But for Byron and Hobhouse it wasn’t all wallowing merchantmen and endless horizons by day, and cramped quarters and brig’s biscuit at night; there was sport to be had, privateering sport, and very well they privateered too.
While it might at first sight appear that one man’s pirate was another man’s privateer, there were distinct and proudly held differences. Piracy was simply illegal and there was only one penalty: hanging, there and then. Privateering was legal, even if its practitioners were subject to civil rather than naval law, and only vessels belonging to, or trading with, enemies of the state could be attacked and taken as prizes. The captured crew were not to be harmed. A complication was the common practice of flying other countries’ ensigns as a ruse de guerre, either as a discouragement from attack or as an encouragement to relax defences. As captured vessels were routinely pressed into the victor’s fleet, appearances were deceptive enough for even the expert eye, and the trick was to guess, or double guess, the true identity and intentions of the other vessel. No doubt Captain Oliver explained the sea rules before letting Byron and Hobhouse loose on passing shipping.
On 21 September 1809, two days or a hundred miles off the Greek coast, just as the British fleet carrying 2,000 men was leaving Malta to invade the Ionian Islands, they saw their first sail on the horizon. Captain Oliver put the Spider on full alert, only for the stranger to identity herself as Greek and returning from a corn run to Sicily; as Greece was under Ottoman control and Sicily a Spanish colony, no enemies of England were involved and no privateering allowed. A pirate would have had no such restraints of trade.
Other coastal shipping soon appeared. They chased a small galliot - a rowed sailing boat - and found her to be trading fruit with French controlled Ithaca. She was taken as a prize and the crew of three brought onto the Spider. Then they chased another galliot, but found her only to be coastal trading and under the Turkish flag and so had to let her go. Captain Oliver must have deemed the Spider could not be a convoy escort and privateer at the same time and thus ordered the captured prize and the Spider’s jolly-boat - its launch - to be turned into privateers. They fitted the former with a two-pounder cannon, which Byron called Murphy, rounded up ten beefy volunteers (you, you and you, look lively!) to be oarsmen, and with the Spider’s surgeon Mr. Swann as captain, the teenage midshipman Mr. Parker as helmsman, and our heroes as accessories, off they went looking for trouble.
They were by now just south of Kefalonia. Byron’s privateer rowed or sailed into an inlet to wait in ambush for whomsoever might pass. Before long they saw one sail pursuing another, and without looking too closely they joined in the chase and fired on the first vessel. Looking more closely they discovered they had just friendly-fired on their own jolly-boat which was merely towing a prize of its own back to the Spider. They then hounded two coastal dhows, one of which had ‘women sleeping’, and the other ‘a Turkish soldier with a firman’, but both were Turkish flagged and so unable to be prized. They rowed and sailed back to join the jolly-boat on the Spider.
The next morning at first light saw them well inside the Gulf of Patras, which leads into the Straits and the Gulf of Corinth. They rose at dawn, and to the sound of ‘sail ahoy!’ from the Spider’s crow’s nest took to their privateer and set off in pursuit of the day’s first quarry. In the early morning still air it took two hours of sweaty rowing to come close to the becalmed merchantman, a seventy-ton, ten-manned Turkish-flagged brigantine called San Marco Fortunato. The English privateer did not believe the brigantine was flagged correctly, hoisted her own colours and fired Murphy across the suspect’s bows in an invitation for the brigantine to heave-to. The brigantine replied with lively musket shot, directed at the privateer, at which point of conflict protocol deemed a proper engagement could start. Murphy and the English muskets then replied in quick fire, and so for half an hour quite a small naval battle raged. One bullet went ‘within an inch’ of Hobhouse’s ear. Then, of all the cheek, Hobhouse saw that ‘a man, a foreigner, shot the next man but one to me in the thigh about four inches from the knee.’
Just as the English privateer was about to win the Battle of Hobhouse’s Ear a breeze perked up and the much larger merchantman was able to put some distance between herself and her pursuer. Then the same breeze reconsidered and the English were encouraged to make ‘one last try’. They loaded up Murphy and the muskets and were soon alongside. As they were ready to take their prize three of the brigantine’s crew jumped on board the privateer but were overpowered and forced into the hold.
On board the San Marco Fortunato they found a cargo of iron, coffee, sulphur and raisins, the latter belonging to a Greek whom Hobhouse found to be ‘the most timid sneaking fellow I ever saw’. The Turkish captain said that they too were from Malta, and had fired on them because he thought the English were French - in spite of flying British colours. But as Swann, and excited opinion on board determined they were sailing for French-controlled Parga the brigantine was taken as a prize.
Soon Swann and the privateer veered off in search of more prizes, leaving the San Marco Fortunato under the command of young mid- shipman Parker (quite a first command), half a dozen stout English sailors and Byron and Hobhouse, while the Turks were kept below and told to man the pumps. They soon came across a suspicious looking dhow with twelve men on board, hoisted their newly captured Turkish colours and boarded her, ‘but finding nothing French let her go.’ By the evening a wind and swell had built up and Parker chose to anchor in a bay south of Patras. At two in the morning they saw a boat approaching and prepared arms, but it was only Swann in the privateers all privateer; he ‘had driven two French boats on shore but taken nothing.’ And thus a memorable day’s privateering (not least for young Parker) had come to an end.
On board the Spider Captain Oliver decided that as it could not be proved that the San Marco Fortunato had been trading with the French she had to be let go, no doubt to much disappointment from Parker and our literary London heroes. One presumes gifts of compensation from the freed Turks’ cargo hold were not discouraged.
Later that morning Byron and Hobhouse set foot on Greek soil for the first time, but within an hour they were summoned back on board as the Spider had completed her whistle-stop mission to Patras: delivering the secret despatch from Spiridion Foresti in Malta, via the English consul in Patras, Mr. Strané, to Captain Wilkes in Ioannina informing the latter of Byron’s forthcoming visit to Ali Pasha. Neither Byron nor Hobhouse knew of the contents of the despatch. Later that evening they sailed past the salt flats and marshes of Messolonghi, where Byron was to die fifteen years later.
But their adventures afloat were not over. On the way north to Preveza a Turkish galliot was rash enough to ‘salute’ one of the convoy with a live shot, and soon the Spider was alongside her. This time Captain Oliver found them with a smoking cannon: the galliot had sailed from Dulsinea, a French-occupied port, and so was made a prize and the crew put below in the Spider’s reeking hold. Byron and Hobhouse were sent to rummage through the galliot’s cargo, and found small arms and the cannon primed for another ‘salute’.
On their way into Preveza they sailed over the site of the Battle of Actium, the Roman name for Preveza. It was here 1,840 years previously that Mark Antony had broken off his engagement with Octavian’s squadron to pursue the fleeing Cleopatra on her purple- sailed treasure ship, completing his transformation from Roman warrior to love-lost Egyptian puppy in front of the legions watching from the hills behind Preveza - soon to become the sight of Nicopolis - and by his downfall reshaping the course of Roman and Mediterranean history. As usual Shakespeare captured the moment perfectly, as when Antony’s friend Scarus says:
She once being loofed,
The noble ruin of her magic, Anthony,
Claps on his sea wing, and like a doting mallard,
Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.
I never saw an action of such shame,
<
br /> Experience, manhood, honour, ne’er before
Did violate so itself.
They rose early the next morning to visit nearby Nicopolis. Built by Octavian to celebrate his victory over Mark Antony, and named after Nike, the goddess of victory, the polis covered a vast undulating stretch of land, a most glorious setting worthy of the king of the world, that covered the breadth of the isthmus north of Preveza, with the Ionian Sea on its western shore and the Gulf of Amvrakia to its east. Little remains today except the perimeter foundations, not in dissimilar repair to Hadrian’s Wall, but spread over so large an area that a colony of thirty thousand souls settled there. There is no trace now of the famous 27-mile aqueduct which brought water down from the Prevezan mountains. The stadium is a hollowed mound, although the mound itself is the size of a hillock, and the amphitheatre large enough to entertain the colony’s easily distracted citizens.
These scattered remains confirm the wonderful advantage for a man with Octavian’s vision, the advantage of an unlimited supply of free labour; not such an advantage for the slaves, it has to be said. But civilisations breathe in and out like the rest of us and what with the Goths and the Slavs and the Turks it was sacked and taunted and used as a builders’ yard until the glory that was Rome was rubble. Even two hundred years ago there was precious little to see, and Byron and Hobhouse were unimpressed: ‘they are nothing magnificent, all that remains being broken walls with here and there the vestiges of a house. We saw the masons cutting up antiques from Nicopolis for the building of some paltry house in Preveza - but yet the Turks seem aware of the value of these curiosities.’
Preveza then, and Preveza now, seemed and seems rather unsure of itself. Just twelve years before Byron’s visit the French had stumbled across it when they took over the Venetian empire along with La Serenissima. Five years later Ali Pasha had taken it from the nonplussed French, and made the still-imposing Venetian castle into his palace. Byron and Hobhouse visited the residence and were shown around by the Albanian governor, ‘a most merry man who laughed much, and avec un sourire impudent, told them that one of the rooms was for the “boys”.’ No doubt Byron, out of amused curiosity, popped his head around that particular corner.
The town they found to be ‘very dirty, with narrow streets, low houses, wooden roofs stretching out forming a wretched colonnade.’ The population were half Greek and half Turkish, so half Christian and half Muslim. The Venetians and French would have favoured the Christians, and now Ali Pasha would have made sure the Muslims’ version of one god, and their rights and privileges held sway. Since then Preveza has been racked by earthquakes and wars, and is trying to reinvent itself as a sailing centre and now has an impressive town quay with the usual amusements ashore and afloat. But a street or two back the town reverts to type, and the disappointment of seeing the Venetian castle going the way of Nicopolis is metaphor enough.
They cheered themselves up that night with an enormous feast at their host the consul’s house. Although they soon surmised the consul to be a rogue, they dined famously, especially after a week of the Spider’s fare, on ‘first a tureen of rice soup, fowl boiled to rags, mutton seasoned high, fish broiled, goose, fish roes, fruit, all brought in separately - decent wines of the country at dinner, and a bottle of good port after by way of a brune bruche.’
***
The pains and pleasures of Preveza were but a mere pit stop on their way north to Ioannina to meet Ali Pasha. The consul arranged for them to be rowed to Salaóra, two hours to the north-east, and to pick up some horses for the journey north. But ready horses were there none, and Byron was forced to spend the first of many exotic nights in the company of an Albanian guard, this one of ten soldiers and this time in the old Venetian fortress at Salaóra. Byron smoked’ the long pipe and gave the captain a glass of maraschino from the canteen.’ The Albanians then produced a bottle of aniseed aqua vitæ and Byron and Hobhouse had their first taste of ouzo. They were served by ‘a pretty boy, one of the soldiers, about fifteen and for the public good.’ During the course of the evening Byron also picked up his first dragoman, Georgiou, of whom Hobhouse noted ruefully ‘he never lost an opportunity of robbing us.’ The exotically dressed and wildly mannered Albanian soldiers, the hookah, the ouzo, the open sexuality, the new servant, the Venetian castle, the initial tension and its easing with good company were Byron’s first taste of his Orient,with no English society close by to judge or impress, and for the first time he must have felt the Grand Tour had found its bearings.
They rode through the plains up to their first stop, the country town of Arta. Hobhouse found it a ‘better-most sort of town, the streets partly paved and sufficiently wide, and not having any unpleasant smell.’ Which is more or less as it remains today, a once is enough,no harm done, just passing through type of town, whose highlight remains its many-legended bridge. Byron and Hobhouse rode out tothe old castle on a hill just to the west of the town, and noted that it was ‘still fortified, badly built on the declivity of the hill.’ Well, in the meantime the hill has won and now there are only ruins, hardly justifying all the brown and yellow tourist signs pointing its way.
It was in Arta that they came across the first murmurings of what would become an increasingly anti-Albanian chorus as they headed north. Travel from town to town was by staging post, the Pony Express system, where one rode from post to post, paid for the stage just ridden, collected a fresh horse, and set off again. In Arta they had to pay in advance, ‘a circumstance that astonished us, because many travellers, Albanese merchants, &c., galloped off without payment.’The antagonism towards Albania remains today. When in Salaóra I rented the Smart car now below me in the hotel car park in Arta. I had asked for it for two weeks but was absolutely forbidden under any circumstances to take it to Albania. ‘First time stop, ba-zoom!’ and a short sharp clap explained their thinking.
The next night found them at an osteria on a summit half way between Arta and Ioannina, at a spot then called St. Demetre, now called EL-VO Truck Stop. Not having a truck I didn’t comply and anyway was keen to reach Ioannina.
It was on Thursday 5 October 1809 that the entourage rode through Ioannina’s southern city gate. It did not take long for them to see they were in the capital of Ali Pasha’s fiefdom: riding through the outskirts of town, near where now stands the Archaeological Museum, they saw a man’s arm with half his torso still attached dangling from ‘under a tree, hanging to a twig’. It had clearly been there for several days and was not in good condition, and Hobhouse noted that ‘no pleasant impression [was] made by this - Lord Byron and myself feeling a little sick.’ They were later to find out that his arms had been tied to the end of a horse and his legs to another, and the horses encouraged into a tug of war. The ‘legs’ horse had won and that half of the equation was hanging from another tree at another entrance into town. It was their first contact with the ruthlessness with which Ali Pasha ruled; worse was to be seen soon. At their first meeting he boasted to Byron that he had personally killed 30,000 people; as he was seventy at the time and had been killing voraciously for fifty-five years one can ‘do the maths’ (ten a week) and not disagree with his tally.
His Excellency Ali Pasha, to whom they were bound on His Majesty’s business, was the worst possible type of monster. A cross between Robert Mugabe without the agrarian acumen and Saddam Hussein without the love for humanity, he was the sort of despot that gives tyranny a bad name. He was also, as already remarked, an enthusiastic pederast and paedophile, and when six years before their visit to Ioannina he had become bored with his harem he had sewn the then-current incumbents up in a giant sack and chucked them wriggling and screaming over the ramparts into the lake.
In 1740, when he was born, all of what are now the new Balkan countries plus Albania, Greece and Turkey were part of a decaying Ottoman Empire still governed from Constantinople. Power was bought and sold from the Grand Seigneur to Viziers and then to regional Pashas.
Ali himself was born in what is now southern Albania. He was the son of the village chieftain, and this grasp on the first rung was all he needed to loot, betray, torture, steal, liquidate, starve, terrorise and bribe his way to run his own and his sons’ private fiefdoms. This nepotocracy controlled an area which stretched from south-western Greece to Macedonia in the east and to the southern half of Albania to the north.
Ali Pasha was above all a natural Machiavellian who believed that all his subjects were beastly and the only way to rule them was to be correspondingly more beastly. He did not want them to love him, let alone fear him, but just be terrified of him.
Although Byron did not yet know it Ali Pasha was expecting him; they may or may not have already heard that he himself was up-country, engaged ‘in a small war’ to the north with the last of his rivals, Ibrahim Pasha. Ali Pasha’s knowledge of their arrival can only have come through Captain Leake, the English consul at Ioannina, and he would have known of it from the despatch brought from Malta by the Spider and given to his fellow consul Strané in Patras. As was Foresti’s design their importance had become exaggerated and Ali Pasha was under the impression that Lord Byron was no mere humble peer but a nephew of King George III.
They settled in a substantial house belonging to a Greek trader called Signor Niccolo. Even Fletcher had his own room. The house is now on Lord Byron (Lordou Vironus) Street, a busy pedestrian cobbled affair lined with boutiques; funnily enough the house that gave the street its name is the only one that has not been developed, being still unkempt and decorated with anarchist graffiti. The house is midway on the right hand side walking north, just opposite the very chi-chi Venetian pink ‘Lord Byron Fashion House’. In this old part of town the cobbled streets are laid out just as they were in Byron’s day, and the two- or three-storey houses, with many old ones interspersed among the new, can give one a fine idea of how the visitors found Ioannina two hundred years ago.
Joy Unconfined Page 11