Dubai's forgotten tragedy that left hundreds of Hajj pilgrims dead or missing in 1968

Up to 200 people may have drowned when their boat sank on the way back to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia

The front page of Dawn on April 8, 1968, features a story on the sinking of the dhow and drowning of around 200 pilgrims off Dubai coast. Photo: Dawn

Hajj had been over for more than a month when a ship, carrying hundreds of pilgrims making their way back to Pakistan, approached Dubai.

They had journeyed for many months to make pilgrimage: travelling first by ship then overland to Makkah. The return journey saw them travel to the port of Khobar on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast, where they boarded a dhow to take them home.

On the way, they would stop in at Dubai. But as the boat nosed its way up the creek, tragedy struck. With a violent lurch, the dhow hit an underwater obstruction and split open, spilling passengers and cargo into the current.

Up to 200 people died, including men, women and children. It was a maritime disaster second only to the MV Dara tragedy, when an explosion and fire on April 8, 1961, killed at least 240. It was the worst peacetime maritime disaster in the modern history of the Gulf.

This second disaster – by coincidence also first reported on April 8, but seven years later – is almost forgotten. Even the name of the ship is not recorded, let alone the details of those who died, or even their number, estimated variously at between 78 and 200.

There are still some, though, who recall what happened in 1968. Shaukat Ali Rana was eight at the time, newly arrived from Pakistan with his mother to join his father, who had been working in Dubai since 1966.

He remembers how his father, Mohammed, joined other Pakistani expatriates in rallying round to help the survivors.

“A lot of people came forward,” Mr Rana said. “My father went down to the site and he said there was a lot of clothes, blankets, wooden planks floating in the water.”

Perhaps as many as 500 passengers were on board the dhow, already dangerously overloaded with cargo picked up at Khobar. Mr Rana believes the ship hit a rock on what is now reclaimed land and the site of the Hyatt Regency Hotel at the entrance to the creek.

The mouth of Dubai Creek pictured in April 1968. The approximate site of the dhow accident is labelled. Photo: Nevile Ryton

The mouth of Dubai Creek in 2023. The site of the dhow accident is estimated to be where the Hyatt Regency is today, following developments along the coast in the years since the incident that involved land reclamation. Photo: Google Earth

Few on board would have been able to swim. Bodies were reported drifting in the water, including a mother with her child still in her arms.

Just a short distance away, construction was beginning on the Mina Rashid, Dubai’s first modern port.

The tragedy seems to be unrecorded in archive files currently obtainable from the time. It was briefly recorded in the international press as a single paragraph, but more extensively covered by the English-language Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

The paper broke the news of the disaster on April 8, two days after it had occurred, and made it their lead story with the front page headline “200 Pakistanis feared drowned.”

“Bodies are still being washed ashore as intensive search continues,” the newspaper reported. “The survivors, nearly 300, have been lodged in a relief camp. Five persons are in hospital.

“An witness said as the pilgrims tried desperately to scramble ashore the launch’s cargo broke loose crushing many women and children,” it said.

Later accounts from Dawn revealed the boat was afloat for about half an hour before sinking. It reported “complete panic” with around 40 pilgrims jumping into a rescue launch sent by Dubai Customs. Others fell into the water and were swept out to sea. One body was later recovered 48 kilometres from the harbour.

The head of Dubai Municipality supervised rescue attempts, which involved other boats.

“By day break, bodies had started floating to shore and on the first day as many as 78 were given a burial by Dubai Municipality,” Dawn reported.

An immediate donation of 100,000 Gulf rupees, the currency in Dubai at the time, was made by the ruler, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed.

Dawn’s eyes and ears on the ground was Noor Ali Rashid, better known today for his historic photographs of the ruling sheikhs of the UAE.

Noor Ali Rashid, the former official royal photographer, with one of his first cameras.

Mr Rashid, who died in 2010, sent both reports and photographs to the newspaper. His images showed the wreckage of the ship, distraught survivors, grim images of rows of bodies on the sand and the Islamic funeral prayers as the first victims were laid to rest.

The caption on one photograph identifies a survivor as Sahil Mania Baksh from Dādu, a city in Sindh Province, and her baby Alam Khatoon.

Quite why the disaster is so little known remains a mystery. Perhaps it was because there were no newspapers, TV stations or even radio in Dubai at the time. It happened just four days after the assassination of Martin Luther King in America.

Most of the official records come from the British, who were responsible for the seven emirates as the Trucial States, but were increasingly preoccupied with making progress towards their withdrawal and the formation of the UAE in 1971.

In the thousands of pages currently available online through the UAE National Archives, only one briefly acknowledges the sinking. It is from the British High Commission in Rawalpindi near Islamabad to the Foreign Office in London.

“The recent dhow tragedy off Dubai has brought illegal emigration from Pakistan into the limelight,” the memo, written on April 17, observes.

It is an uncomfortable thought that, because it was believed the pilgrims were illegal migrants, it may have lessened the significance of their deaths.

More than a week after the ship crashed off the coast of Dubai, Dawn runs a follow up story about the results of an investigation into the incident. Photo: Dawn

Elsewhere, there was more governmental buck-passing. The tragedy was raised in questions by MPs in Pakistan’s National Assembly on May 16, wanting to know who would be held responsible and whether the victims would be compensated.

The reply from the defence minister was that, while he was aware of the incident, Pakistan was not involved. “The craft concerned did not belong to Pakistan. it was reportedly owned by a foreigner and based in a foreign port.”

The boat was actually owned by a Pakistani citizen, Haji Khari Mohammad, now living in Dubai, and had taken pilgrims to Hajj for eight years without incident. The captain was named as Maahid bin Jabbar, who had apparently objected to a cargo of cement and dates loaded at Khobar because he felt the boat would be dangerously overloaded, but was overruled.

Mr Rana remembers that local authorities and local people were actively involved in the rescue. Fishing boats immediately began picking up survivors, he said.

“The community helped them a lot. My father helped with a lot of things. A lot of people came forward to shelter them. They needed food, clothes and they had no money. Not only my father, but his relatives and friends were very shocked.”

Several hundred traumatised Pakistani hajjis were meanwhile stranded in Dubai with little more than the clothes they were wearing. It was left to the local community to help them.

Many shops and businesses closed in mourning and money was collected to send the survivors home. Twelve days after the sinking, a chartered flight took 167 pilgrims back to Pakistan.

By the best estimate, that left over 300 unaccounted for. Many, perhaps most, of these had drowned. Some may have decided to remain, to seek opportunity out of tragedy in Dubai, their stories yet to be told.