QUEEREST CRAFT IN THE WORLD.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 266, 13 April 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

QUEEREST CRAFT IN THE WORLD.

HOW OUR MESOPOTAMIA FORCE IS FED.

Bv EDMUND CANDLER

(Special Correspondent of the Daily Express with the Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia.

For the difficult river navigation of tins fiat country we lia.re built 130 heavy teak-timbered craft, which the Arab describes as. "chias." These carry alwiit forty tens, though three top the hundred; many can take fifty tons, but very many spoil the average by ranging between thirty-seven and tlurty tons. They have short, stubby masts and just a bit of sail, and Wo to polo up river along the bank and drift gently down to a steamer, get loat'ed by slings of cargo craned out to them over tho ship's side, wait for ebb and flow of the tide, and gently drift to shore, sometmes striking tha very place they are required at —but just by accident. Chias can l>o brought quite close inshore at high tr.de and very near at mid-ebb, so near that a plank twenty inches wide two inches thick, and anything up to thirty feet long, can be placed from chia to shore for Persian coolies to carry supplies to the A.S.C depots on shore. The space between shore and chia bridged by these planks is black and squashy mud of the consistency of treacle, and with a. bouquet almost equal to ou rold friend, fish oil. CHEAP TRANSIT.

Tho boatmen earn a sovereign for the first forty-eight hours of each trip from shore to ship and back to shore, with a crown and fourpenee for every subsequent twenty-four hours' detention, and have a skipper and three lightermen to feed on that. When achia has a hut for the crew built on the stern, steps a mast from 60ft. to 80ft. in length, with a yard of about the same length, and is given a great white sail, she becomes a saffara (Arabic "saffar" —to travel), and voyager, up river to Bagdad on the Tigris, or Nasori on tho Karun.

Thero are 130 arger and 180 smaller saffaras. making a total of 310 boats for freight, and yet it is difficult to keep tho number wo want constantly in work and to shift the requisite tonnage per month to the advanced base 157 miles up stream. Three powerful light-draught tugs for helping bunches of six saffaras in the worst part of the river would double their utility, but the right class of tug would have to come thousands of miles by sea under her own steam. A small saffara is described n.s a saffina, and these pretty little craft cover tho river with the'r bright sails. They are small enough to run up any creek and across tho waste of flood waters, but with crews of at least three men and a capacity of twelve tons and under, tho cost of running them is very high. ARTISTIC ARABS.

Tilio word " ballam" means a canoe, and thero arc ballams of over 100 tons burden and down the gamut to the tiny craft (three-quarters of a ton), which causes Basra to bo described as "the Venico of tho East." The large ballams aro flat-bottomed, rectangidar boxes, with pointed and decked-over endfe, nnd many of them are made beautiful with a coat of vivid green paint from stem to stern, pictures of birds, beasts, and fishes, flowers, and quaint scrolls in white—such birds and beasts as the nursery r.rtiit produces, those with five-toed legs growing out of their stomachs and chests, and beasts with four legs in " company column" from nock to curly tail.

Small ballams —our gondolas are just smothered in a coat of paint, and with the curly stem and stern post picked out in brass or a louder colour than the body, or not painted at all. Largo ballams with masts, or ballam saffaras, medium ballam saffaras, bantam ballams ashari are all very useful craft. The <; cashoof" is dear to the heart of that enemy to all men, the marsn Arab. Built of coarse planks, about eleven inches wide, on an extraordinary frame of innumerable .short, straight ribs, it is a hollow wedge, which looks an if it must capsize, but this is seldom does. With peak and st?rn elevated t:> a height equal to a third of the boat's J.engtrhj heavftly coated 'ouiUido wjith bitumen, and propelled by paddles, it pushes its way through the reed-mazes of the great marshes, and it« wedgo shape is ideal for such work. As no one trusts the marsh Arab, and those not born in mashoofs cannot keep them from capsizing, its value for transport in nil, but its quaint black shape, and often quite pretty crew of black robed women, decorates the local pea-soup scenery. At all hours of tho day small mash oofs with two girl paddlers and grandmamma may be seen banging on to the sidrs of the river craft bartering eggs, melons, and dates.

GIDDY TRAVEL. Then thero is the guffah—a round basket lour feet deep and from four to n:no feet m diameter, made of palm frond ribs, held together by juniper wattles, and tho whole heavily coated with bitumen and propelled by a short paddle. It gyrates across rivers and up and down them in a marvellous way. Tho passengers crouch at thj bottom of tho basket with wondering eyes j>ecping over its edge. Well may. they have causo to wonder for ttio craft spins round quickly and is depressed on the paddler s side when he is busy, or elevated on that and depressed on the ether side when Iris paddle clears the water, with so cur'ous an up-and-down and round and giddy round motion that each moment of the voyage has sixty thrills. Guffah are employed as ferries, as tenders to saffaras. and even as buinboats to carry cgg-i, fruit, and vegetables. Lijst, there are great rafts of rreds and mats, those building materials lieloved by our Royal Engineers. It is marvellous how they ever make their week-long voyages without being destroyed by fire, for Arabs keep smoking all over them an dthe (ires are kept burning on a sheet of corrugated iron or two kerosene oil tins opened up and hammeivd flat.

Ihn uses to ulr'cli tlioy am put l>y tlici B.G.R.E. iind his b:it,r>'.'oiui are p\ 'ii nioio marvellous. Wo have hospitals, barracks, offices, stables, carr.cntei',' sheds, farriers' lorges store depots, dockyard slkmK (>ffi' , crs' quarters, laundries, ro<tf-i to our stool barges, hoiis. :'lioatv, priutinjj; slinjis, magazines, and R.K. moss, and oilier iila; <.'■ t< ii numeimis to mom ion, a'l Willi r< i d walls and mat roofs and vcrv niio ( o.

A country clergyman <n Ilk round of \imls inio;v!c\vc(l ;i youiit"-'ta.< to :u'u:iuint:iiii o with IJ'Ve vtuirs. "My Il<!.'' i;c sn.ul, "you have. <>l (•(iur'. 1 , hoard of the parables "Y<~. sir," 'ivly answered the Imy, w !,■•••.) ifM ilnr I::i• 1 instiuct' il him m ,-ai red »'i t« :y. " V«'s, sir."' " >al the elerpynnn. "Now. which (hem do you liKo t!io host ot

The Icy squirmed, hut at la.st Ik-pil-iiiL- hi.s mother's frowns, lie replied : " I lik- that oiui where somebody louts r.nd 1.-lie-v"