‘What I order you is, to keep steady at the helm,’ shouted Bruce over the roar of the wind:
mind the vane on the top of the mast, and steer straight before the wind, for I am resolved to cut that main-sail to pieces, and prevent the mast from going away, and your vessel from sinking to the bottom … D—n Sidi e Genowi, you beast, cannot you give me a rational answer? Stand to your helm, look at the vane; keep the vessel straight before the wind, or by the great G – d who sits in heaven … I will shoot you dead the first yaw the ship gives, or the first time that you leave the steerage.
With that, he lurched across the boat, having ripped off most of his clothes – in case it became necessary to swim – and tore the mainsail to pieces with a machete. When they eventually made it back to the tiny port at Cosseir, they discovered that three boats from that village alone had been lost that day.
On 5 April they were able to set sail for Jiddah in the boat which Bruce had previously chartered. This had canvas sails which could be furled and ‘though small – was tight and well-rigged’. The ship’s captain was experienced and trustworthy though he had an uncanny likeness to an ape, which Bruce found endlessly amusing. He was indeed known by everyone as Ali the Ape. Not one to go on a leisurely cruise when there was work to be done, Bruce decided that he must chart the Red Sea while he was there and hence spent much of his time taking measurements and hurling plummets over the side of the boat. Marine navigation was not something he had studied, yet his chart of the Red Sea was used and valued for many years afterwards. Owing to the plethora of treacherous reefs in the narrow sea, it had previously been impossible for larger boats to travel its entire length. Combined with a treaty with the Bey of Cairo which he managed to forge on his way home, Bruce’s soundings changed all that. He also made an exhaustive survey of where drinking water could be procured, where it was safe to land and which languages were spoken at which ports.
In his Original Portraits, first published forty years after Bruce’s death, John Kay gave an example of how thoroughly Bruce had done the job: ‘Sir David Baird,’ he reported, ‘while commanding the British troops in the Red Sea, publicly declared that the safety of the army was mainly owing to the striking accuracy of Mr Bruce’s chart.’
Baird was a great popular hero who had been captured by Tipoo Sahib in India in 1780 and held captive for four years when he was in his early twenties. In 1801, by then promoted to general and knighted, he led a relief force from the Indian army to help in the removal of Napoleon from Egypt. He sailed up the Red Sea, using Bruce’s chart, marched from Cosseir, using Bruce’s map, and then sailed down the Nile – arriving in Alexandria with plenty of time left to assist in its capture.
The Red Sea inspired Bruce in many way, yet though he succeeded in much that he set out to do there a few of his ambitions proved too challenging. He did chart the sea and open it up to British trade but failed in his desire to solve the riddles of the Bible and the classical writers. He had tracked down and rejected the emerald mountains; he now set himself the formidable task of discovering how Moses parted the sea when being pursued by the Egyptians: ‘If the Etesian wind, blowing from the north-west in summer, could heap up the sea as a wall, on the right, or to the south, of fifty feet high, still the difficulty would remain, of building the wall on the left hand, or the north. Besides, water standing in that position for a day, must have lost the nature of fluid.’
After much time spent in these bizarre musings he eventually came to a conclusion he deemed satisfactory:
This passage is told us, by scripture, to be a miraculous one; and, if so, we have nothing to do with natural causes. If we do not believe Moses, we need not believe the transaction at all, seeing that it is from his authority alone we derive it. If we believe in God that he made the sea, we must believe he could divide it when he sees proper reason, and of that he must be the only judge.
The captain of the ship had various cargoes which needed collecting and depositing around the Red Sea so Bruce received a guided tour on his way down to Jiddah. He stopped off in Yambo, where the inhabitants were engaged in civil war and where he watched a savage battle which halted only because of a lack of ammunition, and he stretched his legs on islands whose wildlife he decimated in order to vary the constant diet of fish. The voyage gave him time to prepare his mind for Abyssinia and to ponder which towns corresponded with the ones he had read about in the works of the geographers Herodotus and Cosmas Indicoplustes. It was 3 May before they ‘anchored in the port of Jidda, close up on the key, where the officers of the custom-house immediately took possession of our baggage’.
When Bruce had set off to Cosseir across the desert he had been excited by the fact that it was the last of civilization he would see for some time. He had forgotten about Jiddah where British ships from India came to trade with Arabia. They could go no further thanks to insufficient treaties and the treachery of the waters but they were firmly ensconced at the Red Sea port. There was a factory and a small community of British working for the East India Company who had to loiter there in between journeys, waiting for the monsoon trade winds to turn to their advantage. There were nine British merchantmen at anchor when Bruce arrived and paid negotiators were busy making deals in a manner which fascinated him:
They sit down on the carpet, and take an Indian shawl, which they carry on their shoulder, like a napkin, and spread it over their hands. They talk, in the meantime, indifferent conversation, of the arrival of ships from India, or the news of the day, as if they were employed in no serious business whatever. After about twenty minutes spent in handling each other’s fingers below the shawl, the bargain is concluded, say for nine ships, without one word ever having been spoken on the subject, or pen or ink used in any shape whatever. There never was one instance of a dispute happening in these sales.
As a show of good manners as well as a way to ease his passage, Bruce always wore a native costume, usually that of a nobleman. When he went to the Bengal-house to meet his compatriots, however, he was dressed as a Turkish mariner.
I desired to be carried to a Scotchman, a relation of my own, who was then accidentally leaning over the rail of the staircase, leading up to his apartment. I saluted him by his name; he fell into a violent rage, calling me villain, thief, cheat and renegade rascal; and declared, if I offered to proceed a step further, he would throw me over the stairs.
Bruce’s disguise was obviously more effective, considering his size and manner, than one might otherwise have thought. The surly captain and relation was later claimed by James Boswell to be their mutual cousin, Bruce Boswell. He is not named in Bruce’s Travels but, for some unfathomable reason, Boswell made this assertion in an article about his adventurous countryman that he wrote for the London Magazine. Bruce Boswell was indeed the kind of man to behave in such a manner. He was a famously appalling captain and was later cashiered before being accepted back as a trader after his influential cousin had interceded with the board in London. He was at this time only twenty – too young to be a captain – and according to well-kept East India Company records, employed in China. Whoever the man was, he did not give Bruce the reception he had hoped for. The insulted traveller decided to remain incognito and take the measure of the other captains at Jiddah. These captains were a glamorous lot, given to wearing tight, bright breeches, much gold braid and exotically coloured turbans. They adopted the manners of both East and West and were much respected by both. Bruce, however, did not initially warm to them: ‘I thought within myself, if those are their Indian manners I shall keep my name and situation to myself while I am at Jidda’.
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