Image: Sulu Craft off Sandakau, with Mecca Pilgrims

Description: Excerpt from the book: SULU CRAFT AT SANDAKAU. This schooner-rigged craft was rather a surprise when she loomed in the distance, heading for Sandakau Bay and Harbour. When she brought up she presented a very home-made hut foreign appearance, for her masts were comparatively untrimmed sticks with bowsprit en suite. She was carrying Mahommedans on a pilgrimage to Mecca, with the ladies in the thatched house midships ; poor things, would they ever get there? did they ever get there? Deponent sayeth not. She is not a had craft in design, and has lines very like an Arah dhow, which can go anywhere, with the Indian Ocean for its natural habitat, with Bombay at one end and the Red Sea and Berbera tor the oilier. Were they converted Sea Bajaus, determined to atone lor all their past sins by this little yachting expedition across the Indian Ocean? They ought to he all right up to Acheen Head. when, if the pirates of that lively locality did not stop them, they would have then to face the dangers of the deep. That is not all; when they arrive at the sacred object of that pilgrimage the great event of their lives is not completed—there is the return. Fanaticism is a powerful master, and there is something very grand in their faith that "Allah is almighty, all graciousness." So they will, with all patience and resignation, start back with bright hopes, having a full conviction that they have only fulfilled what they conceived to be their religious duty ; and duty is a better master than fanaticism.
Title: Sulu Craft off Sandakau, with Mecca Pilgrims
Credit: Pritchett, Robert Taylor (1899). Pen and pencil sketches of shipping and craft all round the world. London: Edward Arnold. https://archive.org/details/penpencilsketche00prit/page/187/mode/1up
Author: Robert Taylor Pritchett
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No