When Serbia Sailed the High Seas

He tried to teach the Serbs temperance by preaching against drinking
and smoking and other vices and he forbade kafanas (taverns) on his
land and smoking in all public places. This effort, however, proved to
be a sizeable failure, and to spite him, the Serbs named that part of
town which was built on his land “Englezovac” (Englishman's town),
knowing full well that he was a Scotsman, not an Englishman.
When in 1895, the Society for the Construction of the Temple of
Saint Sava on Vračar was founded in Belgrade with the purpose of
building an Orthodox Temple on the spot where in 1595 Sinan Pasha
burnt the remains of St. Sava, Mackenzie contributed around 8,000
square meters of his land for the construction of the Temple. His and
the names of his heirs were inscribed in the list of Great Benefactors,
right after the members of the royal family and senior church digni-
taries. Today one of the main thoroughfares in Vračar bears his name:
Makenzijeva.
His first task when he arrived in Belgrade in 1876 was to attempt to
free up the Serbian Nazarenes who had been convicted as conscientious
objectors. During the Serbo-Turkish War of 1875 these followers of the
Church of the Nazarene refused to bear arms which amounted to an
act of treason. They were court-martialled and some were sentenced to
twenty years' imprisonment. To accomplish his purpose, Mackenzie
turned to Elodie Mijatovic for assistance. Their religions were the
common bond. The Church of the Nazarene was considered to be the
largest Wesleyan-holiness denomination in the world; Elodie herself
was a member of the Wesleyan Church. It was Elodie who personally
interceded with Prince Milan, pleading with him to abolish or reduce
the sentences of the Nazarenes. Milan obliged and Mackenzie became
personally indebted to her for it.
In 1881, Elodie travelled to London to arrange for the publication of
her book of Kosovo poems. While she was there the work on Cunard's
new ship was reaching completion and was ready for the launch.
According to the British age-old tradition, the new ship had to be
christened by a notable female. Mackenzie, being the cavalier that he
was, saw it as an opportune moment to repay the favour to his bene-
factress. Through his Scottish connections he arranged for Elodie to
have that honour. She christened the ship SS Servia.
SS Servia made her maiden voyage on November 26, 1881 from
Liverpool to New York and remained in service until 1902. She made
171 roundtrips in total across the North Atlantic. Since she was comm-
issioned as royal mail carrier, she was also known as RMS Servia5). As
one of the emigrant ships she carried thousands of emigrants over the
years from Ireland, Northern Europe and the Scandinavian countries
who were seeking resettlement in the United States. During the
Second Boer War (1899–1902) she was commissioned by the Admiralty
to carry the British troops to South Africa.
Although her Passenger Manifests are still being catalogued, the
ones that have been published indicate that, over the twenty years she
was in active service as a luxury cruiser, she had carried some very
prominent individuals. In 1881, The Duke of Edinburgh was one of her
passenger. In fact, the Italian marine painter, Eduardo Frederico de
Martino commemorated the occasion by doing a watercolour naming
it “The Duke of Edinburgh, aboard SS Servia at Greenock”6). In 1887,
Queen Lili`uokalani of Hawaii sailed on SS Servia to attend the Jubilee
celebration of Queen Victoria in honour of the 50th year of her reign.
In 1891 Prince George of Greece was among her passengers. And of
course, much has been written about the encounter that never took
place between the American writer-activist Jane Addams and the
famous American novelist Henry James when they sailed to Europe on
SS Servia in August 1883.7) SS Servia has been used as the background
milieu for several books8 ) and novels9) and in 1992, Ron Howard, the
Hollywood film director, constructed a replica of SS Servia for the
filming of his movie “Far and Away” with Tom Cruise and Nicole
Kidman. This replica has been donated to the museum in Queenstown,
Ireland, where it remains on display.
With the passage of time and the many battle scars left on her by
the severe gales of the North Atlantic, SS Servia, probably one of the
last sail-steam combination liners in the late 19th century, began to
show signs of fatigue. She was rebuilt in 1893 but the appearance of the
ultra modern Cunard liners RMS Campania and Lucania, relegated
Servia to intermediate service. She was finally decommissioned in
1902 and sold to T.W. Wards, in Preston, Lancashire to be cut up and
melted down as scrap metal.
____________________
5) RMS (Royal Mail Ship) was a designation used for seagoing vessels that
carry mail under contract to the British Royal Mail. Any vessel designated
as RMS had the right to both fly the pennant of the Royal Mail when
sailing and to include the Royal Mail “crown” logo with any identifying
device and/or design for the ship
6) de Martino did a second painting of Servia in 1881 and called it
“The Cunard liner SS Servia in the Mersey”, oil on canvas 23 x 46cm
7) Victoria Bissell Brown, The Education of Jane Addams, University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2007; Katherine Joslin, Jane Addams: A Writer's Life,
University of Illinois Press, 2004; ed. Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Barbara
Bair and Maree de Angury, The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, Vol. 2,
University of Illinois Press, 2009.
8 ) George W. Hills, John Bull, Limited, Regent Publishing Co., Philadelphia,
1914; J.H. Barnes, Forty Years on the Stage: Others and Myself, Kessinger
Publishing, 2005.
9) Pamela Schoenewaldt, When We Were Strangers, HarperCollins, New
York, 2011; Lawana Blackwell, Catherine's Heart (Tales of London Book #2),
Bethany House Publishers, Bloomington, Minnesota, 2002 .