The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-22
YANKEE ADMIRAL
 OF TURKISH NAVY American Sea Rover Anchored In Ottoman Position SAILOR OF FORTUNE Former Cabin Boy On Lakes Shows the Turks How to Tell Naval
 Junk From Real
 Warships

navy, aide-de- camp and naval adviser to the Sultan, puts himself down when
 he gets among his old friends The ad-
 miral is, or was, an American. He has had a career of real adventure. Twen- 1 ty-seven years ago he was cabin boy
 on schooner on the Great Lakes.
 Ransford D. Bucknam was born in
 Nova Scotia in 1869, but his parents al-
 most Immediately removed to Maine. A.
 the age of IA he felt the call of the sea and followed it to the Great Lakes,
 where he became cabin boy on a
 schooner whose skipper was its own
 CT. The captain and his wife took q
 liking to the youngster.
 At 16 Bucknam went out from New
 York as quartermaster of schooner
 bound for the Pacific. When the little vessel reached Manila the captain and the mates died of cholera. and as the boy was the only person left on the
 craft who had studied navigation he
 went before special examining board, got masters certificate, became a
 captain at IF and brought his vessel home.
 About 20 years ago Bucknam sailed
 out of Tampico in command of steam ship laden with hemp and silver bound for New York. Twenty hours later
 he smashed his propeller on a sunken wreck The captain called for volun- teers to go back to Tampico in the
 ships longboat and cable New York for
 a tug. The mate and three men stepped
 out. They accomplished their task without mishap, but the steamship drifted without motive power and the
 tug searched for it 20 days before find ing 1t.
 DodgIng Dry Dock Arrived at Key West, it was assumed that the ship would have to put in dry dock. but Bucknam wasn't paying out
 money for what he thought was un-. | necessary. He crowded all his cargo into the forward holds, which had the effect of throwing the ships stern al most out of water. It was not quite enough, however, to enable the propel- Ter shaft to be repaired, so the re-
 sourceful skipper bought a little l schooner. tied it to his stem and loaded 1t with stone ballast. This pulled the bow down and raised the stern, so that Bucknam was able to achieve the dis tinction of being the first man to put a propeller in a steamship without docketing it. An American admiral who saw the operation said it was one of the cleverest achievements of it's
 kind he had ever witnessed
 But Bucknam had to dry dock his ship after all for the shaft had become twisted and it pounded so on the way to New York that most of the bolts in | the hull were loose when the ship reached Sandy nook.
 After that Bucknam went to the
 Great Lakes again and became com- mander of the first of the whaleback steamers just building. His first trip
 on the Joseph L. Colby was exploited f-. q building of the whaleback passenger
 steamer Christopher Columbus, and was in command of her during the worlds fair. Soon afterward he went out to the Pacific coast, wh ere he built the whaleback sydney. In 1895 he became
 a mate in the service of the Pacific Mail Steamship company. Two years later he was captain in charge of the
 Island of Naos, Panama. While there he invented an electrical device by which compass may be made to trace
 the route of a vessel About ten years
 ago Bucknam was put in command of
 the new steamship City of Pekin and became a transpacific skipper.
 Bucknam had not made many trips across the Pacific before he was asked
 by the Cramps of Philadelphia to be- come their nautical expert. When the battleship Maine made her trial runs
 he was in command of her, and when
 the Cramps finished the Turkish cruis- CT, Medjidia he was assigned to deliver
 her and sent to Turkey with three
 months contract to train the crew. Improving n Joke
 The Turkish navy had been a joke, at least since the battle of Navarino. Somehow Abdul Hamid took fancy to the American sailor and asked him how he would like job as naval ad- wiser to himself at a princely salary. R,1cL n Eek ad fOr I, loo, to come home and get married. After a hurried trip to San Francisco, he re- ported to the Sultan on April 19, 1904. He started to put things shipshape so far as he could. It was not long be- fore the Sultan made him a pasha and admiral, conferred on him the Order of Osmanlieh, and gave him a medal for distinguished service.
 Report has 1t that Bucknam saved the Sultan's life when an attempt was made to assassinate Abdul Hamid several
 years ago. While the Sultan was re-
 turning to the Yildiz Kiosk from the
 Mamidieh mosque a bomb thrown into the imperial escort killed scores of
 men and horses, rent the ground there
 abouts and shook neighboring build
 ings Bucknam Pasha stepped to the side of the Sultan's carriage and shout
 ed that he would lop off any hand
 that dared to stretch forth toward the | cuitdH. iit Wdlhtu SWOTu III Hdnu De-
 side the carriage all the way to the palace. This act Abdul Hamid never forgot
 Bucknam Pasha is the first Christian who ever had actual command of the
 Turkish navy. He won the Sultan's
 favor by his honesty. It used to be
 the system, so 1t is said, for European
 shipbuilders to get as much money as possible for ships as nearly worth less as the Sultans officers would ac- cept. The Sultan paid in one instance
 s1,S50,0 900 and got in return an iron
 tub filled with junk, the whole worth
 perhaps $S00,0C0. Of the money thai
 went out of the Sultan's purse his own
 officers got $1,200,000 and the contrac- tors pocketed the modest sum of $450,-
 O00
 One several occasions the American.
 who usually was sent to shpyards to
 take delivery of vessels ordered, re-
 fused to take the tubs contracted for
 until changes had been made bringing
 them up to contract requirements This
 made him no friends among the ship
 builders of the particular government
 which had the monopoly of Turkish
 contracts at the time, and one day note from the embassy of that power
 suggested to the porte that the build-
 CTS of the new vessel would perfer
 some one else than Bucknam to take delivery of -that ship. Abdul Mamd's
 reply was to make an admiral and
 pasha out of Bucknam.
 While bringinge one of these new