The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1918-08-15
FROM ALL SOURCES
Britain Gathered Small Boats for
Tigris Service.
Even Small Excursion Vessels That
Were a Feature of Outings on
the Thames Were Made Use
Of in Mesopotamia.

River boats for the Tigris were an
absolute, primary necessity. They
could not be built in Mesopotamia or
anywhere else in time to relieve the
desperate situation. They could not
be materialized by the wave Of any
magician's wand. Well, what then?
Then they would have, to come out of
other rivers otherwhere and make
their various ways somehow-no mat
ter how !--across the seas and up
through the Persian gulf, writes FL
eanor Franklin Egan in Saturday
Evening Post.
They were requisitioned from the
Ganges and the Indus and the Ira
wadi, from the Nile and the rivers or
Africa, and even from the Sikiang,
the Yang-tse and the Hwang-ho.
From everywhere they have come; 1t
has been one of the bravest and
strangest achievements Of the war,
and one hears with a feeling Of espe-
cially chill regret that more than
eighty of the ships have failed to ar
rive. A few from everywhere have
gone-along with the high hopes Of
British sailors, and usually with the
sailors. TOTO the bottom Of the
seas they were never made to ven
ture on.
But the Thames penny steamers?
Where is it you go on the Thames
penny steamers? 10 Richmond? To
Putney? To Henley? To queer little
landings here and there round Lon
don where crowds of people gather
on gala days and where happy sum-
mer memories are made? Yes, to
places like that. There is a holiday
sound in the very name-Thames
penny steamer. And wonder If
there are many Englishmen with no
memories to make that sound music
in their ears?
But the Thames penny steamers,
too, were needed on the Tigris to help
meet the tremendous emergency. So
brayely they set out. Eleven of them
started, but only five of them achieved
the impossible. Five of them got to
the Tigris and are now listed by num-
Der in the great fleet under class
initial, though I think ] ought to add
that by British officers and men they
are especially identified and espe-
cially loved.
AS 1 watched the curious, fiat-bot-
toned, high funneled, double decked,
paddle wheeled little craft churning
briskly downstream with her two
crowded barges in tow I was seeing
visions of the kind Of herOism that
makes one prayerful. ! saw first the
matter of fact, nonchalant British
sailors on her frail decks preparing
for such a voyage as was never be-
fore undertaken; then l saw her-her
sides boarded up and her one-time
spick and spanness begrimed with
the coal that had to be slowed in ev-
cry possible space-moving out of the
snug security of the busy, bustling,
city bounded Thames into the open,
high rolling Atlantic. 1 followed her
course across the perilous Bay OF Bis
cay and saw her creep down the long
coasts of Portugal and Spain land
through the strait past Gibraltar.
After Gibraltar would come hope
full, careful, long crawl across the
mine strewn and submarine infested
Mediterranean. Port Said in safety
Then the Suez canal-contributing
brief period of relaxation-the Red
sea, the Arabian sea, the Persian
gulf, and finally-with what a sigh
of relief-the broad current of the
Shat-el-Arab and the almost ripple
less serenity of the blessed Tigris
I don't know what happened to the
six that failed, but one hears that
"their backs were broken by the high
seas" That was the chief danger they
all had to face; they and the hun
dreds of others from other faraway
rivers, too. Eighty of the others went
down and six Of the Thames boats.
Eighty-six! They should be honor
ably counted among England's honor
able losses at sea, and they never
have been.