I immediately flung the helm over and headed down towards the island. There was no time to be lost, as the boat seemed to be already perilously close to the rocks. I could only assume that the engine had failed... not even a fisherman, a breed of men who are definitive risk-takers, would conceivably be in that position by choice... and if the boat touched those rocks in such waves she would go to pieces in moments. In that sea there could be no chance for anyone aboard. I needed to get that fellow off, and quickly.
As I roared in, with the waves scooting me forward, I got a long rope out of the locker and attached it firmly to the lifebuoy. I didn’t think there was any chance of getting the fisherman on board directly in such a chaotic sea, so my plan was to stop head-to-weather just by him and recover him over the stern using the lifebuoy and rope. I longed to call for help, but the VHF radio was in the chart-space, and I couldn’t leave the tiller. Anyway, the fishing boat would be on the rocks long before I could even explain the situation, never mind receive any assistance.
The motion became increasingly wild as I neared the rocks, and now the man on the fishing boat could be clearly seen when she rose at the same time as Lochinvar. I recognised him, had seen him on the dock... he was an enormous, dark-skinned, bare-footed, gypsy-ish character, balding with an extravagant comb-over, whose belly spilled with contemptuous ease out of whatever garment he employed to contain it. I assumed he lived on the boat, as he certainly slept on it most nights, and I didn’t know his name but had privately dubbed him The Wild Man of the Sea. Now he clung to the net-winder with one hand and the cabin with the other, looking rapidly from me to the rocks and back.
I swung Lochinvar around, rolling what felt like about forty degrees in the process, and began to edge towards the capering fishing boat. It looked, I noted with alarm, rather sluggish and I had an idea it was already taking in water. I lobbed the lifebuoy right next to the gunwale, and shouted to the fisherman to jump for it. Waves coming in slapped into waves rebounding from the rocks, the spray and dollops of green water flew, and the malevolent deep crunch and rush of waves on the nearby island eclipsed the engine-noise. I had to keep looking at my rev-counter to reassure myself that the engine was still running, and that, consequently, I wasn’t about to die.
I expected the Wild Man to jump for the lifebuoy, but he fished it out with a hook.
‘Fair enough,’ I thought, ‘he probably can’t swim... it is surprising how many traditional seamen can’t. He’ll put it on and then jump.’
But then I saw him untying the lifebuoy from the rope.
I was, I confess, just a trifle irritated by this. It was irrational of me, I admit, especially in light of my constant failure to attract a mate, but I had a touching fondness for life; and I was aware at that mine was currently entirely dependent on the game little engine, so puny that I could not even hear it over the greedy gobbling of the ravening waves, pounding its little alloy heart out down in Lochinvar’s bilges. One hiccup, one bubble in the fuel system, and I would, very briefly, be garnish on the serrated, stony flanks of Bourtzi. I roared at the bloody idiot, telling him to jump, but he blithely ignored me. And then, with a stone in my heart and liquid soap in my intestines, I realised what he was doing.
He was tying the bloody rope to his boat!
Aghast, I howled my disagreement at him. I could see no way under the firmament that Lochinvar could tow that hefty, dead-weight and probably waterlogged boat out of that watery bedlam. But he evidently disagreed. Indeed, he appeared to repose such utopian faith in his salvation that he calmly sat down on the drive-mechanism for the net-winder and gave every indication of taking a well-earned rest.
What was I going to do? Cast him adrift to die? Cursing and blaspheming, I secured my end of the line and started to manoeuvre to take up the strain on the tow.
The trickiest part of towing is taking up the strain on the tow-line. The towed vessel is, initially, stationary and it is easy to put the strain on the line too fast and break it. The best way to get the tow moving is to move to the side, as she will turn more readily than she will move bodily through the water and so there is less resistance to getting her moving. Then, as she begins to turn, it takes less energy to convert a turn into forward motion than it does simply to start pulling a dead-weight. One can come in line and start to pull her with much less chance of breaking the towing gear.
This I began to do now, and it took me some hour-long minutes to crab across and take the strain. These minutes, tense in any case, were made no easier by the roaring and gesticulating of the Wild Man who was defeating even the thunder of inexorable nature in exercising his inalienable Hellenic right to tell me I was doing it all wrong. By the time I had the engine up to full revolutions and pulling directly offshore, I was angry enough... terrified enough, come to that... to have shut him up with an iron bar if I could have reached.
To judge by his language, the Wild Man found my failure to follow his instructions as infuriating as I found his interference; but even if he had known what he was talking about, and even if I could have understood it, I was towing from the stern... this is very difficult, as the towing vessel has great difficulty turning, and the stern is perpetually dragged in the direction of the tow. The tow-line really needs to be connected in the middle of the towing boat. I partly compensated for this by shifting the weight of the tow from one quarter to the other, as required, using a line from the cockpit winches.
After much adjustment, all conducted to the constant litany of contradictory advice and instructions, I ended up heading diagonally away from the island, with the tow secured to the port quarter of Lochinvar, and tried to edge my ménage slowly to the westward and the shelter of the Poros entrance without losing ground back towards the seething cauldron of malevolent energy which raged at the island’s flanks.
The fishing boat had come partly in line and appeared to have stopped her drift towards the rocks, but I could do no more than that. Lochinvar’s engine was about thirty horse-power, if I remember correctly, and completely inadequate for this task. Thinking back, I suspect that it was as much the back-wash of the waves as Lochinvar’s engine that kept the fishing boat off those fatal rocks; and yet, oh so slowly, I began to drag my salvage, inch by excruciating inch, sideways across the rock-face of the island. Every time I looked back I took a marker on the island... a bush, a fold in the rock... and watched the plunging bulk of the fishing boat creep past it. I rode the throttle, trying to damp out the snatches on the tow-line, but on occasion got it wrong. Then the line would snap taut with a ‘twang’ and hum like a harp string; the snatch pulled Lochinvar’s stern round, and my heart stopped for a few minutes as I waited for the line to part. Then, when it didn’t, I had to wrestle us back on course.
We were not moving away from the rocks; on the contrary, in fact, I think we were slowly losing ground towards them. But infinitesimally we were moving sideways, and after what seemed like a decade, I could make out that the stern of the fishing boat had just, marginally, somehow, cleared the end of the island.
Between the island and the channel into Poros there is another outcrop of rock. Being reasonably confident that I could clear this, especially as the seas had subsided somewhat as we got closer in, I managed to turn more towards shelter and then I even rolled out some genoa. Supplemented by the sail, the engine was now moving the heavy fishing boat a little better, and I was heading for the entrance to the port.
And then The Wild Man of the Sea let the bloody rope go!
I stopped my prop, rolled up my genoa, and heaved in the slack line. The Wild Man ignored me completely, and was trying to rig a large, unwieldy pair of oars... a hopeless task, even in the lesser seas at the entrance to the channel. The boat drifted quickly towards the rocks to leeward, where the man himself now might survive but the seas were still capable of destroying the boat. I approached the loony again, and offered him the rope.
He declined.
“Go get my friend!” he roared in Greek. He used áde, w
hich is an impolite imperative for ‘go’, and did not volunteer who his friend was, or where he might be found.
I managed to construct a few terse sentences in Greek which, if they were correct, should have informed him that if he didn’t take the line, he would lose his boat. He played the stoic for a while, until his boat shook with an impact on something below the water; and then, with ill-grace and bad temper, he re-secured the line and I pulled him again offshore.
As soon as I got him inside the blessed calm of the channel, he cast off again and tried to row. Even now he could not make way, but he was safe now... he drifted gently aground on the mud on the Galatas side of the channel, and at that point turned his back emphatically towards me and settled down to watch the mainland. I left him to it. With my keel I couldn’t get near him there anyway, even if he had wanted my help... and he certainly didn’t.
I knew what it had all been about, of course. The fellow was worried that I would claim salvage on his boat.
Greeks have their own ideas about salvage. The basic principle internationally is that a successful salvor, one who has prevented the loss of a vessel and re-delivered it to the owner in a safe place and condition, can claim up to half of the value of the vessel and cargo salvaged. It is a generous award, which is intended to encourage people to do their utmost to save property, and the most commonly used agreement is ‘Lloyds Open Form’. The Greeks, masters of one of the world’s pre-eminent shipping industries and as sharp the scythe of Death in enforcing their rights under maritime law internationally, know this as well as anyone in the world; and yet, they are peculiarly blind to salvage laws when they happen within their own jurisdiction. Within Greece, the universal belief is simply, ‘I saved it, it’s mine!’
There are a lot of things about salvage which everybody in Greece ‘knows’. Most of them have no basis that I am aware in anyone’s maritime law, but that doesn’t matter, because Everybody Knows. There are various theories about towing other boats, such as whose rope is used, or what agreements are made, or where the salvage takes place, which never appeared in any of my shipmasters law courses but which are all solidly established as case-law in the high court of the kafeneion, and they make the complexities of European Legislation look like the Ten Commandments by comparison; but what I can tell you, without any fear of inaccuracy, is that if you get towed by a Greek in Greece you are almost certain to have your boat impounded and the lawyers will be booking their kids into Eton.
This, then, was the reason for the Wild Man’s apparent ingratitude; and, since the boat was almost certainly all he possessed, I considered his position perfectly understandable... well, I did once I had downed a couple of cold beers and wrestled my heart-rate back into double figures.
I totally ignored the whole matter and didn’t mention it to anyone; not out of modesty... this was Poros, and a main road overlooks Bourtzi Island; I did not for one second believe that the drama on the rocks had gone un-noticed, or un-remarked... but simply because I thought that it best became me as a Brit and a professional seaman to say nothing. So I ignored it.
Later in the day I saw the Wild Man being towed off the mud and back to the quay by a water-taxi. Over the next few days, in the mornings, he took up the heavy oars and rowed up the sheltered bay to fish, and in the afternoons he sat morosely contemplating a mediocre catch of tiny fish and his silent engine. He religiously failed to make eye contact when I passed by, I made no initiatives myself, and there the matter rested for a few days, and it was about midday perhaps three days later when the Wild Man cracked.
I was pottering on the dock where, having stopped to chat with some charterers I had met on my peregrinations, our discussions carried us into The Snail’s souvlaki joint for one of those impromptu Poros paralia lunches. The Snail was a wonderful Poros waterfront character, a bear-like maniac with a permanent grin and a truly magical gift for roasting meat. Humorously passionate about absolutely everything he loved, which principally included his family, his nation, his church, his island, fresh local ingredients in his cooking, Olympiakos and Liverpool football clubs, his friends and good whisky, he was largely dismissive of everything else. He ran his souvlatsidiko with a ribald eccentricity which Basil Fawlty would have considered bizarre, exuding bonhomie with Stentorian force.
Retaining his nickname from his schooldays, from whence he also retained his charming wife, The Snail was avuncular to tourists, boisterously offensive to those he loved and darkly menacing to those he did not. When Olympiakos or the Greek national team won, he was not above launching whole stacks of plates over the pavement. His grilled meat was tasty and juicy, and his oven-roasts were so tender that they abandoned the bone at the mere sight of the fork. I gradually found myself spending more time in The Snailery than I did at my own room. As I was simultaneously holding forth to my chartering acquaintances and addressing one of The Snail’s legendary pork chops, there hove into view a desperate crew consisting of The Wild One himself, Big Savvas and a water-taxi driver called Fotis. It was plainly an assembly constituted to air grievances.
The Wild Man, of course, was the injured party. Fotis, I remembered, had spent time in Australia, so he presumably appeared as interpreter. Glancing nervously at Big Savvas’s shovel-sized hands and towering physique, I didn’t even want to think about what his function was! All three had evidently taken nourishment before visiting, for they were somewhat unsteady, universally unkempt and decidedly belligerent. Glancing around, I was dismayed to find that The Snail had disappeared on an errand... probably to have a quick, refreshing glass with the butcher, as was his wont. Pity. I could have done with the support of a fraternally-biased grizzly.
To the discomfort of the people I was sitting with, the Wild Man began to state the case for the plaintiff most forcefully.
“Go on!” He roared. “Take it! Take my boat! Take the food from the mouths of my children! Take the legacy of my father! Take it! Go to the port police and just take it! Why do you torture me? You are an animal, a monster! Why do you do this to me?”
To gain a moment or two to think, I affected to have no idea what he was talking about. I surmised that word had gone around that he had been saved by the English sailor and that, fearing that he would have no defence if I made a salvage claim, he had got stoked up and the angst had overflowed. By his understanding of the law, the boat simply became mine, or he had to pay me the full value.
I was not, of course, in the slightest bit interested in his boat. The thought of salvage had never crossed my mind until I realised why he had been behaving the way he had; but, even if I had been mean enough to try to take his boat, or mad enough to risk alienating the whole waterfront community, I reckoned it wasn’t worth much more than the equivalent weight of firewood anyway. I had helped the guy out, that was enough for me, but if I was to gain anything out of the affair at all, I was perfectly content that it should be the good opinion of the seafaring community. Well, that, and, of course, my skin intact! And since passions were clearly running very high, I obviously had to handle this carefully.
Greek hospitality to the stranger is legendary, but even legends have their limits. The nation, despite the enormous historical and existential presence it has in the world, is still less than two hundred years old, and one hundred and fifty of those years have been spent in struggle. From the achievement of independence in 1831 to the assimilation of the eastern islands from Italy in 1945, Greece has gradually expanded to assimilate those regions where the dominant... almost the only... culture is Greek. War after war, diplomacy and treaties have gradually brought the Ionian Islands, Epirus, Thrace and Salonika, Crete and finally the Dodecanese within her current boundaries. The struggle with Turkey resulted in a population exchange in the 1920s, Muslims being deported east and Greeks expelled from Asia Minor in reply. This is deeply preserved in the national consciousness, and in the Asian influences in the anarchic, melancholy music of Rebetiko.
Even since the settlement of the current borders, Greece has
known unusual political upheaval as monarchists, Venizelist republicans, democrats, communists and military dictators succeeded each other. In the 1950s the country suffered a hideous civil war, and the last military government was only overthrown as recently as 1974. The legacy of these struggles and experiences has left Greeks a little insecure, with a keen sense of injustice and an inbred propensity for revolution, and the foreigner makes light of these at his peril. The same qualities which make Greeks spontaneously joyful and generous can just as quickly make them powerfully resentful if the stimulus is there.
Another thing I had learned in my time in the country was the importance of personal respect. People, especially men, have their pride and this is a no-go area. Northern Europeans often don’t understand this well... British people in particular, perhaps because our culture tends to self-deprecation, are apt to underestimate the value of persona... but if you are going to live amongst Greeks then ignoring people’s dignity is not a good way to find positive experiences.
In Greece there is a concept called philotimo, which translates directly as ‘love of honour’, but is in fact very difficult to characterize. It is an indistinct quality, and one can have serious arguments attempting to define it, but it seems to me to be a code of conduct, a way of life. It may be expressed in treatment of others, response under adversity, generosity, manners, deportment, and many other ways. The term may also be used to refer to a person’s pride, in so far as it refers to their relations with others, and, by extension, to the wounding of that pride. Hurting someone’s philotimo has the potential to attract a robust response!
My normal means of deflecting anger is with humour, but any attempt at wit, at this moment, would have been an astoundingly bad idea... these chaps were stoked on booze, inflamed by every injustice since the fall of Constantinople, and sensitive that, by their own beliefs and customs, they were in the wrong. If I misjudged this now, I’d be eating my lunch from a hose-pipe up my bum.
The Trojan Walrus Page 19