My “Log”: being an account of a voyage to: Tunis, Malta, Alexandria, Cairo & the Pyramids, Beyrout, Jaffa & Cyprus, by J. B. T., [s.n.], [1903].
This charming travel memoir, based on a series of personal letters written for family and later compiled into a bound volume, offers readers a candid and humorous glimpse into early 20th-century travel during the summer of 1903. Over the course of 67 days, the author embarked on an impressive 7,800-mile journey through the East, aboard the S.S. Syrian Prince of the Prince Line. Among the destinations visited was Cyprus, where the author made a brief stop yet managed to observe and record his impressions of the island.
While in Cyprus, the author captured a few photographs, including one of the Kyrenia harbour as well as the Limassol coast. His description of Limassol is refreshingly frank: “Limassol looks awful from the sea” he noted with characteristic candor before noting admiringly that “but the mountains behind look nice. Troodos the ancient Olympus is 6406 feet high”. This blend of blunt criticism and genuine appreciation perfectly captures the author's unvarnished writing style.
The author also photographed a bustling Limassol coffee shop, capturing the lively atmosphere that showcases the strong sense of community within the coffee shop. However, in another passage, his observations of the locals shift to a more vivid and somewhat dated tone: “The natives were all shouting at the top of their voices […] The wretched natives were hanging on the capsized lighter like drowning rats”.
The volume is enriched by an impressive collection of ephemera - photographs, tickets, newspaper clippings, stamps and maps - making it not just a written account but a multimedia scrapbook of early 20th-century Cyprus and the broader Eastern Mediterranean.
The author's misadventures at sea add a humorous dimension to the narrative. His fishing expeditions at various ports were consistently fruitless, but he humorously claimed a dubious distinction as a self-proclaimed world-record holder in cockroach slaying aboard the ship, boasting that he dispatched some 5,000,000 insects. This achievement, noted with mock solemnity, supposedly earned him a medal from the fictitious “Royal Society for the Extinction of Superfluous Insects”.
This memoir, serves as a fascinating historical document, capturing both the practicalities and personalities of long-distance travel in the early 1900s. Its greatest strength lies in its unvarnished honesty and humor, offering modern readers an unfiltered view of Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean during the twilight of the Victorian era. While the author's colonial perspective occasionally shows through, their keen eye for detail and willingness to share personal foibles makes this an engaging and valuable historical record.
You can find this book, and many more, in the Research Centre of the CVAR.
