THE ADVENTURES OF AN AMERICAN PRESS-BOAT IN TURKISH WATERS DURING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION BY STANLEY WASHBURN BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 1912 Copyright, 1911 Sherman, French & Company TO ALICE ACKNOWLEDGMENT The writer gratefully acknowledges the constant support and unlimited backing accorded him by THE CHICAGO DAILY NEWS, the paper for which he worked, and MR. VICTOR F. LAWSON, its Publisher, whose never failing enterprise in the realms of World News made this narrative of

It has seemed worth while to set down the account of the experiences reported in the following pages, not because they represent any important achievement, nor yet because they are conspicuous for any unusual enterprise, for none realizes better than the writer that they comprise nothing more than the day’s work, for the dozens of newspaper men that wander the earth. As a lover of the Profession these few little adventures are narrated in the hope that they may serve as an interpretation to the

From War to Peace in Manchuria—Peking—A New Assignment, “Russia Direct”—Shanghai. For three days we had been congratulating ourselves that we were on the eve of the greatest battle in history. Around us in silent might, two armies slept on their arms. From the border of far Mongolia for a hundred and eighty miles eastward lay the line of the Japanese trenches , and for forty miles deep every Manchu hut and village sheltered the soldier or coolie patriot of the Island Emperor. Above the roads for

The Race for the Situation—Ceylon—Across India—Stalled in Bombay—Russia via the Suez Canal After four days of Shanghai, the German Mail Steamer Princess Alice , with passengers, mail and cargo, from Yokohama to Bremen, called at Woo Sung and put an end to our sufferings. In a driving snow and sleet storm we boarded the big German liner as she lay at anchor at the mouth of the Yangtse River, and had our baggage ticketed to the Suez Canal. It was during the next weeks, while we are plowing through

Constantinople at last!—The Threshold of the Russian Assignment—A Nation in Convulsion I always supposed that the Japanese were the most suspicious people in the world until I went to Russia, where I discovered a brand of officials that was so much worse than the Japanese that there was no comparison. In fact, for years I had them marked in my mind as the criterion for entertaining doubts as to other people’s business, but the Turks can give the Russians cards and spades when it comes to having

We Charter a Tug and Become Dispatch Bearer of His Britannic Majesty and Learn of Winter Risks in the Black Sea Too Late to Retreat Chartering a dispatch boat is more bother, and offers as much chance of being fleeced as the purchase of a horse. However, four months in the graft-infested waters of the China coast, with a tug during the war, and another month later spread out from Hong-Kong to the Suez Canal in a vain search for a boat with which to cover the movements of the Baltic fleet en rout

We Sail Out into the Black Sea in the Salvage Steamer France and for Sixty-five Hours Shake Dice with Death My ideas of the Black Sea prior to my arrival in Constantinople were based on childhood recollections of maps of Asia and Europe in the geography. On these, that all but land-locked bit of water appeared about an inch long and half an inch across, and wholly unworthy of serious consideration. I had always remembered it as a kind of overgrown lake. The day I chartered the France my ideas be

We Land in Odessa on the Day Set by the Revolutionists for a General Massacre, but Because of Effective Martial Law, Secure Only a “General Situation” Story Odessa, as we viewed it from our ice encrusted bridge that freezing December morning, was a distinct disappointment. Behind the breakwater that stands between the pounding seas of the Euxine and the anchorage and wharves, the city lay, gray, cold, gloomy and forbidding. From the dirty streets of the shipping district the town scrambles up st

The France Does Her Best in the Run for the Uncensored Cable, Sticks in the Mud, but Gets Away and Arrives at Sulina Mouth with an Hour to Spare Every line of enterprise is subject to disappointment and the newspaper business is no exception. I arrived on board the France with my mind picturing an eight-hour drive for the Roumanian cable, and my story in print in the afternoon edition of my paper the next day. “All right,” I called from the rowboat as soon as I was in hearing distance of the Fra

We Send Our Cable and Find Ourselves with Five Francs and Expenses of $200 a Day, but Make a Financial Coup d’Etat and Sail for the Crimean Peninsula The Danube, some twenty miles before it reaches the sea, spreads out in an enormous delta and empties into the Euxine through three mouths, St. George’s to the south, Sulina mouth in the middle and Rilia to the north. The Sulina being the main artery of navigation was the one that interested us. Its channel has been cut in a straight line for perha

We Reach Sevastopol and Land in Spite of Harbor Regulations, Get a Story and Sail Away with It to the Coast of Asia Minor The reader of stories of adventure naturally expects to have something sensational doing every minute. Why else, indeed, has he paid his money? But there are dull spots in even the most strenuous tales (that is, in real life), and the narrator of fact must blushingly, or, at best, hurry over the places where interest flags. Our trip from the Danube mouth to the Crimean Penins

We Send Our Cable from Sinope and Then Sail for the Caucasus, Where Rumor States Revolution and Anarchy to Be Reigning Unmolested After the meal mentioned so enthusiastically in the last chapter, we rowed ashore in the longboat and effected a landing at a decaying old pier (which in truth gave the appearance of being little used for the disembarking of the fish, skins, etc., before mentioned) and were welcomed (?) by a ragged crowd of open-mouthed, very dirty creatures that inhabit this interest

Christmas Morning on the Black Sea. It is approximately a ninety-mile run from Trebizond to the harbor of Batuum, and for this entire distance there is not an anchorage along the coast. From the time one leaves Trebizond the mountains rise sheer up from the sea, their bases studded with reefs and ragged rocks or else rising in cliffs, going straight up for hundreds of feet above the water. At Batuum there is a bit of a bay with a breakwater across the narrowest part of it, which justifies its be

We Find Turmoil in the Caucasus but Celebrate Christmas in Spite of Storm and Stress It was a close shave for us all that Christmas morning, for in another hour the storm broke in all its fury, and the site of the breakwater was only discernible by the dashing of the spray above it as the great waves rushing in from the sea broke against it until it seemed as though even the masonry must give before the weight of wind and water and leave us in the open once more. Of the steel steamer we had seen

We sail Away from Batuum with a Beat, Official Dispatches, Foreign Mails and a Boatload of Refugees That Keep Us Awake Nights I had hoped to sail away from Batuum the day after Christmas, but so fierce was the storm that it was impossible to take on coal. All this day and well into the next the roar of the sea on the breakwater sounded in our ears like a never-ending bombardment of big guns. Not in the memory of the oldest inhabitant had such a furious tempest raged within the harbor. Even the b

The Return to the Golden Horn and the End of the Assignment It was just four o’clock three days later on the afternoon of December 30th that the tired little France poked her steel nose into the waters of the Bosphorus and, running around the first promontory, dropped her anchor in quiet waters just off the Turkish fort that stands sentinel at the eastern end of that wonderful cleft in the mountains that divide the East from the West, Asia and her mediæval civilization from Europe and all her en