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 began to undergo a revolution, which increased in intensity with each succeeding day. I have now totally revised my ideas. To fully appreciate this gentle expanse, it is necessary to survive a fortnight in December spent on a tugboat. If some universal power, bent on manufacturing the world, should ask for a receipt for making a duplicate, I should suggest the following: One hole 900 miles long by 700 in breadth. Make it from 600 to 1000 feet deep, sow the bottom promiscuously with rocks, scatter a few submerged islands in the most unexpected places, and fill this in with the coldest water obtainable. Surround the shores with a coast like that of Maine, and wherever there seems, by any oversight, to be a chance of shelter, insert a line of reefs and ledges of sharp rocks. Add a tide which varies every day in the year. Now import a typhoon from the South seas, mix judiciously with a blizzard from North Dakota and turn it loose. Add a frosting of snow and sleet, garnish with white-caps, and serve the whole from a tugboat, and you have a fair conception of the ordinary December weather in the Black Sea.

Subsequent inquiry on this subject has brought me to the belated realization of the fact that I am not the first, by a long way, to have reached the same sad conclusions. Some thousands of years ago a “Seeing Asia” trireme from Greece discovered these hospitable waters. The people who were then living at the Hellespont, having had personal experiences along this line, tried to head off the enterprise. The Greeks, however, were strenuous people, and were not to be persuaded. They listened carefully to the descriptions that were presented to their notice of what they might expect in the Black Sea, and then held a council of war, and decided that they would square matters in advance with the gods of the place, so they rounded up a few bullocks and unearthed some wine which they had with them, and proceeded to make sacrifices and libations to the Deity, who was supposed to be so hostile to intruders. To clinch matters they winked at each other, and decided to call the new waters on which they were about to embark, the “Euxine” or kindly seas. They were all delighted with themselves and thought they had the matter settled and a pleasure trip insured, so one fine day they sailed out of the Bosphorus where the Deity (who hadn’t been a bit impressed) was licking his chops and waiting to give them a warm reception. Sad to relate, they never came back. If they had, they would certainly have called in the name which they have sent down through the centuries for this wicked caldron, where wind and wave mingle to the confusion of man.

From Constantinople for forty miles each way there is a rock-bound coast. The cliffs rise sheer above the sea, that breaks in clouds of angry spray against those bleak and unresisting walls. Eastward from the Bosphorus for a score of miles, government life-saving stations every two thousand meters bespeak the menace of this deadly coast, louder than any description. In January, 1903, on this single strip of shore, eighty ships were broken in a single night, and I know not how many men lay down their lives as they strove in vain to make headway against the turbulence of hurricane and tide that swept them to their doom. Northward lies another belt of coast; bleak and forlorn for forty miles it stands against the sky. At the very corner of the sea, the Bosphorus winds like a serpent through a confusion of rugged fort-clad hills. The entrance is a mere defile. A few thousand yards back it bends sharply to the south, thus from a few miles at sea, there seems to the eye of the mariner searching for a haven of refuge nothing but an unbroken line of cliffs. Two light-houses on outlying islands mark the entrance to the channel. When the weather is clear and his engines still can breast the wind and seas, the captain may enter safely enough between this very Scylla and Charybdis, but woe to him who, while beating towards this refuge, is overtaken by one of those clouds of driving snow and sleet that shut down about the waters of the Black Sea thicker than a London fog. These then are a few of the conditions which have made it a paying investment for three salvage companies to locate their headquarters in the Bosphorus. Yes, three companies, each with a fleet of a dozen or more boats do a booming business while the storms of winter last. The profit from the reaping of these few months is so great that the expenses of these entire fleets are paid for the entire year, and money for dividends besides, yielded from the misfortunes of sailing ships and steamers that end their careers on the inhospitable shores that girt the Euxine, or are swamped and sunk while seeking some port of safety. Some of these things I learned from my crew as I sat on the France that December evening waiting for steam to turn the engines. The boilers had been cleaned and the fires lighted early that afternoon, and the soft humming forward told of the pressure mounting steadily in the gauges. I had a more careful look at my crew.

Was there ever a sadder lot to the eyes of an American embarking on an enterprise, where quick action and loyal support were the bone and sinew of the expedition? They were all pretty poor, but the skipper (old man Gileti) was the worst. Stupid, slow and heavy, he made one’s heart sick to look at him. His staff were all Greeks, dirty, shiftless and dismal. The only redeeming feature was in the engine room, for both engineers were bright and alert, and their department as neat and clean as a new pin. The stokers were all Turks, and distinguished for being several degrees blacker with dirt than the Greeks. Then there was a sad little cabin boy, who, as far as I could observe, did about three-fourths of the work on the ship, which nobody else wanted to do. He was running about from dawn till late at night, serving everybody from the skipper to the stokers. Another youth lived on a bench in the galley and was supposed to exercise some useful function, but I was never able to learn just what it was. Whenever I saw him he was eating scraps or licking the dishes, and so we called him the Scavenger. Whenever he was called on for action, he always flew for the galley and sent the cabin boy or else Spero, who was the only other hard worker on deck. Angelo Spero! Like the cabin boy, his was a life of toil. From the chain locker in the bows to the hold, where all the rubbish lived aftside, there was not an hour in the day when there were not loud calls for Spero. As Morris said:

“Old Spero is one of them sad guys that does everybody else’s work, and then is thankful that he don’t get booted besides.”

Last, but not least, was my faithful cook. He was the treasure that Morris had dug up in Constantinople. Stomati was a Greek—a sea cook, he. The roar of the wind and lurch of the ship were as the blood in his veins. For twenty-five years he had lived the life of the galley. The China seas, the Great Australian Bight, the sweeps of the South American coast were as familiar to him as the native waters of the PirÆus and the Ægean Sea, beside which he played as a child. He had sailed under every flag in Europe and had pursued the culinary art in all quarters of the globe. He spoke seven languages, all equally unintelligently. While we waited for steam that first night, he expatiated in a composite language, which embodied a judicious mingling of English, French, German and Roumanian, all the terrors of the Black Sea. If there was any unfortunate event which had transpired in that dismal zone during his lifetime, Stomati knew it. He could tell the names of all the ships that had been wrecked, how many people had been drowned on each. He could not only tell you the past, but was eager to make estimates of the number he expected would be drowned in the coming winter. He, himself, had been wrecked three times already, and he had stories about frozen bodies, the details of which have never been exceeded, even in the columns of the yellow journals. Old Man Gileti, the skipper, had come to grief five times, while Spero, he didn’t know how many times, but should guess it must be at least a dozen. That was why Spero looked so sad. Morris listened with mouth open to all these dismal forebodings, but smiled sickly every time I caught his eye.

There are rules for everything in Constantinople and Turkey, and the list of provisions which cover operations in Turkish harbors are as long as your arm. Among other things, there is a standing law which forbids the departure of any ship after the sun has set. An exception was made, however, on behalf of the France as she was registered as a salvage tug, and was licensed to come and go at her own free will, for even the Turks admitted that a sinking ship might well refuse to wait till morning before taking the final plunge. So it transpired that about one o’clock in the morning of the 16th of December, we pulled up our anchor, swung clear of the shipping in the Golden Horn, and with smoke pouring in clouds from our two red funnels, we turned her bows down the Bosphorus, towards the Euxine. The skipper had promised Odessa in thirty hours, and I was pleased enough as I turned in with the dispatches of his Britannic Majesty Edward the VII under my pillow.

I did not sleep long.

The moment we emerged from the Bosphorus into the Black Sea I knew it, and everyone else on the France knew it. The creak of timbers and the swish of clothes describing parabolas on their hooks, with the crash of glass inside the saloon, told me that we were at sea. A look through the small six inch port above my bunk revealed the intermittent light of the moon now and again breaking through fleecy clouds that were scudding across the sky. To the thud of the engines just forward of my bunk, I could hear the seas swishing past. The little port-hole was buried every other minute in seething froth as we rolled in the swell. We were doing a good fourteen knots an hour. I comforted my inward apprehensions with the cheering thought that this speed maintained would land us in Odessa even earlier than the captain had promised. I slept until daylight, when I was awakened by the increased rolling of the ship. The prospect of good weather, which the moon of the previous night had seemed to hold forth, was dissipated as I took a glance out of the port. The dull leaden sky had turned loose a very demon of a raw and piercing wind that was beating the sea into a passion of discontent. The France, straining and groaning in every joint, was valiantly driving her little nose into each sullen sea that rose before her as though to block her course and drive her back. In other seas that I had traveled, the sweep is long between the waves. Even on the Pacific a small boat can crest the waves, slip downward in the hollow and raise to meet the next. It was different here. Before a ship can recover from the first wave another sweeps her deck. In great black ridges of spray-flanked water, the seas crash upon the decks. Now they are dead ahead, now from the starboard quarter and now from the port. It seemed to me that it must be rougher than usual, but I said nothing. My instinct was to go on deck at once, but internal premonitions of disaster urged me to remain in my bunk for the moment. Morris, on the couch in the saloon, was groaning out his anguish in spite of his thirteen trips across the Pacific. I smiled as I listened to him.

“Morris,” I called.

“Standing by like steel, sir,” he answered in a weak voice as he staggered to the door of my tiny cabin. He was the palest colored man I ever saw. I was somewhat to the bad myself, but he looked so much worse than I felt that it cheered me up.

“Sick?” I queried.

“Not seasick, sir,” he replied, his pride and his thirteen trans-Pacific journeys holding him up, “but suffering from a touch of indigestion, sir. Indeed, it is nothing more. The fact is, I attribute it to the potted ham of last night, sir,” and he withdrew hastily.

A moment later the hatch was thrown open and Stomati floundered down the ladder in a cloud of spray. He shook the salt water out of his hair and grinned a little as he delivered a message from the skipper.

“Bad sea. No headway. Wanted my permission to slow down.” I was disgusted and told myself that the old man was flinching at the first sign of heavy weather.

“Tell him no,” I advised Stomati, who immediately disappeared. Ten minutes later Nicholas appeared as a second ambassador from the captain. He spoke excellent English, if he was a Greek. He explained that our 120 tons of coal brought us so low in the water that the ship was pounding badly. I looked at him and realized that he knew his business better than I did, so I told him to cut the speed down to 7 knots. Instead of improving, things seemed to grow worse with each succeeding minute. Even Morris, who was more than half dead to the world, did not need to be told that she was pounding fearfully. We could feel her lift her bows above the water, poise for a moment, and then, like the downward blow of a sledge-hammer, fall into the sea with a crash that shook her from stem to stern, like a rat in the teeth of a terrier. Every time she surged down the rush of water over her decks told us that she was shipping seas at every lurch. The crash of timbers and boards over my head seemed to indicate that we were really making a pretty heavy job of it. The noise and uproar of tons of water crashing against the steel deck-house overhead continued. Every now and again we would hear a piece of woodwork ripped off from some hatch or companion-way with a scream of nails loosening their rusty hold, and the snapping of breaking wood. By and by little drops of water began to leak down through the ceiling. I watched this drip mechanically, as it came faster and faster through the skylight and seams of the deck above my head, until at last the drip became a trickle, and the trickle a stream. Puddles began to appear on the floor, first on one side and then on the other, as the ship rolled heavily in the seaway. About ten the hatch opened and again the engineer appeared. He was wet to the skin.

“We can’t keep this seven knots and our heads above water,” he said. “We’ll have to slow her down some more.” So I said “All right.” The look on his face told me it was time for me to get up, so I staggered out into the saloon and got into my clothes. Lamps were swinging to the ceiling, and the howl and roar of water on the outside and the drip of it on the inside did not make me feel any too happy. Throwing on my heaviest campaign coat, I went up the ladder. The hatch swung out heavily against the wind. For a moment I stood clinging to the railing of the skylight. Like a wounded duck the France was beating her wings and laboring to make headway against the tumult, which strove to force her back. Great mountains of sea rose before us in successive chains as far as the eye could reach. Like assaults of infantry in close columns they stretched for miles, and bore down upon us. Each time the staunch little tug would put her nose into the angry front, she plowed forward. For a moment she would smother in the crash of waters, then she would shake herself clear of spray and foam and lift to meet the next sea. As I stood there, a great black silent roller struck her on the bow. She bent beneath the impact and then before she could stagger to her feet, another hit her, and three feet deep the seas swept across her decks. A coop of chickens torn from its position near the galley came sailing down on the crest of the water and struck a stanchion, breaking it open with a crash, and as the sea flowed out of the scuppers, some dozen wet and melancholy fowls came fluttering and squawking out of the wreck. They were wet and seasick, but their impact with the cold salt water had put some spirit into their souls. The rooster, who seemed to be in command of the expedition, spread himself on the rolling deck, closed his eyes, stretched his neck and uttered one long triumphant crow, whereat his followers began to cackle. At that moment another wave struck us, and as it went roaring over the stem it took that sad company of birds with it. There they sat on the crest of the wave; surprise, indignation and distress were pictured on their silly faces as I saw them disappear in the wake.

Drenched and cold, I fought my way forward and crawled up over the back of the deck-house to the bridge deck, where the two gallant little red funnels were belching smoke into the spray and mist, undaunted by any adverse seas, while the engines beat out with steady rhythm the tune of their determination to fight on until the last. On the bridge old man Gileti, covered with oil-skins, made dismal grimaces and deprecating gestures when he saw me. With Stomati to interpret I soon learned the meaning of his shrugs and murmurings. These big seas were getting to the France and we could not afford to take any more chances. Already the two forward hatches had been beaten in. The chain locker, the forecastle and the salvage hold were filled with water flush to the deck. So low had we sunk forward that each sea swept us from end to end. We slowed down to five, to three, and at length to one knot to keep her from pounding into those relentless seas that surged and beat at us from every side. In the meantime all available hands were working at the pumps and bailing water for dear life. I saw at a glance that we were in a bad way. Two out of seven bulkheads were flooded. If the water forced the next, where the boilers were, we would sink like a stone. We were making no headway, and our efforts to reclaim the flooded parts were of small avail. The skipper renewed his plea for a refuge on the Bulgarian coast. It was now past noon, and the men were wet and cold, and even the dispatches must wait, so I gave assent and we turned her nose for the shore.

Some miles south of Konstanza a great headland peninsula juts into the sea and swings a little south. This is called Kavarna Head. In the elbow of this bend is a semi-bay where even the north wind fails to wreak its vengeance, and to this shelter it was that we slid in about six that night, wet and cold, decks sea-swept and the cables twisted into snarls of halyards and guys. Fragments of wreckage stuck in the scuppers and the salt encrusted funnels told of the storm we had braved. Once in the still water we let go the starboard anchor, which slipped into it with a splash and cheerful rattling of cables as the steel links came clanking over the rollers out of the chain locker. From six to ten that night the work of ousting the water was carried on, and when four bells struck, we were as fit and sea-worthy as when we slid out of the Bosphorus and ran into the jaws of what I subsequently learned was one of the worst storms of the year.

The wind howled outside our haven, and the wet and weary men appealed strongly, so we lay to for the night, the steam simmering in the boilers, and the crew, exhausted by their hard day’s fight against wind and weather, slept on the grating over the boilers, for the forecastle was still too cold and wet for comfort.

In the dawn of as dismal a day as ever brought light we pulled up our anchor and turned our nose seaward again. The wind had subsided, but the waves still snapped at us, licking us now and anon with an angry slap. But the strength of it had oozed with the dying of the wind. Clouds hurried across the sky as we dipped and plunged northward, parting the seas to right and left as the sturdy little ship responded to the steady throb of the loyal heart down in the engines, that beat out its 110 revolutions to the minute. By noon the sun was breaking through, and the sea had subsided enough so that we could keep plates on the table, and the first meal at sea of the trip was served. When I came on deck after tiffin the sun was shining and the air as fresh and invigorating as a fall morning on the prairies in North Dakota. To the west stretched the broken coast of Roumania. An hour’s run or more northward, one could discern with a glass the site of that prosperous little nation’s greatest port, Konstanza. Two dreary nights had made me feel the need of rest. My saloon was cold and damp. The only place of refuge, where warmth was sure, was the engine room, and there I went, throwing myself on the rude bench in one corner where the engineer spent the idle moments of his watch, and fell fast asleep. About three I was aroused by being vigorously shaken. It was the engineer. As I sat up I noticed, to my surprise, that we were again rolling heavily.

“Well, what’s the trouble now?” I asked sleepily. He never smiled, but looked at me grimly.

“Bad. Very bad,” he said.

“What’s bad?” I asked. I was too tired to be even apprehensive. I wished he had let me sleep instead of bothering me with his fears.

“Come on deck,” he said, without any further explanation, and led me up the steel ladder to the top of the gratings and out on the deck. I could scarcely believe my eyes. The darkness of dusk had settled down upon us, and cloud upon cloud of snow were driving past us. I could barely see across the deck where the captain and the bulk of the crew were wringing their hands. As they all spoke at the same time, either in Greek or some other unknown tongue, and as each seemed to have a distinct and separate idea in mind as to what the exigencies of the situation required, it was difficult to gather what all the excitement was about. Everybody was presenting at one and the same moment a different course of action, each of which it would appear was the only road to safety. The captain urged in Greek that turning about and going somewhere astern was the only thing to do. One engineer advised Sulina in broken English, while the other had some ideas in Greek which have not yet come through. The Turkish fireman and others of our crew all wanted to do something or other, and each was howling the merits of his policy at the top of his lungs in his own peculiar dialect. Stomati was there with his seven different languages, which he was using all at once. Someone had dug him out of the galley and brought him forward to use his influence on the situation. Speaking a word in each of the seven languages to one of English, he started out into a detailed account of the storms of the Black Sea, their origin and cause, and their inevitably fatal termination. He had all the others faded for noise, and he soon had them in the background. Already the sea was lashing itself into a vortex of fury. The engineer had eased her down to half speed. I could scarcely believe my eyes. An hour before I had not seen a cloud in the sky, and yet we now appeared to be in the heart of a very enterprising blizzard. However, I could not see the overpowering danger, and personally I favored Odessa as being as safe as any other course and most convenient to the ends I had in view. Stomati finally got my ear, and, backed by old man Gileti, Spero and the mate, explained that these storms were the peril of the Black Sea; that at any moment it might turn up a cyclone and bring up seas that would swamp us in five minutes. I could not see how this could be possible myself, and neither did Morris, who had recovered his equilibrium, and we told them so. Stomati at once reached into the past and told of the wreck of the Roumanian mail, a 4000-ton boat of 21 knots, that had gone down only 20 miles from where we were, in just such a storm. Everyone knew of a dozen similar cases, and when word went aboard of what Stomati was saying, they all began at once to tell of the disasters that they knew of personally. I was beginning to be impressed, when, without warning, just as it had come, the snow ceased, and in two minutes the sun was out and shining brightly, with only a choppy sea and a black cloud sweeping astern to show the passing of the storm. Everyone, but Morris and I, seemed to be disappointed about it. However, they accepted the inevitable and returned gloomily to their posts, and I went back to the engine room bench. By eight o’clock that night we were off the mouth of the Danube at a place called Sulina Mouth. I had dined and reinforced myself with a cigar, when the captain, with his deprecating gestures and up-turned palms, came down and asked for permission to put in for the night. This would mean a delay of twenty-four hours at least, so I declined flatly. We were already nearly forty-eight hours out of the Bosphorus, and Odessa still a night’s run away, besides the night in port and one day lost. I considered it a very bad precedent. Stomati, who was clearing the dinner table, began to reminisce about a series of wrecks that had occurred between Sulina and Odessa, but after the false alarm snowstorm in the afternoon, I was determined to try the sea, even if it should be rough.

“Old Gileti has got cold feet sure,” volunteered Morris, who stood at my elbow as we watched the harbor lights of Sulina fade away beyond our bubbling wake. I was inclined to believe that he was right.

The moon was making frantic efforts to break through the clouds, and, though there was a brisk wind blowing, I believed we would have an easy night, and so I turned in, but I never made a worse mistake. About one o’clock I awoke with a realization of that fact. What we had been through before was child’s play. I threw on my coat and got into the dimly lighted saloon. The place looked as though a ten-inch shell had burst. Broken glass, trunks turned upside down, clothes thrown from their hooks, and confusion everywhere. Outside the wind and waves roared like a thousand freight trains. It took me two minutes to get the hatch open against the wind which seemed to be blowing everywhere at once. I could not see my hand before my face, but felt my way along the rail to the engine room skylight, then to the deck-house, pausing to cling tight for the lurches that followed every succeeding dip. It had come off cold, and ice was forming everywhere. I felt the thin coating on bar and brace as I climbed to the bridge deck, and, watching my opportunity, crawled toward the wheel-house, half blinded by the spray which swept the ship from end to end. The noise was too great for conversation, but the grim faces of the men at the wheel bespoke their views of the situation louder than words. They were two strong men, but flung this way and that they were, as they wrestled with the wheel, which spun and jerked under their hands like a live thing, as it answered the writhings of the rudder beaten by the seas that lashed astern. I tried to stand on the bridge, but snow and sleet-like darts of fiery steel bit my face and drove me back for shelter to the wheel-house. Every time we struck a sea the spray rose in solid sheets, beating against the thick glass windows until we had to raise the wooden storm sashes to keep them from breaking. The spume of the waves, whipped from their crest by the wind, blew across our decks in torrents, and high above the funnels. Every time she rose to take the sea in her teeth I drew my breath for the dip and surge of water that followed. Every time she plunged downward it seemed as though it must be her last. Again and again she buried her nose in the seething vortex, and then, trembling in every fiber, she would shake herself clear and rise to clinch the next sea that swept upon her. I stood there for hours watching the struggle. Puny man and the fragile creation of his hand against the forces of nature. Alone and in the blackness of night, we fought it out to the tune of the howling wind and the crash of water dashing itself to spray against our decks. Hour after hour passed and still she responded to the gallant little engines that never faltered. Half the time the screw would be beating air, the engines racing and shaking the boat as in an ague. The engineers clung desperately to the iron frame of the engine as they dropped in the oil on the working bearings. The firemen in the stoke hole braced themselves against the bulk-head as they heaved the coal.

The struggle lay in steam and the endurance of the engines, and they knew it, and each man shut his teeth and did his part.

Two o’clock came, three o’clock, four o’clock, and still we struggled on. Suddenly the wind stopped, the sea began to subside and the moon came out. All was lovely, only cold, so cold that one’s marrow seemed to freeze. Three hours more and the sun rose red in the east, flanked by two sun-dogs that justified the cold we felt. It was a perfect winter’s day. Way off on the port bow a great bluff began to loom up, and little by little the towers of a great city were discernible.

An hour later, cased in ice, with icicles hanging from every part, the France crept into port. We were wreathed in ice from stem to stern. The thermometer marked ten degrees below zero. I did not speak Greek, but the grip old man Gileti gave my hand, spoke his relief louder than words as we rounded to behind the breakwater in the haven, for which we had struggled for sixty-five hours—Odessa!