Heaven has Claws

by Adrian Conan Doyle

East African adventure and big-game fishing with Adrian Conan Doyle, son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle and his wife begin the book with a disastrous year in Tangiers, before moving briefly to the New Forest where they found themselves neighbours of F.A. Mitchell-Hedges. Conan Doyle and his new neighbour got together a joint expedition to the eastern Indian Ocean. However, the shipping company refused to carry Conan Doyle's pet dog any further than Mombasa, and so Mitchell-Hedges continued the journey alone. The Conan Doyles stayed behind with their "10 tons of shark hooks, tinned food, ropes, wire traces, rods, reels, rifles, tools, cameras, ammunition and medicines heaped on the wharfside".

Genres: Classics

203 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Adrian Malcolm Conan Doyle was the youngest son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his second wife Jean, Lady Doyle or Lady Conan Doyle. He had two siblings, sister Jean and brother Denis, as well as two half-siblings, sister Mary and brother Kingsley.
Adrian Conan Doyle has been depicted as a race-car driver, big-game hunter, explorer, and writer.
He married Danish-born Anna Andersen, and was his father's literary executor after his mother died in 1940. He founded the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Foundation in Switzerland in 1965. On his death, his sister Jean Conan Doyle took over as their father's literary executor.

(source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second non-fiction book I have read by Adrian Conan Doyle, youngest son of Sir Arthur. This is the first in published order (1952) with Lone Dhow, which was perhaps a little better than this one, likely because this is his first book.

It outlines the journey of the author and his wife Anna as they leave Morocco for something more interesting - to seek out big fish (mostly seeking game fish, but also sharks, rays etc) among the islands and along the coast of Tanzania. They buy a small launch and establish a small crew comprising an engineer who is constantly fixing the engine which breaks down with painful regularity) and a supposed navigator (they have several of these, of wildly varying expertise).

There are multiple tales of various big fish - barracouda, sharks, skip jacks, jew fish, dorado (he caught the world record dorado on this journey), kingfish, cavalli jack; also rays of all types - manta, eagle, death, torpedo and leopard as well as small fish - stone fish, horned trunk fish, garfish, grunter and other things such as sea snakes, sea scorpions & sea slugs.

There is an interlude where they seek out overgrown ruins on the island of Songa Manara, which Wikipedia tells me was excavated and researched in the 2000s. The author also regularly takes to the inland with his rifle in search of game (the all-fish diet wearing thin) and meat for bai, but is largely unsuccessful in this.

There are various black and white photographs, the quality matching the era, so not great, but interesting still. A map of the Tanzania (Tanganyika & Zanzibar at the time) coastline, while small scale is helpful for placing their movements up and down the coast.

In case you are wondering, I am not sure of the meaning of the title - perhaps I missed the key phrase in the narrative that links this!

4 stars.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Heaven Has Claws” is the remarkable story of six months when Adrian Conan Doyle, youngest son of Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) explored the Swahili coast. In the 1950s, shortly after the war and on the cusp of independence, Doyle and his wife outfitted a boat and went around the Tanzania islands, specifically from Zanzibar and down through Chole to Songa Manara and back. Adrian, like his father, is a gifted writer and one experiences with him the beauty of the Swahili coast, the extraordinary fish and wildlife, the danger and the unpleasantness and the glory of life ‘off the grid’.

My favorite part of this book is Adrian’s discovery of the ancient ruins of a castle of (at very least) a 12th century Persian caliphate and (at most) the ancient southern port where the Queen of Sheba transshipped gold from King Solomon’s Mines (probably in Zimbabwe) to her lover in Israel, to adorn the temple. The Swahili coast was a civilization of its own, about 800 years ago during the times of the Mongols; an ethnogenesis happened there that lasted half a millennium, and I need to research and read more about that. Like the Maya, the Swahili civilization has largely been consumed by the jungles and the elements; but they were there and if the extraordinary palace that Adrian found on Songa Manara were any indication, it rivaled anything in antiquity.

[Marybeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a good travel journal published in the 50's. It takes you there even though he has some issues with how animals are being treated all over the world yet shows a picture of himself with a caught shark's mouth open.

Turns out my copy is missing 30 pages. It was a great read.