, for he had found a simple way of obtaining 

 such things in the dockyard at Chatham. He had carried a piece 

 of chalk with him and had put the ship's name on anything useful 

 he saw lying in the yard, and sooner or later this resulted in its 

 being delivered onboard by the authorities. Charles Grattan was 

 the Navigator and he was proud of the fact that he had been in 

 the Gulf in Challenger before the War ; this led him to remark to 

 a junior officer on the bridge, as they approached Bahrein and 

 saw the oil flare at the refinery at Sitrah, that he had sighted this 

 on occasions at a distance of loo miles. The Captain, who always 

 enjoyed a leg-pull, at once said, without a smile on his face, that 

 he had seen it loi miles distant, and turning on his heel left the 

 bridge and Grattan in a fury. 



A visit was first paid to Bahrein, where the Captain obtained 

 a letter for the Sheikh of Qatar from Sir Rupert Hay, the Political 

 Resident, so that the Sheikh should know what this strange white 

 ship was doing, and that her men who would come ashore in the 

 wastes of Qatar were not evilly disposed but would be hastening 

 the day when the first barrel of oil would be exported and the 

 first royalties become available to the Sheikh, who had ruled his 

 barren lands for so long and was about to see his desert flower 

 indeed. 



The ship came to anchor off the crumbling stone township of 

 Doha, which is scattered along the shores of a lagoon protected 

 by off-lying coral reefs. A shallow channel through these reefs, 



