Six Months in the Hijaz

John Fryer Thomas Keane was born in the Yorkshire port of Whitby in 1854, the son of a Protestant clergyman. The merchant marine dominated much of Keane’s early life: he went to sea at the age of twelve and by the time he set shore in Jiddah in 1877 he had already sailed and steamed across the Seven Seas. Keane’s book on his journey to Makkah caused a sensation in England with his discovery and account of an Englishwoman The Lady Venus stranded in the Holy City. Keane led a life of extraordinary variety and adventure: mariner, author, sugar planter, war correspondent in China, medical student, railwayman in India, occasional tramp, cane cutter and plantation owner. He died in North Queensland Australia in 1937 at the age of eighty-two. William Facey is director of Arabian Publishing Ltd, London, where he devotes himself to the cause of research and publishing on the Arabian Peninsula. His fascination with the early photography of Arabia, and with its maritime history, have led to a curiosity about the backgrounds, personalities and motives of Western travellers in Arabia. His books include Saudi Arabia by the First Photographers and Riyadh: the Old City.