Return from India

Nearchus · 325 BCE – 324 BCE · Earth

Return from India — Nearchus · 325 BCE – 324 BCE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Bring Alexander’s fleet from the Indus to Persia and, in Nearchus’s words as Arrian gives them, learn the coast, its harbours, islands and bays, its towns, and whether the land was habitable or desert.

Historical context

Alexander, Nearchus wrote, longed to sail the whole sea from India to Persia but feared losing a fleet on a barren, harbourless coast. In 325 BCE he led his army west through the Gedrosian desert and sent the fleet along the shore, each meant to help the other. Nearchus’s own account is lost; Arrian’s Indica, written in the second century CE, follows it anchorage by anchorage.

The voyage, step by step

  1. The fleet puts to sea

    325 BCE

    Nearchus takes Alexander’s fleet down the last reach of the Indus, cuts a channel through the bar at its mouth and waits out the gales in a harbour he names after the king.

  2. The whales scattered

    325 BCE

    Past the coast of the Oreitai, a Gedrosian pilot joins the fleet; off Kyiza, spouting whales send the rowers into a panic until Nearchus turns the ships on them.

  3. The Fish-Eaters

    325 BCE

    On the bay beyond Kyiza, Nearchus takes a walled town of the Fish-Eaters by a trick and carries off its fish meal and grain.

  4. The Gedrosian coast

    325 BCE

    Beyond Talmena the food runs out; the crews cut down wild palms to eat, and Nearchus anchors offshore so that starving men cannot desert.

  5. The narrows at Harmozeia

    325 BCE

    Refusing to steer for a cape of Arabia, Nearchus brings the fleet to the river Anamis in Harmozeia and goes inland to Alexander’s camp, five days’ march away.

  6. Into the Persian Gulf

    324 BCE

    The fleet works up the shoals of the Persian coast to the mouth of the Euphrates, then up the Pasitigris to meet Alexander’s army at a bridge on the road to Susa.

Outcome

After hunger on the coast of the Fish-Eaters, the fleet met Alexander in Carmania, then reached the mouth of the Euphrates and sailed up the Pasitigris to rejoin the army near Susa in 324 BCE; Alexander crowned Nearchus with gold.

Nearchus

Admiral of Alexander the Great who brought the fleet from the Indus along the coasts of Gedrosia, Carmania and Persis to the head of the Persian Gulf.

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Sources

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