Through the Haze, Dubai Creek
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An Imperial Airways Short Empire flying boat descends through warm evening haze into Dubai Creek, passing over the coral-stone buildings of the old town. Dhows crowd the waterway below — the Creek serving as both commercial harbour and flying boat landing area in this period before the airport was built.
The Short S.23 Empire class — built by Short Brothers at Rochester — were the workhorses of Imperial Airways' long-distance routes from 1937. Designed to carry mail under the Empire Air Mail Programme, they linked Southampton to Sydney via a chain of waterway staging posts across the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, India and South-East Asia. Dubai Creek was one of these stops — a brief refuelling halt where passengers stepped from the aircraft into launches and were rowed ashore.
The painting is built around the warm, rich atmosphere of a Gulf evening, when Dubai was a small trading port rather than the great metropolis it would become. This painting exhibited with the Guild of Aviation Artists in 2026 and was part of a set of work that collectively won the Bonham Trophy. Signed in the lower right.
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