Posted inDaily News Maritime & Naval History

Steamer is Destroyed

Loss of $350,000 and Traffic to Martha’s Vineyard Interrupted When Steamship Sankaty Burns at Dock

Postcard of the steamer Sankaty

New Bedford, Mass., July 1—The steamship service between this port, Wood’s Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, just beginning its season of greatest traffic with summer vacationists, was rearranged today as a result of the destruction by fire last night of the steamship Sankaty and the dock of the New England Steamship Co. here. The fire which started in a pile of hay on the dock from a cause still undetermined, caused a loss of $350,000. As the dock used by boats on the New York service which is adjacent, was undamaged, it was arranged to use that and to put the other vessels of the fleet on a new schedule.

Posted inSports

4,000-Mile Bike Race is Captured by Frantz

Nicholas Frantz, winner of the 1927 Tour de France

PARIS, July 18 (AP).—Nicolas Frantz of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg today won the annual longest bicycle road race of the world, covering 4,000 miles, which started June 19.

The race is called “tour de France,” and skirts the entire frontier and coast boundaries of the country.

Posted inSports

Perfect Sport for the Tired Spectator

By Crosby S. Noyes, Foreign Correspondent of The Star

Cartoon of Tour de France spectators

PARlS.—After a number of years of more or less serious spectating, we have finally discovered what we consider the ideal spectator sport.

The Tour de France rates, we are given to believe, as a national sporting event in France almost in the same way as the World Series rates in the United States. But there’s one great difference between the great annual bicycle classic and most other national sports.

Posted inTravelers' Tales

Domestic Comedy on the Nile

"He mixed her a drink; then he brought her two balloons and a false face to play with. Later, I found her singing softly to herself."

Keeping house in Egypt is great fun, if you can keep your temper. Servants a-plenty are a certainty, but what they will do next is always uncertain. Here a noted Egyptologist tells some amusing stories of his household difficulties.

BY ARTHUR WEIGALL,

Former Inspector General of Antiquities for the
Egyptian Government.

IN ordinary, amiable conversation with people whose interests have little in common with mine, I often find that the introduction of the subject of servants supplies just that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. When I have been talking about my life in the land of the Pharaohs, for example, I have observed that some stray remark of mine about my domestic staff has kindled the light of interest in eyes that were rolling upward with boredom; and therefore I offer no apology for making this my present theme. Like illnesses and operations, it has an almost universal appeal.

What happens in Egypt, of course, is outside the scope of everyday experience in the West; yet servants are servants wherever they be, and certain of their qualities—such as that of smashing things with a light heart—are common to the whole species.

Posted inUS Civil War

June 27, 1861 – Gatlin in Charge of Coast Defenses

We see here to-day Col. Gatlin, or General Gatlin, we are not certain which, but certainly Major Gatlin, formerly of the U. S. Army. Mr. Gatlin is a native of North Carolina, graduated at West Point, with Gen. Holmes, served with him in the Federal Army, and, like his friend, has resigned from that Army and offered his services to his native section. Need we add that his offer was accepted?