The Strode Venturer - a novel set partly in Maldives

Masters (2006, p. 34) in his book on Maldives writes that:

Despite the unique Maldivian script that dates from the 1600s, most Maldivian myths and stories are from an oral tradition and have only recently appeared in print. Many are stories of witchcraft and sorcery, while others are cautionary tales about the evils of vanity, lust and greed, and the sticky fates of those who transgressed. Some are decidedly weird and depressing, and don’t make good bedtime reading for young children. Novelty Press has published a small book called Mysticism in the Maldives, which is still available. The Hammond Innes thriller The Strode Venturer is about the only well-known novel that is partly set in the Maldives.

The following is a look at The strode Venturer written by Hammon Innes and published in 1965.

The story is set in 1960 and in the southern tip of the country, Addu atoll. The description of Maldives and Addu seems a bit farfetched to a 32 year Maldivian, especially one who has been born and bred in the capital island Malé. However, this story illustrates the plight of the Maldivian people a mere 48 years ago. The contrast between Malé versus outer atolls is quite paramount. It also epitomizes how far Maldives has come in terms of technology and transport in these 48 years. The important question here would be if it is good enough, or is there scope for improvement?

Snapshot of the novel (from the dust cover of the book)

Geoffrey Bailey is a man in search of a new job – a new life. Then Strode & Company, City shipowners, make him a curious offer: find Peter Strode, the family black sheep, and make sure he returns to the fold. Bailey’s acceptance of this assignment plunges him into a world where the smiling face of the Maldive Islands masks unseen terrors. But the lethal dangers of the coral reefs and the remote islands are pale in comparison with the civilized jungle of high financial warfare. And the directors of Strode & Company have too much to lose, and too few scruples, to care about one man’s life – or his death.

Preface (from the book)

Very little is known or has ever been written about the Maldives due to the difficulties of getting there. These coral atolls, running south from Ceylon 500 miles into the Indian Ocean, are like a great barrier reef, and even to-day communication with the mainland is by sailing vessel. On one of the southernmost islands, however, an R.A.F. staging post has been established and its is to the Royal Air Force that I am indebted for the unique opportunity of visiting these remote islands on the equator and getting to know the people who inhabit them. A novel that is partly about these people, and the impact of the twentieth century upon them, must naturally include the R.A.F. who have brought that century into the islands. I should like, therefore, to make it clear that the characters of serving officers and others are entirely imaginary, though ranks and titles have, of course been adhered.

Today, Maldives is a popular tourist destination and it is well known for its beautiful white sandy beaches and crystal clear water. Getting to Maldives is not too difficult and inter-country transport is relatively easier than it was in those days. However, have we developed intellectually, or more importantly have we moved away from the oral tradition, and have we preserved the oral culture?

Interesting snapshots from the novel as I read:

He also gave me my first briefing on Addu Atoll. I had never been there. All I knew of it was a description given me by one of the Britannia pilots – ‘Like a huge aircraft carrier stranded on a coral reef.’ But that was just the island of Gan, not the whole atoll. Alec, on the other hand, had been on a destroyer that had refuelled there during the war when it was known as Port ‘T’. ‘It’s the finest natural harbour I’ve ever seen – a hundred square miles of water entirely protected by reefs and only four navigable channels between them.’ He hadn’t been there since, but without my asking he had borrowed from a destroyer the Admiralty Pilot for the West Coast of India which includes the Maldives. He had also borrowed charts 2989 and 2067 – the first a general chart of the whole 500-mile chain of islands, the second a large-scale chart of Addu Atoll itself (pp. 80-81).

The charts were like no other charts I had ever seen before, for the Maldives are not islands in the normal sense, but groups of coral growth forming lace-like fringes around shallow seas dotted with islets. There were altogether nineteen groups extending from Addu Atoll, which was almost on the equator, 470 miles north to a position west of Ceylon. Some of these groups were over a hundred miles in circumference. It was a great barrier reef with only a few deepwater channels through it – the Equatorial Channel, the One and Half Degree Channel, the Eight Degree Channel (p. 81).

The Adduans were described as ‘great navigators and traders’, but the only things they exported were dried fish and cowrie shells, their existence dependent on what they harvested from the sea and from the soil of pitifully small islands that were nowhere more than five or six feet above the sea level. There was nothing there to attract the attention of a trading concern like Guthrie’s – the islands were far too poor, far too remote. (pp. 81-82)

‘This is one of their big inshore boats – a bondo-dhoni,’ Strode said. ‘With a good sailing breeze like this we’ll be there in under the hour.’ (p.102)... The boat itself was quite different from any I had ever sailed in before. It was home-made, of course, but running my hand curiously over the rough, sun-worn surface of the wood, I found each morticed joint as tight as any boatyard could have made them, the planking copper-fastened and neatly stopped below the paint. The oars consisted of a bent blade of wood with the shaft socketed into a hole in the middle and bound with coir rope through two small holes. The hole pins were of wood, too, and the oars were strapped to them with fastening of twisted rushes. In a manner of moments it seemed, I had been transported back in time to another age where men existed by what they could make with their own hands. It was primitive and yet, glimpsing the line of coral islands ringing the horizon, conscious of their remoteness, their isolation in the enormous wastes of the Indian Ocean everything about me in the boat seemed essentially right, a part of man’s creative genius, his ability to survive. (p. 103)

The art of building this impressive vessel known as dhoni is an oral tradition. Shouldn’t there be illustrative and detailed written texts on this art form?

‘You’ve only just arrived and you know nothing about these people – how they’ve always been different from the rest of the Maldives, how the little they’re able to produce for export has always had to be sold through Malé. That’s the Sultan’s capital. It’s nearly three hundred miles north of here and the Malé Government doesn’t give a damn for the welfare of the Adduans. Exploited, living near the edge of starvation, T.B. and elephantiasis rife – you’ve only got to look at the size of them. You see what you think is a ten-year-old boy and you find he’s eighteen, possibly twenty. It’s pathetic.’ (p. 105)

The Maldives government has done a number of works in addressing these health related issues with the assistance of international aid agencies. However, is it properly documented? Has there been a scholarly communication process? Does a scholar or a researcher interested in these kinds of information have the access to this information? Has it been collected and collated? Is it accessible?

‘Two years ago the Adduans set up an independent People’s Republic. A couple of gunboats were sent down from Malé and if it hadn’t been for the R.A.F. there’d been a bloody massacre. The island group to the north was brought to heel, but these boys still have their own government. They are free. But they’ve had to pay a high price for their freedom. You’ll see when we land. I’ll show you something that as a sailor will make you heart bleed.’ (p. 106)

Isn’t this an important piece of information that citizens need to know about? An average high school student, by the end of their 10 years of education in Maldives would not know about this. Shouldn’t this be important information that needs to be incorporated in the teaching of national history so that lessons can be learned from that incidence?

In less than half an hour I could see the land curving round ahead of us. The dark blur became steadily blacker, more pronounced. Suddenly there were palm trees, the dark outline of thatched houses and then the shadow of a coral reef was slipping by and the crew were lowering sails as we glided into a white sand beach where men stood in the shallows waiting for us. Strode touch my arm and pointed. ‘See those?’ (p. 107)

‘I want you to meet Don Mansoor.’ The man in the linen jacket shook my hand. ‘I am very pleased to meet you,’ he said in precise English. ‘Happy to be welcoming you to the island of Midu.’ There was dignity and an old-world charm in the manner in his welcome, but his gaze was shrewd and his hand, though small, had a powerful grip. 'Don Mansoor is a great navigator,’ Strode said. ‘Probably the greatest in Addu.’ The long, rather sad face broke into a smile that sent little lines running out of the corners of the eyes. ‘I am sailing very many times to Ceylon.’ (p. 108)

Passages like these illustrates how well Hammon Innes captured the essence of Maldivian culture, the way of living, behaving and talking.

Don Mansoor’s gai or house was built like the rest of coral cement with a palm-thatched roof. There was a well in the forecourt and the interior was lit by a roaring pressure lamp that cast giant shadows with every movement of the occupants. There was a table, chairs and a big, ornate mirror, a dresser with cheap English china displayed. But the thing I remember most clearly was a great swinging bed slung by ropes from the balm bole roof beams. His wife greeted us, slight and dark with doe-like eyes and a beauty that was clearly driven from Ceylon. There were other, older women in the background, and as I sat down a young girl brought me a glass of some pale, amber-coloured liquid. He soft nubile features smiled at me shyly as she moved back into the shadows with a glint of gold at waist and throat. (p. 112)

The family atmosphere, the sense of order and neatness, of a culture and a way of life nurtured and maintained in absolute isolation; it was impressive and strangely attractive so that I felt relaxed and at ease, and as I sipped my drink I found myself falling under the spell of the island. (p. 113)

‘I don’t care where he finished up. He caused me one hell of a flap. And the situation here is almost as tricky. As you know, the Maldivian Government had the question of Addu Atoll raised in the united Nations. Contrary to what they claim, we did nothing to encourage the Adduans to form a break-away republic. One may sympathise with
them privately, but officially it’s been a damned nuisance.’ (p. 124)

Inevitably I thought, and fretted whilst he showed me the Government building, the house of the man who had styled himself President of the Adduan People’s Republic, the neat ordered streets of the capital: and then we were whirring low over the reefs, heading east. There was a batteli fishing in the Kuda Kanda Channel, the curve of its white sail like the wing of a bird, and shoals of big fish – bonito – just beyond Bushy Island; and the far side of the Man Kanda Channel he came down low to follow four big rays winging their was with slow beats across reef shallows that were shot with all the hues of coral growth. (p. 128)

He was silent then and I waited, listening to he liquid sound of the Adduans talking amongst themselves. In the end it was Don Mansoor who answered. ‘You must understand that we are very poor peoples here in Addu. Very poor indeed before the R.A.F. are coming to the island.’ His was soft and gentle, his English nearly fluent. Later I discovered he has been educated at Bombay University. ‘We are always very distant from Malé and the government. But we have nothing but fish and cowrie shells to sell to the world outside. We wish to be less independent upon the R.A.F. They are our friends. They have been very welcome to use. They raised our conditions of living so that we have lamps and oil to put in them, flour and cigarettes, even radios. But what happens next year or the year after? We do not know. We want independence for all times, but we are not being certain of our independence if we are not having – if we do not have ...’ ‘Resources,’ Peter Strode said. (p. 137)

... ‘Storms aren’t very common – no storms of any duration. But he [Don Mansoor] hit one and it carried hi'm into an area that he’d never been in before. Probably no one has. It’s right off the tract of any shipping, away from any route that aircraft take, even R.A.F. planes.’ He paused there. I think he was afraid that he was being betrayed into telling me too much. ‘An undiscovered island?’ ‘Perhaps.’ He picked up one of the lumps of ore and held it in his hand, staring at it as though it contained some magical property. (p. 140)

‘I suppose you could call it an island, yes. It was the bed of the Indian Ocean really.’ He’d come straight from the airport, his tropical suit still rumpled from the journey, but he didn’t seem tired and he wanted to talk. ‘Never seen anything like it. All grey slime and weed and the empty cases of shellfish, and stinking like a dirty harbour at low water.’ The description, the atmosphere of the place came pouring out from him compulsively, leaving me with the impression of a dark whale shape about three miles by two, a dead decaying mass from the ocean depths lying stranded in a flat calm oily swell a thousand miles from anywhere. He had seen the manganese lying exposed in drifts like banks of black metallic shingle. And here and there were outcrops of the basalt from which the nodules had been leached by the sea’s action. But most of the island was overlaid by sediment, a grey slime baking under a blazing hot sun. He wouldn’t tell me where the island was. “It’s way off any steamer track, clear of the flight path of any plane.’ (p. 172)

Nobody said anything. We just stood there, too dazed, too mesmerised by what we had seen to speak. Lennie Porter was the first to find his voice. ‘What was it? What the hell was it?’ But nobody could explain it. We looked it up in the Pilot. The master of the Ariosto had seen very much what we had seen, but off the coast of Kutch in India more than fifty years ago. In his case the phenomenon had lasted twenty minutes with the appearance of very high seas. He had described them as so agitated that they appeared ‘like a boiling pot, giving one a most curious feeling 0 the ship being perfectly still, and expecting her to lurch and roll every instant.’ And his report added, ‘It turned me dizzy watching the moving flashes of light, so that I had to close my eyes from time to time.’ On leaving it in the line of light had presented the same appearance as on entering, as of breakers on a low beach, and after steaming through bright, clear, cloudless night for a further twenty minutes, the whole thing had been repeated, but if anything slightly worse. The Pilot recorded two other instances, both reported by naval vessels – in 1928 and 1933. But it offered no explanation, merely observing that the phenomenon could occur in the open sea as well as near land and either in calm or stormy water and that it might be caused by ‘the presence of confervae or other organic matter in the water.’ Peter had heard about the ‘white water’ from Don Mansoor during his voyages from Mukalla to Addu Atoll. ‘He told me he had seen it twice and each time his crew had been very frightened, thinking it was Ran-a-Maari.’ Ran-a-Maari, he explained, was apparently some sort of jinn or devil, and he added, ‘The first man the Adduans recognise is Adam, the second Noah and the third Solomon, whom thy call Suleiman. According to legend, Suleiman made a copper ball and confined Ran-a-Maari inside it, but wasn’t big enough to encase the jinn’s legs.’ He smiled, the lines at the corders of his eyes deepening, Suleiman threw the copper ball with Ran-a-Maari inside it into the sea and it’s their belief that the white water is the threshing of the jinn’s legs as he struggles to release himself.’ A pleasant enough story to chuckle over beside a winter fire back in England. But out there in the Indian Ocean, in seas that were virtually unchartered, the superstitions of a primitive people seemed less absurd. (pp. 220-221)

The white waters, and the appearance of high seas – is this what is described as kandumathi elhun? Wonder how much has been written about these phenomena by Maldivians. I have heard people talk about this. People who have actually been in this situation. But how well has this information been collected and disseminated? Has there been any attempt by Maldivians to understand this phenomenon or is it yet another unknown and unexplained occurrence left to the fanditha verin for the mere reason that it is not readily explainable?

‘They’re not helpless.’ He turned on me furiously, his eyes glittering in the sun so that for a moment he really did look mad. And then in an even tone he said, ‘They’re an intelligent, highly civilised people, an island race that understands the sea. And they’re tough.’ (p. 240).

The vedis came down on us under full sail, heeling to the breeze and the water bone-white in front of their blunt bows. They were doing a good six knots and as they came abreast of us, so close we could have tossed a coin on to their decks, their crews began to sing – a sad, strange chant. Both chips were flying the blue, green and red flag of Adduan People’s Republic and when they were past and showing us their blunt, dhow-like sterns, the crews moved to their stations. They stood in as far as the first shoal, and just beyond it they turned as one with their bows facing into the wind and the sails came down with a run as the anchors were let go, I shall never forget the arrival of those first two vedis. It wasn’t just that they looked so magnificent, coming in like that without engines, their decks littered with the bits and pieces of the boats they had brought with them. It was the behaviour of their crews. After such a long and dangerous voyage they might have been expected to rest or embark in a
leisurely exploration of the island. Instead, they went to work at once, unloading gear and stores, getting their dhonis launched. Their urgency and enthusiasm was so immediate that we just stood there, watching spell-bound, so that it was some time before we got into a boat and went across to them. (p. 410)

The Adduan flag was then run up on the spar they had brought from Midu. It was an impressive, very colourful flag – blue, green and red in horizontal stripes with white stars in opposite corners and white star and crescent in the centre. Peter then produced a new ship’s log book and everybody signed their name in it as witness to the formal annexation of the island by the Adduan People’s Republic. (p.412)

They would still need sugar, rice, implements, but they knew now that the island was viable. They had the illusion, if not the actuality, of independence. And in the stockpile of ore on the quay they had the assurance that there was something else beside cowrie shells and dried fish that they could trade to the outside world. (p. 413)

This has been a fascinating read. Above I have only highlighted some texts that relate to Maldivian context. The rest of the story about the family feuds, boardroom dramas, and the voyages itself present an interesting mixture of a journey.
What is noteworthy is the fast paces that Maldives has taken in decreasing the differences between her and other countries.

This is a must for the Maldives national collection. I wonder if they have it. I wish I could check their catalogue online.
Note: These are the sorts of things that need to be improved in the Maldives information culture: a more proactive approach in information collection, preservation and dissemination from the information providers, a more open environment of information exchange and use by the wider community, a curiosity in discovering the unknown and unexplained, a desire to advance knowledge...

Source:
Innes, H. (1965) The Strode Venturer. Collins.
Masters, T. (2006) Maldives. Lonely Planets.