0N A TURKISH STEAMER.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13955, 15 July 1909, Page 3

0N A TURKISH STEAMER.

The delights of the sea voyage (seven hours; from Brusa t-o Constantinople are graphically depicted by Mr Mark Sykes, in the "Saturday Jievicw ": —

"Oil Turkish steamers all natural laws aro permanently suspended. A i ui-Kisu st amer can proceed with engines which no ship-chandler would accept as scrap-iron. A Turkish steamer can go out to sea with a starboard list of 18 degrees and survive. A Turkish steamer can still continue to ply though she may not have been overhauled since she was cast aside as useless by lier European owners in the year 1884. On Turkish steamers there is no reason why the chart should not bo used as a table-cloth for the captain's dinner, nor yet why the chart-house should not be used as a hen-roost for the captain's fowls. Most of these conditions obtained on board the vessel which fate directed should bear me from Modania to Constantinople. "Besides her crew she carried on a deck 15ft. wide and 90ft. long 80 passengers and 250 sheep, not to speak of the various things that could not be crammed into her hold. "Before we had been two hours out at sea the various inhabitants of the absurd gasping, groaning, leaking, moaning little ship had become an organised Eastern state. The captain, who had ensconced himself in a cra/v deckhouse, had gone to sleep. A sailor smoking a cigarette sat with .his hand on the wheel. Certain merchants who found a few square inches of deck vacant had spread out their wares, and established a bazaar, where the}' sold oil, bread, fish, and meat. Seven officer* of the schools had set up a political club-house, in the firstclass cabin below; tlir.ee Khoias had carved out sufficient room for their rugs and were beginning -to pray; a deformed dwarf had elbowed out a chink amid some bales of goods, and was giving a comic theatrical entertainment to a party of slieepdrovers and others; five Greeks passed the time of day drinking brandy and firing revolvers: a nondescript gentleman, who. it afterwards appeared, was one of the omrineers : threaded the deck selling coffee and lemonade: from behind a canvas screen which had been rigged astern shrill voices sounded, admonishing the mutinous fat babies that endeavoured to crawl into the uncuitaine'd region devoted to 'mankind.' 1