The Trojan Walrus

by Julian Blatchley

  The Poros waterfront was a very public forum where secrets were few and where professional seafarers and young yacht-jockeys, motor boat drivers and fishermen all rubbed shoulders in the kafeneions and competed, even when unconscious of the fact. It was not an environment that set much store in caution, so when one was asked to do something, one did it. If it worked, one affected a nonchalant modesty; if it did not, one had ready to hand all sorts of reasons why it was the fault of the proposer, the elements, the design of the boat, that bloke over there, or, in fact, any other person or thing under the sun, rather than the perpetrator. It was, I suppose, a bit like living in a gladiator’s school... one really didn’t want to be second best. So off I went to Kos, perfectly happy simply to have an opportunity to showcase my casual attitude to single-handed passages and blithely supposing that ‘someone’ would help me to tie up at the other end.

  * * *

  I left Poros before the dawn, puttering down the harbour in a twilight enhanced by a sinking moon. All around me, quite by chance but seeming to salute the nobility of my solo quest, were an escort of little boats whose rudimentary exhausts riveted the morning quiet as their ancient engines drove them out in quest of the morning fish. Greeks have a deep distrust of exhausts... anything that mutes the sound is under extreme suspicion of equally emasculating the engine. Fishing boats, motorbikes and pump engine exhaust systems are routinely eviscerated or discarded altogether.

  Once clear of the channel I brought in my fenders and then, increasing the engine revolutions, I bid farewell to my fisher escort with a series of grave salutes as Green Dragon accelerated.

  Setting course to the west-south-west, I passed Modhi Island at the east end of Poros and gradually began to feel the tickle of northerly breeze in my beard. By the time the east was orange-gold I had the engine off, the main sail and genoa drawing pleasantly, and Green Dragon chuckling contentedly as she ran out from the land.

  The direct route from Poros to the island of Kos, which lies in the Southern Dodecanese islands hard against the Turkish coast, runs close to the western Cycladic island of Kythnos then just north of the large, central island of Naxos, and the distance is about one hundred and eighty-five nautical miles.

  In Greece, however, the shortest distance from anywhere to anywhere else is rarely a straight line, and the canny Aegean sailor will only consider this direct route if the wind is confidently expected to be from the south. In any other conditions at all he is wise to be as alert as a mouse in a cattery, for the Aegean is a capricious creature and exceedingly prone to northerly winds which can be much stronger than forecast where they funnel between the high, rugged islands. Anyone who doubts this need only take a look at the Cycladic scenery, which is almost devoid of trees; and those that do manage to cling to the friable soil are either sheltered from the North or else they are stunted, blasted freaks, fantastically deformed and permanently bent away from relentless Boreas.

  In the South Aegean, the part which lies below the narrowest point linked by the islands of Evvoia, Andros, Tinos, Ikaria and Samos, the wind is not uniformly northerly, however. In the central Aegean it blows from very close to true north, but at the western side it is deflected by the Peloponnesian coast and blows more from the north-east. Similarly, on the eastern side, it tends to follow the Turkish coast and blow from the north-west. A diagram of the prevailing winds over Homer’s Wine-Dark Sea looks a little like an inverted Prince-Of-Wales feathers.

  The knowledgeable sailor can make good use of this. By leaving the Peloponnese coast on a south-easterly heading he can keep the wind on his port beam, allowing him to enjoy an exhilarating close-reach at a good speed instead of beating hard and uncomfortably to maintain the direct track. If he passes close to Sifnos and then under Paros and Naxos he will also avoid the worst of the large seas which develop in the open area north of those islands. As he crosses the Aegean, the wind will normally back steadily from north-easterly through northerly, until he clears the island of Amorgos; and then the wind goes slowly into the north-west. This means that, by keeping the wind a little forward of the beam all the way, he can cross the Aegean at good speed in a relatively comfortable arc, gleefully trading about twenty nautical miles of extra distance for speed, comfort and fun. We called this southerly passage ‘The Gentleman’s Route’, and it has the added advantage that, if you wish to stop on the way, there is much greater choice... Serifos and Sifnos, Dhespotico, the Small Cyclades, Amorgos, Levitha, Kinaross, and Astipalea are all ideally on the route, whilst Milos, Folegandros, Sikinos, Ios and even Nisiros are just a little further south.

  With all the above in mind, and further impelled by the knowledge that Green Dragon was too buoyant to make easy progress on a hard beat, I shaped my course east-south-east for Sifnos, and settled down to enjoy the sixty-five mile sail. My progress was modest at the outset, but I was not worried... my local knowledge was developing fast, and I was also confident that the wind would increase by one or two points on the Beaufort scale when I passed my old friend Agios Yeorgios. To my intense satisfaction, it proved exactly so; and thus, about six in the evening, having enjoyed a leisurely sail all morning and a spanking, eight-knot close-reach most of the afternoon, I brought Green Dragon into the long inlet on Sifnos which leads to the main ferry port of Kamares.

  Rounding the light on Akra Kokkala, I was suddenly a busy man. There were the sails to douse, and as I removed canvas1 the skittish Green Dragon was too inconstant in her movements for her auto-pilot to handle. This meant that I had to go back to the cockpit periodically and steady her up again. Then I rigged fenders in case there was a chance to go alongside, and prepared some mooring-lines.

  All this I did between frequent pauses to admire the scenery, as the bay is a fabulous one indeed. Both sides are majestic, rocky slopes or crags, predominantly grey but shot with sandy-coloured outcrops and here and there threaded with gleaming green or coffee-toned swirls of minerals, rising almost five hundred metres on either hand. The highest peaks are tipped with chalky monasteries, the head of the bay is rimmed with the brilliantly white, cubic Cycladic houses, and the Cycladic sky overhead is usually a pristine, cloudless powder-blue. It is a spectacular arrival.

  Noticing during these scans of the scenery that a ferry was about to depart from the port I edged Green Dragon closer to the northern shore of the bay and got on with my preparations for mooring. I had just unlashed the anchor when I heard, very close by, a strident voice.

  Looking quickly ahead I saw nothing close, and a rapid scan of the shoreline revealed nothing... I was looking, of course, for one of the omnipresent fishing boats which are almost universally painted white. Not seeing anything I was turning to look offshore when the voice came again, this time sounding angry and now definitely inshore of me.

  Turning back to the rocks, I perceived at last a darker slab of stone low to the water, upon which were a number of gesturing figures. All seemed to be uniformly dressed, all very animated. My heart sank as I apprehended that these appeared to be officials in uniform, and they didn’t seem very happy with me. What on earth they were all doing standing on a flat rock in the middle of nowhere puzzled me extremely.

  I looked around for a church... Greeks seem to measure piety in terms of how inaccessible a place they can build a church, and the only explanation I could imagine for a horde of officials to be marooned on a desolate rock had to involve religion. I saw no sign of a church, however... and then I noticed, on top of the rock, a strangely smooth column. My mind, fed delusions of adequacy at an early age by an ‘O’-level2 in geology, had just formed the thought ‘that must be a weathered basaltic intrusion’ when a man emerged out of the top of it.

  ‘OK,’ I thought, ‘...so it is quite a talented weathered basaltic intrusion.’

  But, do you know, it wasn’t a weathered basaltic intrusion of any kind, talented, hollow, or custom-built. It was a submarine.

  Once I realised what I was looking at, it sort of ‘materialised’, appearing so clearly
that I could not understand how I had missed it in the first place. The hull and fin were a mottled mix of light and dark grey, which gave it an element of camouflage, but now the outline was quite clear against the lighter rock behind. Her bow was a smooth hump, her stern sloped down into the sea and her fin was a square block topped with several protrusions. I was within fifty metres of the beast, so close that I could now see the bubble and haze of her generator exhaust; and definitely so close that I could not plausibly ignore the gestures of her crew, who were clearly ordering me to come closer.

  Bugger, I thought.

  I had good reason to be concerned, because Greeks are pretty paranoid when it comes to their armed forces. Any military or naval installation has large signs warning against photography, and these rules are enforced with scant respect for habeas corpus. Even at the naval school in Poros, which consisted of no more than classrooms, old buildings and a mothballed World War Two destroyer, the click of a camera-shutter would bring the normally lethargic sentries out onto the street with fixed bayonet, truncheon and the snarling ferocity of dogs after a postman. A foreigner getting within a hundred metres of what was obviously an active, operational, modern submarine was likely to be particularly vexatious to the uniformed mind.

  Throttling back and taking my time to turn towards the submarine, my mind raced. What would they do to me? No doubt there would be some minimum distance within which I should not approach, of which I was utterly unaware. I faced, at the very least, the confiscation of the film on my camera... and now the thought occurred that this posed another problem, since I didn’t have a camera. I was officially on holiday, and who goes on holiday without taking a few snap-shots? My fertile imagination conjured up images of grim-faced MPs ripping Green Dragon to pieces to find a hidden camera, or alleging that I had thrown it overboard to conceal my guilt. I could imagine courts charging me with entry into prohibited areas, failure to keep a safe lookout, illegal fishing and anything else that came to the official mind short of poisoning the hamster in the national zoological gardens. Yes, I know, I am paranoid... but I don’t think I am sufficiently paranoid.

  As I approached the submarine, my mind waxed increasingly pessimistic. In Greek law, all offences are liable to jail terms. Sentences of less than two years can usually be ‘bought off’, effectively being commuted to a fine. Now, I am not a habitual offender, and anyway the Greek police tended to be as tolerant and relaxed as the nation generally; it was hard to get them sufficiently annoyed to fill in papers unless one made an effort. It required violence, or public disrespect for the nation, authorities or the church, to move Plodopoulos to action. Although I was learning actively every day about all aspects of life in Greece, I had somehow omitted to research how to irritate The Fuzz, and the consequence of this omission was that I had not the slightest idea how heavy a fine might be; but my lifestyle was somewhat hand-to-mouth and I very much doubted whether I had enough money in the country to pay the standard bung for high-level espionage. Sending money from England took over two weeks, and even if they allowed the condemned man a phone-call home I didn’t much fancy spending that time in a Greek slammer.

  With all this negative energy bouncing about between my ears, I pulled Green Dragon up close to the starboard side of the submarine. I could now see that she had an anchor out forward, and her stern was secured with two long lines to the rocks astern of her. Two men, who had obviously just secured them, were swimming powerfully back. I did my best to look as disinterested in the vessel as possible, in particular averting my gaze from any antennae or anything else that might appear sensitive. A man in officer’s epaulettes was shouting at me in Greek, and I understood him to be calling me alongside.

  I have a penis, which means that I like techy stuff; and submarines are about as techy as it gets. I had also, in my tanker officer persona, refuelled a few submarines in my time. This meant that I knew a little about them... not enough to steal one, or even make an informed choice about buying one, but certainly enough to know that they don’t have a ‘conning tower’, they have a ‘fin’. I also knew that this one was a conventional diesel/electric type, and by the looks of it probably built in Germany or Sweden. And I was aware that it wouldn’t be the best idea in the world to try to put a yacht alongside one, because of the ballast tanks.

  The bit of a submarine one sees is mainly the casing, which is quite narrow; but their external ballast tanks extend out sideways from this some way under the water. Putting a sailing boat alongside would probably result in the keel and ballast tank making contact below the waterline. That doesn’t do the yacht much good, and it certainly won’t raise the value of the submarine either... modern subs are often covered with rubber ‘anechoic’ tiles which absorb sound and sonar signals, and a yacht keel would probably chisel them off like a paint-scraper. Not wishing to add sabotage of a front-line naval asset to the list of crimes I was about to be accused of, I didn’t want to go alongside. But I also didn’t want anyone to know that I knew about anechoic tiles, or, indeed, anything at all about submarines; so I played a bit dumb. The officer evidently bought it, as he suddenly switched language.

  “Do you speak English?” he called.

  Not much point in denying that... they’d probably have my passport within the next five minutes. So I confessed myself a son of Albion, and waited, resolutely straight and stoical, for them to throw the book, or possibly the whole library, at me.

  The officer signalled me to wait and turned to speak up to another imposing-looking chap on the top of the fin. I could not hear the brief conversation, but I gathered from the body language that an agreement had been reached before my tormentor turned back to me.

  “Are you aware,” he said sternly, adopting a pugnacious stance by putting his fists on his hips and lowering his chin so that his glare ricocheted off the underside of his eyebrows, “...That there is an exclusion zone around warships, which you have entered without permission?”

  “Is there?” I asked, attempting to sound astounded by this news. “No, I didn’t... but in any case, I didn’t see you” Then I improvised desperately. “Excellent camouflage, I must say...”

  The officer was visibly, massively, extravagantly unimpressed.

  “You will have to come alongside. I must put two men on board you.”

  Oh, bloody hell. The officer’s English was dreadfully fluent, there was no plausible way of creatively misunderstanding this. Glumly throwing out a couple of fenders I started to move Green Dragon towards the bow of the submarine, where the ballast tanks hopefully weren’t as wide. As I did so, I contemplated making a run for it. After all, I couldn’t see a gun, and I reckoned you’d have to be pretty good to hit a yacht with a torpedo. Unless they happened to have Sean Connery or Jürgen Prochnow on board, I should be away and gone. But, sadly, there was a port police station in Kamares, and most of them have radios and fast inflatable boats; and even if they didn’t take direct action, Green Dragon had a registration number clearly marked on her stern... it would be like beating someone to death with your social security file, and then leaving the murder weapon at the scene of the crime. I reluctantly discarded the Hornblower option.

  “I’ll try to come alongside your bow” I told him, and a couple of capable looking sailors trotted purposefully forward. This turned out to be a good thing, because, at this point, a small spilliade ruffled the water and, before I could do anything to prevent it, Green Dragon’s stern swung in and gave the sub’s bow a shrewd thump which would have been a lot shrewder had the brawny arms not been ready to catch her. A petty officer and a rating, looking horribly official in what the Royal Navy would call ‘number eight uniform’ complete with caps, leapt nimbly aboard.

  “You must proceed to the harbour, and take these men with you.” announced the officer.

  Morosely, I tried to manoeuvre away, but the spilliades were feeling playful. I tried every trick I knew for what seemed like an hour, and was in fact a rather embarrassing couple of minutes, to get that yac
ht away from that sub, only to be defeated by little gusts of wind which patted me back against the mottled grey hull like a cat playing with a hapless mouse. Every time I landed alongside again was a separate collision, and although these were again mitigated by the hands of the crew on the deck, I had a mental image of each separate impact representing an individual act of sabotage in the eyes of the Greek Navy. I believe that there is an anti-submarine weapon called a hedgehog, but this may have been the first recorded instance of a woodpecker in the genre.

  Finally I managed to get clear, and we set off down the approach to Kamares, a spectacular entry which would normally have captivated me. Now, however, I had no eyes for it. I made a couple of nervous attempts to talk to the two sailors, but they appeared unable to see or hear me. They sat each side of the hatch, swapping cigarettes and low chatter with the most unnerving lack of concern for my presence or plight.

  I swung Green Dragon around the end of the main breakwater, hoping there would be no room to tie up. Port full. Sorry, chaps, did my best. Just hop off at the end of the pier and I’ll be on my way. Pip pip! Mind the dolphins down there! But of course, there was plenty of room. Almost the whole length of the inner side of the quay was empty, and plenty of places on the south side of the harbour were also available. Gloomily noticing that there was a telegraph pole next to a whitewashed wall at the root of the breakwater which could almost have been made for a firing-squad, I easily secured Green Dragon alongside.

  My two guards watched this performance with mild interest, and the sailor went so far as to pass me a rope when I asked. Then they climbed onto the dock.

  “Thank you very much” said the petty officer, politely. He offered me a cigarette.

  “The last cigarette?” I asked him, bitterly, in Greek. He looked puzzled, and flipped open the pack to show the contents.