SEA-GOING STEAMERS IN EUROPEAN WATERS.
The name of steam lines in the waters adjacent to Europe is more than
legion, and the enumeration of them would occupy several pages of this
volume. Bradshaw's Continental Railway and Steamboat Guide contains a
list of these lines, corrected from month to month, according to the
changes that have occurred; the information is conveyed in skeleton
form something like the following:
"Malta to Tripoli.--By a French steamer, three times a month.
Twenty-two hours. First-class (including food), £2, 8s."
"London to Honfleur.--The Villa de Lisbon and the Villa de Paris twice
a week."
All the great steamship companies issue pamphlets (gratuitously)
containing the information needed by travelers. These can be obtained
by writing to the office of the company, or by personal application,
and it is advisable for a traveler who expects to wander away from
_terra firma_ to provide himself with a stock of these documents.
They are of essential advantage in laying out a route, and by a little
study a tourist may often save much time and money. Take the following
as an illustration:--
In 1873 the writer was at Vienna to attend the great exhibition of
that year. At the close of the affair he projected a journey to Syria,
Palestine, and Egypt, and persuaded a friend to accompany him; the
time of each was limited, and it was desirable to make the trip as
expeditiously as possible consistent with doing it thoroughly.
Information concerning the facilities of eastern travel was difficult
to obtain, and it was concluded to postpone final arrangements until
reaching Constantinople. There were three companies engaged in
navigating the waters of the Levant, but no one of them would give the
least information about another. "You can buy a through ticket by our
line," said the agent of each, "and then you may stop over at each
port till the next ship of our company comes along." This seemed fair
enough, and is what is done by the majority of tourists, but it was
thought possible to improve on the plan.
The handbooks of the companies, French, Austrian, and Russian, were
obtained, and with these books before them the twain sat down one
evening in the hotel. It required a couple of hours to arrange a
route, but by dint of hard work it was accomplished. The result was
something like the following:--
Leave Constantinople by Austrian Lloyd steamer of the --th, and go to
Syra, one of the Greek Islands. There connect with a steamer of the
same company for Athens.
Spend eight days in and around Athens, and return to Syra by an
Austrian Lloyd ship.
Spend a day at Syra, and then take the fortnightly French steamer for
Beyrout. It stops two days at Smyrna, and part of a day at each of
half a dozen points including Rhodes, Alexandretta, and Latakieh, so
that a fair view of those places can be had.
Eight days after the arrival of the French steamer at Beyrout, an
Austrian one will touch there. This time will suffice for a journey to
Baalbeck, and Damascus, and the return to Beyrout, so as to catch the
Austrian steamer, and proceed to Jaffa, the port of Jerusalem.
Eleven days later a Russian steamer will touch at Jaffa, on her way to
Egypt. Eleven days will be enough for Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Dead
Sea, and the river Jordan, together with the return to Jaffa, to catch
this Russian steamer.
The plan was carried out to the letter. There was plenty of time for
seeing everything, and no loss in waiting for ships in the different
ports, save in a single instance that had no serious consequences. The
scheme had a decided advantage over the ordinary plan of buying a
ticket by a single line, and depending only on the ships of that line.
In the latter instance you are compelled to wait for a fixed period,
while by traveling independently, and knowing the movements of all the
ships serving the ports in which you are interested, there is often a
material saving of time.
In addition to the regular lines, there are many independent steamers
trading along the coast of the Mediterranean and through the north
seas, and by scanning the advertisements, or enquiring at the
steamship offices, the traveler will often find something decidedly to
his advantage. For example, the writer was once in Singapore, at the
Straits of Malacca, intending to go to Java. There is a steamer once a
week from Singapore to Batavia, the capital of Java, and the vessel
for that particular week was a French one that had only sixteen berths
in her cabin; it was whispered around the hotel that she would be
terribly overcrowded, as she had nearly fifty passengers booked, and
perhaps more. By enquiring at the shipping offices it was ascertained
that a Dutch steamer had been at Singapore for repair, and would
return the same day and hour as the French one, but she had not been
advertised, and nothing would have been known of her in the ordinary
way. The writer and his friend secured passage on the Dutch steamer,
and had a pleasant voyage; she had the same accommodations as the
French ship, and only seven persons to occupy them, while the latter
had fifty-two! They were packed somewhat after the manner of sardines
in a can, and had a hard time of it, while every passenger on the
Dutch ship had a room to himself, and all the space he wanted at the
dinner table.
The rules and regulations on the steamers in and around European
waters vary somewhat, according to the nationalities of the companies.
The American traveler will run across what will be to him a curious
custom, on some of the Mediterranean lines; the supplying of food, and
the service of the table generally is not undertaken by the company,
but is leased or farmed out, the same as a hotel-keeper in New York
leases the space for a cigar or newspaper stand. The consequence is
that the table will vary considerably on different ships of the same
company, in proportion as the steward is liberal or the reverse. It
also happens frequently that the captain and steward are not on
friendly terms, as the latter does not run the table in accordance
with the ideas of the former; the steward is not responsible to the
captain, and cannot be removed by him, and as long as the contract is
a favorable one for the company, and the passengers make no complaint,
the managers of the concern are likely to uphold the steward as
against the captain. On most of the French and Italian lines it is
useless to make any complaint to the captain concerning the table, and
the steward will laugh at you for so doing. But if you write your
objections in the official complaint book, the situation is changed at
once.
This matter requires a little explanation. On all Italian mail
steamers, and on some of the French and Austrian ones, there is a book
accessible to the passengers for the express purpose of receiving
their complaints. The pages are numbered consecutively, and they are
stamped by the chief maritime officer of the port where the ship is
registered, and at the completion of every voyage the book goes to
that functionary for examination. If there is any complaint it is
investigated, and receives the proper punishment, at least such is the
general belief. The service of the table of an Italian steamer has
been changed from bad to good by the mere threat of writing a
complaint, and on one occasion, when the matter had been written out,
the captain and officers subsequently begged the complaining passenger
to add a postscript to the effect that the cause of his growl had been
removed, and he was willing to withdraw his remarks. They had
bestirred themselves to make things pleasant, and so he complied with
their request, but not till the steamer was in sight of port, lest
their vigilance might relax. It is a pity that the same system is not
in vogue on some of the trans-Atlantic steamers, as it would have a
good effect now and then on the discipline of the servants.
One great inconvenience of travel in the Mediterranean, and also at
many ports on the eastern and northern coast of the Continent of
Europe, is the necessity of landing or embarking in row-boats. The
boats are rarely supplied by the company owning the steamers, but must
be secured by the passenger, and as the boatmen are rapacious, and
more or less dishonest (generally more), the negotiations are not
pleasant. Besides it is no joke when the sea is rough, and the
distance long, to be tossed in a skiff between shore and steamer, or
steamer and shore, especially if one is inclined to sea-sickness, and
not over-confident in the safety of the craft that carries him. The
operation of landing or embarking when the waves are tossing, has an
element of risk about it, and many a person has been dropped into the
water in stepping from a skiff to the gangway stairs, or from stairs
to skiff. The steamship companies shirk the responsibility of
transfers in harbors where they connect with ships of their own lines;
in the voyage just mentioned, from Constantinople to Syra, and from
Syra to Athens, the tickets were purchased through from the Golden
Horn to the Piraeus, but on reaching Syra the party was told it must
pay its own expense for transferring to the branch vessel that was
waiting for them. Gouty, feeble, and timid persons are warned that a
tour of the Mediterranean is not to be undertaken lightly, by reason
of this impossibility of landing directly at a dock. Of all the ports
of the Mediterranean there are not half a dozen where the steamers lie
at docks, so as to render the small boat unnecessary.
For general advice concerning the business of going down to the sea in
ships, the reader is referred to a previous section of this volume.
The precautions against sea-sickness are as good (or as useless) in
the one case as the other, and the stewards and other employés of the
ship are much alike, whatever their nationality. On the French,
Italian, and Austrian steamers, the chief steward has the assignment
of rooms instead of the purser; the latter functionary is rarely seen
by the passenger, and is supposed to be busy with his accounts of the
freight. Consequently the chief steward is the proper personage to
evince any friendly disposition for, and he is generally open to
arguments of a financial character. A five-franc piece will render him
attentive, for ten francs he is obsequious, and for twenty he may
possibly harbor the proposal to throw the captain overboard, and put
you in chief command.
For parties containing ladies it is well to remember that English,
French, or Austrian steamers on the Mediterranean and Black Sea lines,
are preferable to other nationalities, as they generally carry
stewardesses, while the others do not. There are exceptions to this
rule on some of the Italian ships on long voyages, but they are
decidedly rare. In the matter of cleanliness, the various
nationalities may be ranged in the following order:--English, French,
Austrian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Greek.
The Turkish and Egyptian steamers are hardly worth including in the
list as they have at best very poor accommodations for occidentals of
the sterner sex, while they are totally unfit for ladies to travel on.
In Northern Europe the German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, and Russian
ships are pretty nearly alike, and if there is any difference it is in
the order named. All the northern nations are good sailors, and the
captains are competent navigators; the Latin races are less reliable
in this respect than the Teutons and their kindred, and the Orientals
are the worst of all. Of the Latins the French are the best, and
especially those from Marseilles and its vicinity. The Italians were
once hardy navigators, and the mariners of Genoa, Venice, and other
maritime cities of Italy have a noble record; but in these latter days
they have degenerated very seriously, and their triumphs on the sea
are not of great renown. The best of Italian seamen and sailors come
from Genoa, Sardinia, and Corsica,--the latter, though belonging to
France, may be classed as Italian, since the people are of that
lineage and speak the language of the peninsula. In the same way the
Austrian Lloyd steamers belong properly to the Italian classification,
since Trieste, the headquarters of the company, is essentially
Italian, and it is not unusual to find captains and other officers of
the company who speak no other language, although German is the tongue
of the country under whose flag they sail.
The Spanish sailors are a sad travesty on the men that four hundred
years ago traversed the Atlantic with Columbus, and during the three
following centuries made the Spanish name respected and feared on the
seas all over the globe. A Spanish steamer generally abounds in fleas
and dirt, and the cuisine leaves much to be desired; if you call the
attention of the steward to creeping or jumping things in the berths
he will gravely inform you that such a thing was never known before on
the ship and you must have brought it on board when you embarked.
The Turk is too much a fatalist to be a good sailor. He is not
deficient in bravery or intelligence, but in a place of peril he is
very apt to fold his arms and say "Inshallah" (God wills it), and let
events shape themselves. Therefore it is well to avoid a Turkish or
Egyptian ship whenever another nationality can be found, not only on
the score of cleanliness already mentioned, but on that of safety.