BUG

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shipstamps
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Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:12 pm

BUG

Post by shipstamps » Thu Sep 18, 2008 10:23 pm


Built in 1801 (some sources says 1804) by Nichols Booles & William Good, Bridport, England for an unknown owner in England.
Tonnage 139 gross, dim. 39.5 x 6.7m.

She was built under the name SWIFT, a single masted wooden smack at Bridport on the Dorset coast, east of Exeter.
1822 Lengthened and converted to a side paddlewheel steamvessel.
On 20 April 1828, she arrived at Constantinople, where the Armenian Cazesartine and other merchants, residents of Constantinople, for 350.000 pilasters, purchased her.
Was then given as a gift to Sultan Mahmut II. Obviously and reasonably, this was in the hope of future trade.

Renamed SÜRAT by the sultan which means “speed or speedy”, and used as a yacht.
However the locals, noting the dense clouds of smoke called her BUGU GEMISI, which in Ottoman Turkish means “fog/foggy/steam/ship”.

In 1839, she was transferred to the state-owned Tersane-iAmire, and in 1853, she is listed as owned by Osmanli Bahriye.
She was decommissioned in 1859.

The information provided in the leaflet from Turkish Post of decommissioned 1879 is very doubtful.

Source: Mr. Andreas von Mach. John Guard.Ian Buxton.

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