Αλέξανδρος [Apis, Alexandros, California, Washington]

[Nicholas Peppas]

Alexandros is the name of two pre-war ships. I am correcting here the original article as suggested by Ellinis.

Alexandros was built in 1869 at Clyde as APIS for the Austrian Lloyd in Scotland. She had 624 tons. She was bought by the Ottoman shipping company Hadji Daoud Farkouh that had also Greek interests.
A citation from here:

Apis was sold to Farkouk, Smyrna in 1894
being renamed Alexandros. later renamed California owned by
Archipelago-American SS Co, Smyrna. Removed from Lloyd's Register in 1913.

NB; By the way the Shipslist http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/lloydaust.htm shows her at 1,246 tons!

The Hadji Daoud Farkouh Shipping Co, otherwise known as Aktoploia Archipelagou had a very wide range of routes across the Aegean. For example, in Rudolf Fitzner's Kleinasien und Syrien (Volckmann, Rostock, 1904), the following routes are given

Arch.jpg
Arch2.jpg

Just before the end of the Ottoman empire, members of the Farkouh family transferred most of the shipping company to the US flag (see also http://hadjidaoud.blogspot.com/2008/...elsewhere.html)

In the The New York Times, 14 February 1915 it is stated:

Advices received here today from Constantinople say that the Turkish government will protest against the sinking by the Russians of the steamship Washington while sailing under the American flag. The vessel is reported to have been sunk on Feb. 8 while engaged in carrying Red Cross supplies between Constantinople and Trebizond.The Washington was owned by the Archipelago-American Steamship Company, which controls a fleet of boats named after American States and playing between American ports. The steamship Texas, which struck a mine and sank in the Gulf of Smyrna in May 1912, at the time of the Turkish-Italian war, belonged to this line.The Archipelago-American Steamship Company is owned in large parts by naturalized Greeks, and is chartered under the Maine laws, though no American registry has been granted to its vessels. At the time of an anti-Greek boycott directed against the ships of this company some years ago, however, the line was authorized to fly the American flag by the American Consul at Smyrna because the company was largely controlled by American interests.

Here are some schedules of Alexandros.

First on June 16, 1900, Alexandros does the Piraeus, Chios, Klazomenes, Smyrna route!!! Klazomenes was the Greek Vourla, today's Urla in Turkey and was located 20 miles west of Smyrna.

Vourla was the birthplace of the Greek poet and Nobel laureate Giorgos Seferis, whose paternal house has been preserved and is shown below.

19000616 Alexandria.jpg Seferis.jpg