Salonika: Australian timber expert query

[MaureenE]

I recently heard from an elderly family member that someone in my family tree who was a timber mill manager went to Salonika to advise on the construction? of the trenches there.

I found the following from a 1918 online newspaper article:

"Mr Harry Smith, general manager of the Mornington Mills, has returned to WA from Salonika, where he organized the timber industry, within sounds of the guns, for the Allies".

Bunbury Herald Saturday 5 October 1918

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/87171115?searchTerm=%22Harry%20Smith%22%20Salonika&searchLimits=

Does anyone have any suggestions how I could research this further?

Cheers

Maureen

[rksimpson]

Hi Maureen

NAA does not have much-

K1267 MORNINGTON MILLS Mornington Mills - rifle range plans [Defence Centre Perth]

Access status: Not yet examined

Location: Perth

circa1907 - circa1988 1947326

B2455 CONNELL E M Connell Edward Maurice : SERN DEPOT : POB Mornington Mills WA : POE Bunbury WA : NOK M Connell Kate

Access status: Open

Location: Canberra

circa1914 - circa1920 3277169

MT1486/1 COOKE/BERTRAM JOSEPH Cooke, Bertram Joseph; age 22, born Blakeville Vic; address - Mornington Mills WA

Access status: Open

Location: Melbourne

1916 - 1918 6523415

MT1486/1 GUEST/JOHN ROBERT Guest, John Robert; age 21; address - Mornington Mills

Access status: Open

Location: Melbourne

1917 - 1917

Might be something here - https://www.google.com.au/?gws_rd=ssl#q=mornington+mills+history

regards

Robert

[MaureenE]

Thanks Robert.

I was wondering if there might be any records of Harry Smith's visit to Salonika, or a report of what his recommendations there were.

Cheers

Maureen

[MaureenE]

My family member Harry Smith managed the Naoussa Timber Mill " 50 miles by rail and 12 miles by road from Salonica"

From https://www.harveyhistoryonline.com/?p=3699. 

HARRY SMITH – LETTER FROM ITALY

1917 Letters from the Front —

The following is a copy of a letter Mr. W. Balston has received from Mr. Harry Smith, who, as our readers will recollect, was formerly manager for Millars’ Timber and Trading Co., Ltd., at Mornington: —

Naoussa Mills, via Salonica, Macedonia, March 3th, 1917. Your letter of the 22nd December reached me on the 25th February, so you will see that it takes a long time to reach one in this part of the world. It was very good of you to write and let me know how things are in W.A., and to wonder if I reached Salonica safely.

The Morea is a very good boat to travel by, and we had very fine weather right through, though a bit warm at Colombo and Aden. We heard at Aden of the “Arabia” disaster in the Mediterranean, which made us rather anxious for the rest of the voyage, and after leaving Port Said we had to have life belts at our side all the time until we got to Marseilles. I left the boat there and got the train to Boulogne, arriving in London on the 20th November. I had five weeks in London, during which time our London office was trying to secure for me a passage to Salonica by transport of mail boat from Marseilles, but could do neither. I did not worry very much, as I thought there were plenty of worse places than London to spend Christmas in, despite the fact that it was in darkness at night, and sometimes all day as well, from the continuous fogs and smoke, which made it so dark that traffic had to be stopped for a day or two at a time. I think I saw London at the worst time of the year. The directors were very nice, and did all they could to give me a good time of it whilst in London, so I had a fairly good time, but as I had the worst part of the journey before me, I did not feel much inclined to go out.

Ultimately I left London on the 27th December, in company with a Mr. Campbell, who is the company’s agent in Salonica. We went to Paris in the hope of getting a French mail boat from Marseilles, but this could not be done; so we took the train for Rome and Naples, where we got an Italian steamer for Salonica. This was a very interesting trip through beautiful scenery, but it is no fun travelling in Europe at the present time, as one has to get their passports examined and filled in at every town one goes through. Luckily, Mr. Campbell could speak all the languages required as we went along, which was a great help. The Italian steamer was a small boat of about 1,000 tons, and it took six days from Naples to Salonica. We had three distinct warnings of submarines on the way, but luckily did not see any, and were glad when we got to Salonica, where we arrived on the 8th January. The mills are 50 miles by rail and 12 miles by road from Salonica towards Monastir, and we readied them on the 13th.They are situated on the side of a great mountain, which overlooks the plains of the Vardar, and there is a great view. The forest is in the mountains back from the mills, and they are very steep, being as much as 9,000 to 10,000 feet high. They have been and still are the homes of the brigands. We have to keep five men with rifles guarding the mill night and day, these men being paid by the company. Some of these men have been brigands, but are now alright.

There are also six Government police stationed at the mill. Most of the men working here live in the villages back from the mills, and when they go home once a month they have to have a police escort to their homes, I as they have been frequently robbed, so you will see that this is not the best place the world to live in. The timber here is beech, and the trees are very small, the principal cutting being sleepers. Some of the logs are so small that they only make one sleeper. The logs are brought to the line by manual labor, there being no horses or bullocks for log hauling. The sawn timber is carried to the main line by an overhead rope-way on trestles, which works by gravitation. The timber is carried on small hangers taking four sleepers each, the load going down on one side and the empties returning on the other. As the mill is 4,500 feet above the railway, this works fairly well. We can hear the guns night and day, but must not refer to military matters.

(South Western Times, 8 May 1917)

 

I have now been told my family member Harry Smith  was born Christian Jensen, Moss Norway 1856,  so when he was in  Salonica he was 61 (although he was probably thought to be about 5 years younger) but even so, probably considered to be quite old for the conditions.

Maureen

[stevenbecker]

Maureen,

It was not uncommon in times of war for civilian companies to travel to war areas to sell there products

Mornington Mills as you know near Harvey and Bunbury, was a large Timber Industry

"went to Salonika to advise on the construction, trenches there"

I think this refers to civilan Timber works not Military

While Timber was needed to build works, and some came from civilian companies, most came from Army engineers cutting Timber via what was later known as Forestry Companies.

So far none of the papers or letter has any mention of the Military use of the wood so where did they get the idea it was for Military use in Trenches?

And by 1917 the use of timber was well known and set up, so I was thinking he was after post war contacts that his company could use not just the short term war work. But I could be wrong

S.B

[MaureenE]

I could not locate my original notes (probably lost due to  computer failures over the years)

I think  the Trenches suggestion may have come from a family member, although I have a vague memory of seeing something in a newspaper report, but I couldn't locate that reference now.

Recent googling indicates that the company my family member Harry Smith worked for in WA was Millar's Timbers and Trading Company, which had its headquarters in the UK. This company also had a timber mill in Macedonia, where it had a 20 year lease on the Kanelli Forest 1904-1924, the mill being "Naoussa Mills, via Salonica" as per the letter in my post above, or elsewhere is referred to as the  Gournosovo sawmill (more details below)

 It seems that my family member Harry Smith managed a mill near Salonica which had a contract to supply timber to the Allied military authorities.

This link from Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/26991809 dated 19 September 1916 says 

"The company has sawmills in Macedonia, where work continued, though the output has been restricted by difficulty in forwarding saws and other necessary supplies. Practically the whole of the timber produced has been supplied to the Allied armies in Greece".

This link from Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/81778738 dated Friday 11 October 1918 says "Mr. Harry Smith, formerly manager of the Mornington Mills, returned lately from Salonika, where he has been for a couple of years in charge of sawmills for the supply of railway and other timber  in connection with the Palestine campaign.

This link from Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/27618837 dated 27 September 1919 says 

"The contracts for the supply of timber from the company's mill in Macedonia to the Allied military authorities have recently been completed"

There are more details about the mill on a YouTube video called "Hiking the Gournosovo Forest Train line in Naousa - Vermio (Greece)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7BiPxyfZzU

The Gournosovo Forest Railway was a narrow 762 mm gauge logging railway in the Municipality of Naoussa, 10 km from the city at an altitude of 1.050m on mount Vermio. It operated from 1906 to 1922.

The railway, also known as 'Decauville', and the sawmill were built and operated by the English company Millars Timber & Trading Company Limited. The English company had leased the Kanelli Forest from 1904 to 1924 for 20 years.

The first task was to build a brick factory for low-rise single-storey buildings for workers (craftsmen, workers, loggers, transporters, etc.), as the forestry sector employed about 5,000 people. At the same time, English engineers began to build the narrow railway, which eventually opened up in the entire forest. The forest railway led from the Kanelli forest near Three - Five Wells above the main stream, through the Decauville tunnel and over two river bridges to the Gournosovo sawmill from where logs were transported to the station with a cable car (aerial), today's Lefkadia. This factory was pioneering for its time. The company exploited the rich wood of the mountain (mainly the beech forest), with the raw forest products initially collected by wagons and the locomotive (german-made Orenstein & Koppel) that they dragged, to the central factory where they were cut in smaller ones (traverses, pellets, etc.) with the water saws that were installed there. After the wood was processed, they were transported by aerial cable from the sawmill to "Golisiani" (Lefkadia) and from there by the largest trains, they were directed and exported to foreign countries (Arabia, etc.), to form the wooden infrastructure of the railway networks built there. The company before leaving, sought to allocate the network and the cable mechanisms, with a rather small fee, but found no response. So they took it all out and took with them as many machines as were of some value. Today, only Galaria (tunnel), through which the train passed, is reminiscent of the "past greatness". For historic and recent photos please visit my page: https://www.facebook.com/sidirodromeas/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1749062035217370

Maureen

 

[MaureenE]

There is a Wikipedia page, German language, with some photos.

Waldbahn von Gournósovo  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldbahn_von_Gournósovo (Gournósovo forest railway)

The Wikipedia article also has links to other pages about other railways in the area, I think used for military purposes used during WW1.

One of the photos from the Wikipedia page appears in the following link where it is captioned "Air transportation of timber with cables in “Gournosovo” area, beginning of the 20th century" but there is no other mention of the timber mill or railway.

 https://projects2014-2020.interregeurope.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/tx_tevprojects/library/Noussa industr herit GR.pdf

The Materialseilbahn or material ropeway, mentioned in the Wikipedia article sounds somewhat similar to a system used from 1912 in India, in the Punjab, (which became the model for the Khyber Ropeway in 1919), mentioned in the link https://pecongress.org.pk/images/upload/books/P17-PAPER130.pdf  Paper No 130 "Punjab Building Timbers and Methods of Extraction" by H M Glover IFS page 123 Proceedings of the Punjab Engineering Congress, Lahore, Volume 17, 1929.

Maureen

 

[keithmroberts]

Brilliant material Maureen, along with others in the Salonika Campaign Society I'll be following this up, and hopefully we will explore the location.

Keith