_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 route to its destination in the Straits of Tschurma,
had taught me at least one thing, namely, I knew what I wanted. So
I spent the afternoon in a launch in the pouring sleet and rain of
that bleak winter day on the Bosphorus in looking over the available
shipping. Nobody wanted to charter a boat for such a short time as I
contemplated needing one. Although there were dozens to choose from on
long contracts, when I talked charter by the week, the owners either
withdrew entirely, or put up the price so high that my hair stood on
end. There was the _Warren Hastings_, the finest salvage boat in the
world, to be had at the Dardanelles. She was 260 feet long with two
funnels, twin screws, that would drive her nineteen knots, and fitted
throughout like a yacht. I was sick to get her, but her owners were in
England. A small fortune in “rush” cables disclosed that nothing could
be done under a month’s charter. Next I learned of a British gunboat
whose name I forget, that had been sold to a salvage company in the Sea
of Marmora. She had left England for delivery to her new owners, and
was expected daily. She, too, was speedy, and had accommodations that
would delight the heart of an admiral. But again my hopes were blasted.
A cable stated that heavy weather in the Bay of Biscay had rendered
imperative a week’s delay at “Gib” for the overhauling of her engines,
and I saw my man-of-war dream fade away. A Russian coasting vessel next
appeared on the horizon. I could get her cheap for any length of time,
from a week up. She was a sweet little boat with clipper bows and the
grace of a fairy, but an investigation showed old compound engines that
could only do seven and a half knots in fine weather, and she passed
out of the reckoning. A German salvage boat met my requirements, but
her owners vetoed the deal at the eleventh hour. Next in line came a
twin-screw tugboat called the _Rhone_. I all but seized on her, but
her engines did not show Black Sea qualifications, and I stood off her
owners, pending further investigation. Frantic wires failed to locate
a yacht within reach which could be had for quick delivery. There was
a neat little craft reported obtainable at the Piræus, but the owners
could not be reached quickly enough, and she, too, passed into the
list of rejected possibilities. Perhaps a dozen others, whose merits
failed even to enlist consideration, were presented to my notice by
the various shipping men in town. As soon as it became known that I
was in the market for a boat and had the “spot” with which to close
the deal, I had all the steamship brokers of the Levant at my heels to
unload their old tubs on my innocence. When I went out they would get
into the carriage and go, too. At lunch, two or three would be waiting,
and when I came home to dinner an eager row would be sitting outside
my room. It looked as though I should have to take the little _Rhone_
in spite of her sewing-machine engines, but finally I ran across a
Greek, who rejoiced in the name of M. Pandermaly. He was the head of
a fleet of salvage tugs and tow boats that lived in the waters of the
Bosphorus and the Black Sea. We spent an hour together, weighing the
respective units of his fleet. He showed me the picture of a boat then
out of port. She had two funnels and lines that indicated both speed
and sea-going qualities.
“Where is she?” I asked, delighted with her appearance. He referred to
five telegrams. At last he found the latest record.
“Zungeldak, coaling,” he replied.
I told him I knew as much about Zungeldak as I did about the contour
of the North Pole, whereat he unearthed a great map of the Black Sea
and showed a spot some hundred miles from Constantinople, on the
coast of Asia Minor. A pier, a breakwater and about a score of houses
constituted the town of really important coal deposits a few miles
inland.
“When can she be here?” I asked.
“Two days if I wire,” and forthwith he sent the message.
I figured that at least two days must elapse before I could get started
anyway, even if the paper sanctioned my scheme, and I felt sure enough
it would, to justify myself in taking the first steps.
The next day, as I had anticipated, the reply came from Chicago giving
me free hand. The die was cast. I called Morris and turned him loose to
get a cook and provision the boat the moment she arrived in port, if on
examination she proved fit. Beaming from ear to ear, he disappeared.
Ten minutes later there was a tap at my door, and the magnificent Leo
entered with the greatest deference and humility.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “for my intrusion, but your
secretary, Mr. Morris, tells me that you expect your private yacht to
arrive in the course of a few days. I beg of you, sir, command me if I
can be of service in facilitating your plans.” And saluting with great
respect, he withdrew. I called Morris off on the yacht story as soon as
he came in, but it was too late. My credit in Constantinople was fixed,
and as affairs transpired, it was well for me that it was so.
While I waited for my tug to arrive there were other things to do, and
as time was the essence of my business, I had not a moment to waste.
In the first place, there was the matter of funds to be arranged,
and funds, needless to say, are the bone and sinew of any enterprise
requiring quick action in Turkey. In China it had been much simpler,
for there I had a boat under four months’ contract, and my paper
arranged a long credit in the Hong-Kong Shanghai bank, on which I drew
checks when needed. A dispatch boat (even a small one) costs five or
six thousand a month to operate. First there is the charter, and then
the fuel bill to meet, and when one is burning from fifteen to twenty
tons in the twenty-four hours, at anywhere from $5.00 to $15.00 gold a
ton, the cash goes fast. My friend, Pandermaly, insisted on two weeks’
cash in advance for charter money, and the balance of the operating
expenses to be met by me. Besides this, I needed cable money, for down
in this suspicious zone it was all cash in advance at the telegraph
offices. I was only paying as far as London, to be sure, but even that
was fifteen cents a word. One has to figure on the possibility of at
least 5000 words a week, which counts up into big money. The worst
of it all was that what I needed was currency, for conditions were
so unsettled where I was going, that I figured I would be laughed
at if I asked for sight-drafts or checks to be honored, much less
such an impossible thing as credit. Cash here means gold coin of some
sort, for the notes that float about in Levantine banking circles are
subject to big discounts outside the vicinity of their origin. One
cannot conveniently carry more than a thousand dollars in gold, but
on this occasion I proposed to stow all I could get in my money belt
and pockets, and trust to my revolver and Morris to keep anyone from
separating me from it. So I figured on the maximum amount needed and
cabled my office to arrange so that I could get it quickly.
Next came the question of how I was to gain access to the ports of
interest in Russia, and when in, how I was to get out. I had operated
a boat outside of Port Arthur for four months under somewhat delicate
circumstances. The Russian admirals were anxious to sink us, and the
Japs were equally anxious to be rid of us, although they did not
admit it. I learned at that time the somewhat crude way that wars are
conducted. The spectacle of a British merchant steamer sunk by the
Russians, off the Liotung peninsula one dark night, with the idea that
they were destroying my boat, had given me a graphic idea of what press
boats must expect when operating in belligerent waters. Since then it
has been my policy to avoid getting into trouble without preparing
myself in advance for the means of getting out. Down here in the Black
Sea, as I sized it up, there would be no one backing us, and as far
as I could see, any irresponsible Russian warship on a strike might
sink us with never a murmur or protest from any quarter. But I turned
up what I hoped would be a solution to this difficulty. My paper
maintained in Europe, besides some sixty local correspondents, four
staff representatives, sent out from Chicago, and occupying palatial
offices in the four most important capitals of Europe,—one in Trafalgar
Square, London; one on the Place de l’Opera, in Paris; one in Friedrich
Strasse in Berlin; and one on the famous Nevsky Prospekt in Petersburg.
All these men were picked for their tact and social qualifications,
and each was supposed to know, and be known, to all the prominent
diplomats and statesmen within his territory. At the moment, as I
well knew, there was not a foreign office in Europe that had not been
frantically trying for two weeks to get word both to and from their
consular representatives in South Russia—for all the news that came out
of Odessa, Sebastopol, and the Caucasus, these diplomatic gentlemen
residing in these places might as well have been at the bottom of
the sea. So I sent to our news bureaus in the capitals, the message
that the _News_ had chartered a dispatch boat to cover all points of
interest in the Black Sea, and that I would be glad to carry dispatches
from the respective foreign offices to their isolated consuls in the
zone of silence, and furthermore, requested an immediate reply. In
addition, I cabled Chicago a similar message, asking them to offer our
services to the State Department in Washington for a like purpose. A
package of dispatches had gotten me out of the clutches of a Japanese
fleet in Korean waters the previous year, and I had great faith in the
persuasive power of anything with an official seal in getting one out
of a tight fix. The next day our London man wired that he had seen
the foreign office and that my offer was accepted with thanks, and
that the British Ambassador at Constantinople had been instructed to
communicate with me. Berlin and Paris declined, but I did not care.
I had all that was necessary, for one bunch of official dispatches
would answer my purpose as well as a dozen. Besides, I had a wire from
Chicago that the State Department was also going to send me cables for
delivery in the Black Sea. So far so good. I had a strong card, and I
thought I knew how to play it so as to keep myself out of the hands of
any irresponsible meddlers. The next day Sir Nicolas O’Conor presented
me with two bottles of old Irish whiskey, and asked if I would carry
dispatches and official documents to the British consul in Odessa.
Without undue enthusiasm, I replied that I would be pleased to be of
service to him, and he promised to send them around that night.
At three in the afternoon, the _France_ slipped into the Golden Horn,
after a terrible trip from Zungeldak. I went aboard with Pandermaly,
and an hour’s investigation settled my mind. She was the boat for me.
I knew enough about ships to know that if any steamer her size could
do my business, it was she. Built in Falmouth, England, five years
before, she was 125 feet long and 22 feet in the beam, with nice
lines and a maximum draft, bunkers full, of 12 feet. Seven bulkheads
and steel-plated construction steadied my mind on her toughness. The
engines interested me next, for a tug in any angry sea is like a child
in the lap of Niagara, but when I stepped down in the engine room my
mind was made up. Triple expansion engines good for 1000 H.P., with
two big Bellville boilers and a bunker capacity of 140 tons, enough
to keep her at sea for ten days at a fair speed, looked good to me. I
didn’t care much what the accommodations were, after I had seen the
vitals of her, and was pleased when I found them fairly comfortable.
Some cabin space forward had been converted into a hold for salvage
pumps and wrecking apparatus and bunks for the crew. The rest of the
accommodations was directly aft the engines. One entered a small saloon
by a ladder through a hatch. Two tiny staterooms flanked a dining-room
table, while a nice open fireplace opposite the stairs gave a homelike
look that was most acceptable. An oil lamp hung above the table, while
two others swung on pivots over the fireplace. Superficially, then, she
would do.
“How about her boilers?” I asked. After a little debate the engineer
admitted two months without cleaning. Pandermaly agreed to draw the
fires and open up the boilers as soon as they cooled, and to turn in
with chisels all his available staff, to chip the salt out of the
tubes. We closed on the spot, and I went to get a charter drawn.
Pandermaly seemed all right, but after all, a Greek is a Greek, and
I was playing the safe game, so I got an English attorney to draw
my papers. He said he would call in some shipping friends and talk
matters over, and would have the charter ready the next morning. What
I feared most was my inability to control the crew, for I had agreed
to take those on the boat as it stood. They were all Greeks but the
stokers, who were Turks. What would I do if they refused to go on at
some critical moment? A friend of mine told me that the Greeks had no
sporting blood anyway, and would insist on flying to the nearest port
at the first cloud that appeared on the horizon. However, there is an
element in the Greek character stronger than fear. It is cupidity. At
least, that is what my friend told me, and he had lived in Greece and
Turkey, so I finally decided to enter a clause in the charter, which,
after many wailings, I persuaded Pandermaly to accept, that I thought
would cover the situation. It was mutually agreed that if the Captain,
with his superior and nautical experience, thought the sea risks too
great to venture forth, I should abide by his decision, but that every
time he insisted on going to port against my wishes, he should pay a
fine of twice his salary. Every day he remained at sea he got a bonus.
That night a messenger from the British Embassy delivered the
dispatches into my hands. I signed the receipt for them and took them
to my room. On the top of the envelope in large letters was printed,
“On his Britannic Majesty’s Service,” and on the back in red sealing
wax as big as a dollar were the arms of Great Britain. The package was
worth its weight in gold to me!
In the meantime my money did not arrive, and I wanted to sail at once.
Any inquiry at the cable office brought back the dismal news that there
was a blizzard of fearful proportions in western New York, and that the
telegraph wires were down. When I had laid in provisions, filled my
bunkers with 120 tons of coal and paid two weeks down on the charter in
advance and settled my hotel bill, I had only $25 to operate on, and I
must say this looked pretty small. I was to sign the charter the next
morning, and planned to sail as soon as I could get up enough steam to
start the engines. My plans were to go first to Odessa, then to run to
Sulina at the mouth of the Danube in Roumania, which, I learned, was
the nearest uncensored cable. I hoped that my 25 would get me that far,
and I could not wait longer in Constantinople for the remittance, and
decided to chance it on getting financial reinforcement when I sent my
first cable.
The next day at ten o’clock in the morning I went to my lawyer’s
office. He had the charter drawn in due form and had brought in three
of his shipping friends to talk matters over with me. They were a sad
lot. Stiffly they sat against the wall, hands on knees, and regarded me
much as an undertaker does a prospective customer.
“Here is your charter,” my friend said, “but before you sign it,
I would like to have you talk the situation over with my friends.
They are shipping men of a great deal of experience in this part of
the world, and what they will say ought to carry a great deal of
weight with you. As a matter of fact, they think it unwise and very
hazardous for you to attempt to get to Odessa in the month of December,
especially in that small boat.”
One of them came forward and delivered a most violent harangue in
French with many gestures and grimaces, the sum total of which, roughly
translated was, that the Black Sea in winter was Hell. This annoyed me
a little and depressed me also.
“No doubt it is disagreeable,” I said. “Probably I shall be as sick as
a dog, but still, people don’t die of seasickness.”
Another long discussion from the second gentleman. He had a cheerful
tale of two steel steamers, one of 1500 tons, the other of 2500 tons,
wrecked while trying to make the entrance to the Bosphorus within the
past ten days. Seven men had escaped from one boat, while everybody
had been drowned on the other. This account was not particularly
encouraging, but I replied that I had no idea the Black Sea was so bad;
however, as I had taken dispatches from the British government and had
wired my office that I was sailing that day, I couldn’t see my way
clear to back down. The fact of the case was, my keenness was a bit
chilled. If a 2500-ton steamer had been swamped by the seas, I couldn’t
see just where my little 250-ton tug boat was going to end up. The last
man said little, but what he said was more depressing than the combined
testimony of all the rest. He looked at me for a full minute with a
pitying and incredulous expression on his face. He did not address me
at all, but turned to my attorney and said in broken French:
“Is it possible that this young gentleman will take this small
boat—what you call the _France_, and essay to go to Odessa? He will do
this in December? He will do this on the Black Sea?” My friend said:
“Yes, he says he can’t back out now.” (Only he said it in French.)
The man looked at me, smiled faintly, turned up the palms of his hands,
shrugged his shoulders and said:
“C’est impossible. Ze unfortunate young man. He will never come back.”
He took his hat and went out.
One comes to figure risks pretty carefully in the newspaper business.
The idea of the editor at home is that he wants the maximum amount of
news, with the minimum amount of risk. When a man is taking chances
week in and week out, he must have some basis on which to act, for it
is an axiom that a live correspondent, with a small story, is better
than a dead one, with a world beat in his pocket. There is no use in
a man trying for the best story in the world, if the chances are that
he is going to be killed in getting it out. A man is, therefore, not
expected to go after a story which he has not a fighting chance of
getting away with. Once he has it, however, he is supposed to take any
chances in getting it on the cable.
The editors like the men who figure these things closely, and don’t
get killed or shot up. Nothing is more annoying to the publisher than
to send a man to the ends of the earth and fit him out for a campaign
at an enormous expense, only to have him killed in the first action
through excess of zeal. When this happens, the editor must write
off the money spent on the man as a total loss. What is even worse,
from his standpoint, is that he has probably lost his chances for
covering the situation, unless indeed, he is fortunate enough to have
a substitute on the field of action. It is obviously impossible to
figure accurately what risks lie ahead, but it is possible to make
much closer estimates than one would imagine. As a matter of fact,
war risks, even for soldiers, are far less than one might imagine.
But a correspondent, if he be careful, need never face a more than 4%
risk, or say one chance in twenty-five. In the Russo-Japanese war, for
instance, it was shown that the great bulk of killing of soldiers was
from rifle and machine gun-fire, at a range of 200 yards and under. At
800 yards, which is near enough for the most enthusiastic journalist,
the risk is much smaller, say one in ten or fifteen. At a mile there is
not one chance in a hundred of his being killed by a rifle ball, and
the shells are the only thing that need bother him. Now, in the Far
Eastern war, only 6% of the entire casualties were from shell-fire, and
of that 6% about nine-tenths were from shells bursting where men were
bunched together or advancing to the attack in close formation. A man
who joins large masses of troops runs a 6% risk, but if he keeps to
himself and does not get near batteries in action, his chance of injury
at a mile fades to only one in perhaps a hundred and fifty. A man often
thinks he has narrowly escaped, but if he comes to estimate the matter
carefully, he will find that what he thought was a close call was in
matter of fact not one chance in ten. A bullet may pass within a foot
of a man’s head with a most insidious hum and he assumes that he has
had a close call, but if he comes to calculate that there was room
between the course of this bullet and his head for forty similar ones
to be placed side by side, and then the forty-first would make only a
scalp wound, he must realize that he has not had such a narrow escape
after all. The standard which has always seemed justifiable to me is
one in five, or a 20% risk, and that only under stress, when there is a
prize of a world story in sight. This has seemed to me as the maximum
risk a man should knowingly accept. Often he faces greater, but it
should not be of his own seeking, for the pitcher that goes to the well
too often gets broken at last, and the thoughtful journalist should
keep this then in his mind.
When the men had gone, I asked my lawyer what in his judgment the risks
really were. Was I exceeding my 20% limit?
“My boy,” he said, “I have been on the Pacific and on the Atlantic,
on Baffins Bay and in the Behring Sea, in the Gulf of Korea and the
Bay of Biscay, but I must say that all these at their worst are not a
circumstance to the Black Sea. I can’t estimate the percentage of risk,
but will say I shall consider you playing in great luck if you get
back.”
What could I do? My hand was forced, and I had told my paper that I
was going, and I had the British dispatches, so I signed the charter.
When I returned to the hotel I found Morris with a Greek he had hired
to cook for us. The Greek’s name was Stomati; but more of him anon. I
sent him down to the _France_ with the provisions that he and Morris
had been gleefully buying all the morning. When he had gone I sat down
and looked at my faithful chief of staff. From my Secretary, he was
now the Chief Steward of my private yacht. In the servant’s dining
room he had risen to be the leading social light. Even the chattering
French maids held their tongues while Morris, with great dignity, held
forth on European and Far Eastern politics. Now it happened that at
this time there was in Constantinople a delegation of negroes from
Abyssinia that had come up from their torrid country to get some loan
out of the sultan. The valet of the head of this delegation heard
Morris discourse and was amazed at his glib utterances, and reported
the same to his master, with the result that Morris was soon hobnobbing
with the Abyssinian princelings, who finally invited him to come down
to their country and engage in building, railroads and other minor
enterprises. Morris, never abashed, said he thought he could raise
$2,000,000 from the colored people of America, who wished to carry out
these little enterprises, but stated that for the moment he was pressed
for time, but as soon as he had a little more leisure would give the
matter his attention. The servants were greatly impressed by all this,
and whenever he passed they would stand reverently aside, salute,
and speak in awed whispers of this Ethiopian capitalist, who shed
the radiance of his presence upon them. Morris certainly worked his
position for all there was in it.
After I had listened to all the evidence of the shipping men that
morning, I really felt very apprehensive about our chances on the Black
Sea trip, and it seemed to me that the least I could do was to tell
Morris what I had been told, and give him the option of avoiding the
risk if the adventure was not to his liking. So I told him that I had
been talking over the Black Sea proposition with some shipping people.
“It seems it is a pretty bad place,” I said, “and these fellows here
are willing to lay bets that we won’t get back to Constantinople. What
do you think about it?”
“All right! Fine business,” he replied with a grin, not in the least
perturbed. I thought I would put it in plain words, so I said:
“The fact is, Morris, two large steamers have been sunk within ten
days, trying to get into the Bosphorus, and they do say here that
the _France_ is too small for December seas, and in a word, that
we will never get to Odessa anyway, much less ever come back to
Constantinople.” This sobered Morris a little, and he stopped grinning.
“I don’t want to urge you to go,” I continued. “I have told you all I
know about the situation. Personally, I don’t think it is as bad as
they say, but, as a matter of fact, I do think we take a pretty big
risk, and if you have any particular reasons for wanting to get home,
you want to think about it now. I can give you your wages to date and
your fare to Kansas City. Now it’s up to you. What do you want to do?”
He walked to the window and looked out for perhaps a minute. Then he
came back.
“What are you going to do?” he said.
“My hand is forced,” I replied. “I have wired my paper that I leave
to-night. I am going anyway.”
“All right,” said Morris. “If you go, I go.”
“That settles it,” I replied. “Pack up and have everything aboard by
six o’clock to-night.”
That afternoon I paid Pandermaly his due and went aboard the _France_
for what was to prove the most strenuous two weeks in my experience.