The Balkan peoples are an excellent example of these differences. To me, they have the same naturalness as children and the same inability to hide their feelings; in this they are the exact opposite of the English. One afternoon, about tea time, I called on an attractive Hungarian lady. Shortly after my arrival another guest arrived. He was in the diplomatic service of one of the Balkan states and, of course, an educated, upper-class man. When he saw us he stamped his foot in a rage, hit the table with his fist and then shouting, “I cannot stay, I must go!” turned and literally ran out of the room. He had expected to be the only guest and, like a child, could not hide his disappointment.
On another afternoon at Tokatlians an Army officer from the Balkans was sitting at a table with a Russian girl. One of our men, a big lieutenant from Kentucky, came into the room and, as he knew the girl, stopped as he passed her table and commenced talking to her. The Balkan officer acted exactly like a small boy; he commenced wiggling in his chair and showed unmistakably that he wanted the American to go away. You may have seen small boys, when bored by the conversation of other small boys, take the bore by the shoulders and endeavor to push him away. Something very like that happened. The Balkan, perhaps unconsciously, picked up his napkin and flicked it across the American officer’s face in an effort to drive him away. The American stood staring at him unbelievingly and then knocked him completely through a small table where two Englishmen were quietly having their tea. When the shower of tea and buns subsided the Russian girl had fled and the Englishmen were disclosed sitting on the floor, applauding frantically and demanding an encore. The Balkan officer was knocked unconscious but several of his friends came running up, drawing their swords as they did so. Their way was blocked by the other patrons who had jumped up and were crowding around to see what was happening. In the ensuing confusion, we got the lieutenant out of the café and around the corner. Just as the Kentuckian could not conceive of someone hitting him in the face for no reason, so the Balkan officer obviously had no idea that the American would retaliate. If he resented the action, the correct procedure would be to issue a challenge to a duel.
With the best will in the world, one had to be constantly on one’s guard to avoid giving offense. I met a Captain Rawlings on the British Aircraft Carrier Pegasus, whom I had known in Scotland and we renewed our old friendship. Rawlings asked me if we had any motion pictures the Pegasus could borrow and I sent to the Denebola for a few. He had me over to dinner on the carrier and, in front of the crew before the picture show, presented me with a silver cup to be used as a prize in athletic competitions on the Denebola. I said a few words of thanks, the men applauded, and we sat down to enjoy the show. Suddenly I remembered that for some reason a number of the pictures we had been receiving were violently anti-British. I don’t know if this was because they were slanted to the Irish-American audiences or because there was resentment among the Jews over the British mandate in Palestine. I did know that if one of these pictures was to be shown, the entire crew of the Pegasus, officers and men, would consider it a deliberate insult. Thank heaven the picture turned out to be quite innocuous and before leaving I carefully checked the others.
As summer approached we spent more and more time out of doors, most of it on the water. Constantinople is the most wonderful summer resort in the world, especially if you have a power boat. It is never really hot there and, unlike New England, the water is warm and perfect for swimming. The Bosphorus forms a sort of funnel from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora and there was nearly always a cool breeze coming down from the Russian steppes. At intervals along the shores, both of the Bosphorus and the Marmora, there are little cafés extending out over the water and provided with boat landings. Here we would run alongside, step from my gig, sit down at a table and have tea. There were countless such places but Moda became our favorite. It is on the Asiatic shore of the Sea of Marmora, not far from the Tower of Leander, where the legendary Greek hero performed the amazing feat of swimming the Hellispont. After passing through the entrance to the Bosphorus and rounding the breakwater, we would head in at slow speed, sounding with a boathook, until we were in about five feet of water and let go the gig’s anchor. The girls would go down into the cabin and shift into swimming clothes while we were changing up forward and then all hands would go swimming off the boat.
I had a wooden ladder rigged to hang over the side so we could get back on board without too many gymnastics. After swimming we would get up anchor, run across the bay and have tea and dance at a little Russian café on the end of the breakwater, returning to Constantinople after dark. Ah, those were golden days, the happiest time of my life.
I remember a couple of amusing incidents connected with these trips — at least, they seemed amusing to me. Once I was accosted by an old fellow who started to talk to me in Turkish which I did not understand. One of the girls with us, an Austrian, began to laugh. I asked her what the man was saying and she replied, “He says that the Turks like Americans but they cannot stand those accursed Christians.”
On another occasion I was confronted by one of the American ladies attached to our embassy who looked with strong disapproval at our female companions and asked angrily, “What do you see in those furriners?” I told her “They have nice manners and are pretty and interesting.” She retorted, “They don’t look like real folks” and turned away with an angry sniff. I felt put in my place.
We were forced to shift our anchorage to one off Bostanjik in the Sea of Marmora. As the peace approached, the natives got more and more aggressive and several of our men were stabbed in the streets at night. As we had been on very friendly terms with the Turks, I was entirely unprepared for this sudden change in attitude. I don’t know whether this belligerency was because the Turks thought our men were Western Europeans or whether in a burst of national pride over the peace treaty they delighted in attacking any strangers, but the embassy wanted to get the Destroyer Squadron away before a general battle took place and to clear the Bosphorus of ships as far as possible.
We left our old berth and shifted to one about half a mile from the shore of Asia Minor. After anchoring, I went to a conference at the embassy; an hour’s run for my gig. The city was adorned with Turkish flags and all foreigners were being evacuated. It looked like the beginning of the end.
I held a conference with the fleet navigator of the British Squadron and we discussed various plans for mutual support if the trouble became acute. The next day I discovered that two of our men were missing. They had gotten into a fight on shore and when the Shore Patrol had gone to their help, the patrol had been beaten up too. According to my informant, everyone had been drunk, including the Shore Patrol, which was outrageous. I went to Pera that afternoon with a group of armed sailors. As we tramped down the main street of Bostanjik apprehensive heads appeared at the windows. Through some of my Turkish friends I was able to obtain the men’s release. Except for some broken heads, none of them was seriously injured. After that, I stopped all shore liberty.
Again through my friends in Constantinople, I was warned that conditions in southern Russian were “uncertain” and there might well be fighting at any time. This was something I didn’t want to get involved in unless it was absolutely necessary to protect American lives. I went ashore in Varna and called on the captain of the port, the mayor and the British consul general hoping for more news; we had no diplomatic or consular representative there. What they told me was not encouraging. They all agreed that the Bulgars and the Serbs were “les vrai sauvages” and trouble between them and the Turks after the European warships left was inevitable. The British consul’s wife was a Polish woman, who spoke twelve languages as well as several gypsy dialects and kept abreast of all the rumors. Her companion was a Bulgarian girl who had been secretary to Stambouliski, the Bulgarian statesman who had sided with the Allies during the war and later been deposed and shot by a military coup. She told me that he wasn’t simply shot; the r
evolutionists had first cut off his ears and then tortured him to death. “If there is trouble, don’t let those people take you alive,” she warned me. I promised her to avoid it if possible.
Of course, as long as we stayed on our ships we were in no danger but if it became necessary to send landing parties ashore to take off American citizens, the situation might become sticky. I made a few visits on shore and noted that almost all foreign uniforms had disappeared and there were many more fezzes. The most gruesome aspect of the whole business was the plight of the refugee Russian girls who worked in the restaurants and cafés. Many of them had been helped by the foreign officers and men. Now that the Allied Forces were leaving, the girls were faced with the alternative either of being “nice” to the scum of the Near East or starving to death. Many did not even have that choice. While I was there I heard of one girl who, reduced to the last extremity, attempted to drown herself. She was pulled out of the water by a gang of laborers who, after doing what they wanted with her, threw her back again and stood laughing as she drowned.
I personally witnessed one of these tragedies. There was an officer on the Denebola who disliked all women intensely and who never failed to be rude when he was forced to speak to them. His sole recreation had been to go ashore once a week and drink beer with his cronies at Novatni’s. One morning he came to my cabin with a face as long as the maintopbowline and asked my advice. It seems there was a young Russian girl who was very much in love with one of our seamen and was hoping desperately that he would marry her — her only chance to escape the city. She had tried hard to see her sweetheart but this officer had callously turned her away. She had then come back with a little bunch of flowers she had picked somewhere and presented them to the officer in a despairing effort to win him over. Even this misanthrope was touched by the poor child’s pitiful gesture and he had allowed her to see her lover. One of the American women saw him take the flowers and had written a vicious letter to the man’s wife. (I could not imagine his having a wife), saying he was receiving flowers from women. Except for the fact that the officer was almost out of his mind with anxiety the affair would have been amusing as he had never looked at a woman except to insult her. He said he was going to write a scorching letter to his wife for presuming to doubt him. I advised him simply to laugh at the affair for if he and his wife had a falling out it would be just what the writer of the letter hoped for. In retaliation for the trouble she had caused him, I later learned that he had refused to allow the Russian girl on the ship and, as all shore leave had been cancelled, she was never able to speak to her lover again, although she used to stand on the wharf and wave to him. Whether after we sailed she drowned herself or was forced to become a prostitute I never learned.
This morning we have received our evacuation orders. Everybody was to get out not later than October 4th and on the 5th the Turkish Army under Mustapha Kemal would march in. At first it was not expected that we would leave at the same time as the Europeans; we have never been at war with Turkey and there was not the same feeling against us. However, a regular campaign was started by the local foreign language newspapers such as the Levant News and Le Journal. Their headlines screamed, “Why do the Americans stay when we must leave?” and so on. Finally, apparently to shut them up, the Turkish authorities requested us to leave at the same time.
I had a final luncheon at the “Summer Embassy” at Therapia. All the Near East Relief people had fled and the YMCA was preparing to leave with the Navy. For several days the Denebola’s radio had been our only means of communication with the outside world and we were the only means of rescuing the remaining Americans. I helped evacuate several of the women who had been complaining about me to Admiral Bristol and strangely enough they couldn’t have been more agreeable. I wonder why. Our businessmen ashore didn’t seem to be apprehensive as they knew how to get along with the Turks. We sailed at five o’clock the afternoon of October 4th with a long, homeward-bound pennant flying at the main truck. All our ships were to be away before the entrance of the Kemalist Army. At seven o’clock we anchored in Suvula Bay opposite Chanak. That afternoon I did something I had long wanted to attempt — swimming the Hellespont.
For months now I had been studying all the available literature on this famous strait including tide tables, sailing directions, charts, and the encyclopedias. The first step was to locate accurately Sestos and Abydos — the two points on either side of the strait where both Leander and Lord Byron had made the swim. In one of the encyclopedias I found the following, “North and east from the town of Tchanck Kalesi is a low strip of land called Nagara Burun projecting into the sea. This spot has been fixed upon as the site of ancient Abydon and a similar projecting point corresponds to it on the European shore. Here Leander swam across the strait from Abydos to Sestos and Lord Byron swam the same distance on May 3, 1818.”
This information checked with the standard Navy Hydrographic Office chart of the Dardanelles for, while there are no traces of the ancient towns there is a “Sestos Point” on the European side and an “Abydos Point” on the Asiatic, and behind these points the chart shows the “Sites of Ancient Sestos and Abydos”.
The current at this point flows southwesterly with a force of from one to four knots depending on the strength and direction of the wind. The shortest distance between Europe and Asia is very nearly one and one-eighth nautical miles but because of the current it would be impossible to swim directly across; I would have to swim diagonally across the axis of the current so as not to experience its full force.
I had arranged to have a small pulling boat follow me. There were two reasons for this: one, in case I couldn’t make it at least I wouldn’t drown. Secondly, I wanted to have witnesses to the stunt if I succeeded.
The day I decided to attempt the swim there was a fresh breeze blowing from the southwest or directly against the current. This had raised a choppy sea with waves about two feet high. I was obliged to decide either to swim with the current and against wind and sea or vice versa. I had heard so much about the strength of the current that I decided to go with it and buck the waves. As soon as I got clear of the shore the waves began slapping me in the face and before long the little following boat was half full of water and the crew had to start bailing. When I had been in the water about an hour I began to get cramps, first in one leg and then in the other, but fortunately they didn’t get too bad.
I did all right until I approached the Asiatic shore where I encountered a counter current flowing strongly up toward the Sea of Marmora. When I first put my feet on the bottom they were snatched out from under me by this counter current and I found it impossible to stand up until I got closer inshore but I finally made it. I did not try to establish a time record as we were under orders to sail that evening and there would have been no opportunity to attempt the swim again in case I failed the first time. The state of the sea, indeed, made any fast swimming impossible.
When we got back to the ship the crew of the following boat signed a certificate of the swim. Here it is:
Office of the Commanding Officer
USS Denebola
This is to certify that, on October 5, 1923, Captain D. Pratt Mannix, US Navy, swam across that part of the Dardanelles known as the Hellespont, from Europe to Asia, between the ancient sites of Sestos and Abydos. Distance, one and one-half nautical miles; elapsed time from shore to shore, one hour, thirty-five minutes, seven seconds. Sea, choppy, wind South West, force five.
John J. Smith
Boatswain, US Navy
Oswald H. Lucke
Chief Boatswains Mate, US Navy
Anton Eminger
Boatswains Mate First Class, US Navy
Herbert D. Van Voorhis
Coxswain US Navy
Certificate of Hellespont swim, October 5, 1923.
An account of my swim was published in the Naval Register but otherwise it attracted li
ttle attention. Two years later, the writer-traveler Richard Halliburton claimed to have made the swim and announced that he was the first American to do so. His account was widely publicized. I wrote to the newspapers pointing out that whether or not Halliburton did make the swim — and several of the feats he claimed to have performed were highly questionable — he was certainly not the first American to do so. Halliburton, however, continued to make his claim and many people believed him. Whether or not I was the first American to perform this stunt I do not know, but while the newspaper controversy between Halliburton and myself was raging, no one else made a prior claim so I suppose I was the first American to duplicate Leander’s feat.
After a short stay in Athens, we proceeded homeward. We had been absent for two years. There is always a thrill in coming home! As we passed Fire Island Light, a radio message was brought to me on the bridge. I must admit I was touched. Clearly it was a “Welcome Home” and meant that the Department remembered us. It is pleasant to feel that you are not forgotten. Wiping my eyes which, I am ashamed to say had become moist, I read it by the light of our binnacle. It was from the Big Flagship:
You will report in writing your reason for violating section seven-eleven Paragraph four-eleven-forty-four subhead QXR of Radio Communication Manual WJZ as amended on the umpteenth instant.
Then I KNEW we were home!
Postscript
The Old Navy Page 34