They were influenced by the anarcho-nationalism, which emerged in Europe, following the French Revolution, going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin and his involvement with the Pan-Slavic movement.

In 1900, Petar Mandzhukov also resided in Thessaloniki, where had a contact with the Gemidzii and they were influenced by his anarchist ideas, especially those relating to methods of terrorist struggle.

[19] The group is found in published works with several names: "The boatmen of Thessaloniki", the "Crew",[20] or the "Gemitzides", form of the Ottoman word for "boatman".

[21] The name "boatmen" was due to "leaving behind the everyday life and the limits of law and sail with a boat in the free and wild seas of lawlessness.

In December of the same year Merdzhanov was connected by the secretary of the Bulgarian Exarchate Dimitar Lyapov with local Armenian revolutionaries.

During 1900 Merdzhanov arrived again in Istanbul to discuss the plan with the Armenians, and afterward the terrorists started to work, digging tunnels in both places.

[24] Merdzhanov and Sokolov went to Sofia and began to think up new ideas, one of which was to hold up the Orient Express on Ottoman territory near Adrianople, and to gain possession of the mail in order to finance future actions.

[5] In pursuit of this plan, they went to the Adrianople area in July 1901, with a cheta consisting of ten men, equipped with the help of Pavel Genadiev, the Supreme Macedonian Committee's representative in Plovdiv.

The cheta managed to place a large quantity of dynamite on the railway line, but something went wrong, and the train passed undamaged.

[25] The Gemidzhii were ready for action again in 1902, but the seizure in Dedeagach of dynamite, arranged by Supreme Macedonian Committee's leader Boris Sarafov, forced the group to abandon planned attacks of Austrian post office in Adrianople, and to restrict its activity.

On April 28, 1903, a member of the group, Pavel Shatev, used dynamite to blow up the French ship "Guadalquivir" which was leaving the Thessaloniki harbor.

[26][27] He left the ship together with the other passengers by lifeboat but was caught later by the Ottoman police at the Skopje train station due to a description by a boat crew member.

The same night, other group bombers: Dimitar Mechev, Iliya Trachkov, and Milan Arsov, struck the railway between Thessaloniki and Istanbul, causing damage to the locomotive and some of the cars of a passing train without wounding any passengers.

[28] The next day, the signal to begin the large raid in Thessaloniki was given by Kostadin Kirkov who used explosives to shut off the electricity and water supply systems of the city.

Yordan Popyordanov (Orceto) blew up the building of an Ottoman Bank office, under which the "gemidzhii" had previously dug a tunnel.

It was planned to attack the port of Istanbul, with four ships being exploded there on September 9: besides "Vaskapu", these were the Austro-Hungarian "Apollo", the German "Tenedos" and the French "Felix Fressinet".

[31] Pavel Shatev, Marko Boshnakov, Georgi Bogdanov and Milan Arsov were sentenced to death by a Turkish court martial.

The members of the group were as follows:[34][5] Thessalonica bombings and the exiles in Fezzan, based on the memoirs of Pavel Shatev, was published in 1927 in Sofia by the Macedonian Scientific Institute.