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.