Weekly Travel Feature

Old Ayutthaya Through the eyes of a Greek Sailor

Prepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International

    I believe a good novel is a great way to learn about a country, but it has to be well researched and written. For many years I had been reading about a Greek sailor, Constantine Gerakis. Here was a most fascinating story, about a sailor who heard about the charms, and possible opportunities of the Siamese. He finally reached Ayutthaya and became the prime minister for King Narai. I decided to research his story but it was no simple task. Ayutthaya hand been sacked by the Burmese and all records were destroyed. But there were records by the Portuguese, Dutch, French and Japanese. From these records I was able to compile the true story of Constantine Gerakis and wrote the book For the Love of Siam.  In the following series I have taken excerpts from the book that pertain to old Ayutthaya. I hope you enjoy the stories.

SHIPWRECKED
    The passengers and crew of Putra Siamang had seen little of the Greek on deck before the storm. It wasn’t until the ship began to break up under them that they saw him rushing around the deck attempting to make some order out of chaos. The Greek had not been pleased with the trading schooner from the moment he stepped aboard in Batavia, nor was he in favor of the half-cast Portuguese captain and his dozen Javanese crew. The ship was terribly overcrowded and unseaworthy. The Greek knew it was a bad choice to book passage aboard the trader but he had no other option: there were no other vessels sailing to Ayutthaya.
    In addition to her captain and crew, the supercargo and her six cabin passengers, Putra Siamang sailed under the Dutch flag with something like sixty deck passengers— Javanese, Malays, Chinese and Siamese, men, women and children, each with their sleeping mats, pandanus sacks filled with clothing, to say nothing of bundles of food stuff.
    Nevertheless, it had started as a promising voyage.
    Their first port-of-call after leaving Batavia was to be Songkau, a seaport in southern Siam. The King of Siam had opened Songkau to trade and, in less than a decade, she had grown rich and prosperous. Chinese merchants came down from the Chinese mainland, Arab traders from Muscat and Dubai, and Muslim immigrants from Java and other islands in the Dutch East Indies, all eager to engage in trade and, with some, desirous to make new homes for themselves. The Portuguese captain, seeing the chance to make a bit of profit for himself, overloaded the vessel in Batavia; all the same when they set sail, no one had cause for complaint, neither the regular cabin passengers nor the sixty-five deck passengers either. All had begun well and, at most, it was only a seven days passage to Songkau. There the deck passengers would disembark and much of the cargo would be unloaded.
    But Putra Siamang was overloaded, terribly. She was only seventy tons and the captain had no right to carry the mob on board that he did. Beneath her hatches she was jammed with trade goods for the Siamese market. Even the chart room was packed full with cargo. It was a miracle that the Javanese could work her. There was no moving around on decks, and to get about they had to climb back and forth along the rigging.
    At night time they were forced to walk upon the sleepers who carpeted the deck, two deep. There were also chickens and a number of goats on deck, plus sacks of durians, while every conceivable space was festooned with strings of drinking coconuts and bunches of rambutans and bananas. On both sides, between the fore and main shrouds, lines had been stretched, just low enough for the fore boom to swing clear. From these lines at least fifty bunches of bananas were suspended.
    The tiny ship was also pushing the southeast monsoon to its limit. The season was near its end and, once the northeast winds began blowing, it would be a difficult, if not an impossible passage to make. Sailing ships never fought the northeast monsoon. The loading of cargo in Batavia had taken longer than expected. Time was against them.
    In the beginning the southeast monsoon had little wind and they could only ghost along. Then, after three days, the winds died away in a dozen or so gasping breaths. The calm continued for the next four days—with a glaring sun overhead and a glassy calm sea beneath—and thirst became constant with everyone aboard. But the very thought of drinking foul tepid water from leather goatskin sacks was nauseating. The drinking coconuts had long since been consumed.
    Things began to fall apart on the fifth day when a man died—a Dyak from Borneo. The passengers thought his death was a curse, and they were convinced of it when they learned, while burying him at sea, that he was a bomoh, a witch doctor.
    On the seventh day, a slight breeze from the northeast rustled the sails and with it came hope as the crew hurried to set the main. But hope turned to alarm by nightfall. The wind increased, not slowly, but with a sudden fury. The crew had to reef the main. By nightfall it had reached gale force strength and sails were lowered. By midnight it was blowing a full storm. By dawn much of the rigging and top sails had been carried away and still the force of the winds grew in strength. When night fell the second night, the Greek knew the tossing little ship would not see another day.
    While the terrified crew huddled in fright along the deck on the lee-side of the main cabin, the Greek was hard at work on the foredeck. Between flashes of lightning, he labored to remove the hatch from its hinges, and once it was free, he tied one end of a line to it and the other end to his wrist. And there he waited. He knew it wouldn’t be long. Water had begun entering open seams in the ship’s hull faster than the crew could bail. Finally they gave up in despair.
    The captain, who lay drunk and passed out in his cabin, was of no help. The helmsman worked hard to save the vessel, keeping her close-hauled into the wind, but the closer he pointed her bow into the eye of the storm, the more violently she pounded. With each thrust of wave the bow rose up high, shuddering as it did, like a dog shaking water from its back, only to come crashing down into a deep trough, completely submerging itself once again. The helmsman could fall off and ease the pounding but out there, somewhere to port in the blackness of night, was land, but not friendly land. It was inhospitable land of which he was well aware. To become shipwrecked on the eastern shore of the peninsula that jutted south from Siam was a fate worse than drowning at sea. Malay pirates waited in coves for ships in distress. Despite his effort to keep the tossing ship on its northern course, the gale, for certain, was blowing them toward land.
    The doomed ship shuddered and groaned; their only hope now was that they might have sailed far enough to the north to be in Siamese waters, away from the pirate coast to the south. It was far better to be shipwrecked along a coast under control of Siamese, who wanted to take their captives alive, to make slaves of them to build their cities and great temples, rather than be taken by Malay pirates who wanted plunder, and whose Dyak crews wanted not riches but human heads for their prizes.
    Then it happened! In one choking green sea, with white foam everywhere, the Greek, clinging to the hatch on the foredeck, had fleeting glimpses of splintered masts crashing down while bodies in tangled rigging flew by in blurred images that would forever haunt him. He had survived other wrecks, some terribly violent, but now they seemed to have been only tests for what was to come. It was terrifying, the cracking sound of the ship breaking up. Then, in one violent thrust, the hatch cover he was tethered to broke free from the vessel and he found himself clinging to it among the tossing debris of the wreck. Voices called out in the darkness, helpless voices, but he could offer no condolence, and give no help.
    Relief came when he heard the surf breaking. In his dazed confused mind he knew enough to untie himself from the hatch and let the unrolling surf carry him ashore and deposit him on land. He had survived.

Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)

Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited.