Postal Communications with the Boundary Commission 1902-1903
The Aden Boundary Commission moved up to Dthala in January 1902 and spent the remainder of that year there liaising with their Turkish counterparts and meeting local chiefs to determine who owned what where, who owned allegiance to whom and generally preparing to carry out survey work. The Commission would remain based near Dthala until late in 1903, after which the Commission was much more mobile as it moved southwest towards the border on the sea opposite Perim.
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The Commission needed a reasonably frequent and comparatively quick means of postal communication with Aden. This short article deals only the system of postal runners that was used whilst the Commission was near Dthala.
Prior to the Commission leaving Aden arrangements were made for a postal run to the Commission every other day from Aden, using a team of nine camel-mounted runners working in relays with each runner and a supervisor being paid two Rupees a day.
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A lone man on his camel would have been somewhat vulnerable travelling outside his own tribal area and the nine postal runners were therefore working in relays as follows:
This system allowed the journey of nearly 90 miles in theory to be covered in 20 hours travelling time, but as the runners could not travel at night on one of the sections (through the Radfan) it was going to take 25 hours for the mail to reach Dthala, and due to the timings 32 hours for the return journey. The timetable, with the legs to be covered by each runner, was:
It looks to have been the sort of timetable that should work well in theory but not in practice, though remarkably the system worked well. The supervisor must have been worth his two Rupees a day several times over! The cost of this dawk was quite considerable. The Commission budget included one thousand Rupees per month for the dawk and another thousand for the cost of official telegrams and postage. Shekka, or Chakka as it was being called in 1904, was 7 miles SSE of Nobat Dakim. It was to become an important signalling relay station for the use of heliograph between the Commission’s camp outside Dthala and Aden.