In addition to the regular lines, there are many independent steamers trading along the coast of the Mediterranean and through the north seas, and by scanning the advertisements, or enquiring at the steamship offices, the traveler will often find something decidedly to his advantage. For example, the writer was once in Singapore, at the Straits of Malacca, intending to go to Java. There is a steamer once a week from Singapore to Batavia, the capital of Java, and the vessel for that particular week was a French one that had only sixteen berths in her cabin; it was whispered around the hotel that she would be terribly overcrowded, as she had nearly fifty passengers booked, and perhaps more. By enquiring at the shipping offices it was ascertained that a Dutch steamer had been at Singapore for repair, and would return the same day and hour as the French one, but she had not been advertised, and nothing would have been known of her in the ordinary way. The writer and his friend secured passage on the Dutch steamer, and had a pleasant voyage; she had the same accommodations as the French ship, and only seven persons to occupy them, while the latter had fifty-two! They were packed somewhat after the manner of sardines in a can, and had a hard time of it, while every passenger on the Dutch ship had a room to himself, and all the space he wanted at the dinner table.
The rules and regulations on the steamers in and around European waters vary somewhat, according to the nationalities of the companies. The American traveler will run across what will be to him a curious custom, on some of the Mediterranean lines; the supplying of food, and the service of the table generally is not undertaken by the company, but is leased or farmed out, the same as a hotel-keeper in New York leases the space for a cigar or newspaper stand. The consequence is that the table will vary considerably on different ships of the same company, in proportion as the steward is liberal or the reverse. It also happens frequently that the captain and steward are not on friendly terms, as the latter does not run the table in accordance with the ideas of the former; the steward is not responsible to the captain, and cannot be removed by him, and as long as the contract is a favorable one for the company, and the passengers make no complaint, the managers of the concern are likely to uphold the steward as against the captain. On most of the French and Italian lines it is useless to make any complaint to the captain concerning the table, and the steward will laugh at you for so doing. But if you write your objections in the official complaint book, the situation is changed at once.
This matter requires a little explanation. On all Italian mail steamers, and on some of the French and Austrian ones, there is a book accessible to the passengers for the express purpose of receiving their complaints. The pages are numbered consecutively, and they are stamped by the chief maritime officer of the port where the ship is registered, and at the completion of every voyage the book goes to that functionary for examination. If there is any complaint it is investigated, and receives the proper punishment, at least such is the general belief. The service of the table of an Italian steamer has been changed from bad to good by the mere threat of writing a complaint, and on one occasion, when the matter had been written out, the captain and officers subsequently begged the complaining passenger to add a postscript to the effect that the cause of his growl had been removed, and he was willing to withdraw his remarks. They had bestirred themselves to make things pleasant, and so he complied with their request, but not till the steamer was in sight of port, lest their vigilance might relax. It is a pity that the same system is not in vogue on some of the trans-Atlantic steamers, as it would have a good effect now and then on the discipline of the servants.
One great inconvenience of travel in the Mediterranean, and also at many ports on the eastern and northern coast of the Continent of Europe, is the necessity of landing or embarking in row-boats. The boats are rarely supplied by the company owning the steamers, but must be secured by the passenger, and as the boatmen are rapacious, and more or less dishonest (generally more), the negotiations are not pleasant. Besides it is no joke when the sea is rough, and the distance long, to be tossed in a skiff between shore and steamer, or steamer and shore, especially if one is inclined to sea-sickness, and not over-confident in the safety of the craft that carries him. The operation of landing or embarking when the waves are tossing, has an element of risk about it, and many a person has been dropped into the water in stepping from a skiff to the gangway stairs, or from stairs to skiff. The steamship companies shirk the responsibility of transfers in harbors where they connect with ships of their own lines; in the voyage just mentioned, from Constantinople to Syra, and from Syra to Athens, the tickets were purchased through from the Golden Horn to the Piraeus, but on reaching Syra the party was told it must pay its own expense for transferring to the branch vessel that was waiting for them. Gouty, feeble, and timid persons are warned that a tour of the Mediterranean is not to be undertaken lightly, by reason of this impossibility of landing directly at a dock. Of all the ports of the Mediterranean there are not half a dozen where the steamers lie at docks, so as to render the small boat unnecessary.
For general advice concerning the business of going down to the sea in ships, the reader is referred to a previous section of this volume. The precautions against sea-sickness are as good (or as useless) in the one case as the other, and the stewards and other employés of the ship are much alike, whatever their nationality. On the French, Italian, and Austrian steamers, the chief steward has the assignment of rooms instead of the purser; the latter functionary is rarely seen by the passenger, and is supposed to be busy with his accounts of the freight. Consequently the chief steward is the proper personage to evince any friendly disposition for, and he is generally open to arguments of a financial character. A five-franc piece will render him attentive, for ten francs he is obsequious, and for twenty he may possibly harbor the proposal to throw the captain overboard, and put you in chief command.
For parties containing ladies it is well to remember that English, French, or Austrian steamers on the Mediterranean and Black Sea lines, are preferable to other nationalities, as they generally carry stewardesses, while the others do not. There are exceptions to this rule on some of the Italian ships on long voyages, but they are decidedly rare. In the matter of cleanliness, the various nationalities may be ranged in the following order:—English, French, Austrian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Greek.
The Turkish and Egyptian steamers are hardly worth including in the list as they have at best very poor accommodations for occidentals of the sterner sex, while they are totally unfit for ladies to travel on.
In Northern Europe the German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, and Russian ships are pretty nearly alike, and if there is any difference it is in the order named. All the northern nations are good sailors, and the captains are competent navigators; the Latin races are less reliable in this respect than the Teutons and their kindred, and the Orientals are the worst of all. Of the Latins the French are the best, and especially those from Marseilles and its vicinity. The Italians were once hardy navigators, and the mariners of Genoa, Venice, and other maritime cities of Italy have a noble record; but in these latter days they have degenerated very seriously, and their triumphs on the sea are not of great renown. The best of Italian seamen and sailors come from Genoa, Sardinia, and Corsica,—the latter, though belonging to France, may be classed as Italian, since the people are of that lineage and speak the language of the peninsula. In the same way the Austrian Lloyd steamers belong properly to the Italian classification, since Trieste, the headquarters of the company, is essentially Italian, and it is not unusual to find captains and other officers of the company who speak no other language, although German is the tongue of the country under whose flag they sail.
The Spanish sailors are a sad travesty on the men that four hundred years ago traversed the Atlantic with Columbus, and during the three following centuries made the Spanish name respected and feared on the seas all over the globe. A Spanish steamer generally abounds in fleas and dirt, and the cuisine leaves much to be desired; if you call the attention of the steward to creeping or jumping things in the berths he will gravely inform you that such a thing was never known before on the ship and you must have brought it on board when you embarked.
The Turk is too much a fatalist to be a good sailor. He is not deficient in bravery or intelligence, but in a place of peril he is very apt to fold his arms and say "Inshallah" (God wills it), and let events shape themselves. Therefore it is well to avoid a Turkish or Egyptian ship whenever another nationality can be found, not only on the score of cleanliness already mentioned, but on that of safety.