C.L. COLBY

COLBY, C.L. Submarine Pipe Line Construction. Haifa: Hassolel Press, [c. 1935].

Extremely rare engineer’s report on the construction of submarine oil pipe lines at Haifa and Tripoli, Lebanon.

Folio (332 x 213 mm.) 11 plates of which 3 folding, 9 photographs (most 88 x 140 mm.) over 3 leaves. Mounted in original portfolio (very lightly rubbed, clips rusting).
Provenance:
AUTHORIAL PRESENTATION COPY, ‘Compliments / C.L. Colby / March 5th 1935’ (inscription to title).

POSSIBLY A UNIQUE COPY. Under Winston Churchill, in his position as First Lord of the Admiralty 1911-1915, the Royal Navy accelerated its programme of converting from coal to oil-fired ships. This switch, although rendering the Royal Navy a much more efficient fighting force, forced the British government to look for secure energy supplies abroad. Churchill persuaded the British government to invest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and negotiated a secret contract for a 20-year supply. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Britain created the new country of Iraq and installed King Feisal as a puppet monarch in 1921. This secured the oilfields around Mosul, and a decade later, in 1931, the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) was granted permission to construct a pipe line in order to transfer crude oil from Iraq to the Mediterranean, with one terminating at the Palestinian port of Haifa. Completed in 1934, the pipeline was firstly a target of attacks during the 1936–1939 Arab Rebellion in Palestine, and then later by Jewish terrorists. For the British, their initial strategy of holding the Palestine Mandate in order to secure the eastern flank of the Suez Canal now mutated into a much more important one, whereby the Mediterranean Fleet could be refuelled without sailing through the canal and circumnavigating the Arabian peninsula; indeed, Time called the pipeline 'the carotid artery of the British Empire' (21 April 1941).

In order to expedite the loading of oil tankers with deep draughts, the six submarine lines at Tripoli and two at Haifa led to mooring berths one or two miles or more at sea. The author of this report, C.L. Colby, Superintendent of the Construction and Pulling of Pipelines, focuses on the final stage of construction, and includes 9 photographs depicting construction equipment, 11 plates illustrating engineering maps and diagrams, plus comprehensive descriptions of the process of establishing the lines, the necessary equipment, and a detailed log listing the daily events and difficulties of construction throughout May 1934. WORLDCAT RECORDS NO OTHER COPIES.

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