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  The Trojan Walrus

  The Misadventures of an

  English Stowaway on the Aegean Sea

  Julian Blatchley

  Copyright © 2015 Julian Blatchley

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

  publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

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  Matador®

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  ISBN 978 1784626 372

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  Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

  This book is dedicated to

  Renate and Nerissa

  Two ladies who love Greece and, inexplicably, me!

  Contents

  Cover

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ENDNOTES

  GLOSSARY

  CHAPTER ONE

  A SERENDIPITOUS SAUSAGE

  In which we hear an alarming allegation concerning a sausage... Piraeus in winter... the critical avoidance of okra... second mates, an irrelevant but heartfelt digression... yearnings… rapt by an historic shore... nationality, musings and angst with regard to... a change of plan... lamentations on the decline of the British Merchant Navy... the deteriorating prospects of British seaman in general with one in particular… ashore but feeling adrift... we meet the portentous sausage at a critical juncture and clear it of all suspicion... a lemming leaps.

  THIS IS A TALE ABOUT A RADICAL CHANGE IN MY LIFE. IT WAS AN EVENT OCCASIONED BY UNQUIET TIMES AND A COINCIDENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH HAD LED ME, AT THE OPENING OF THE NARRATIVE, TO THE BRINK OF AN ABYSS. THERE I TEETERED FOR A WHILE, BY TURNS PULLED FORWARD BY A LEMMING-LIKE COMPULSION TO JUMP AND DRAWN BACK BY THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION; AND THEN, AT THE CRUCIAL INSTANT, A SAUSAGE PUSHED ME OVER THE EDGE.

  Later in this account you will become accustomed to my convoluted taste in metaphors... a-simile-ation, if you will... but for those readers who assume that I have unleashed imagery in the opening paragraph, I must be quite clear: this was no sausage of the mind but rather a real, gleaming, engorged skin straining under the pressure of savoury contents; a sausage sensible to feeling as to sight, which marshalled me along the way that I was going in an entirely corporeal manner; and I encountered it as I lugged my kit-bag through Piraeus docks in search of a ferry-boat one mad March afternoon.

  * * *

  It was a blazing, brilliant and bitter day, delicately balanced somewhere on the cusp of winter and spring; the sort of day which can often be found in the Mediterranean in the early months of the year. The ice-blue heavens cascaded such radiance upon the drab waterfront that even the grimy concrete of Greece’s utilitarian port-city seemed tinged with the nobility of a greater age, but the coruscating light was accompanied by a wind that sliced like a scalpel.

  The air temperature, driven by a brisk, northerly breeze, was as crisp as a wind off the tundra, yet, if you got out of the air-stream and into the sunshine, it was suddenly as warm as the finest of English summer days. The direct sunlight baked like a blow-torch, causing my scalp to perspire a little under the burden of the great canvas sea-bag on my shoulder, so that when a small bead of moisture escaped the hair-line the wind pounced on it, transformed it to ice, and sent it skittering down my cringing neck. Passing through the shadows of awnings and kiosks was like walking from a boiler-room into a fridge. The Greeks call such conditions ‘ilio meh dontia’... ‘sun with teeth’: schizophrenic weather, but so beautiful that even the strident, stinking, savage traffic and the dry, dilapidated, dirty fountains failed to give their customary offence in the effulgence.

  I generally don’t like cities much, and Piraeus is not a beautiful one in any case. My aim had been to get onto a ferry to an island with all possible despatch. However, the distance to the required terminal was uncertain and breakfast had been at oh-six-hundred; it was now after three in the afternoon and the combination of an empty belly, a shoulder complaining under the awkward weight of the sea-bag and the cosmetic effect of the light on the grimy city was sufficient to divert my steps into a taverna.

  The restaurant was a typical down-town Piraeus eatery; a narrow, echoing, indifferently-lit hall behind jaded metal-framed windows. A counter ran along most of one side of the room, and a single row of square tables stretched down the other side. There was a strong suspicion of cobwebs lurking up in the gloomy rafters; the furniture was painted a jaded grey and covered with check tablecloths from which all joy had long ago been washed out; the swarthy cook leaned his tattooed and hairy forearms on the counter and peered expressionlessly around the dog-end of his cigarette. What light there was emanated from un-shaded fluorescent tubes. Heating was something which happened elsewhere, and the clients retained their coats.

  In most places in the civilised world I would have hurried past with a shudder, but from previous experience in Greece I knew that the appearance of urban restaurants is often in complete contradiction to the quality of their food.1 Peering into the sombre depths I noted that this one was well-stocked with obviously local clientele... nuggety, bronzed men in sailor’s pea-jackets and fisherman’s caps... and decided it was worth taking a chance on. Selecting a table behind the door to avoid the worst of the cool draft, I ordered something called ‘loukaniko’, which sounded familiar; I thought it was probably meatballs, but it didn’t really matter as at least I knew that it wasn’t tripe or bloody okra.†

  Having ordered I addressed myself to a beer, and, gazing out of the lack-lustre window at the contrasts of sun and shadow outside, I reflected back over the previous week and the events which had brought me to this smoky, chilly, Spartan, echoing and irretrievably foreign establishment.

  * * *

  “What the hell’s up with you this morning, Two-Oh?” scowled Captain Andy. “You’re simpering like a tart in a rugby club shower!”

  ‘Two-Oh’ was me, the second mate, and the Two-Oh of a commercial ship is expected to be a reliable, stoical sort of chap. A fully proficient and experienced navigator, only two promotions away from commanding the vessel, the second mate is a man trusted to be the master’s principle confidant in planning and controlling navigation, and the chief mate’s first resource in handling cargo. Perhaps most tellingly of all, he is entrusted with navigating the ship in the dead of the graveyard watch, when all others sleep soundly under the aegis of his skill and judgement. A proficient second mate, in a nutshell, is ideally a creature of worth, deserving of the world’s approbation.

  The world in general, however, rarely concerns itself with second mates. They exis
t largely below the conscious horizon, or at best as a vague, misconstrued entity, in the same way that swan’s wings are only ever associated with fractured arms. The popular perception seems to be that ships ply the oceans at the behest of omniscient or alcoholic (there is no middle ground) captains, and are manned by superhuman bo’suns, ingenious ship’s boys, deranged cooks, villainous amputees and misanthropic, incomprehensible Glaswegian chief engineers. No second mates. As a shining proof that this is no idle assertion, ask yourself: ‘How many crew does the Love Boat have?’ I think I counted six, and definitely nothing resembling a second mate. In fact, I challenge anyone to tell me the name of a famous second mate in fiction or history... even I can only think of Charles Lightoller and Arthur Hawkins.2

  The universal invisibility of second mates, I suggest, is greatly to their credit, because one thing we may be quite clear about is that something is rarely invisible if it is unreliable... the common consciousness never dwells upon the brake that functioned, the parachute that opened or the rhinoceros repellent that worked. By and large, I was comfortable with this anonymity, and contented myself with the smug conceit that, if the world ever did concern itself with second mates, then adjectives such as ‘capable’ and ‘dependable’ would be what it would hear, along with metaphorical links to pillars, rocks, and other images connected with permanence, composure and competence. I found Captain Andy’s accusation hurtful, but only briefly unjustified.

  On our port side, between a gently-undulating sheet of silver-spangled azure sea and a sky of flawless sapphire, a hazy olive-grey coastline was hardening and developing detail with every mile the ship advanced. On the starboard bow a long line of cliffs, high and rocky, brightly yellowish-white in the brilliant winter sunlight, rose steadily out of the sea; and beyond them a great, grey hump began to take form on the shimmering horizon. It looked as if the ship was steaming into an enormous closed bay, but a glance at the chart showed that the closest point to port was Cape Tainaron, the cliffs to starboard were the east side of the island of Kythera, and the hump dead ahead none other than the fabled Cape Malea, nemesis of Odysseus. Seatank York was in Greek waters, steaming across the south coast of the Peloponnese, through waters fabled in legend and history from the dawn of memory to the Second World War, and would shortly round Malea to enter the Aegean Sea. And I was becoming more euphoric with every mile, because I was coming home.

  * * *

  Now, anyone who knows me will cry out at this point that I am spouting complete and utter hogwash. I am a stout (few stouter!) son of the northern English mountains; the issue of a Yorkshire father and a Westmerian mother, weaned on Cumberland sausage and raised on Stilton, beef, Yorkshire pud and Hartley’s bitter from infancy to adultery. I was educated in Shakespeare, Waterloo and cricket at a draughty and venerable pile on a moorland hillside, where blood-sports were played between the inmates and shorts were de rigueur until the Third Form, even in three feet of snow. I have known the words of all five verses of Rule Britannia since the age of ten. If you cut me in half, I would bleed gravy and the words ‘A present from Windermere’ would be found inscribed in my midriff. I am as English as Stratford-upon-Avon, a hundred per cent more English than Winston Churchill and, until October 1984, I would have dealt with anyone who dared to even think otherwise according to the Marquess of Queensbury’s rules. And yet, by the end of February 1985 I was feeling homesick at the sight of a country which, barely half a year previously, I had thought of only as the haunt of dancing waiters, soldiers in ballet-dresses and Anthony Quinn.

  What a change a few months can make. It was not even five months previously that three staunchly English chappies... Rex, Malcolm and I... had loaded our somewhat jaundiced preconceptions of Mediterranean mores, means and morals onto an ageing sailing boat called Nissos and sailed out of Alimos Marina for a two-week yacht-charter holiday; fourteen days in which we became Goldsmith’s ‘fools who came to mock and remained to pray.’3 We developed a strangely intense fascination with the country and all fell to some degree under its spell: in my case, the allure was so strong that I had made a last minute decision to stay ‘for a while longer’.

  Having formed a very chummy relationship with Spiros Thallasodoros, the agent who had provided our yacht Nissos, I had spent almost a month bringing his boats back to Alimos from all over Greece for the winter; a magical experience, rough on occasion, but deeply satisfying and one which had given me a passing acquaintance with a surprising number of the Greek islands, coasts and waters in so short a time. Then, as the season died completely and Greece succumbed to winter torpor, I had taken up residence on the island of Poros for a few weeks. Here I spent my time in studious pursuits. I familiarised myself with the year’s new wine and the winter cuisine, tried out the results of my two-cassette language course on the tolerant locals, poked around a few of the local antiquities and took the master-class in relaxation which the islands in winter can offer par excellence.

  Even in mid-December, when the brightly changeable weather of autumn finally gave way to the duller cloud and rain of winter, my new love affair with the Hellenic lifestyle did not cool and I had little thought of leaving; but beer-vouchers do not grow on trees... not unless you own the trees, at any rate... and when the unwelcome summons back to another world inevitably came just before Christmas, I decided that it ought to be heeded. I went complacently, signing on the Seatank York in Singapore for a six month voyage. Fair enough, I thought... even allowing for the inevitable ‘Sorry, your relief got mauled by a rogue gerbil, could you remain on board another month?’ telex from the Human Remains department, I could still be back in Greece by the end of June with three months off to enjoy the summer. I intended to make a few delivery trips for Spiros, to look for some like-minded female company, and keep an eye out for an affordable small boat of my own on which to spend my leaves.

  But, you know, the darned place had got further under my skin than I had realised. As the Seatank York ploughed westwards across the Bay of Bengal with a cargo of Indonesian crude oil for Fos in the south of France I became wistful, and spent the long ocean watches reprising the ports of the Argo-Saronic.

  When off-watch, I bored anyone who would listen with tales of the Aegean. As I laid-off the courses from Suez across the Mediterranean I experienced an elevation of my emotions which I unaccountably made no attempt to repress; indeed, I indulged my feelings by edging the parallel rulers as far north as I dared without arousing comment from the Old Man, just to pass that little bit closer to Homer’s islands. I spent long hours perusing the chart catalogue and charts of the Aegean, reading the pilot-books for the area, memorising weather patterns, making lists and planning cruising itineraries. I scrounged any out-of-date Mediterranean charts and pilot-books, and photocopied that which I could not purloin.

  Once we passed though Suez and into the Mediterranean, proximity intensified my feelings. I fell into a bizarre humour which I might describe as euphoric melancholia; elated at the mere proximity of Greece barely over our northern horizon, and saddened by its inaccessibility. Then we got to Fos, and towards the end of the discharge Andy came into the control room to announce that our next loading port would be Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea coast of the Soviet Union. We had to pass the length of the Aegean, through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus… the prospect of merely seeing the islands of the Wine-Dark Sea made me feel as if I had won the lottery.

  * * *

  So thus it was that I came to be accused of simpering like a tart in a rugby club shower as we entered the Aegean on a cloudless, brilliant, almost warm day at the end of February. Although not on watch until midday, I had been around the bridge most of the morning, seeing in my mind’s eye a cavalcade of historic landmarks as they passed by just out of sight to the north.

  With nothing in sight but sea and other occasional ships, I greedily eyed the chart as we passed Pylos, the Navarino of antiquity where I knew Admiral Sir Edward Codrington and his fleet had sunk eighty-odd Turkish and Egyptian sh
ips to settle the course of the Greek revolution.4 Just east of Pylos lay the great Venetian renaissance fortresses of Methoni and Koroni. A little further north was Kalamata, scene of the Commonwealth evacuation of Greece during the Second World War, and north of that lay ancient Olympia, where the Games were born.

  Next we passed the Mani, fastness of the revolutionary Petrobey Mavromichaelis and, some claim, the home of the Buonapartes. We sailed through the 1941 battleground off Cape Matapan, and in my imagination I saw the hellish blossoms of battleship broadsides flowering out of the inky night, and the shattered hulls of the Italian cruisers plunging to the seabed beneath us.

  Shortly after passing Matapan (now called by its Greek name, Tainaron) I took over the watch as we entered the Kythera channel... ancient Sparta now lay just northwards and the lands of those ferocious Lacedaemons reached its southernmost point at the massive, sheer, barren cliffs of Cape Malea, just ahead. This, of course, was the legendary Akra Malea, Cape of Storms, where the Aegean met the Mediterranean and Odysseus took the definitive wrong turn.

  Just beyond this celebrated Rubicon, however, waited an enticement even more enthralling than all the history and legend which had inspired me through the morning; for on the east side of Malea lies Monemvasia, a preserved Byzantine walled town clinging to the flank of a towering column of rock known as the Gibraltar of the East. From there northwards I didn’t care a fig for anything Odysseus or anyone else in history might have done, because my own feet had walked those ancient, cobbled alleyways, and my own lungs had collapsed at the top of those cliffs. Monemvasia had been our most southerly port on the cruise of the Nissos. I was now entering familiar territory.