[PERIODIQUE - JOURNALISME MARITIME] Levant Times and Shipping Gazette

A rare run of approximately 250 issues of the Levant Times and Shipping Gazette, the bilingual maritime newspaper published in Constantinople, covering almost a complete year from 1 July 1869 to 3 June 1870. At the centre of this period stands the opening of the Suez Canal on 17 November 1869, an event that transformed the geography of trade between the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The present collection records the anticipation, announcement and immediate aftermath of that moment from one of the principal ports of the Ottoman Empire.

Two large folio volumes (31 × 48 cm), bound Bradel-style in half black cloth over beige boards, smooth spines ruled in gilt. The numbering is at times erratic and contains several inconsistencies. A manuscript note reading “suspension” appears to record a brief interruption in publication during November 1869, together with an error in dating.

Founded in 1868 under the direction of John Laffan Hanly, the Levant Times and Shipping Gazette was published in English and French for Constantinople’s European communities, commercial houses and maritime interests. From its offices in Galata, close to the quays, banks, trading houses and shipping agencies, the paper sought to provide Western Europe with reliable intelligence concerning trade, shipping and the economic resources of the East. By 1869, a twice-weekly edition was also being advertised for distribution in the United Kingdom.

Its columns record arrivals and departures, routes, timetables, commercial intelligence and information concerning the principal steamship lines. The paper’s interest, however, extends far beyond that of a conventional shipping sheet. Local columns, diplomatic reports, private notices, advertisements, international news and miscellaneous anecdotes together form an exceptionally vivid, issue-by-issue portrait of a cosmopolitan capital. Several contributors appear to have been associated with the teaching staff of the Imperial Lycée of Galatasaray, opened in 1868 and already an important centre of French-language education in the city.

The dates encompassed by these volumes lend the collection particular historical significance. On 16 August 1869, the newspaper announced the approaching opening of the Suez Canal, as the decade-long excavation neared completion. Three months later, the passage was formally inaugurated in the presence of Empress Eugénie, Khedive Ismaʿil and an international gathering of sovereigns, diplomats, writers and scholars. For Constantinople and the ports of the Levant, the new maritime route promised a redistribution of trade, ports of call and commercial interests; the Gazette captures its first effects through the daily movement of ships.

The paper’s characteristic mixture of intelligence and anecdote is epitomised by the issue of 15 November 1869:

“Mr Théophile Gautier has not married, as had been reported; instead, he broke his arm aboard the steamer while travelling to Egypt.”

The editor then added:

“On hearing this, one confirmed bachelor remarked: ‘Of the two evils, one must choose the lesser.’”

Beneath the pun lay a genuine incident. Invited to attend the celebrations for the opening of the Canal, Gautier had sailed from Marseille aboard the Moeris on 9 October 1869. During the first evening of the voyage, he fell on a companionway and dislocated his shoulder, an accident subsequently simplified by the press into a broken arm. Confined for much of his stay in Cairo and obliged to abandon part of his intended itinerary, including Upper Egypt, he nevertheless produced a series of accounts published in the Journal officiel during 1870 and collected posthumously in L’Orient in 1877.

The bindings show signs of use: two headcaps frayed and torn, a vertical cut with orange and green staining to the spine of the first volume, small losses of paper from the boards and minor wear to the edges. Some spotting; one leaf formerly repaired with adhesive tape, with a small newspaper item cut away; a small loss to another leaf; occasional annotations in red or blue pencil.

Institutional holdings of the newspaper appear to be highly fragmentary, and the collection preserved by the Bibliothèque nationale de France is itself incomplete. Through both its extent and the coherence of the period covered, the present run forms an important primary source for the moment at which the opening of Suez shifted the maritime horizon of the eastern Mediterranean.

At once a bulletin of the quays, a chronicle of the city and an observatory of the world’s changing sea routes, the Levant Times records Constantinople almost day by day at the precise moment when the Mediterranean ceased to be a terminus and became the threshold of a passage to the East.