Elderly sisters at rest on the Istanbul waterfront.
raised luggage racks reminiscent of thirdclass rail carriage seats provide accomodation, and a concession serving Turkish coffee and baklava completes the picture. Clinker-built pulling boats with raked wine-stem transoms hang from the gracefully curved iron davits port and starboard. Directly above, a green visor shades the windows of the varnished pilothouse and slightly aft two ventilators flank a squat funnel painted in white-and-orange bands . A raised escutcheon in red and showing crossed anchors under a crescent moon with star stands out in relief. Amidships the scrape of a coal shovel on iron grates, the clang of the fire door and the measured pulse of a reciprocating engine dominate the senses. Peering into this inferno with sun-struck eyes, one sees a fierce orange glow through the fire grate and wafts of coal dust floating through the slanted shafts of sunlight. A silvery gleam of oil-slick metal pumping rhythmically and counterweights and eccentrics turning in repetitive revolutions revealed a Brobdingnagian steam engine. No whine or vibration of a screaming diesel or the queasy stench of fuel oil here; only the ubiquitous thunkady thunkady thunkady of the tripleexpansion engine pulsing life through the fabric of the Kocatas in a refrain that stretches back through half a century. While the Kocatas plies the Golden Hom, her bigger sisters work the broader reaches of the Bosporus. These differ from the Kocatas in two major respects. They have twin-screw propulsion and they can be conned from two independent midships bridge stations. As the ferries shuttle back and forth in a zig-zag course between Europe and Asia, passengers can embark and disembark from alternate sides, and the pilots change their bridge station depending on what continent they are alongside. The "pierhead jump" method of picking up and discharging passengers seems to be more the rule than the exception. The twin screws facilitate maneuverability in the close quarters of the ferry docks, and the pilots' deft use of the immense torque of the engines to execute landings and departures is a thrill to watch. Just when you think that ramming the pier is 24
a dead certainty, the pilot rings down for Stop Engines, then Astern Full on the outboard screw and Astern One-Third on the inboard one . A deckhand lassoes a bollard with a spring line and the steamer's wales rub gently against the dock piles as she rides her almost spent forward momentum . Stop Engines is rung down; but before a gangplank can be thrown across the gap most passengers have jumped on or off.
"Some vessels were built during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire . .. and the newest date from the 1930s." The engine room telegraph speaks again, Astern One-Third outboard engine, Ahead Two-Thirds inboard engine. Vortices boil and swirl under the stem as the big props work against each other to pivot the bow outboard. And then with the order for All Engines Ahead Full she picks up speed with each revolution and slides quickly along, the smoke rolling from her funnel and casting an oblique shadow across an ever-widening wake . The age of these vessels attests to the durability of steam power and rivetted iron hulls. Some vessels were built during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire in the teens of this century. Others were built in the 1920s and the newest date from the 1930s . But their staid appearance hearkens back to the Victorian era. A two-tiered inland steamer profile with a centrally located saloon provides ample deck space and shelter for passengers. Rows of orange life rings are strung conspicuously along the handrails, and on either side a clinker-built pulling boat lies cradled under the gooseneck davits. An oversized carbon-arc searchlight mounted on a pedestal at the bow dominates the foredeck. The plumb stem, low-slung hull , proud smokestack flanked by cowl ventilators , varnished panelling, visored pilothouses and the raked masts form an image pleasing to the eye. The most distinctive of the Istanbul'un buharli gemileri are the diminutive steam tugs with hinged funnels which can be lowered when negotiating low bridges .
The Dutch-built Tescil #345 of 1935 sports a triple-expansion engine and a hinged funnel .
At one time this type of vessel was the standard small harbor towboat throughout Europe, and they have been immortalized in prints depicting the type passing under the bridges of the Seine River at Paris. Walking over the Galata Bridge, the oldest spanning the Golden Horn , I saw one of these miniature tugs about to pass below me . A couple of deckhands lowered the smokestack by hauling on a line attached to its top rim . When she emerged on the other side they released the reefing line and the stack swung back into an upright position under the weight of counterbalances at its base . There are few of these " little toot" tugs left in Istanbul. But one day I hired a rowboat to poke around the waterfront and located the Tescil #345. Built in Holland in 1935, the Tescil #345 is 18 .75m long, with a beam of 4.75m and a draft of 2.14m. Her triple-expansion engine can develop 180 "steam" horsepower. This little vessel has worked so long and hard that her deck has rusted through in some places. When the engine turns over, the worn bearings and out-of-balance shaft create a cacaphony of thunks and clanks and her stern shudders from the prop' s cavitation. On the foredeck there is a "Shipmate " type coal range where the crew brew their Turkish coffee. The teak wheel with brass bands is scalloped from fifty years of helmsmen 's calloused hands. The crew's reaction to my enthusiastic appraisal of their steamer was one of healthy skepticism. This is typical of what happens when a romantic , interested in relics of our past, confronts the everyday reality of such sailors . I am sure they would willingly trade their dirty , clanking Tescil #345 for an antiseptic, diesel-powered tug. Such changes to the scene are everywhere imminent. The waters of the Bosporous have silently witnessed the transition from oar to sail and, in more recent times, to steam. The Istanbul ' un buharli gemileri are living on borrowed time . The march of progress has doomed these dinosaurs of an earlier industrial age to extinction. Soon they will follow the Byzantine and Ottoman empires into the realm of hisSEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987