On the morning of January 5, 1867, Dr. Quick and Juliana return to the town of Suez from the Suez Canal construction site at Shaluf el-Terraba to board the S.S. Bengal, Peninsular & Oriental Company steamer bound for Galle, Ceylon, via Aden. Suez was a sleepy little Turkish-Arab outpost that, historically, had primarily served as the departure point for dhows carrying Hajj pilgrims to Yanbu and Jeddah, the former being the port for Medina, the latter the port for Mecca. Suez tripled in size in the 1840s and 1850s, however, after becoming a key transfer point along the so-called Overland Route to India. In the late 1830s, the British Government subsidized an effort to establish a rapid system for transporting its mail across Egypt, especially across the desert from Cairo to Suez. Over time, the system was adapted to move passengers quickly, too. It consisted of light, horse-drawn carts with awnings, which took about two-and-a-half to three days to cover the 110 mile route. There were about ten staging posts on the road, three of which offered meals and accommodations. Semaphore stations were located on prominent hills to signal the approach of a cart, so that a replacement team could be made ready for a quick change of horses. This was how you reached your India-bound P&O steamer at Suez until the completion of the British-built railroad in 1859. By the time of Dr. Quick and Julianas journey (January 1867), Suez was served by two P&O steamers each month and one Messageries Imperiales (French) steamer, in addition to a couple of Turkish vessels that plied the Red Sea, occasionally running around to the Persian Gulf. Few people stayed at bleak Suez if they could help it, although there was a hotel there, and six steamer days a month were not enough to support the kind of frantic porter / touting sub-culture that harried tourists at Alexandria and Cairo. Then, there was the Suez Canal, which paid good, regular wages for manual labor. When a foreigner stepped down from his train, at Suez, he found no one to help him drag his bags across the 100-yard interval separating the railway platform from the jetty. The P&O agent at Suez was also the British Consul, and the company had a steam-powered launch that ferried people out to its ship, which had to moor 3 miles offshore because the tidal creek at Suez was too shallow for large vessels. The Suez Canal Company was dredging and building a new dock, but these facilities would not be ready until later in the year 1867.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 03:03:19 +0000
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