While the focus of British relations with Abu Dhabi, and the wider United Arab Emirates, is today set firmly in the present, with a commitment to the building of a continuing close relationship in the years to come, the origins of British links with the UAE go back over two hundred years. Some of this earlier history is relatively well-known, such as the signing of 1820 of treaties between the British Government in India and the Rulers of what were to become the Emirates

. Less well-known, though, is the fact that a variety of British sailors, scientists, political officers and others made major contributions to the early collection of dataabout the country. One such contribution was to the charting of the waters of the Gulf, from the late 18th Century until the 1950s. Indeed, all marine charts of the UAE's waters are still largely based on the data collected by British hydrographers.

British scientists, historians and others continue to contribute to knowledge of the Emirates today - part of a relationship between the two countries that has always gone far beyond business and politics.

The article that follows is abridged, with permission, from a longer article that appeared in Volume 15.2 of the journal Tribulus, published by the Emirates Natural History Group, in 2005.

In 1953, I was serving as a watch-keeping officer on board HMS Dalrymple, carrying out a detailed survey of the waters of the UAE to the west of Sir Bani Yas, where soundings on the Admiralty chart were still based on those obtained in 1823 by Lieutenant John Michael Guy of the Bombay Marine, the navy of the British East India CompanyOne afternoon I was in charge on the bridge running lines of soundings in an east-west direction in a comparatively flat bottom. At the end of my watch I retired to my cabin for a well-earned rest, but was soon woken up by a rumbling noise that lasted about thirty seconds.Dashing up on deck, I spotted a dirty brown patch in the water astern. We had run over an uncharted isolated reef and the rumbling noise I had heard was branch coral being broken off by the ship's bottom, fortunately without doing any major damage to the ship. The following day I was sent away in a boat to examine the reef in detail,finding it very small in extent. Being a new discovery, it was named Webb Rock in honour of the senior British naval officer in the Gulf. It is now described in Admiralty sailing directions as

: Webb Rock (24o 05' N; 52o 15' E), with less than 1.8 m over it, lying 6¼ miles offshore NW of Jabal Barakah, should be given a wide berth; soundings give no indication of its proximity, nor can it be seen even in good conditions, except at very close range whence the dark brown coral can be distinguished; there is no sand on it to give the usual warning of lighter coloured water.

Although the general outline of the Arabian Gulf was known to Arab scholars from an early date, European cartographers remained largely ignorant of the area. In the earliest surviving printed maps, the Gulf has a rectangular shape, derived more from imagination than from observation, with its largest dimension being east/west rather than north-west/south-east. By the early sixteenth century, the general outline of the Gulf was depicted much more realistically, particularly on its north-eastern side which by then was being visited by European ships. Since such ships rarely, if ever, ventured along the southern shores of the Gulf, the coastline of the UAE continued to be based largely on imagination. When John Thornton published his chart in The English Pilot: The Third Book in 1703 any additional information was confined mainly to the north-eastern side of the Gulf with virtually no information at all about the coast and islands now comprising the UAE

The first detailed survey of the Gulf was carried out between 1785 and 1787 by John McCluer of the Bombay Marine, which Alexander Dalrymple, Hydrographer to the East India Company, published in 1788. This chart, however, did not cover the waters of the UAE since at the time there was no incentive for the British to examine the southern side of the Gulf since it appeared to offer little.

in the way of trading possibilities. The inhabitants of the coastal settlements to the east of Dubai were also viewed, with good cause, as being unfriendly to European shipping. Indeed it was as a result of attacks by Qasimi vessels, based principally on Ra's al-Khaimah, that eventually brought British warships to UAE waters. During these operations the Minerva, which had been captured by the Qawasim, was recaptured in November 1809 and set on fire in front of Ra's al-Khaimah by the schooner Prince of Wales, assisted by boats from the Chiffone and Caroline

.During British operations against the Qawasim in 1809 and 1810, Captain John Wainwright of HMS Chiffone acquired a great deal of hydrographic information, which he forwarded to the Admiralty. In his report he noted that a frigate could not approach within four miles of Ra's al-Khaimah and that from 'Rumps' (Rams) to Sharjah the coast was low and indifferently planted with dates. It was also indented with a number of creeks affording shelter to potentially hostile vessels. To the west the land, as far as Bahrain, was called by the inhabitants the 'Coast of Danger' and was completely unknown to Europeans, with many shoals reported to lie off it. Wainwright concluded by advocating that a survey of the whole of the Gulf was highly desirable, pointing out that although McCluer's chart was the best one available, it was erroneous in the configuration of the coast. 

Attacks on passing shipping continued in spite of the presence of British warships in the Gulf and eventually a major British expedition was sent against the Qawasim in 1819-20. Accompanying the expedition was Lieutenant Thomas Remon of the Engineers who produced a plan showing the locations of the villages that were attacked as well as individual plans of six of them. The positions of the towers and forts destroyed during the expedition are depicted on the plans. As a result of this expedition, treaties were signed in January 1820 between the British and the Rulers of the Coast, the beginning of what was to become the Trucial States (the present UAE). 

Because of growing British interest in the Gulf, Captain Hurd, Hydrographer to the Admiralty, published the first British Admiralty chart of the Gulf on 21 September 1820, in which he incorporated the surveys and comments made by Wainwright, together with those of McCluer and others. At the western end of the coast of the present-day UAE, in what is now western Abu Dhabi, the chart carries the legend 'This part of the Coast is unknown'. Some soundings are also shown on the chart between Dubai and a position some 70 miles south-west with the legend along the adjacent coastline 'Low sandy Coast with Trees some Forts and small Villages interspersed'. The only part of the coast of present-day UAE which is depicted on this chart with any accuracy is from the Musandam Peninsula to the vicinity of Sharjah.

In 1820, following the signing of the treaties with the Rulers, the Bombay Marine gave instructions for a major survey of the Gulf to be carried out by Lieutenant Guy in the Discovery of 268 tons with Lieutenant George Barnes Brucks as his assistant in the Psyche. Guy started his survey the following year at Ra's Musandam and by the end of 1822 he had reached Abu Dhabi. Since by the end of 1824 Guy and Brucks had extended their survey as far as Ras Rakan at the head of the Qatar Peninsula, it seems likely that they completed the survey of the coast of the UAE and its outlying islands by the end of 1823. While Guy endeavoured to base his surveys on a system of triangulation, this was rarely possible since in places the coast is fringed with low and featureless islands up to 20 miles offshore, making triangulation impracticable. In addition, because of the difficult terrain, many of the bases on which his survey depended were measured by sound between the two ships rather than on shore. Thus many of Guy's surveys were controlled by astronomical observations both on board ship and on shore, where Guy used a sextant on a stand or a theodolite to observe for latitude by observing the meridian altitude of the sun or a star. Guy's longitudes were obtained by chronometer measured from the meridian of the English factory at Bassadore on Qishm Island, whose longitude had been fixed by meridian distances from Bombay. He, therefore, had to return to Bassadore at intervals to check the errors of his chronometers and to obtain provisions. These were also obtained during the survey from local Sheikhs, who were very civil to the officers of the surveying vessels. Soundings were obtained by lead line from which the height of the tide was subtracted to reduce them to a low water datum. In some parts of Guy's survey there are numerous soundings, but in other parts there are large areas with few soundings or even no soundings at all, inevitable in a survey which was principally aimed at discovering the correct delineation of the coastline and the positions and extent of off-lying islands. Guy was faced with the dilemma faced by all surveyors of his generation when surveying a completely unknown stretch of coastline. Such a survey is inevitably a compromise between absolute accuracy and completing the survey to an acceptable degree of accuracy in a reasonable length of time. In such a survey it is inevitable that not all dangers will be discovered as we discovered to our cost in the Dalrymple.

When Guy reached Khor Abdulla, at the head of the Gulf, his health gave way and Brucks took over the survey and we must rely on the latter's memoir, published in 1856, to learn about Guy's survey. In it Brucks wrote that Ra's al-Khaimah .

was prior to the expedition in 1819- 20.... surrounded on three sides with a wall, flanked with towers, and to the south-westward of the town had a further defence of strong square fort or Ghuree, and was at that time supposed to be defended by between six and seven thousand men, including the auxiliaries collected from the country round about, and about eighty boats of different size, from two hundred and fifty to forty or fifty tons, some mounting eight and ten guns. They also had about sixty or seventy pieces of Cannon, of various descriptions, but most of them would be considered unserviceable by Europeans. 

Brucks also commented on Sharjah and Abu Heyle (Abu Hail): 

Shargah...is long and narrow and open: the defences are a fort a little inland, mounting six pieces of Cannon together with some detached towers. In case of alarm from an enemy, it is stockaded round with Date trees and wood...Shargah sends from three to four hundred boats of various sizes to the pearl fishery. 

Aboo Heyle is a small village situated about three miles to the SW of Shargah, on the same creek with Khan village on the other bank. They jointly contain about two hundred and fifty inhabitants of various tribes, mostly fishermen, and are subject to Shargah. 

Brucks described all the islands that he and Guy surveyed. According to him, Jezirat Arzanah was moderately elevated and about six and a half miles in circumference, while its south point, like most of the islands, was low and sheltered from the prevailing winds, where good anchorage could be found under the lee of the island. It had no water. He considered that Jezirat Zarakkuh (Zirku) was the highest island off the south coast of the Gulf and that it afforded good anchorage under its lee, sheltered from the prevailing wind. It too had no water. Sheltered anchorage from northerly winds was essential for the safety of the two ships since in winter the shamal can blow at times with considerable violence. 

The results of the surveys carried out by Guy and Brucks, with support from Captain Haines, covering the waters of the UAE, were drawn at the end of the survey of the Gulf in 1830 on a small scale chart, extending from the Musandam Peninsula to Khor Abdulla, with the off-lying islands drawn on nine large scale plans. On 1 January 1832, James Horsburgh, Hydrographer to the East India Company, published a chart of the Gulf on two sheets based on these surveys. The publication of this chart led to the withdrawal of the 1820 Admiralty chart, which thus was in publication for a very short time. When the Admiralty took over the charting responsibilities of the East India Company in 1861, the Hydrographer of the Navy continued to publish Horsburgh's chart as charts 90 (a) and (b), but did not initiate further major surveys of the coastal waters of the UAE for over 100 years, although a number of minor surveys of small extent were carried out during this period. Thus it was not until after the end of World War II that Guy's survey was finally superseded, when the discovery of oil in the waters of the UAE led to the area being surveyed in detail to modern standards.

Lieutenant Commander Andrew David served in the Arabian Gulf in the early 1950s and, in retirement, has made a special study of British mapping in the Gulf. The illustrations are taken from originals in the archives of the Hydrographic Office in Taunton.