Nearchus

He was almost certainly older than Alexander, as were Ptolemy, Erigyius, and the others of the ‘boyhood friends’;[3] so depending on when Androtimus came to Macedonia Nearchus was quite possibly born in Crete.

Nearchus' naval blockade of Persian fleets threatening the Aegean Sea was successful in aiding Alexander's conquest of Phoenicia, Egypt and Babylonia.

However, his trierarchy was a financial responsibility – that is, Nearchus put up the money for the boats (Heckel, p.229); and there were plenty of other trierarchs in the Indus fleet who were not natural-born sailors.

Strabo recounts that the Himalayan range of Emodus was close to the construction of the fleet near Taxila, providing ample supplies of fir, pine and cedar timber.

[4] Initially, the fleet progressed down the Hydaspes much like a triumphal military parade, accompanied by a land-based entourage of the main armed forces of Alexander including cavalry, elephants and loot trains.

At the confluence of the Acesines and Indus Rivers, Alexander founded a city called Alexandria-on-the-Indus, assigning it to the satrapy of Oxyartes (father of Roxana) and populating it with Thracian troops.

By the time the Macedonians had reached Pattala (modern Bahmanabad in Sindh, Pakistan), Nearchus prepared to lead 17–20,000 men for an expedition into the Persian Gulf, while Alexander continue through the Gedrosian desert.

Nearchus was not the only Greek naval officer to have pursued a voyage down the Indus River—this was also done by Scylax of Caryanda under the commission of Darius the Great, according to Herodotus.

This work likely consisted of two parts: one detailing India's frontiers, size, population, castes, fauna, flora, cultures and militaries, and the other describing his home-bound voyage toward Babylon.

Nearchus described, according to Arrian, how commodities like rice, sugarcane and cotton fabrics and textiles were cultivated, manufactured and traded in the Indus Valley.

To wait out the adverse weather, the Macedonian fleet camped near the mouth of the Indus and Arabius Rivers, building stone walls as fortification against hostile natives and subsisting off of briny water, mussels, oysters and razor-fish.

Nearchus had arrived at the country of the Icthyophagoi -- 'Fish-Eaters' -- who inhabited the barren coastal region of Makran, between the Arabian Sea and the Gedrosian Desert and found the harbor of Bagisara (modern Ormara Port).

His visit marked the start of Bahrain's inclusion within the Hellenic world, which culminated in the worship of Zeus (as the Arab sun god, Shams) and Greek being spoken as the language of the upper classes.

In the initial arguments over the rule of the empire Nearchus supported Heracles, Alexander's son by Barsine – the king's mistress was now his mother-in-law.