When Tim Severin repeated Sinbad the Sailors voyage from Oman to China
“Did Sinbad the Sailor really exist? Did he actually make those fabulous journeys legends have credited him with?” asked the South China Morning Post on March 27, 1980. “One man aims partially to answer these questions – and to prove that Arabs first sailed the 6,000-mile voyage to China long before any European ships ventured to this part of the world,” the story continued.
“Madness, some might say. But then Tim Severin is no fool.”
When the British explorer set sail that November aboard the Sohar – “a replica of a medieval Arab ship” – he would “be following a trade route opened up more than 2,000 years ago, from the [Persian] Gulf to south India, across the eastern half of the Indian Ocean to the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, and finally across the South China Sea to Hongkong”, reported the Post on April 13.
The Sohar reached its destination, Huangpu Port, in Canton, on July 1, 1981. The voyage, which was sponsored by the government of Oman, had taken more than seven months.
At a welcoming reception, China’s minister for cultural relations with foreign countries, Huang Zhen, said the endeavour “symbolises the new development of a long history of friendship between the two peoples”, according to a July 14 Post article.
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“The epic voyage of the sailing vessel Sohar is over and its crew have established that the legend of Sinbad the Sailor is firmly rooted in historical fact,” it reported on July 16, after the dhow docked in Hong Kong.
Crew members said it had not all been plain sailing. “People began to suffer from hypochondria (anxiety) […] just being on the ship was becoming a strain,” said the ship’s doctor, Nicholas Hollis.
“It’s nice being back in civilisation again,” admitted Richard Greenhill, the ship’s photographer.
Severin praised his shipmates. “I could not have hoped for a better crew,” he said.
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