SS Bandirma Ship Museum

Samsun

After arriving back to Turkey in 15th February of this year, I had around 1 month of free time before I heading up to Elazig for my 7 months internship. Sitting in Trabzon me and Muhammet were thinking what to visit, where to go in this short time. Of course I wanted to go shopping as my time in Romania was so short I didn't had time to do that so I voted for a shopping walk somewhere around Turkey. But I wanted to go to a city where they had H&M, and this is a problem in this country, you cannot find good shops no where, maybe Istanbul and Ankara and that's it. Muhammet voted for Georgia and maybe outside of Turkey. After we decided, we had our itinerary set with Samsun, Georgia and maybe Iran. We started making the list with what to do and visit. Samsun was the obvious choice for shopping, it was extremely close to us ( around 6 hours from Trabzon ) I mean better than Ankara which is 10 hours always or Istanbul with more than 20 hours by bus and it had a big shopping center with all my favorite brands of clothing and a Starbucks which is a necessity wherever I go!

I was decided to go to Samsun strictly for shopping, of course Muhammet does not appreciate this types of trips, I mean, he's a man of course, and he does not have the patience to do so, but he agreed to come because he could buy also some new outfits. I googled before a bit the city of Samsun and surprisingly was looking maybe better then Trabzon, with long beautiful beaches, great historical places and many things to do.

The day came and we took a bus from the main bus station, ticket was 20 TL per person if I am not wrong, and we left at 7 in the morning. We were supposed to arrive around 1PM to Samsun but the trip took 2 more hours extra. The bus stopped absolutely in every single bus station and village so it was extremely frustrating. So we finally arrived around 2 PM and we stopped somewhere close to the shopping mall but we still didn't know where we were. But then there was something in the distance that caught my eye!

The SS Bandirma

From the distance it was looking like an amazing ship so I immediately thought it was the harbour and we should definitely go and take a look. When we arrived there, we realized it was a museum inside of a ship. Okay it was something unexpected but we decided to enter and visit whatever this will be, and also Muhammet was not so excited to be spending the next 5 hours shopping so I said why not to visit something. We entered this museum area and Muhammet immediately realized what this ship was about and started to tell me as a long story.

The story about this ship is related to the ''father of the Turks '' Ataturk, initially the ship was owned by British then it was sold to the Greeks and after it became part of the Ottoman Empire around late 19th century. I got a chance to read very quick the legends inside the ship and it was interesting that this particularly ship had an encounter during the first World War with a British submarine and actually survived a collision and a torpedo attack, which I thought was awesome. But this was not the reason why this ship was so famous.

I need to mention that the museum ship in Samsun is not the original one, they built exactly the same replica from the original, same height and length and inside you may find wax figures of Ataturk and his friends as well, princes and royalty. So I was saying that the ship actually became famous for the history of the Turkish people when Ataturk traveled with the Bandirma from Istanbul ( back in the days Constantinopol) to Samsun on 19th May 1919. It was the period when Ataturk demolished the Ottoman Empire and build the Republic of Turkey after the war of independence. This trip became famous in history because they say in that time the waters of the Black Sea were so high and the trip was a challenge itself.

The ship took 1 year to be built and the museum opened in 2003 in Samsun. Entree fee for students is only 1 TL and inside is very interesting. On the walls you may find many pictures with Ataturk on his different trips as well as many history quotes.

The captain as a wax figure and one and only in real size!

There is also an underground level where they have a huge conference room where Ataturk held meetings and spent this 3 days on the sea.

The ship length is about 47 meters same as the original model.

It is such a cool place to visit if you ever find yourself in Samsun, the city is situated in the northern part of Turkey, at the Black Sea. I couldn't visit the city as much as I wanted but everything I saw was looking amazing, maybe one of the best cities in the country.

Around the museum were also some tanks and old fire guns on display as well as old bombs and huge torpedoes. And what I found interesting were miniatures models of airplanes, I don't know if they were the Solo Turk but it was looking amazing.

Maybe is not the miniature, maybe is the real size.

Our trip to Samsun was a success overall, I spent all day shopping, came back to Trabzon with my hands full of bags and I visited this amazing part of Turkey's history. It's always better when you visit a new city to get to know a part of it as well. Even when it is not planned at all just enter the first museum that comes in your way and you will be surprised of what you may discover or learn.

If you ever get a chance to travel to Samsun, do so because I know that I will return for sure and this time not just for shopping.