The Joseph Mathia Svoboda Diaries
On February 12, 1862, Joseph Svoboda began working for the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company, an arm of the Lynch Brothers Trading Company. He made his first journey from Baghdad to Basra aboard the City of London, the company’s first steamer. [[Diary 36, December 1891 to August 1892, ed. Margaret Makiya, 84. Entry for February 12, 1892.]] Joseph began keeping his diary during his first year working for the Lynches. Although they contain copious information about many aspects of life in 19thcentury Iraq, they are essentially a purser’s log of journeys made on the Lynch steamers. Joseph records the details of each journey up and down the Tigris in meticulous and often monotonous detail. Each time, he documents the same procession of landmarks, usually recording the timing of their passage within five minutes. Similarly, he assiduously notes the time and place that they meet other vessels plying the waters of the Tigris—other Lynch steamers, competing steamers from the İdare-i Ummân-ı Osmaniye (the Ottoman-Oman Administration), or the British Residency yacht Comet. He makes logs of the various types and quantities of cargo that they take on, and the number of passengers that embark and disembark at any given port, diligently logging any notable people or products aboard. In marginal notes, he takes down the temperature, notes the wind speed and direction, and records the level of the river and the draft of the steamer. He also includes tabular information about the number of passengers, the quantity of cargo, currency transported, and the draft of the steamer on departure.
The usual journey from Baghdad would begin at around 6 am, with Joseph boarding the steamer about an hour before it departed. Generally, it would take about two days to make trip downriver, and about three and a half for the return. Joseph often records the time between each destination and landmark of the journey as marginal notes. By the late 19th century the steamer service was regular enough to have times published in travel guides. [[see Handbook for Travellers in Asia Minor, Transcaucasia, Persia, Etc, ed. Sir Charles William Wilson, (London: John Murray, 1895), 313.]] These times, of course, depended on the flow of the river and any mechanical issues that arose, or the steamer running aground on the Tigris’s many shoals, or getting caught in the dreaded Devil’s Elbow—a bend in the river so acute that it was a challenge for any pilot. To start they would pass the Diyala River, then the famous Arch of Ctesiphon, then Baghdadieh Fort, the towns of Kut and Amara where the Lynch Company maintained fueling stations. Between Amara and the pilgrimage site of Ezra’s Tomb, the Tigris enters a stretch called the Narrows, dwindling to a width of 50 yards and depth of barely three feet. Joseph often attests to the difficulty of navigating this stretch of the river. [[For the specific details of its width and depth, see Makiya, “The Svoboda Diaries,” 43.]] Beyond the Narrows, the Tigris drains into the Shatt al-Arab at Qurna before arriving at Basra. A typical day’s worth of diary entries on a down river journey might follow a similar pattern: “At 6,,20 AM. proceeded Ship drawing 3 feet 6 Inches; no rise of the river yet; At 8,,45 passed Diala, it has risen this river about 2 feet; At 9 passed the SS. Phrat & Barge going up at Jaffer; At 9,,45 we anchored at Gusseiba & sent to sound, At 9,,55 the S.S. Khalifah came to pass up; I saw Nassoory Andria his wife & children going up for the wedding of Yousif Yaghchi with Louisa daughter of my brother Henry, on Sunday next At 10,,15 we weighed and proceeded; the Khalifah had stopped further up, apparently repairing some thing in the Engines;~ At 11 passed Ctesiphon, Finished with the passenger Tickets; we have in all 139 ½ (4 in 1st Class, one is the Persian consul dismissed, going to Bushire Mirza Ali Khan, 2 persons relations of Agha Khan to Bombay Moolchoob Shah & an other and Gorgi Shantob to Basreh)~At 4,,50 P.M. passed Baghdadieh Fort;~Weather clearing up & becoming fine, moon 4 days old;~At 5,,50 we touched at Rmelat & could not get passed we anchored for the night”. [[Diary 48, August 1898 to February 1899, 232–3. Entry for November 18, 1898.]]
The wealth of information in diaries is staggering and often transcends the dry recording of journeys, passengers, and cargos. Biographically, they contain the sweep of the second two thirds of Joseph’s life, witnessing his transition from an emotional but mostly carefree young man to a concerned father and loving grandfather in his later years. They contain innumerable facts of everyday life and business, from weather conditions to market prices of various goods; they contain his own accounting of his finances and his time, but also the matters of the company. They also contain the trials and joys of his personal life, and his observations of the geopolitical upheavals of the 19th century.
The diaries’ significance is not limited to the narrative of Joseph’s life. Throughout the diaries, Joseph is meticulous and thoroughgoing in recording disease outbreaks, deaths amongst friends and family, and his own ailments and treatments. Joseph’s experience of dealing with repeated outbreaks of cholera and plague in Baghdad are a topic of intense interest not only because of the concern the aroused for family and friends but for the problems that Ottoman government attempts to contain and control epidemic diseases caused for steamer traffic on the river. The steamer’s frequent detention in Ottoman river quarantines was an unending source of annoyance for Joseph.
Joseph’s personal health is also an oft-repeated topic and provides a compendium of popular (and often bizarre) remedies. For example, in Diary 4, Joseph treats us to a lengthy description of a large and painful boil that erupted on his left hand. For several days, he listed off various herbal remedies that he applied to the boil to bring down the swelling: Potter’s comfrey ointment, Basilicon ointment, a bread poultice, and so forth. Finally, he had the apothecary of the Comet lance it as they passed. [[Diary 04, May 1865 to August 1866, ed. Margaret Makiya, 51–3. Entries for December 20-23, 1865.]]
Throughout the diaries Joseph reveals himself to be a keen sportsman. As a young man he would often go shooting with his brother Henry, his brother-in-law Antone Marine, or other relatives, friends, and acquaintances from the European community of Baghdad. A favorite target was the Chukar partridge, common along the banks the river, which he would distribute to his wife and sisters. [[Diary 18, 115–121. Entries for September 17-20, 1877.]] In this typical shooting trip Joseph took his nephew with him south of Baghdad near the Diala river, nabbing 48 birds in three days out, a total that Joseph found somewhat disappointing. Beyond upland birds, other notable game included snakes and—much more rarely—lions. [[Diary 04, 108. Entry for May 12, 1866.]] Joseph, Henry, and Captain Cowley of the City of Londoncaused a minor sensation in Baghdad in the spring of 1874 when they shot three lionesses and an immense male lion from the deck of the ship, with Joseph felling a female and the male. An exceedingly uncommon sight, Joseph hypothesized that they had come down from the foothills of the Zagros in Persia. Upon returning Baghdad he paraded the skins around to his friends and family, before having themprofessionally tanned so he could stuff them himself. [[Diary 13, January 1874 to August 1874, ed. Margaret Makiya, n.d., 56-67. Entries for March 19-31, 1874.]]