Dawson Of Arabia ( VILLAGE TALES EP. 55 )

More Dawson catastrophes. Charles Dawson and his part during the WW1 in Egypt alongside Lawrence, then Captain Nathanial Dawson, accidental discoverer of islands and coloniser, both knighted for their services to the Crown.

Trawling through dusty old papers, diaries and correspondence is not my idea of heaven, however it is Rachael’s, our village historian. She sometimes refers to herself as an amanuensis, not necessarily copying manuscripts but spending as much time with them, researching the background to my stories, and more profitably, the history of the Dawson family and their catalogue of catastrophes. 

The political map of the middle east is complicated enough now but during the first world war it makes the current situation look almost straightforward. The French and British had not given up colonial control but needed Arab help to overcome the alliance between Germany, and Turkey and their Ottoman empire which had possessed Arab lands since the fourteenth century. India too had an interest being on the brink of partition and the eventual formation of Pakistan. The allies made an agreement with the Arab states to grant them independence in return for their help. An agreement which, incidentally, the British reneged on. Add to that the internecine disputes conducted by caliphates and tribal war lords, if there was any time in history when a conflict did not need the help of a Dawson, it was then. 

One might wonder why the British government chose Charles Dawson as an emissary. The Dawson tendency to create mayhem wherever they went must have been well know, even before the first edition of ‘The Dawson Miscellanea of Mishaps’. Granted, as has been amply demonstrated, the Dawsons invariably come up smelling of roses, but that cannot be said for those left in their mire. So why was he chosen? Because his qualifications were exemplary. First and foremost, he went to the right school, the same one that a descendant of his partly demolished a few years later, secondly he was distantly related to a member of the war office by way of an extra-curricula fumble in a disused cabinet office, and thirdly, Dawson and Co. had agreed to publish an influential ex-minister’s memoirs recounting his exploits in the Crimea. A novel that other publishing houses had managed to avoid having done their research and been unable to verify any of that individual’s heroic deeds.

So, into this middle east maelstrom entered the ill-equipped and inept Charles Dawson, not that anything had ever stopped a Dawson from meddling in matters for which they were eminently unsuited. You may remember my description of the Dawsons, ‘a family steeped in academia, without an iota of common sense’. It would have been the latter that with most people would have rang alarm bells. A voice pleading, ‘Hang on a minute, you don’t know anything about this, have nothing to do with it!’ No such warning, if it sounded, was heard or heeded by the over-eager Charles Dawson.

Very little genuine evidence of Charles’s exploits survive other than unverified reports of how, with the support of the British government, this or that was achieved against all odds and how proud those in government, particularly the relevant minister, are of their choice of their man in the middle east, ‘Sir’ Charles Dawson. One of many accolades piled upon Charles, who had no problem accepting them, not caring whether they were deserved or even relevant. Apparently after two or three skirmishes with the French, with whom the British were supposed to be allies, Charles was awarded the knighthood with a promotion. This was a political decision in an attempt to allay any criticism of Dawson mistaking the French for Turks. His period of duty terminated after he was held captive by a guerrilla group where he claimed to have single handedly subdued over twenty heavily armed Turks, and with no more than a boy scout pen knife and a rolled up copy of the Cairo Gazette, escaped without injury. The government issued a statement applauding Dawson and fearing his re-capture would be a coup-de-gras for the enemy, they decided he would be of more use in London, and he returned to a hero’s welcome.

Rachael informs me that little, if any, of Charles Dawson’s exploits stand up to scrutiny. His ‘Boy’s Own’ escape from the Turks and his repatriation was all the work of a certain T. E. Lawrence. Lawrence, for the duration of Dawson’s presence in Egypt, had been sending dispatches to parliament correcting erroneous reports and pointing out how much of his efforts to get the Arabs on side was being undermined by Dawson’s incompetence. By now the British press had adopted Dawson as the saviour of a calamitous British middle eastern escapade. Lawrence’s dispatches were treated with contempt so typically he took matters into his own hands.

Lawrence was assisting the Arabs in sabotaging Turkish and German supply routes and installations. Dressed as Turks, Lawrence’s men kidnapped Dawson and convinced him that as Turks they were going to do to him all sorts of ghastly things unheard of, at that time, amongst the rolling hills of north Dorset, Charles Dawson’s family home. The terror Charles felt can only be imagined when a dozen or more swarthy Turks approached, each wanting ‘a piece of him’. At that moment a horde of Arabs, led by Lawrence, freed him on condition that he set sail for Portsmouth immediately and never return, or else Lawrence would hand him back to Turks for them to - ‘do to him what ever they wanted’. Charles couldn’t leave fast enough. 

Rachael tells me at the time Charles returned the hero and the family set about writing ‘Dawson of Arabia’. The book was about to be released when a draft of T. E. Lawrence’s book, ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’, was seen to describe Dawson as an incompetent fool. A lengthy debate ensued resulting in ‘Dawson of Arabia’ being withdrawn, on condition that all derogatory references to Sir Charles Dawson were removed from Lawrence’s book. This resulted in no mention of Dawson at all.

Rachael gave me another taster of the forthcoming ‘Dawson’s Miscellanea of Mishaps’. Once again their connections and intellectual pedigree allowed them access to some of the more vaunted positions in society. A Dawson member of Parliament during the eighteen hundreds, with responsibility for ports and shipping, had a son who he thought should be made familiar with the service. What one might call these days a career ‘fast track’ was completed at lightning speed making Nathanial Dawson a captain before he could tell one end of a boat from the other. The unquestioning nature of the ‘senior service’ in those days meant that Captain Dawson’s incompetence was never questioned for fear of being lashed, keel-hauled or merely shot. 

Dawson was skippering a supply vessel bound for the Cape of Good Hope. This was more than a wonder, having never successfully navigated a ship into open water before. The Dawson’s hereditary lack of common sense made it unavailable as a substitute for inept seamanship, so how he and his previous crews managed to survive was a miracle. On one occasion he had turned northwards on Southampton Water and had floundered at Marchwood, rather than arriving at the Solent. No life was lost on that occasion however the ship was plundered by the locals who to this day have a bit of a ‘reputation’. After the loss of three ships one might think his father in government might have found him other duties, but bearing in mind he too was a Dawson, a common sense decision was not in their armoury.

After three months in the Indian Ocean looking for the Cape of Good Hope his crew mutinied when they passed the same small island for the eleventh time. They were trying to supply a British garrison at the Cape, which they had missed by some distance. An understandable madness broke out, initially amongst the officers. The Captain dismissed it as them having ‘a surfeit of air’, and prescribed that they should all hold their breath for five minutes in every hour until they recovered. Aware of the penalties for mutiny they and the rest of the crew all jumped ship as soon as the island came came round again, which they knew it would. They left Captain Dawson tied to his bed below decks. 

It was some days before the ship ran aground, eventually breaking up on the rocks of one of the islands of the Mauritius. A recent typhoon had devastated the small island and the arrival of what supplies were left on the ship were taken as a God send to the starving natives. Amongst the debris the captain was found floating, unharmed but still tied to his bed. The natives took him to be the architect of their deliverance and immediately made him a God. Captain Nathanial Dawson claimed the island and several others for the Crown and when he returned to England he too, like Charles, was knighted.

Rachael and Gill Dawson continue to research, ‘The Dawson Miscellanea of Mishaps’.

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Written and read by Barkley Johnson.