GREEK MARINERS
I sailed from Smyrna in the _Amphitrite_, a Greek brigantine, which was
confidently said to be bound for the coast of Syria; but I knew that this
announcement was not to be relied upon with positive certainty, for the
Greek mariners are practically free from the stringency of ship’s papers,
and where they will, there they go. However, I had the whole of the
cabin for myself and my attendant, Mysseri, subject only to the society
of the captain at the hour of dinner. Being at ease in this respect,
being furnished too with plenty of books, and finding an unfailing source
of interest in the thorough Greekness of my captain and my crew, I felt
less anxious than most people would have been about the probable length
of the cruise. I knew enough of Greek navigation to be sure that our
vessel would cling to earth like a child to its mother’s knee, and that I
should touch at many an isle before I set foot upon the Syrian coast; but
I had no invidious preference for Europe, Asia, or Africa, and I felt
that I could defy the winds to blow me upon a coast that was blank and
void of interest. My patience was extremely useful to me, for the cruise
altogether endured some forty days, and that in the midst of winter.
According to me, the most interesting of all the Greeks (male Greeks) are
the mariners, because their pursuits and their social condition are so
nearly the same as those of their famous ancestors. You will say, that
the occupation of commerce must have smoothed down the salience of their
minds; and this would be so perhaps, if their mercantile affairs were
conducted according to the fixed business-like routine of Europeans; but
the ventures of the Greeks are surrounded by such a multitude of imagined
dangers (and from the absence of regular marts, in which the true value
of merchandise can be ascertained), are so entirely speculative, and
besides, are conducted in a manner so wholly determined upon by the
wayward fancies and wishes of the crew, that they belong to enterprise
rather than to industry, and are very far indeed from tending to deaden
any freshness of character.
The vessels in which war and piracy were carried on during the years of
the Greek Revolution became merchantmen at the end of the war; but the
tactics of the Greeks, as naval warriors, were so exceedingly cautious,
and their habits as commercial mariners are so wild, that the change has
been more slight than you might imagine. The first care of Greeks (Greek
Rayahs) when they undertake a shipping enterprise is to procure for their
vessel the protection of some European power. This is easily managed by
a little intriguing with the dragoman of one of the embassies at
Constantinople, and the craft soon glories in the ensign of Russia, or
the dazzling Tricolor, or the Union Jack. Thus, to the great delight of
her crew, she enters upon the ocean world with a flaring lie at her peak,
but the appearance of the vessel does no discredit to the borrowed flag;
she is frail indeed, but is gracefully built, and smartly rigged; she
always carries guns, and, in short, gives good promise of mischief and
speed.
The privileges attached to the vessel and her crew by virtue of the
borrowed flag are so great, as to imply a liberty wider even than that
which is often enjoyed in our more strictly civilised countries, so that
there is no pretence for saying that the development of the true
character belonging to Greek mariners is prevented by the dominion of the
Ottoman. These men are free, too, from the power of the great
capitalist, whose sway is more withering than despotism itself to the
enterprises of humble venturers. The capital employed is supplied by
those whose labour is to render it productive. The crew receive no
wages, but have all a share in the venture, and in general, I believe,
they are the owners of the whole freight. They choose a captain, to whom
they entrust just power enough to keep the vessel on her course in fine
weather, but not quite enough for a gale of wind; they also elect a cook
and a mate. The cook whom we had on board was particularly careful about
the ship’s reckoning, and when under the influence of the keen
sea-breezes we grew fondly expectant of an instant dinner, the great
author of _pilafs_ would be standing on deck with an ancient quadrant in
his hands, calmly affecting to take an observation. But then to make up
for this the captain would be exercising a controlling influence over the
soup, so that all in the end went well. Our mate was a Hydriot, a native
of that island rock which grows nothing but mariners and mariners’ wives.
His character seemed to be exactly that which is generally attributed to
the Hydriot race; he was fierce, and gloomy, and lonely in his ways. One
of his principal duties seemed to be that of acting as counter-captain,
or leader of the opposition, denouncing the first symptoms of tyranny,
and protecting even the cabin-boy from oppression. Besides this, when
things went smoothly he would begin to prognosticate evil, in order that
his more lighthearted comrades might not be puffed up with the seeming
good fortune of the moment.
It seemed to me that the personal freedom of these sailors, who own no
superiors except those of their own choice, is as like as may be to that
of their seafaring ancestors. And even in their mode of navigation they
have admitted no such an entire change as you would suppose probable. It
is true that they have so far availed themselves of modern discoveries as
to look to the compass instead of the stars, and that they have
superseded the immortal gods of their forefathers by St. Nicholas in his
glass case, {66} but they are not yet so confident either in their
needle, or their saint, as to love an open sea, and they still hug their
shores as fondly as the Argonauts of old. Indeed, they have a most
unsailor-like love for the land, and I really believe that in a gale of
wind they would rather have a rock-bound coast on their lee than no coast
at all. According to the notions of an English seaman, this kind of
navigation would soon bring the vessel on which it might be practised to
an evil end. The Greek, however, is unaccountably successful in escaping
the consequences of being “jammed in,” as it is called, upon a lee-shore.
These seamen, like their forefathers, rely upon no winds unless they are
right astern or on the quarter; they rarely go _on_ a wind if it blows at
all fresh, and if the adverse breeze approaches to a gale, they at once
fumigate St. Nicholas, and put up the helm. The consequence, of course,
is that under the ever-varying winds of the Ægean they are blown about in
the most whimsical manner. I used to think that Ulysses, with his ten
years’ voyage, had taken his time in making Ithaca, but my experience in
Greek navigation soon made me understand that he had had, in point of
fact, a pretty good “average passage.”
Such are now the mariners of the Ægean: free, equal amongst themselves,
navigating the seas of their forefathers with the same heroic, and yet
childlike, spirit of venture, the same half-trustful reliance upon
heavenly aid, they are the liveliest images of true old Greeks that time
and the new religions have spared to us.
With one exception, our crew were “a solemn company,” {67} and yet,
sometimes, when all things went well, they would relax their austerity,
and show a disposition to fun, or rather to quiet humour. When this
happened, they invariably had recourse to one of their number, who went
by the name of “Admiral Nicolou.” He was an amusing fellow, the poorest,
I believe, and the least thoughtful of the crew, but full of rich humour.
His oft-told story of the events by which he had gained the sobriquet of
“Admiral” never failed to delight his hearers, and when he was desired to
repeat it for my benefit, the rest of the crew crowded round with as much
interest as if they were listening to the tale for the first time. A
number of Greek brigs and brigantines were at anchor in the bay of
Beyrout. A festival of some kind, particularly attractive to the
sailors, was going on in the town, and whether with or without leave I
know not, but the crews of all the craft, except that of Nicolou, had
gone ashore. On board his vessel, however, which carried dollars, there
was, it would seem, a more careful, or more influential captain, who was
able to enforce his determination that one man, at least, should be left
on board. Nicolou’s good nature was with him so powerful an impulse,
that he could not resist the delight of volunteering to stay with the
vessel whilst his comrades went ashore. His proposal was accepted, and
the crew and captain soon left him alone on the deck of his vessel. The
sailors, gathering together from their several ships, were amusing
themselves in the town, when suddenly there came down from betwixt the
mountains one of those sudden hurricanes which sometimes occur in
southern climes. Nicolou’s vessel, together with four of the craft which
had been left unmanned, broke from her moorings, and all five of the
vessels were carried out seaward. The town is on a salient point at the
southern side of the bay, so that “that Admiral” was close under the eyes
of the inhabitants and the shore-gone sailors when he gallantly drifted
out at the head of his little fleet. If Nicolou could not entirely
control the manœuvres of the squadron, there was at least no human power
to divide his authority, and thus it was that he took rank as “Admiral.”
Nicolou cut his cable, and thus for the time saved his vessel; for the
rest of the fleet under his command were quickly wrecked, whilst “the
Admiral” got away clear to the open sea. The violence of the squall soon
passed off, but Nicolou felt that his chance of one day resigning his
high duties as an admiral for the enjoyments of private life on the
steadfast shore mainly depended upon his success in working the brig with
his own hands, so after calling on his namesake, the saint (not for the
first time, I take it), he got up some canvas, and took the helm: he
became equal, he told us, to a score of Nicolous, and the vessel, as he
said, was “manned with his terrors.” For two days, it seems, he cruised
at large, but at last, either by his seamanship, or by the natural
instinct of the Greek mariners for finding land, he brought his craft
close to an unknown shore, that promised well for his purpose of running
in the vessel; and he was preparing to give her a good berth on the
beach, when he saw a gang of ferocious-looking fellows coming down to the
point for which he was making. Poor Nicolou was a perfectly unlettered
and untutored genius, and for that reason, perhaps, a keen listener to
tales of terror. His mind had been impressed with some horrible legend
of cannibalism, and he now did not doubt for a moment that the men
awaiting him on the beach were the monsters at whom he had shuddered in
the days of his childhood. The coast on which Nicolou was running his
vessel was somewhere, I fancy, at the foot of the Anzairie Mountains, and
the fellows who were preparing to give him a reception were probably very
rough specimens of humanity. It is likely enough that they might have
given themselves the trouble of putting “the Admiral” to death, for the
purpose of simplifying their claim to the vessel and preventing
litigation, but the notion of their cannibalism was of course utterly
unfounded. Nicolou’s terror had, however, so graven the idea on his
mind, that he could never afterwards dismiss it. Having once determined
the character of his expectant hosts, the Admiral naturally thought that
it would be better to keep their dinner waiting any length of time than
to attend their feast in the character of a roasted Greek, so he put
about his vessel, and tempted the deep once more. After a further cruise
the lonely commander ran his vessel upon some rocks at another part of
the coast, where she was lost with all her treasures, and Nicolou was but
too glad to scramble ashore, though without one dollar in his girdle.
These adventures seem flat enough as I repeat them, but the hero
expressed his terrors by such odd terms of speech, and such strangely
humorous gestures, that the story came from his lips with an unfailing
zest, so that the crew, who had heard the tale so often, could still
enjoy to their hearts’ content the rich fright of the Admiral, and still
shuddered with unabated horror when he came to the loss of the dollars.
The power of listening to long stories (for which, by the bye, I am
giving you large credit) is common, I fancy, to most sailors, and the
Greeks have it to a high degree, for they can be perfectly patient under
a narrative of two or three hours’ duration. These long stories are
mostly founded upon Oriental topics, and in one of them I recognised with
some alteration an old friend of the _Arabian Nights_. I inquired as to
the source from which the story had been derived, and the crew all agreed
that it had been handed down unwritten from Greek to Greek. Their
account of the matter does not, perhaps, go very far towards showing the
real origin of the tale; but when I afterwards took up the _Arabian
Nights_, I became strongly impressed with a notion that they must have
sprung from the brain of a Greek. It seems to me that these stories,
whilst they disclose a complete and habitual knowledge of things Asiatic,
have about them so much of freshness and life, so much of the stirring
and volatile European character, that they cannot have owed their
conception to a mere Oriental, who for creative purposes is a thing dead
and dry—a mental mummy, that may have been a live king just after the
Flood, but has since lain balmed in spice. At the time of the Caliphat
the Greek race was familiar enough to Baghdad: they were the merchants,
the pedlars, the barbers, and intriguers-general of south-western Asia,
and therefore the Oriental materials with which the Arabian tales were
wrought must have been completely at the command of the inventive people
to whom I would attribute their origin.
We were nearing the isle of Cyprus when there arose half a gale of wind,
with a heavy chopping sea. My Greek seamen considered that the weather
amounted not to a half, but to an integral gale of wind at the very
least, so they put up the helm, and scudded for twenty hours. When we
neared the mainland of Anadoli the gale ceased, and a favourable breeze
sprung up, which brought us off Cyprus once more. Afterwards the wind
changed again, but we were still able to lay our course by sailing
close-hauled.
We were at length in such a position, that by holding on our course for
about half an hour we should get under the lee of the island and find
ourselves in smooth water, but the wind had been gradually freshening; it
now blew hard, and there was a heavy sea running.
As the grounds for alarm arose, the crew gathered together in one close
group; they stood pale and grim under their hooded capotes like monks
awaiting a massacre, anxiously looking by turns along the pathway of the
storm and then upon each other, and then upon the eye of the captain who
stood by the helmsman. Presently the Hydriot came aft, more moody than
ever, the bearer of fierce remonstrance against the continuing of the
struggle; he received a resolute answer, and still we held our course.
Soon there came a heavy sea, that caught the bow of the brigantine as she
lay jammed in betwixt the waves; she bowed her head low under the waters,
and shuddered through all her timbers, then gallantly stood up again over
the striving sea, with bowsprit entire. But where were the crew? It was
a crew no longer, but rather a gathering of Greek citizens; the shout of
the seamen was changed for the murmuring of the people—the spirit of the
old Demos was alive. The men came aft in a body, and loudly asked that
the vessel should be put about, and that the storm be no longer tempted.
Now then, for speeches. The captain, his eyes flashing fire, his frame
all quivering with emotion—wielding his every limb, like another and a
louder voice, pours forth the eloquent torrent of his threats and his
reasons, his commands and his prayers; he promises, he vows, he swears
that there is safety in holding on—safety, _if Greeks will be brave_!
The men hear and are moved; but the gale rouses itself once more, and
again the raging sea comes trampling over the timbers that are the life
of all. The fierce Hydriot advances one step nearer to the captain, and
the angry growl of the people goes floating down the wind, but they
listen; they waver once more, and once more resolve, then waver again,
thus doubtfully hanging between the terrors of the storm and the
persuasion of glorious speech, as though it were the Athenian that
talked, and Philip of Macedon that thundered on the weather-bow.
Brave thoughts winged on Grecian words gained their natural mastery over
terror; the brigantine held on her course, and reached smooth water at
last. I landed at Limasol, the westernmost port of Cyprus, leaving the
vessel to sail for Larnaca, where she was to remain for some days.