Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1918-11-21
FROM ALL SOURCES
Britain Gathered Small Boats tor
Tigris Service.
Even Small Excursion Vessels That
Were q 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 Ell
eanor Franklin Ecan In Saturday
Evening Post.
They were requisitioned from the
Ganges and the Indus and the Ira
wadi, from the Nile and the rivers OF
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 feeling of espe-
cially chill regret that more than
eighty of the ships have failed to ar
| rive. A few from everywhere have
gOne-aiong 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 1t you go on the Thames
penny steamers? To 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 holiday
sound in the very name-ThameS
penny steamer. And l 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
bravery 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-
initial, though / think l ought to add
that by British officers and men they
are especially identified and espe
ciaIly loved
As l watched the curious. fat-bot-
toned, high funneled. double decked,
puGdle wheeled little craft churning
briSkly downstream with her two
crowded barges in tow ! was seeing
visions of the kind of heroism that
makes one praverful. ! saw first the
matter of fact, nomchalant British
sailors on her frail slecks preparing
for such voyage as was never be-
fore undertaken; then / saw hcr-hor
sides boarded up and her one-time
spick and spanness begrimed with
the coal that had tn he slowed in ev
cry possible Space--moving out of the
snug security Of the busy. bustiiaS,
city bounded Thames into the open,
high rolling Atlantic. l followed her
course across the perilous Bay of Bis
cay and saw her creep down the long
coasts Of Portugal and Spain and
through the strait past Gibraltar.
After Gibraltar would come hope
ful, 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. Me Persian
guIf, and finallv--with what sigh
of relief--the broad current of the
Shat-el-Arah and the almost ripple
less serenity Of the blessed Tigris.
don't know what happened to the
six that failed, but one hears that
"their backs We're 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.
E;ghty,six! They should be honor
ably counted among England's honor
able losses ut sea, and they never
have been.