South Arabia during World War I
The campaign in South Arabia during World War I was a minor struggle for control of the port city of Aden, an important way station for ships on their way from Asia to the Suez Canal. The British Empire declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 5 November 1914, and the Ottomans responded with their own declaration on 11 November. From the beginning, the Ottomans had planned an invasion of Britain's Aden Protectorate in cooperation with the local Arab tribes. The Ottomans had gathered in some strength on the Cheikh Saïd, a peninsula which juts out into the Red Sea towards the island of Perim.[5]
At the start of the war, the British had one force stationed in the Aden Protectorate, the Aden Brigade, which was part of the British Indian Army. In November 1914, an Ottoman force from Yemen attacked Aden, but was driven off by the Brigade.[6] Although fighting in South Arabia effectively ceased after June 1916, the last Ottoman troops did not surrender until March 1919.
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Uses of the South Arab ports during the war[edit]
On 18 October 1914, a convoy of ten troopships carrying the New Zealand Expeditionary Force was escorted by the Imperial Japanese battlecruiser Ibuki out of Wellington. It joined a group of twenty-eight ships carrying the First Australian Imperial Force, and the total convoy, with Ibuki and the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney, crossed the ocean, which was being patrolled by the Japanese protected cruiser Chikuma. While Sydney was sidetracked, and ended up in the Battle of Cocos, the rest of the convoy reached Aden on 25 October.[15]
On 9 November 1914, a small landing party, numbering five officers, one surgeon, and forty-seven petty officers and men, under Lieutenant Hellmuth von Mücke, was separated from their ship, the SMS Emden during the Battle of Cocos, and piloted the Ayesha to the Dutch port of Padang on the west coast of Sumatra. There von Mücke arranged a rendezvous with the German freighter Choising, which transported him and his men to the Ottoman city of Hodeida in Yemen. Once on the Arabian Peninsula, von Mücke and his men experienced months of delay securing the assistance of local Turkish officials to return to Germany. At last he decided to lead his men on an over-water voyage up the east coast of the Red Sea to Jiddah. Ultimately, Von Mücke and forty-eight of his men returned to Berlin.
When the Arabs of the revolt of June 1916 attacked the port of Jiddah, they were supported by the seaplane carrier HMS Ben-my-Chree, based at Aden.[16]
Occupation of Kamaran[edit]
On 17 February 1915, the British Resident in Aden, Brigadier William Crawford Walton, wired the Government of India that dhows bearing telegrams, mail and money from Jiddah had made it to Ottoman headquarters in Yemen, and that it was necessary that these be stopped. He proposed the occopuation of Kamaran with 200 men from the RMS Empress of Russia, the RMS Empress of Asia and HMS Minto. This had the support of the Admiralty, the Commander-in-Chief at Port Said—who wished to use Kamaran as a "naval base for small vessels"—and the India Office, which duly informed the Viceroy of India to give the necessary orders. The viceroy demurred, fearing that the local population would be "unlikely to acquiesce", that an occupation might "alarm the Idrisi", was likely to be misunderstood by Muslims, and would reduce the defences of Aden, at just the moment when the Turks were advancing.[17] On 3 March the India Office rescinded its order, but when intelligence suggested that some Germans stranded in Massawa in Italian Eritrea at the outbreak of war were attempting to sail across the sea to Arabia, the resident renewed his request for 200 men (7 March). Again the viceroy refused (11 March).