The Culture of Ships and Maritime Narratives 2018045123, 9781138055841, 9781315165684

Citation preview

The Culture of Ships and Maritime Narratives

The ship transcends the descriptive categories of place, vehicle and artefact; it is a cosmos, which requires its own cosmology. This is the subject matter of this volume, which falls within the broader, flourishing sub-field of maritime anthropology. Specifically, the volume first investigates the dialectic between the sea, the ship and the ship-dweller and shows how traits are exchanged between the three. It then focuses on land-dwellers, their understanding of seaborne existence and their invaluable contribution to the culture of ships. It shows that the romanticised views of life at sea that land-dwellers hold constitute an important aspect of the cosmology of ships and they too need to be considered if the polyvalence of ships is to be fully understood. In order for this cosmology to be written, some of the volume’s contributors have travelled on ships and interviewed mariners, fishermen, boatbuilders and boat-dwellers; others have traced the courses of ships in poems, films, philosophical texts, and collective myths of genealogy and heritage. Overall the volume shows where ships can go, and how they are perceived and ­experienced by those living and travelling in them, watching and waiting for them, dreaming and writing about them, and, finally, what literal and ­metaphorical crews man them. Chryssanthi Papadopoulou is a maritime archaeologist, a classicist and the assistant director of the British School at Athens. She has published on the perception of shipwrecks by maritime archaeologists, underwater sites of various periods, Greek religion, and the archaeology of classical Athens, and has been excavating shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean since 2005. Her research draws on various disciplines including land and maritime archaeology, philosophy, anthropology and analytical psychology.

British School at Athens – Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies Volume 7

Series editor: Professor John Bennet Director, British School at Athens, Greece

The study of modern Greek and Byzantine history, language and culture has formed an integral part of the work of the British School at Athens since its foundation. This series continues that pioneering tradition. It aims to explore a wide range of topics within a rich field of enquiry which continues to attract readers, writers, and researchers, whether their interest is primarily in contemporary Europe or in one or other of the many dimensions of the long Greek post-classical past.

THE CULTURE OF SHIPS AND MARITIME NARRATIVES

EDITED BY Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Chryssanthi Papadopoulou; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Chryssanthi Papadopoulou to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Papadopoulou, Chryssanthi, author. Title: The culture of ships and maritime narratives / Chryssanthi Papadopoulou. Description: London ; New York, NY : Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2019. | Series: British school at Athens – modern Greek and Byzantine studies ; volume 10 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018045123 | ISBN 9781138055841 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315165684 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Seafaring life. | Shipping—Social aspects. Classification: LCC G540 .P28 2019 | DDC 306.4/6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045123 ISBN: 978-1-138-05584-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-16568-4 (ebk) Typeset in Palatino Linotype by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To my father, Kyriakos, the chief engineer

Contents List of figuresix Preface and acknowledgements xi List of contributors xiii

Ship cosmology: an introduction Chryssanthi Papadopoulou PA R T I

1

S E A FA R I N G S H I P S 

1

The boatbuilder, boatbuilding, and the creation of socialities Elena Maragoudaki

19

2

Seafaring in the Mediterranean: intercultural interaction and loneliness on board Giorgos Tsimouris

41

3

A woman on a fishing boat: an ethnographic account of wilderness, familiarity and gender relations Brigida Marovelli

63

4

Dwelling, Pollution and the rhetorical creation of “nature” on inland waterways Benjamin O.L. Bowles

77

PA R T I I

S H O R E FA R I N G S H I P S 

5

Ships in the sky: maritime mythistories in the Pindos Mountains Daniel M. Knight

6

The ship as the symbol of emigration in Greek cinema Eleni N. Mitakou

95 111

Contents

viii

7

What we think about when we think about ships: a journey through philosophical metaphors Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

8

Shipwreck is Everywhere A.E. Stallings

153

9

Afterthoughts John Bennet

183

129

Index193

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2

Nikos Daroukakis building Iliopotissa The Iliopotissa Nikos building Athena Skeleton-first technique applied by Nikos to a newly built vessel Nikos’s adzes and workshop Athena and her Chinese sail rig Bowsprits supporting the ground-floor balcony A view from the bridge A party in the kitchen of the tanker Working on deck The anchovies massacre The landscape: Mount Etna and Catania seen from the boat

20 21 22 25 27 30 33 45 50 53 67 69

Preface and acknowledgements

This collective volume emerged after numerous conversations on the nature and powers of ships. The discussion commenced in Edinburgh in 2014 at the Association of Social Anthropologists conference (ASA14), where a panel entitled Humanity at Sea: Hybridity and Seafaring was organised by the editor of this volume and Dr Nicolas Argenti. Bowles, Marovelli, Mitakou and Papadopoulou continued this conversation in the years after 2014 and were subsequently joined by the other contributors to this volume: Maragoudaki, Tsimouris, Knight and Stallings. Sincere thanks to all the anthropologists who took part in the panel in Edinburgh and share our fascination with ships and life at sea. I would like to thank the British School at Athens, its Committee for Society, Arts and Letters, and its director and series editor, Professor John Bennet, for their support and assistance in the publication of this volume. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful input and suggestions; any errors that remain are the editor’s responsibility. Last but not least, I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to all contributors in the volume for many productive discussions and wonderful cooperation in bringing this project to completion.

Contributors

John Bennet is director of the British School at Athens and professor of Aegean archaeology at the University of Sheffield. His research interests lie in early writing and administrative systems (especially Linear B), and the integration of material and textual data to understand past complex societies. He has employed this approach to the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures of the Bronze Age Aegean, as well as in the context of diachronic regional studies to the Venetian and Ottoman periods of Greece. His recent books include: The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Perspectives on Literacy and Communication (Equinox, 2008), co-edited with John Baines and Stephen Houston; Α{theta} ΥΡΜΑΤΑ: Critical Essays on the Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honour of E. Susan Sherratt (Archaeopress, 2014), co-edited with Yannis Galanakis and Toby Wilkinson; and The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project: A Retrospective (ASCSA, 2017), co-edited with Jack L. Davis. Benjamin O.L. Bowles completed his undergraduate degree in anthropology at Durham University in 2011. The work presented here dates from his doctoral fieldwork, completed at Brunel University, London, between 2012 and 2015. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science on the CRUISSE network funded project “Towards Flexible and Reflexive Standards: Uncertainty on Decision Making on Resilience Infrastructure.” He is also a senior teaching fellow at SOAS. His research interests include the governance of water infrastructures, UK governmental funding and financing decision making processes, and the materiality of water. Daniel M. Knight is lecturer in social anthropology and Leverhulme fellow at the University of St Andrews. He has published on crisis and austerity, time and temporality, historicity, neo-liberalism, neocolonialism and renewable energy. He is author of History, Time, and Economic Crisis in Central Greece (2015), co-editor (with Charles Stewart) of Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe (2016), and co-editor of the History and Anthropology journal. Elena Maragoudaki holds degrees in archaeology and history of art, and prehistoric archaeology, while her PhD thesis was on experimental archaeology. She has worked since 1999 in several Greek departments of antiquities as both a field archaeologist and a supervisor in the restoration of monuments. Her research interests include ancient technology, prehistoric navigation and experimental archaeology, and she has published on tools for wooden shipbuilding.

xiv

Contributors

Brigida Marovelli is a postdoctoral research fellow at the European Research Council-funded SHARECITY project at Trinity College Dublin. She was awarded her PhD in social anthropology from Brunel University, London, UK, and her thesis explored the dynamic relationship between place, history and landscape in an urban food market in Catania, Sicily. Her work engaged in a complex discussion about the market as social system, in which the cultural and the economic are intertwined. Her research interests include food studies, environmental anthropology, urban studies, cultural and gender studies, and the anthropology of Europe. Eleni N. Mitakou is a PhD candidate in urban and regional planning at the National Technical University of Athens. Her research treats filmic analysis as a method of identifying and studying spatial and social changes. She has published on Greek cinema and urban space, and has been awarded prizes in international and European architecture competitions. Her projects have been displayed at several architecture exhibitions. Chryssanthi Papadopoulou is a maritime archaeologist, a classicist and the assistant director of the British School at Athens. She has published on the perception of shipwrecks by maritime archaeologists, Greek religion and the archaeology of classical Athens, and has been excavating shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean since 2005. Her research draws on various disciplines: namely (land and maritime) archaeology, philosophy, anthropology and analytical psychology. A.E. Stallings is an American poet, critic and translator who has lived in Athens since 1999. She has degrees in Classics from the University of Georgia and Oxford University. She has translated Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura for Penguin Classics, and has published three volumes of poetry, most recently Olives. Her new verse translation of Hesiod, Works and Days, recently appeared in Penguin Classics, and she has a new volume of poetry, Like, forthcoming. In 2011 she was made a fellow of the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Giorgos Tsimouris is an associate professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University, Athens, the vice-president for academic and international affairs at the Hellenic Open University, and was visiting fellow at the University of Durham, Department of Social Anthropology. His research focuses on forced migration, intercultural education, maritime anthropology, oral history and the anthropology of Greece and the Mediterranean.

Ship cosmology: an introduction Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

Introduction Once upon a time there was a golden age. Where and when, I do not know. After it, they say, came the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Myths or history, always metal. Metal or stone: polished, shaped, neolithic or palaeolithic. We can only write of solids. Why? Because of their order and their relations. Coherence, rigour and rigidity. . . . The discourse is no different than the hard matter upon which it is written. . . . Invent liquid history and the ages of water (Serres 2000, 191).

Constantinos Volanakis (1837–1907) is arguably the most famous Greek seascape painter. He was a Greek islander from Syros who moved to Trieste to work as an accountant. Nevertheless, having been brought up on an island with a long maritime tradition, the sea occupied too large a place in his thoughts and imagination. He therefore kept sketching seascapes and occasionally boats on pieces of paper, which he hid in his accounting books. When his boss discovered these, he recognised Volanakis’s talent and urged the young man to study painting. In 1867 the emerging artist participated in a competition organised by the Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph II, on the best depiction of the sea battle of Lissa. Volanakis, who loved drawing boats and the sea, won first prize and the emperor granted him a place on an Austrian ship sailing the Adriatic Sea (Volanakis 2009, 20–21). On board, the artist acquired experiential knowledge of sailing, sails and rigging, and the sensitivity always to draw these with unprecedented accuracy (Paloubis 2009). In Volanakis’s paintings ‘ever interacting sea and vessel influence one another and, depending on the subject, take the lead in the marine stage’, as Manolis Vlachos (2009, 51) has lyrically pointed out. The artist having himself spent time aboard knew that the sea and ships are in a dialectic relationship, constantly passing the verbal baton back and forth. The sea determines the movement and fate of the boat, and the boat renders the sea a lived and thus familiar place. Volanakis’s syntheses thus communicate the basic principles of maritime-ness: interaction, interdependence and ceaseless negotiation. Nowadays, Volanakis’s paintings sell in London auctions for extraordinarily high prices. Greek ship-owners, who pay these amounts

2

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

for owning a ship by Volanakis, view his work as a piece of Greece’s maritime heritage, which they can hang in the very offices that ensure the continuation of this heritage. The aim of this edited volume is to discuss the types of ships mentioned and implied in the previous paragraphs: those sailing ships which are built on Greek islands and safeguard the continuation of the long, Mediterranean wooden boatbuilding tradition, those that transported immigrant (Greeks) abroad, those that reside in the psyche of among others islanders, mariners and fishermen and creep up in (accounting) books, poems etc., those that conduct international trade and fetch the resources that sustain families and/or sophisticated tastes in fine art, those that rest still on canvases or in memory yet travel further than cargo ships can reach, and finally those ships that carry metaphysical cargoes, like a piece of home, life aspirations, dreams of a new beginning, and, naturally, hold the ability to wreck at any point. Each of these ships has a different story to tell. All together, they show how complex and extensive the culture of ships is. The ship transcends the descriptive categories of place, vehicle and artefact; it is a cosmos, which requires its own cosmology. In order for the latter to be written, some of the volume’s contributors travelled onboard ships and/or interviewed mariners, fishermen, boatbuilders and boat-dwellers, and others traced the courses of ships in poems, films, philosophical texts, and collective myths of genealogy and heritage. Ships, in my opinion, can easily be misunderstood. More often than not they are studied and presented in the manner one would describe a solid, with ‘coherence, rigour and rigidity’ (Serres 2000, 191). They nevertheless float in water. Their hulls, rhythms and courses are fluid, lax, permeable, unpredictable. Like water, which can run through cracks, disappear into a wall and reappear where least expected, ships have abilities and a flexibility that cannot be pinpointed. One moment they sail in a remote corner of the sea and are out of sight and mind, and the other they float in and thoroughly occupy a retired mariner’s thoughts and a mountain dweller’s personal ‘mythistory’ (Knight, this volume). As such, ships are invisible and omnipresent at the same time. It is like the hull’s hogging and sagging in stormy weather; when the wave is high enough the ship disappears with the hogging as if lost at sea and then suddenly reappears with the sagging like a ghost. Few places hold such power and this volume proposes that, instead of overlooking this power, because it is too complex to comply with the modern factual, solid way of (academic) thinking, we could perhaps consider exploring it. It is, after all, real and fascinating. Thus this book considers the ‘liquid’ culture of ships, which does not solidify in any single place; it goes from the boatbuilders’ tools into different types of ships and boats, through mariner’s narratives, in and out of land-dwellers’ mythistories, onto the movie screen, to the core of philosophy, as far as the genesis of literature, and back again (Serres 2000, 191).

Ship cosmology: an introduction

3

Structure and scope This volume has two parts. The first part discusses seafaring ships and their creators and inhabitants, and is written by anthropologists who travelled on board ships and boats (Tsimouris, Marovelli, Bowles), and an archaeologist (Maragoudaki) who conducted ethnographic research on boatbuilding. The second part is written by an anthropologist (Knight), an architect (Mitakou), a maritime archaeologist (Papadopoulou) and a poet (Stallings), and examines shorefaring ships and their trajectories and powers. The volume starts with the genesis of ships, i.e. ship construction, then looks at sea- and river-going ships, continues with charting the courses of ships on mountains, in films and philosophical texts, and ends with a discussion on the dying ship, i.e. the shipwreck, and its unique didactic powers. Overall the volume shows where ships can go, how they are perceived and experienced, and what literal and metaphorical crews man them. More than half of the contributors in the volume focus on Greece/the Mediterranean. Maragoudaki writes about the important, perishing tradition of traditional Greek wooden boatbuilding, and the impact of its diminishment on the boatbuilder and the broader community of Greek craftsmen. Tsimouris writes about life on a Greek tanker with Greek high-ranking officers. Knight shows how inextricably linked Greekness and maritime-ness are. Mitakou demonstrates how important ships have been historically for Greeks. Marovelli writes about the central role the sea plays in Sicilian fishermen’s lives and perceptions. Nevertheless, this volume is not restricted to the eastern Mediterranean seafaring tradition and the importance that boats, ships and the sea have (pre) historically held for specific nations. Bowles, who writes about London boaters, shows amply how boats and ships are experienced similarly by their dwellers regardless of the latter’s country of origin. Papadopoulou demonstrates how a French philosopher can speak (to) the mind of every mariner regardless of his origin and the type of ship he has served in. Finally, Stallings’s contribution lyrically illustrates that the culture of ships and shipwrecks has changed very little over both time and space. After all, it is in the nature of seafaring ships and boats habitually to cross national borders and time zones. Similarly, shorefaring ships are capable of conveying universal, pan-human messages. There is thus something global and diachronic about the culture of ships and the ways ships are perceived and experienced.1 Once we place the local in the broader context of the global this becomes clear and underscores the incomparable powers ships hold.

Key themes This volume revolves around two main, unifying themes. The first is the dialectic relationship between the sea, the ship and the ship-dweller, and the

4

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

central role the ship holds on the ‘marine stage’ (Vlachos 2009, 51). The second follows from the first and centres on the audience of the marine stage. The volume aims to show the different ways the sea, the ship and the ship-dweller affect each other, as well as the ways this dialectic relationship is perceived and/or imagined by those who are not directly involved in it, i.e. by nonmariners. What follows is not a summary of the chapters per se but a discussion based on the contributors’ treatment of the volume’s key themes. The chapters are not presented in the order they are placed in the book, but in the order that explicates these themes best to the reader. In order for one to grasp the complex attributes ascribed to ships, one needs to consider the ways water/the sea is perceived. Consequently, any study of ships needs to be a study of ships and the sea. Water’s: characteristics of transmutability and fluidity make it the perfect analogue for describing complex ideas about change, transformation, mood and movement. Because it can transform from one extreme [ice] to another [steam], it can readily convey all of the binary oppositions through which people construct meanings and values. Of all the elements in the environment, it is the most suited to convey meaning in every aspect of human life. (Strang 2004, 61)

No wonder that Serres (2000, 191) pleaded for us to ‘invent a liquid history’. Veronica Strang’s (2004, 2014) fascinating studies on the anthropology of water have shown how water serves as both the instigator of and the medium upon which to project complex ideas and habits. She also showed that, unless the characteristics and potency of water per se are acknowledged, these central ideas and habits pertaining to numerous sociocultural aspects of life can be neither comprehended nor presented. As Volanakis experientially learnt and conveyed in his work, sea (i.e. water) and ship are an inseparable duo that jointly occupies the ‘marine stage’ (Vlachos 2009, 51). The close relation of the two results in ships being viewed as the extension of water/the sea. Consequently, the attribute that water holds both to inspire and reflect complex ideas is necessarily passed on the ship. This is why ships are such powerful places which negotiate binaries like invisibility and omnipresence; because ships are of the sea and since the sea can negotiate binaries, so can the ship. This interconnectedness and sharing of attributes between the sea and the ship feature prominently in this volume. Knight here shows how the inhabitants of a Greek village, high in the Pindos Mountains, claim that ‘the sea goes much deeper into our history . . . our bodies’ and that they ‘can feel the sea in their blood’. Another informant of Knight’s claimed that ‘the sea . . . this entity, the liquid blue mass, was important to him, to this existence, his identity’. In order to substantiate these claims, the inhabitants of this village say that they have found in the mountains material evidence for the presence of ships. The

Ship cosmology: an introduction

5

sea and ships are thus perceived by them as more or less one and the same. Evidence of the presence of the latter guarantees that the former has permeated their history and blood. After all, the sea – as well as all sorts of maritime (pre) occupations – has a unique quality to permeate existence and everydayness as easily as it saturates the wooden planks of a hull. Papadopoulou explores the sharing of attributes between the sea and the ship further. She shows that ships have acquired the power to bring down dualities as a result of their ability to float in the literal and metaphorical world of water. Any vehicle that can traverse such a complex medium necessarily acquires metaphysical powers: to carry men to the afterlife, to alter the perception of those travelling in it, to become the substance of dreams and imaginings. Stallings notes in her contribution that ‘there is something mirror-like about the sea . . . it has the effect of doubling current experience as premonition or nostalgia’ and presents what happens when the sea and the ship merge fully. The storm causes shipwrecks and shipwrecks ‘turn out to be the embarkation point for many narratives, and maybe one of the starting points of literature itself. . . . Shipwreck for many writers . . . is a metaphor for our mortality.’ Nevertheless, this volume does not restrict the discussion to the dialectic between the sea and ships. The first part of the volume, and to a lesser extent the second, move further to investigate the relationship between the sea, the ship and the ship-dweller. They show that the traits that are passed from the sea to the ship are in turn passed on from the ship to its dweller. Once one goes onboard (s)he becomes of the ship and therefore also of the sea. The ways this happens are manifold. Both Bowles and Marovelli, who spent time onboard boats and interviewed boaters and fishermen, respectively, note how the sea via the ship affects the corporeality of everyone aboard. Bowles notes how the hulls of boats ‘do little to distance the boat-dwellers from the dynamic watercourses which surround them’ and shows how: the act of navigating a boat through water . . . involves feeling the flow of the water around the rudder . . . and adjusting the tiller with tiny movements accordingly. At the same time, the Boater’s attention is directed towards sensing the most minor of changes in the vibration coming through the deck boards . . . as well as minute changes in the tone and pitch of the engine noise . . . changes in the wave of the water breaking against the bow.

In order for one to navigate efficiently one needs to become one with the ship, the sea, the waves and the wind. Marovelli notes that ‘on board the crew is always alert, watching constantly the horizon, checking if the engine is making strange noises, consulting the navigational instruments and so on’. Maragoudaki, who interviewed a boatbuilder who is also a former liveaboard, writes that her informant told her ‘how living on board and travelling requires an aptitude for reading the elements. Accordingly, his body becomes attuned

6

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

to the waves’ so much so that ‘it takes [him] some time to readjust to the stillness on land’. Papadopoulou discusses mal de debarquement syndrome (MdDS), which is something that disembarking mariners often experience. It is a syndrome that prevents the mariner from corporeally adjusting to the stillness of the land. Those suffering from it continue to experience the rocking motion of the boat even when they are ashore, on firm, non-rocking ground. Their corporealities adjust to the movement of the sea and the swaying of the boat to such an extent that it takes them time to retune to the motionlessness of the land. The dialectic between sea, ship and ship-dweller, though, is not inscribed on the latter’s corporeality only; it also impinges on the ship-dweller’s perception. Marovelli notes how the fishermen, who spend half their life at sea, ‘see the sea in everything’. They fish in the familiar waters of the Gulf of Catania as well as in the open, wild sea. They thus perceive two types of seas: the wild and the domesticated one. They then proceed to project this differentiation to women and accordingly perceive that there are two types of women: the wild ones (mistresses) and the domesticated ones (wives). Bowles shows that the fact that boaters live on the waterways and the hulls of their boats do little to distance them from the elements have resulted in boaters perceiving themselves as distinctly different to land-dwellers. Their proximity to the water is experienced by them as a lifestyle which is natural, eco-friendly and thus the direct opposite of the lifestyle adopted by land-dwellers. Tsimouris, who travelled onboard a tanker and interviewed mariners, notes how the latter see themselves as dissimilar to people living ashore. Mariners claim to be more straightforward people than non-mariners to the extent that the former are seen by the latter as gullible children that are easy to exploit. Mariners think that the ship educates them in particular codes of conduct and moral behaviour, which are unknown to people on land. Life onboard/at sea thus appears to affect the boat-dweller both corporeally and perception-wise. The sea through the ship gets to the mariner. The latter perceives himself as a different creature to the land-dweller, because he spends his life negotiating with the waters. He therefore considers himself attuned to the natural environment, ecological and purer of heart. More importantly, he cannot perceive life as anything other than a constant negotiation with the waters; he holds no other key to deciphering life ashore. He consequently has to view women, for example, as different types of seas. Otherwise he can neither understand them nor interact/negotiate with them. As expected, however, he often finds that his decoding key is of little value on land, because land-dwellers are not trained in the ways of the sea. The ship-dweller thus feels misunderstood, tricked, neglected and alone. Having become of the sea and the ship, his life ashore is as paradoxical as a ship aground. Tsimouris writes how mariners often complain about getting financially exploited when ashore and how they get deeply offended by the stereotypical ways they are perceived by land-dwellers. Marovelli notes

Ship cosmology: an introduction

7

how the fishermen are tired of being viewed as uneducated and desperate people. Bowles describes how boaters feel wronged and misunderstood by land-dwellers. Maragoudaki comments that the traditional boatbuilder she interviewed does not see the point in building a boat for anyone other than ‘inspiring worshipers of wooden boats’. Unless his customers fall in this category then they will not be able to make sense of the boat, appreciate it and treat it properly. So far it has been shown how the sea passes on certain traits to the ship, which in turn passes these on to the mariner. The relationship between the sea, the ship and the ship-dweller, however, is not unidirectional. In the same manner that the ship and the sea affect the mariner’s corporeality and perception, the mariner too impinges on the ship and the sea. Tsimouris, who travelled onboard a ship with Greek officers, notes how ‘Greekness or at least the Greek language had come to dominate the space of the ship’. Via its high-ranking officers, the ship acquired a national identity and a language. The ship saw a Greek Easter (Pascha) feast, heard more Greek than English, which is the international language of seafaring, learnt about Greek politics etc. The ship thus transformed via the mariners into a floating piece of Greece. Similarly, Daroukakis’s boats ‘carry in their hulls the heavy cargo of [the] tradition’ of Greek wooden boatbuilding (Maragoudaki), in the same manner that Volanakis’s paintings of ships do. Gaetano’s dream boat carries on it the Sicilian ‘art of fishing’ challenging catches like swordfish and tuna, another heavy cargo of a long and diminishing tradition (Marovelli). In turn the seas these boats sail in partake in the continuation or revival of such traditions. It is the sea that will provide the fish, the waves that will enable the traditional boat to travel, the stillness of the waters that will allow mariners to stay off-duty and celebrate a Greek festival. Thus, in the conversation among the sea, the ship and the ship-dweller all three have an equal say. Still, the ship holds a central role on the marine stage as mediator of messages between the sea and ship-dweller. It is this ship that this edited volume focuses on: the ship which is bound to both the sea and the mariner, and which plays the role of the mediator. This ship, as already noted, holds unique powers to carry cargoes of traditions, affect and be affected by the mariner, be of the sea, negotiate dualities, balance nature with human intentionality, and permeate histories of genealogy and heritage. The second part of the volume turns its attention from the marine stage to the audience observing and at will participating in the play. As aforementioned, mariners complain that land-dwellers misunderstand and mistreat them, because land-dwellers are ignorant of the challenges of life at sea (Tsimouris, Marovelli and Bowles; also see Sampson 2014, 2, 105, Couper et al. 1999). Nevertheless, some land-dwellers are as aware of and sensitive to the powers of the waters as are mariners (see Strang 2004). Moreover, they themselves hold claims over maritime-ness even if they have spent no time aboard (Knight).

8

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

This is not to say that there are no land-dwellers who continue to view the sea as an asocial place, despite the fact that it is dwelt by mariners and traversed by ships (Pannell 1996, Phelan 2007, Mack 2011, Anderson and Peters 2014). These are the same land-dwellers that welcome the merchandise that cargo ships bring, without even considering that it was mariners that loaded these goods and navigated the ship (Tsimouris). These land-dwellers, however, are unaware of the dialectic of the sea, the ship and the ship-dweller and are therefore neither part of the audience of the marine stage nor the subject matter for this volume. At this point it is also worth mentioning that there are mariners, too, who are unaware of this dialectic. These mariners do not view ships as powerful environments that negotiate with the elements and do not allow the sea to affect their perception. Instead they are as land-focused as land-dwellers and only view ships as a temporary, unpleasant but muchneeded salary-wise working environment (see Sampson 2014, 122, Just 2000, 67). This volume does not focus on these mariners either. These two categories of land-dwellers and unaffected mariners are subject matter for a separate study, and I briefly return to them once more in the final subsection of this introduction. Returning to the audience of the dialectic, this volume explores its understanding of seaborne existence and its contribution to the culture of ships. As aforementioned, mariners complain that land-dwellers cannot grasp what life onboard entails. It thus appears that the audience does not fully comprehend the dialectic or chooses to focus selectively on certain aspects of it whilst (intentionally) overlooking others. Stallings insightfully points out that ‘the ability to imagine conditions at sea from the shore, and to think of the shore from the sea, is an important imaginative leap’. Since the imagination constitutes the interface between understanding life onboard whilst on land and life ashore whilst aboard, it is only natural for certain realities to elude consideration or be misread. In addition, the imagination tends to romanticise in the manner that reminiscences do. There is no malice involved in this process; it is merely the way the mind and the imagination work. The second part of the volume thus presents what people ashore think of ships in an attempt, amongst others, to help mariners/ship-dwellers understand that romanticised views of life at sea naturally occur and that mariners/shipdwellers should not feel offended by these. Such views do not overshadow the (harsh) realities of life at sea; they simply exist alongside them. Moreover these views too constitute an important aspect of the cosmology of ships and, unless considered, the polyvalence of ships cannot be fully understood. These views build a channel of communication between those aboard and those ashore. If the seafarers comprehend this, then they can find new ways to interact with land-dwellers, occupy a place in their thoughts and earn their much-deserved support and admiration. Finally, some of these ideas shed light on the creation of the negative stereotypes that misrepresent seafarers and can assist landdwellers in overcoming their stereotypical way of thinking.

Ship cosmology: an introduction

9

In this part of the volume Knight presents the lengths that ships can travel through his investigation of the ‘mythistory’ of a Greek mountain village, whose inhabitants claim to be the descendants of seafarers and think of themselves as a maritime people. This clearly shows that ships and the sea can be as important to land-dwellers, regardless of their lack of experiential knowledge of life at sea, as they are to seafarers. Consequently, land-dwellers too have important insights into the culture of ships to contribute. Mitakou explores the role of ships in Greek cinematography and shows how ships became the visual symbol of Greek emigration. A single appearance of a ship in a film conveyed to the audience that a rich emigrant was returning to Greece to financially support his/her relatives. Otherwise, and if the ship looked small and sailed in a gloomy sea, it conveyed that the emigrant had had a difficult time abroad. She notes that: the crucial involvement of ships in the two Greek migratory waves which depopulated rural Greece and permanently ruptured social and family bonds was a historical reality that elevated ships into one of the most heavily emotionally invested symbols of modern Greece and Greek identity. . . . Ships were loathed because they epitomised the vehicle of separation and they were simultaneously worshipped as the enablers of a return and of a better future by generations of Greeks.

This serves to underscore the central place that the marine stage has historically held for numerous land-dwellers: past or current emigrants, inhabitants of villages in the mountains and occasionally an entire nation, as in the case of Greece and numerous other countries with long maritime traditions. Ships do not only traverse the oceans; they can also travel on mountains, to cinemas, in paintings. And these shorefaring ships constitute an extensive and important part of the culture of ships. They show how eager land-dwellers are to engage in conversation with ships and the sea. In addition, they demonstrate the ease with which ships communicate messages and can carry metaphorical cargoes. It is therefore these shorefaring ships that best show the broadness and omnipresence of the culture of ships. Papadopoulou examines in her contribution the journeys of ships in philosophical texts, specifically in metaphors woven by philosophers. She examines the power of ships to negotiate dualities in the manner that the water/sea can. She shows why ships are the most popular means of transport to the afterlife and how mythistories like the ship of fools and Charon’s boat might have excited long-standing stereotypes of mariners. She also notes that these potent, imaginary ships, which constitute an important part of the cosmology of ships, did not spring out of land-dwellers’ imaginings only; instead they are products of the mixis of mariners’ reminiscences, realities at sea and land-based people’s imagination. Stallings, who examines the journeys of wrecked ships in literature, notes that ‘the ability to imagine oneself at sea from the shore,

10

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

or from sea to imagine oneself at the shore, to leap into the future or the past, seems to be part and parcel of seafaring’. She focuses on the ominous finale of the dialectic of the sea, the ship and the ship-dweller, which is none other than the shipwreck, and shows how the latter ‘infuses literature and the development of one of modern literature’s notable components, empathy’. She writes that empathy is born when the spectator on the shore witnesses a shipwreck and thus binds inextricably and to the end the seafarer with the land-dweller. As shown, this volume presents not only the ways the ship is experienced by those living and travelling in it, but also the ways it is perceived by those watching it, waiting for it, dreaming and writing about it. It thus examines all the different types of ships mentioned in the first subsection of the introduction and, ship by ship, weaves a ship cosmology.

The broader context of this volume Anthropology developed a fascination with ships and seafaring from its early days (Malinowski 1922, Lévi-Strauss 1970). Schneider (2015, 32) wrote recently that in the old days travelling by ship was for anthropologists a rite of passage to fieldwork. It was certainly not long before anthropologists realised that ships and seafaring constituted an important topic of investigation aside from a rite of passage to fieldwork (Zurcher 1965, Bernard and Killworth 1973, Munn 1977, Scott 1981, Horridge 1985, Lewis 1994, Sampson 2014 are but few examples). Numerous maritime cosmologies have since been presented in (anthropological) treatises acknowledging people’s connections to the sea as a core aspect of their social relations and local identities (Gibson 1994, Lewis 1994, Jackson 1995, King 2007, Stacey 2007), drawing attention to the fact that consumerism has corroded Western perceptions of maritime cultures and landscapes (Pannell 1996), and finally emphasising the need for a shift of perspective from the sea landwards as opposed to the other way round (Cooney 2004). As maritime anthropology continues to flourish, its budding topics have come to include boatbuilders, island and maritime communities, fishermen and fisheries, mariners and life onboard ships (Wilson 2014, Lamvik 2012, Varadarajan ed. 2011, Markkula 2011, Ota and Just 2008, Karjalainen 2007, Dwyer et al. 2003, Just 2000, Barnes 1996, Knutson 1991, Scott 1981, to mention a few examples). Moreover, maritime anthropology is responsive to current, wider issues in the discipline. A new anthropological journal entitled Mobile Culture Studies was launched in 2015. The first two volumes focused on maritime migration and included articles on cutting-edge, contemporary topics like lifestyle boat-dwelling (Rogelja 2015) and the experience of the sea voyage of migration as this is communicated in art (Fuchs and Klengel 2015). This volume falls within this broader, flourishing anthropological subarea. It focuses on ships and presents both emic perspectives and experiences

Ship cosmology: an introduction

11

of ship-dwellers, as well as ship/sea-related (myth)histories disseminated in other media, such as films, philosophical treatises and poems. It thus looks both from the sea landwards and from the land seawards in an attempt amongst others to find a common language of communication between those aboard and ashore. After all, it is this common language that best speaks about the culture of ships. This endeavour may at first appear unrealistic or romantic for numerous reasons. Ship-dwellers appear to face much more serious issues than their problematic communication with people ashore. Ships are highly stressful environments for those working in them, more so than most land-based workplaces. The notable difference between work-related stress onboard in comparison to jobs ashore has been noted and quantified since 1998 (Bridger et al. 2008, 534, Oldenburg et al. 2010, 251). The results of several interviews with mariners of various nationalities identify the same stress factors internationally. Mariners complain about their working conditions, which include constant noise, vibration, dramatic temperature changes and exposure to chemical substances carried as cargo (Carotenuto et al. 2012, 189). In addition, the majority of mariners onboard ships work seven days a week in shifts that disrupt their sleeping patterns and hardly allow them any time for leisure activities, which are deemed necessary for their mental health (Jensen et al. 2006, 395). Another unanimously identified stress factor in all relevant surveys is the configuration of the crews. Sixty-five to 80 per cent of the world’s merchant fleet operates with multinational crews (Oldenburg et al. 2010, 252, Oldenburg et al. 2009, 103). This causes ‘linguistic and intercultural problems’ amongst boat micro-societies, which have been noted as common causes for operational malfunctions and casualties onboard (Oldenburg et al. 2009, 103). Mariners on transoceanic ships crossing time zones at rapid speeds complain of episodes of awakening during their already-disturbed sleep (Carotenuto et al. 2012, 190). In addition to these negative aspects, piracy continues to be a major threat for transoceanic ships and, despite the international efforts to contain it, the vastness of the oceans grants its undetectability and consequently its continuation. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) reported 5,224 piracy incidents and attempts between 1984 and 2009. In 2008 alone 774 crew members were either taken hostage or kidnapped and 38 crew members remain unaccounted for (Oldenburg et al. 2010, 250). In IMO’s 2012 annual report on acts of piracy and armed robbery against ships, these acts resulted in four mariners dying, 13 being wounded, five being assaulted and 312 taken hostage (www.imo.org). Another serious problem is the treatment of mariners employed in the substandard sector of merchant shipping. Couper et al. (1999) report the numerous cases of mariners having been refused rightful payment for their lengthy services on board ships. They review occurrences when mariners were left abandoned – sometimes for longer than a year – in ships with no food or gas

12

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

provisions, and cases of unpaid mariners stuck in unpaid hostels at major ports awaiting repatriation for months. In the meantime, their families were going bankrupt and their houses were being confiscated. Some of these mariners refused repatriation without rightful payment for their services, because they feared that, upon their return to their country, loan sharks would harm them or their families (Couper et al. 1999). These stories are not the exception in shipping. The exploitation of mariners is more frequent than we, ashore, may think. Couper et al. (1999, 5) note that the International Transport Workers’ Federation recorded ’992 cases of abandonment and abuse over a period of four years’. They write that this may be ‘merely the tip of the iceberg’, because these are the cases that were reported (Couper et al. 1999, 5). Most cases, however, stay unreported and unpunished. On top of these hardships, most mariners continue to complain about the long periods of separation from their families (Carotenuto et al. 2012, 189). In a survey published in 2009, 59.7 per cent of interviewees responded that this is the leading cause of stress for them (Oldenburg et al. 2009, 99–100). Additionally, seafarers face problems with the disturbance in their sexual life. This has been identified as the primary cause for psycho-emotional stress (Carotenuto et al. 2012, 190, Oldenburg et al. 2010, 253). These stress factors result in several psychosocial and psychological conditions, more commonly encountered amongst mariners than in the general population. It was noted in 1996, for example, that the incidence of suicides onboard ships is three times higher than it is ashore. The commonest cause for these incidents is isolation (Oldenburg et al. 2010, 252). This serves to show that it is important for mariners to be understood and appreciated by the people on land. Finding a common language for these two groups of people to communicate is not an endeavour of secondary importance. Another reason why this goal of this volume may at first appear unrealistic is the fact that, as briefly aforementioned, not all land-dwellers are in the audience of the marine stage. To complicate matters further, it is far from clear who indeed is in this audience. On the one hand we have Knight’s mountain dwellers, who claim to have the sea in the blood and on the other hand, we have Roger Just’s (2000, 63–64) islanders, specifically Lefkadhites, who are surrounded by the sea but nevertheless remain ‘distrustful’ of it and avoid maritime occupations. Similarly, it is unclear who is on the marine stage. There are for example fishermen who do not necessarily perceive themselves as people of the sea, because fishing is for them a seasonal occupation that holds no greater importance than farming. There are also mariners who only boarded ships briefly in order to make enough money to own a land business (see Just 2000, 63–67). These people may as easily be part of both the marine stage and the audience as be absent from both. In any case, for as long as maritime narratives are found on land, there is indeed an audience observing the marine stage. There therefore can be a common ground where those ashore and aboard can meet and communicate.

Ship cosmology: an introduction

13

If ships travel with the same ease on land as they do in water, ideas too can be exchanged between land and sea, and differences negotiated. This volume does not turn a blind eye to the numerous ships carrying hardships, emotional and physical pain, and/or disaster. After all, some of the hardships faced by mariners, fishermen and boaters are presented in this volume in detail. It nevertheless acknowledges equally the auspicious and romantic ability of ships to carry cargoes of traditions, heritage, hopes for a better future, dreams and imaginings. Both these ships inform us about the Culture of Ships and are the protagonists in land- and seaborne Maritime Narratives.

Note 1 This not to say that there is uniformity; only similarity. After all, the ‘liquid (hi) story’ of ships does not speak ‘coherence, rigour and rigidity’ (Serres 2000, 191). It is fluid and permeates everything.

References Anderson, Jon  & Peters, Kimberley, 2014, ‘ “A  perfect and absolute blank”: Human geographies of water worlds’, in Anderson, Jon & Peters, Kimberley (eds), Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean, Farnham, Ashgate, pp. 3–21. Bernard, Russel H. & Killworth, Peter D., 1973, ‘On the social structure of an ocean-going research vessel and other important things’, Social Science Research 2, pp. 145–184. Barnes, Robert H., 1996, Sea Hunters of Indonesia: Fishers and Weavers of Lamaler, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Bridger, Robert S., Brasher, Kate, Dew, Angela  & Kilminster, Shaun, 2008, ‘Occupational stress and strain in the Royal Navy 2007’, Occupational Medicine 58, pp. 534–539. Carotenuto, Anna, Molino, Ivana, Fasanaro, Angiola M. & Amenta, Francesco, 2012, ‘Psychological stress in seafarers: a review’, International Maritime Health 63(4), pp. 188–194. Cooney, Gabriel, 2004, ‘Introduction: Seeing land from the sea’, World Archaeology 35(3), pp. 323–328. Couper, Alastair Dougal, with Walsh, Chris J., Stanberry, Ben A.  & Boerne Geoffrey L., 1999, Voyages of Abuse. Seafarers, Human Rights and International Shipping, London, Pluto Press. Dwyer, Peter, Just, Roger & Minnegal, Monica, 2003, ‘A sea of small names: Fishers and their boats in Victoria, Australia’, Anthropological Forum 13(1), pp. 5–26.

14

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

Fuchs, Anja & Klengel, Robin, 2015, ‘The sea voyage in Don Bluth’s “An American Tail” and Shaun Tan’s “The Arrival” as a representation of liminal experiences’, Mobile Culture Studies 1, pp. 125–145. Gibson, Ross, 1994, ‘Ocean settlement’, Meanjin 4, pp. 665–678. Horridge, Adrian, 1985, The Prahu: Traditional Sailing Boat of Indonesia, Singapore, Oxford University Press. Jackson, Sue E., 1995, ‘The water is not empty: Cross-cultural issues in conceptualising sea space’, Australian Geographer 26(1), pp. 87–96. Jensen, Olaf C., Sørensen, Jens F.L., Thomas, Michelle, Canals, Luisa M., Nikolic, Nebojsa  & Hu, Yunping, 2006, ‘Working conditions in international seafaring’, Occupational Medicine 56, pp. 393–397. Just, Roger, 2000, A Greek Island Cosmos: Kinship and Identity on Meganisi, Sante Fe, SAR. Karjalainen, Mira, 2007, In the Shadow of Freedom: Life on Board the Oil Tanker, Helsinki, the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. King, Tanya J., 2007, ‘Habits and prosthetic performances: Negotiation of individuality and embodiment of social status in Australian shark fishing’, Journal of Anthropological Research 63(4), pp. 537–560. Knutson, Peter, 1991, ‘Measuring ourselves: Adaptation and anxiety aboard a fishing vessel’, Journal of Maritime Anthropological Studies 4(1), pp. 73–90. Lamvik, Gunnar, 2012, ‘The Filipino seafarer: A  life between sacrifice and shopping’, Anthropology in Action 19(1), pp. 22–31. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1970, Tristes Tropiques, New York, Atheneum. Lewis, David, 1994, We, the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific, Honolulu, HI, University of Hawaii Press. Mack, John, 2011, The Sea: a Cultural History, London, Reaktion. Malinowski, Bronisław, 1922, Argonauts of the Western Pacific: an Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Markkula, Johanna, 2011, ‘ “Any port at storm”: Responding to crisis in the world of shipping’, Social Anthropology 19(3), pp. 297–304. Munn, Nancy, 1977, ‘The spatio-temporal transformations of Gawa canoes’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 54–55(33), pp. 39–53. Oldenburg, Marcus, Baur, Xaver & Schlaich, Clara, 2010, ‘Occupational risks and challenges of seafaring’, Journal of Occupational Health 52, pp. 249–256. Oldenburg, Marcus, Jensen, Hans-Joachim, Latza, Ute  & Baur, Xaver, 2009, ‘Seafaring stressors aboard merchant and passenger ships’, International Journal of Public Health 54, pp. 96–105. Ota, Yoshitaka & Just, Roger, 2008, ‘Fleet sizes, fishing effort and the “hidden” factors behind statistics: An anthropological study of small-scale fisheries in UK’, Marine Policy 32(3), pp. 301–308. Paloubis, Ioannis, 2009, ‘Volanakis’ vessels’, in Kassimati, Marilena, Z. (ed), Constantinos Volanakis 1837–1907; Poet of the Sea, Athens, Aikaterini Laskaridi Foundation, pp. 69–77.

Ship cosmology: an introduction

15

Pannell, Sandra, 1996, ‘Homo nullius or “where have all the people gone”? Refiguring marine management and conservation approaches’, Australian Journal of Anthropology 7(1), pp. 21–42. Phelan, Jake, 2007, ‘Seascapes: Tides of thought and being in Western perception of the sea’, Goldsmiths Anthropology Research Papers 14, London, Goldsmiths Research Online. Rogelja, Natasa, 2015, ‘The sea: place of ultimate freedom? Ethnographic reflections on in-between places and practices’, Mobile Culture Studies 1, pp. 181–198. Sampson, Helen, 2014, International Seafarers and Transnationalism in the Twentyfirst Century, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Schneider, Arnd, 2015, ‘An anthropology of the sea voyage; prolegomena to an epistemology of transoceanic travel’, Mobile Culture Studies 1, pp. 31–53. Scott, William Henry, 1981, ‘Boat building and seamanship in classic Philippine society’, Anthropological Papers 9, Manila, National Museum. Serres, Michel, 2000 [1977], The Birth of Physics (trans Hawkes, Jack), Manchester, Clinamen Press. Stacey, Natasha, 2007, Boats to Burn: Bajo Fishing Activity in the Australian Fishing Zone, Asia-Pacific Environment Monograph 2, Canberra, ANU E Press. Strang, Veronica, 2004, The Meaning of Water, Oxford, Berg. Strang, Veronica, 2014, ‘Fluid consistencies. Material relationality in human engagements with water’, Archaeological Dialogues 21(2), pp. 133–150. Varadarajan, Lotika (ed), 2011, Gujarat and the Sea, Vadodara, Darshak Ithias Nidhi. Vlachos, Manolis, 2009, ‘The viewer as intermediary in Volanakis’ painting; views and insights into a quasi-self-portrait’, in Kassimati, Marilena Z. (ed), Constantinos Volanakis 1837–1907; Poet of the Sea, Athens, Aikaterini Laskaridi Foundation, pp. 51–57. Volanakis, Miltiadis Constantinou, 2009 [1962], ‘My father’, in Kassimati, Marilena Z. (ed), Constantinos Volanakis 1837–1907; Poet of the Sea, Athens, Aikaterini Laskaridi Foundation, pp. 20–23. Wilson, Margaret Elizabeth, 2014, ‘Icelandic fisher women’s experience: implications, social change, and fisheries policy’, Ethnos 79(4), pp. 525–550. Zurcher, Luis A. Jr., 1965, ‘The sailor aboard ship: a study of role behaviour in a total institution’, Social Forces 43(3), pp. 389–400.

Website www.imo.org Accessed 16 May 2014.

PART I Seafaring ships

1

The boatbuilder, boatbuilding, and the creation of socialities1 Elena Maragoudaki

Undoubtedly every boat-builder, mariner or seafarer would have a different story to tell us. But this is the (hi)story of a traditional boat-builder of our times, of Nikos Daroukakis.

Introduction What motivated me to write this chapter on boatbuilding was my wish to pay homage to a distinguished Greek boatbuilder, Nikos Daroukakis. I have collaborated closely with Nikos for the needs of my PhD research since 2004. Our relationship was grounded on my curiosity to learn as much as I could about shipbuilding tools. Soon, though, it evolved into a long-lasting friendship which permitted fruitful, in-depth exchanges of experiences, thoughts and ideas. Nikos Daroukakis is not only a traditional, yet innovative, boatbuilder but also a daring navigator and a former liveaboard. His varied maritime experiences render him a unique case study in maritime (pre)occupations. This chapter, which examines traditional wooden boatbuilding is the culmination of numerous, open-ended interviews with the interlocutor. These interviews were conducted on various occasions through the years of our collaboration and revolved around his background, boatbuilding knowledge, as well as his experiences and thoughts of boats and life at sea. Accordingly, what follows transcends a clinical presentation of wooden boatbuilding techniques and extends into how boatbuilding has affected the builder’s perception and life in general.

The boatbuilder Nikos Daroukakis Nikos Daroukakis used to live in Vancouver, Canada, where, along with various other occupations aimed at earning a living, he constructed a wooden sailboat. The latter was based on the design of a sailboat conceived by the famous naval architect/historian H.I. Chapelle and was constructed with the exclusive use of traditional woodworking tools and with utmost respect for

20

Elena Maragoudaki

Figure 1.1 Nikos Daroukakis building Iliopotissa. Source: Daroukakis’s photograph, used with permission.

traditional boatbuilding techniques. Nikos named the boat Iliopotissa (Sundrinker), a word coined by Nikos Kazantzakis. She is an American, East Coast fishing schooner, designed by Howard I. Chapelle and constructed by Nikos Daroukakis on Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada, in 1984. Local Canadian timber, Douglas fir and black locust, were used in her construction, and she was subsequently exhibited in the Vancouver Maritime Museum for two years. In this two-year period my interlocutor was presented with the opportunity to study the boatbuilding traditions of various cultures and to conserve some of the other traditional boats exhibited in the museum. In 1987 Iliopotissa left Canada with Nikos, crossed the Panama Canal and reached Greece after having sailed for one year. According to her captain and creator, even though she is undoubtedly fast and seaworthy, what characterises her best is her simplicity. Having arrived in Greece, Nikos chose the island of Aegina to moor for long periods of time and eventually settle. He was a liveaboard and a seawanderer for the first eight years in Aegina, until the completion of the construction of his ship-inspired home. The latter lies on an isolated hilltop, in the south-western part of the island, and offers views of the surrounding islands as well as the mainland. He has been living there, in harmony with nature, ever since. It is worth mentioning that, for the first decade in this house, he lived with no electricity or connection to the central water supply system (on boaters and economy of resources, see Bowles, this volume).

Boatbuilding and socialities

21

Figure 1.2 The Iliopotissa. Source: author’s photograph.

During his years of sea and land wanderings he met and interacted closely with craftsmen of diverse cultural backgrounds and specialisations (e.g. totem sculptors, musical instrument makers, traditional woodworkers and fellow boatbuilders). This immersion in a number of cultural and naval traditions, apart from making him the restless spirit that he is, also broadened his horizons as a boatbuilder and a woodworker. This is reflected in his craft, where elements drawn from different naval/woodworking traditions become innovatively and harmoniously intertwined. Moreover, this multicultural craft knowledge has often led him into making audacious – but effective – constructional choices. For example, for the purposes of my PhD thesis, entitled Mycenaean Woodworking Tools Used in Shipbuilding, I had the opportunity to watch closely the construction of a wooden sailboat named Athena. This was designed and built by Nikos Daroukakis and his apprentice on the island of Aegina within a two-year period. The vessel’s design was the result of a fruitful collaboration between Nikos and his client, who had adequate experience sailing wooden vessels. The client’s openness to Nikos’s ideas, as well the trust he placed in the boatbuilder’s experience and tendency towards innovative solutions, allowed the construction of an exceptionally seaworthy vessel with bold

22

Elena Maragoudaki

design features (e.g. a Chinese sail rig, refined underwater sections). Athena is a 13-metre sailboat with a hull that combines the traditional form of a Symi (an island in the south-eastern Aegean) hull but with deeper, more refined underwater sections, which are uncharacteristic of this vessel type. Local pine and acacia were used for its construction. All the timbers were chosen by the boatbuilder himself, who taught a lumberjack in northern Greece which trees and branches were appropriate for the task at hand. Hand-picking the timbers used to be common practice for traditional boatbuilders working in small- or medium-scale local shipyards all over Greece, Asia Minor and the Balkans. Even though this level of detail and selectivity is unheard of nowadays, Nikos and his apprentice resorted to it, in order to ensure the soundness and seaworthiness of Athena. Having constructed and repaired several sailboats (Athena, Chryssopigi), Nikos Daroukakis has become an expert in offering fresh, safer perspectives to traditional, wooden boatbuilding. He employs traditional methods from various parts of the world in order to reach the best boatbuilding solutions. Ignoring the criticism of the purists, he does not hesitate to use a Chinese sunk rig, for example, if he believes that this rig will better meet his client’s needs. The efficiency of the aforementioned choices as well as his customers’ satisfaction

Figure 1.3 Nikos building Athena. Source: author’s photograph.

Boatbuilding and socialities

23

make him a specialist in his field. In doing so, he strikes a balance between his clients’ requirements and current boatbuilding parameters for safety at sea. When he has finished building a boat, putting his experience as a mariner and a liveaboard to use, he always sails her himself first, so as to be able to vouch for her seaworthiness. Having done all this, together with having fulfilled, in his own words, ‘his client’s dream’, he draws ‘enormous pleasure from his creation’.

Boatbuilding: a complex and demanding activity The art of boatbuilding involves various undertakings (ship design, selection of raw materials, wood elaboration, tool design and construction, hull construction etc.), which in turn require the services of craftsmen of varying specialisations. British Admiralty documents mention that any state-run shipyard should be treated as an ‘industrial’ facility, since it engages no fewer than 26 trades: shipwrights, caulkers, joiners, pitch heaters, smiths, sail makers, riggers, sawyers, oar makers, carpenters etc. (Dodds and Moore 1984, 39, 41). In charge of the building and repair works is the master shipwright, who is assisted by a number of artificers. His presence is indispensable since he is the designer as well as the overseer of the entire boatbuilding project. His skills can only be acquired after a long and painstaking apprenticeship, and his role is to ensure that the ship plans will be faithfully executed and that works on the vessel will proceed smoothly. After all, from the most basic boat to the most sophisticated ship, boatbuilding is never a chance act but a response to specific needs and demands (Pomey 2011, 27). It is the master shipwright’s job to ensure that these demands are met. What follows is an account of the operational chain of construction of traditional, wooden vessels in local shipyards in Greece. The procedures that will be described below have remained unaltered for almost two centuries and, despite few differences, as the reader will soon find out, they adhere to a considerable extent to what is described in the aforementioned documents. Wooden shipbuilding in Greece has traditionally been carried out in the open air from the early stage of ship design to the final stages of construction (Damianides 1998, 35). Small-scale shipyards are more often than not temporary as opposed to permanent structures, since, even in the cases of larger vessels, enduring infrastructure has always been deemed unnecessary. In addition, when it comes to traditional boatbuilding, the term “design” means something completely different to what is commonly implied today; it merely refers to the method used for giving the vessel its shape. Prior to the eighteenth century the commonest eastern Mediterranean method for shaping a vessel was the “single mould” (monochnaro). As its name implies, the shipwright used a single mould and, with the appropriate adjustments, reproduced from this all of the mid-ship frames that gave the hull its form and consequently

24

Elena Maragoudaki

determined the vessel type that would be produced (Damianides 1995, 61). Towards the end of the eighteenth century a new “design” was introduced, namely “the lofting floor”, most commonly referred to in Greek shipyards as the sala (Vaitses 1980). This method was no longer based on the use of a single mould. Instead, numerous structural features of the hull of the boat would be drawn in full size directly onto a wooden surface (the sala). The drawn pieces would be then cut out of the sala and used in the construction of the hull. This method, which allowed for the construction of larger, better-shaped hulls, is considered the predecessor of current ship design (Damianides 1995, 62). Another way to design a boat is to create a scaled “half model”. In this case, the shipwright needs to build a scaled, wooden model of one half of the boat. He then transfers the geometry of his model on the lofting floor in full scale, and finally cuts out the drawn pieces and uses them for building the boat. In the case of my interlocutor, the vessel first takes shape in his mind. He then draws this on paper using a convenient scale. He keeps drawing the lines of the new boat until he is satisfied. Then he follows the detailed construction plan and the sail plan, as well as the plan of the interior if this is needed. Sometimes he makes a half model just to acquire a three-dimensional perception of the boat. The construction begins with the transfer of all the lines on the lofting floor in full scale. What follows the “design” phase is what is called the “realisation” phase. The first step in this phase is the selection and acquisition of the necessary materials (wood, metal, ropes, coating, paint, sails etc.). This is a particularly complex operational process (Pomey 2011, 31). Accordingly, in the case of wood, the choice of trees for felling is dependent on the properties of their species as a whole, as well as the morphological characteristics of each individual tree, which determine the structural elements of the boat that can be cut out of this (Desmond 1997, 7–17). After the selection of the trees come the felling, transporting and milling. Numerous professions are involved in this process, thus demonstrating how wooden shipbuilding necessitates collaborations and exchanges of ideas between craftsmen, and serves as the common goal around which a small, diverse community of specialists is built (see Gourgouris 1983, 460–466). Milling is followed by the working of the raw materials into boat parts. As my interlocutor points out to me, the way a log is cut and its timber worked are revealing of the level of technical skill involved in the construction of a boat. The cutting of the wood is done by expert lumbermen and requires specialised knowledge on the optimum time for cutting wood (ideally in the winter), as well as the shape the tree and branches will be cut in, which need to make the most of the wood’s physical and mechanical properties such as its natural inclination and stress resistance (Dodds and Moore 2005, 13–20). As was shown with Athena, my interlocutor is willing to go and pick the trees for felling himself, so as to ensure that his raw materials will comply to his high standards. Since wooden boatbuilding, as will be discussed below, is no longer as popular as it used to be, the knowledge required at each stage of

Figure 1.4 Skeleton-first technique applied by Nikos to a newly built vessel. Source: author’s photograph.

26

Elena Maragoudaki

the “realisation” phase is progressively lost. Consequently, the shipwright’s job becomes increasingly hard, since he has to oversee every stage of the “realisation” phase himself in order to be able to build a seaworthy boat. In the actual construction of the boat, my informant – following the traditional Greek wooden shipbuilding method – uses the skeleton-first technique with sawn frames. First he joins the longitudinal boat components (the keel and stem- and stern-posts), which are more commonly made of pine wood. Then he positions the middle pair of frames and then fixes the rest of the frames on the keel and stem- and stern-posts. Once the frames are in place, he strengthens the skeleton with longitudinal and transverse wooden components. Finally, he lines the skeleton with planks. The latter are often made of softwood (e.g. pine), which is easily elaborated into the shape of the skeleton. After the planking of the hull, he makes the latter watertight with caulking. He inserts a cord of natural fibres in the seams between the planks using caulking irons. He then seals the seams with a layer of tar or hot melted pitch or putty so as to protect the caulking material. In the old days of wooden shipbuilding the material used for sealing the seams was resin. Then the construction of the vessel is completed with the building of the deck and the positioning of the mast and spars.2

The boatbuilder’s tools What is of utmost importance in wooden boatbuilding is the builder’s tools. Many of these are the same to those used in other woodworking crafts. Some of them, however, need to be designed and made by the boatbuilder himself with the help of a blacksmith specialising in tool construction. Archaeological, ethnoarchaeological and anthropological research has provided ample information on the boatbuilder’s toolkit from the appearance of the boatbuilding craft onwards (Maragoudaki 2017, 233–247, Christensen 1972). Accordingly, his toolkit comprises tools used for wood elaboration, most of which are also used by carpenters, joiners, carvers, lumberjacks and sawyers. Specifically, it includes tools for cutting (axe, adze, chisel, saw), perforation (drill, awl) and percussion (hammer, mallet) (Maragoudaki 2010, 2012, 2017). Of them all, the adze is the most essential tool for most traditional boatbuilders in the Aegean region. Nevertheless, every expert boatbuilder views all the tools ‘as the extension of his hand’, as Nikos says. He adds that ‘in the hands of a skilled shipwright all the tools are capable of performing the most delicate operations in elaborating timbers’. Apart from the adze, the axe, saw and chisel are important cutting tools too, but in larger shipyards most of the work done by these tools is left to the lumberjacks and sawyers instead of the boatbuilders. In the case of our interlocutor and most small yards, though, the boatbuilder uses these cutting tools often and values them greatly.

Boatbuilding and socialities

27

Another important group of tools are those for caulking, which are used in making the hull watertight. In large shipyards the caulker is the second key figure after the shipwright. His tools include caulking irons (namely the creasing, caulking and reaming irons) and the caulking mallet. All of these are used for opening the seams so as to drive the oakum or cotton home. Again, in the case of Nikos and smaller boatyards, the boatbuilder often has to do the caulking himself and therefore has these tools too in his toolkit. Even though boatbuilding tools are dependent on the materials available for their construction, the techniques used by the boatbuilders and the boatbuilding tradition these are representative of, tool types in the eastern Mediterranean and their constructional geometry have changed very little from the prehistoric period up until the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries (Maragoudaki 2017).3 It goes to show how early the constructional geometry of tools evolved, and at what high level, that only minor amendments to the tools were deemed necessary over the centuries of wooden boatbuilding in the eastern Mediterranean. Even in the transition from the shell-first to the skeleton-first technique the geometry of tools for boatbuilding was affected very little (Maragoudaki 2017).

Figure 1.5 Nikos’s adzes and workshop. Source: author’s photograph.

28

Elena Maragoudaki

Still, the most demanding and innovative boatbuilder does not settle for standard boatbuilding tools. He needs to build his own so that he can work the wood with unprecedented accuracy. Sometimes, though, the craftsman will use any convenient woodworking (as opposed to specialised, boatbuilding) tool for a task, simply because this lies close to him or because he has an attachment to it, without even thinking whether this tool is the optimum choice. Nikos told me that on many occasions he loves using a North American adze, which was offered to him as a gift for the construction of Iliopotissa by a famous sculptor, Stephen Godfrey, a representative of First Nations Art. Godfrey had been given this tool by a native artist chief, Mungo Martin, and, according to Godfrey, Mungo Martin had used the aforementioned adze when he sculpted the 30-metre-long totem pole that stands by the entrance of the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

Boatbuilding, and the making and breaking of bonds As previously mentioned, boatbuilding is an activity that apart from boats also builds communities of specialised craftsmen. Representatives of various trades, some related exclusively to boatbuilding (e.g. rigging, caulking, spar making, sails making, block making) and others not (lumberjacks, mechanics, electricians, plumbers, loggers, fastener makers, blacksmiths), exchange skills, tools and ideas in order to see a seaworthy boat coming into being. Additionally, when the market demand for wooden boats was widespread, the number of workmen employed in boatyards was high (Delis 2015, 205–207). Naturally, this number depended on the size of the yard and the size of the boats constructed in it. Still, it was large enough to allow the division of workmen into groups, each of which specialised in a particular part of the vessel (the framing team, the planking team, the caulking team, the spars makers, the rigging makers, the cabinet makers for the interior of the cabins etc.). Thus, apart from the broader community of craftsmen of non-maritime-related trades collaborating with local boatyards, there were additional, small-scale socialities of craftsmen created within the boatyards. The strikingly reduced demand for wooden boats in the last few decades that fibreglass boats took over the market changed this picture drastically and managed in a short period of time to dismantle communities and socialities that had existed for centuries not only in Greece4 but also in other places in the world.5 After all, the replacement of wooden boats with fibreglass ones is an international phenomenon, which has affected all wood shipyards. Specifically, with shipyards closing down or reducing in size, the aforementioned groups of specialised workmen scattered into other professions. The broader community of craftsmen (lumberjacks, blacksmiths) collaborating with boatyards was ruptured and their maritime-related knowledge (e.g. which trees to cut for boatbuilding) ceased being passed down from one generation to

Boatbuilding and socialities

29

another, since it was rendered unprofitable and by extension useless. This left the lone boatbuilder or the shipwright of a small yard having to do the work of all aforementioned specialties himself and when necessary instilling relevant knowledge to other professionals anew. In some cases, like my interlocutor’s, this also forced boatbuilders to become more skilled, innovative and capable of solving, usually single-handedly, any technical problem that arose. For example, this situation led my interlocutor to become a woodwork expert. He firmly supports that ‘any skilled boatbuilder is capable of doing any woodwork there is; build furniture, make sculptures, all sorts of carpentry’. He tells me this whilst pointing to some musical instruments, which he loved building himself, specifically guitars and lutes, which are used by professional musicians and some of his dearest friends. Returning to the decline of wooden boatbuilding and the abandonment of local boatyards, my informant recognises this ‘as a growing phenomenon with important implications for individuals, local communities and places’. He says that there is a variety of reasons why this is happening, namely ‘popular ship types have changed, new technologies have been introduced, different raw materials are used, and most importantly boat-owners’ needs have changed’. He points out to me that, ‘although wooden boatbuilding was practised throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially in coastal and fishing villages, signs of the decline in the techniques used were already recognisable’. He says that nowadays ‘people only want wooden boats for sailing and entertainment’ and this leads to a decrease in the construction of wooden boats, since in the past these were built for professional uses (e.g. fishing, carrying passengers). Moreover, he adds, ‘yachts made of fibreglass are easier in their upkeep, and also most of them are designed as comfortable, floating hotels. They are more attractive to recreational sailors and families’. In order for a wooden boat to stand a chance of attracting clientele, my interlocutor argues that it will have to satisfy some of these modern market needs. Amongst the things that could be improved are the boat’s speed, rig, living quarters and craftsmanship. If carefully designed solutions for improving these characteristics are offered, some people will once more turn their attention to wooden boats. He also supports that ‘many boatbuilders are neither skilled not inspirational yet they overcharge for their medium-quality work. This makes the situation even worse than it is’. He says that over the years he was regularly hired for ‘minor projects: fixing imperfections originating from the poor, but highly overrated, workmanship of “expert boatbuilders” ’. Equally, he believes, that the lack of experimentation in hull types and rigging as well as the absence of open-minded craftsmen willing to try materials and techniques from other cultures, contributes to the downgrading of wooden boatbuilding. He notes that the orders for wooden sailboats keep decreasing. And to make matters worse there are no schools he says ‘for boatbuilders to train in the traditional, Mediterranean methods and techniques of making

30

Elena Maragoudaki

wooden ships’. He thinks that the closing of local boatyards undermines his profession further, ‘even though this profession constitutes an important facet of the Greek identity’. He also expresses his frustration about the fact that there are ‘no institutions such as museums or institutes for the preservation of traditional boatbuilding methods, materials and techniques’. If we add this, he tells me, to the fact that ‘many of the remaining traditional wooden boats are neglected and even purposefully destroyed’ then ‘it is possible that these crafts will become altogether extinct’. The conversation with Nikos inevitably ends with him criticising the European Union directive for the destruction of wooden boats in the Mediterranean (EC No 1198/2006, Article 23), since he views this as ‘the final blow to

Figure 1.6 Athena and her Chinese sail rig. Source: author’s photograph.

Boatbuilding and socialities

31

the art of wooden boatbuilding’.6 According to this law, fishermen are offered considerable compensation for destroying their wooden boats. In order for the boats to be considered “destroyed” they need to be sawn in half. Many fishermen, however, simply take their kaikia (traditional Greek wooden fishing boats) to shore and have bulldozers smash them to smithereens. Images of this practice have appeared in Greek newspapers and the media, and haunt islanders, fishermen and boatbuilders. The rationale behind this law is the prevention of overfishing in the Mediterranean.7 Nikos says that ‘the EU purchasing existing fishing licences so as to make them inactive is an important act for the preservation of the marine environment, but destroying the boat is crazy’. He totally disapproves of the offering of EU compensation for the dismantling of traditional fishing boats. He notes that: this law does not even try to protect perennial wooden boats, which should never be allowed to become extinct. This way the law destroys all trace of the Greek, wooden boatbuilding tradition, and takes away any possibility for a subsequent uplift and development of this craft.

Nikos sums up his views on the EU directive by exclaiming: ‘This is a crime!’ It is worth noting that in the spring of 2017, when I  visited with Nikos one of the few remaining boatyards in Syros, Nikos’s exclamation was frequently repeated by all the boatbuilders working there.8 After all, the Greek boatbuilding community respects their “art” and is exasperated by the EU law as well as the lack of measures ensuring the preservation of their profession.

Boats as living entities and boatbuilding as a form of creation Nikos’s and the other boatbuilders’ exclamation, ‘this is a crime’, when referring to the EU directive, cannot be fully deciphered unless the boatbuilder’s relation to his creations (the vessels) is explicated. Having spent considerable amounts of time around maritime people (seafarers, boatbuilders, liveaboards) for the purposes of my research on boatbuilding tools and boatbuilding, I could not help but notice that almost all of them spoke about their boats as if these were parts of themselves.9 Nikos does not only build boats; he was also a liveaboard and still owns and sails Iliopotissa, which he constructed himself. He has thus spent a considerable part of his life on board. More often than not, Nikos refers to his boat as his ‘travel companion’. To him boats are living entities that accompany one in his journeys and in life in general. Additionally, he told me: ‘Every time she [Iliopotissa] has suffered damages I  had the feeling that something bad had happened to me’. It thus becomes apparent that he does not only view his boat as a living entity but as one connected to him, an extension of his own

32

Elena Maragoudaki

body – in the manner of most other maritime people I have spoken to.10 As for the other vessels he has constructed himself, he often refers to them as ‘my children’.11 He tells me: I have a bittersweet feeling when the time for the project delivery arrives. On the one hand I feel sad to let her go, but on the other I am filled with joy and satisfaction having helped the owner make his dream come true.

Moreover, it is important for him to build boats for a specific kind of people, those he calls ‘inspiring worshipers of wooden boats’, and to cultivate steady relationships with them. Otherwise, he does not feel comfortable creating another “child” for someone who would not appreciate and treat her well. As aforementioned, he also always tests the newly constructed boat himself, in order to evaluate her seaworthiness. In a way he thus has the opportunity to spend time alone with this child, before giving her away. This perception of boats being his children is relevant to the one mentioned previously, of boats being extensions of his body. It is natural for parents to feel that their children are parts of them and to hurt when their children are hurting. No wonder, therefore, that Nikos characterised the destruction of wooden boats as ‘a crime’. As far as he is concerned, this EU directive exterminates living entities. As shown above, the finished vessel is not treated by Nikos solely as an object traded to earn a living. Although earning a living should not be underestimated, there is much more to this relationship. Every boat he embarks on designing and building, he tells me, offers him ‘a sense of freedom’. He says that for him the entire process of designing and building a vessel ‘is a long journey’. When he accepts an offer for a new boat, he tries to understand the needs of her future owner and offer the best solutions to these. If the future proprietor, however, demands things which are contrary to Nikos’s perception of how a wooden boat should be, he does not make the deal. Nikos firmly supports that ‘every boat should be more advanced than the last one I built’. This shows that the profit he makes from boatbuilding is secondary. What is most important for him is enjoying the process of bringing another boat into being, and expanding his knowledge and expertise as a builder of wooden boats.

. . . you cannot take the boat out of the boatbuilder His pleasure of creating something out of wood extends into any artefact he creates, whether this is intended for him, a friend or somebody who has placed an order. As aforementioned, a skilled boatbuilder is capable of embarking on any woodworking job. Nikos constructed his house on the hill as well as his furniture himself mostly with left-over materials from dismantled vessels. He chose to build and inhabit a space on land, which closely resembles a wooden

Boatbuilding and socialities

33

sailboat. The extensive use of wood (floors, stairs, windows, roof, furniture) gives one the feeling of being onboard a wooden ship. In order for Nikos to enhance this feeling further, he reused in the construction of his house wood from old boats. Two left-over masts were used for the support of the wooden staircase and bowsprits support the ground-floor balcony. In the interior of the house, numerous niches with shelves were constructed all around the living room. These serve as bookcases but resemble the built-in cabinets one finds in wooden boats. His kitchen and bathroom are fully invested in wood as one would have them on a wooden boat. Additionally, the wood used for the staircase and kitchen cabinets came from the teak deck of an old cruise ship. This is to show how boatbuilding and life on board have been carried by the boatbuilder on land and permeate all aspects of his life there. Maritime artefacts (boats, wooden parts of boats) have thus provided the template for Nikos’s spatial – and by extension social – organisation on land (Mack 2011, 196). For my interlocutor, living at sea and living on land are not opposing but intimately intertwined ways of life. Maritime motifs and allusions are present in almost every domain of his everyday life. For example, Nikos builds stringed musical instruments, the body of which resembles a ship’s hull while the strings allude to the rigging

Figure 1.7 Bowsprits supporting the ground-floor balcony. Source: author’s photograph.

34

Elena Maragoudaki

of a vessel. He also makes guitars and lutes, whose sound boxes are beautifully decorated with seashells. He uses steam to bend the wooden pieces of the sound box, which is the same technique he employs with the frames of his hulls. Once he proudly confessed to me: ‘While I try to tune the strings, I have the sensation that I  tune the rigging of the boat’. In addition, on numerous occasions, when he encounters woodworking difficulties in his instrumentbuilding, he resorts to his boatbuilding techniques, in order to come up with a proper solution and reach the desirable outcome.

. . . you cannot take the sea out of Nikos One day Nikos told me: ‘I carry boats and the sea on my mind like boats carry sailors’. He had just finished narrating a maritime story involving the Iliopotissa and our small wine-drinking group was visibly captivated by his narrative. Having spent a considerable part of his life onboard, his experiences at sea and incidents with Iliopotissa came up often in conversations. Nikos does not speak much, but when he does it is mostly to narrate such episodes. His adventures always arouse, naturally and effortlessly, an interest in people for boats, sailing and the wooden boatbuilding art. He is actually as much a maestro in boatbuilding as he is in narrating maritime stories. Since Nikos ‘carries boats and the sea on his mind’, these inevitably reside in his imagination apart from his thoughts and reminiscences. Accordingly, he does not only narrate maritime stories: he admitted to me that he also dreams of maritime adventures.12 Specifically, he said: ‘Many of my dreams are of ships and the sea’. He adores reading many books about the sea including the memoirs and biographies of seafarers and sailors. In his dreams he entangles his own experiences at sea with those he reads about, and dreams of himself sailing the seas that audacious seafarers have written about. Nikos told me that one of his favourite books, to which he often refers when speaking about the sea, is Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum, first published in 1900. In 1895, Joshua Slocum, a seaman, adventurer and writer, became the first man to sail single-handedly around the world. His writings about the sea and his personal experiences have contributed largely to the understanding of human life at the sea, and have influenced my informant profoundly. The latter has also been inspired by the writings of Joseph Conrad, who had a rich seafaring career working on a variety of ships as an officer until eventually becoming a captain. Specifically, Nikos is fascinated by the literary qualities and the adventures narrated in Conrad’s novel The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’. This book, written in 1897, is considered to be an allegory for isolation and solitude (Yates 1964, 183–185). It was also partly based on Conrad’s experiences during a voyage from Bombay to London. It is interesting to note that Nikos’s favourite books speak about the sea from an emic perspective, since they have been written by seafarers. Having been a seafarer himself,

Boatbuilding and socialities

35

he finds it easier to associate with these realistic narratives, instead of others that are purely fictional and by extension inaccurate. After having spent a fair amount of time at sea, as a traveller and a liveaboard, Nikos describes the sea as a highly potent place which grants him a chance to ‘be free’.13 He says that he ‘fears but mostly respects her’ and continues: ‘sailing the seas allows me to constantly discover myself and evolve. The sea offers you the means to change.’14 For Nikos, the opportunity the sea offers one to change rests on the fact that a sailor needs to focus on his boat in order to navigate her efficiently.15 As a result of this, his own existence and problems become secondary; the sailor acquires distance from those and once he revisits them he gains fresh perspectives that allow him to evolve. When onboard, though, it is the boat that the seafarer and the liveaboard concentrate on and aim at attending to her every need. This way of sailing liberates the seafarer/liveaboard from the centrality of his being, and teaches him to exist through his environment (his boat, the sea). The fact that Nikos also happens to be the creator of his boat amplifies this feeling further. His boat is his child. He is therefore already in tune with the latter’s needs. Sailing her binds him even more closely together with Iliopotissa. His testimony also ties in with the aforementioned ‘sense of freedom’ that he said he experiences every time he embarks on designing and building, a new boat. After all, he needs to think of the needs of the boat from the earliest stages of her design. Nikos tells me how living on board and travelling requires an aptitude for reading the elements. Accordingly, his body becomes attuned to the waves so as to fight off the sickness caused by the constant motion of the vessel. He confessed to me that every time he steps on land after a long boat journey of many days at sea he feels: ‘like everything around me continues to move’. Having adjusted to the motion caused by the waves, it takes some time to readjust to the stillness on land.16 He has also learned to notice the constant shift of the winds, make choices based on the phases of the moon, anticipate the appearance and disappearance of landmarks. He says: ‘a navigator can smell the winds, knows the meanings of the colours of the sky above the sea, can hear sounds from the sea, and those the winds make on the rigging’. For Nikos, being on the move is the only lifestyle he could lead. He sails to satisfy his need for adventure or escape. He travels often to Canada for personal matters. His professional obligations too, such as building a new vessel in a specific shipyard, require him to relocate often. To someone unaccustomed to life at sea, this may seem inconvenient and tiring. Nikos, on the other hand, tells me that he enjoys being able to design his life in a way that he is in motion. However challenging this situation may appear to an external observer, my interlocutor undoubtedly enjoys being both a liveaboard and a land-dweller. He says that having both options to live at sea and on land ‘fulfils me and allows me to be free and evolve’. Having the ability and means to switch from being a land-dweller to being a sea-dweller and vice versa

36

Elena Maragoudaki

whenever he chooses is for him: ‘a sanctuary that shelters me from personal crises, and allows me to introspect and receive inner feedback’.17

Conclusions This chapter presented the art of wooden boatbuilding: its complexity from the initial stages of a boat’s conception to the latter’s materialisation. It showed that boatbuilding used to be a collective effort, which created communities of craftsmen and socialities apart from boats. Nowadays it is largely dependent on the perseverance and skills of the lone boatbuilder. As a talented, lone boatbuilder, Nikos Daroukakis has mastered all aspects of his craft and even resorted to constructing new tools, so as to fulfil his every woodworking requirement. He considers it his duty to ensure that the boatbuilding tradition will not perish, and that wooden boats of the highest standards will continue being built. Having acquainted himself with the boatbuilding traditions of diverse cultures, he does not hesitate to add innovative features to traditional Greek boats. This way he enriches this long-standing tradition in hopes of sparkling new interest in wooden vessels. The fact that my interlocutor enjoys his craft and generously invests his time in every woodworking detail, in combination with the fact that he considers it his duty to ensure that traditional wooden boats will continue being constructed, elevates this profession into one of his life goals. Boatbuilding for him is much more than the means for earning a living; it is an activity he is wholeheartedly dedicated to. He therefore views his boats as his creations and companions. They are his children and he inevitably has an intimate relationship with them. Like a good father, he does his best to raise them solidly and then demands of them to sail the seas fast and efficiently. Unsurprisingly, for him boatbuilding is a creative process of self-evolution. Like parents, whose personalities mature in the process of them fostering their children, the conscientious boatbuilder too feels that he improves through gaining knowledge and experiences with every new boat he builds. Consequently, boatbuilding is embodied by my informant as a life-enhancing activity and his boats as living entities carrying forth his aspirations at sea. The relationship that this specific craftsman has developed with boatbuilding is as complex and demanding as the act of boatbuilding itself. It is therefore natural for him to resort to his boatbuilding techniques and to the aesthetics of boats every time he constructs something (instruments, his home etc.). Boatbuilding and boats, thus, imbue the whole of the material culture that surrounds him. In addition to these boat-alluding artefacts, he is also often surrounded by the hulls of Iliopotissa and his other children, since he is a sailor and a former liveaboard. As a result, boats are omnipresent in his life. This constant, material presence has also granted them a permanent place in his thoughts, dreams and imaginings. It has defined the literature

Boatbuilding and socialities

37

he reads, the content of his narratives and his relationship with the natural elements. ‘The sea – as well as all sorts of maritime (pre)occupations – has a unique quality to permeate existence and everydayness as easily as it saturates the wooden planks of a hull’ (Papadopoulou, this volume, introduction). Nikos Daroukakis, as a boat connoisseur, is more familiar than most with the sight of waterlogged wood as well as the delights and peculiarities of a maritimeinfused life. In my opinion, though, Nikos’s case is more complex than most other seafarers’ and liveaboards’, whose lives, even on land, are influenced by their experiences on board ships. Nikos’s relation to boats, boatbuilding and the sea is heavily influenced by an additional, highly potent factor; namely tradition. For Nikos, boats playing a major role in his life is not only a pleasure but also a duty. Accordingly, he sees it as his duty to initiate people into the wooden boatbuilding tradition and ensure that they will hold this in high respect. As far as he is concerned, this is the only way for this tradition to survive. This is why he complains about the fact that there are no museums educating people about local, traditional craft. The existence of such museums would partly unburden him of the task of having to do this himself. Similarly, he views it as his duty to continue building boats, which carry in their hulls the heavy cargo of tradition. This is why he turns down commissions from anyone who does not qualify as ‘a worshipper’ of such boats. Nikos could not possibly trust such a person with one of his tradition-burdened children. What if that person disrespects her and mistreats her? His crime would be, amongst others, against a long-standing Greek tradition and Nikos would not allow this. Finally, and before closing this chapter, I would like to add that I think it highly likely that the ethnographic research that Nikos allowed me to conduct by his side, as well as the treasure of information he offered me during our lengthy anthropological interviews, he did, amongst other reasons, in the hope that this (hi)story of a traditional boatbuilder of our times will inspire individuals and institutions to learn about traditional, wooden boatbuilding and contribute towards the preservation of existing traditional boats.

Notes 1 I would like to express my gratitude to Nikos Daroukakis for his willingness to participate in this research and for being my mentor not only in my research but also my inner quests. I would also like to warmly thank Dr Chryssanthi Papadopoulou for the opportunity she gave me to broaden my horizons, her continued support and our fruitful discussions. 2 On the construction of traditional wooden boats in Greece in the past see Delis (2015, 114–133) and Damianides (1995). 3 For comparative purposes also see Ward (2004, 14, 2006). 4 On these socialities see Delis (2015, 205).

38

Elena Maragoudaki

5 For a similar case in Yemen see Agius et al. (2010). 6 For the views of a Chian boatbuilder on the EU directive see Argenti (2014). 7 The EU fisheries policy has been heavily critiqued for its inefficiency (see Symes 2010, 47–50). 8 Argenti (2014) discusses in length how a boatbuilder can perceive the destruction of his wooden boats. 9 For an extensive discussion on this, see Phelan (2007, 3–4). 10 On the boat as the mariner’s body, also see Papadopoulou (this volume) and Bowles (this volume). 11 Argenti (2014) has also remarked that a boatbuilder can view his boats as his children. 12 On mariners often dreaming about ships, also see Papadopoulou (this volume). 13 On the sea as freedom and an “escape” for liveaboards, also see Rogelja (2015, 183). 14 On the sea and self-discovery, also see Papadopoulou (this volume). 15 On liveaboards and mariners corporeally tuning to their boats see Bowles (this volume) and Papadopoulou (this volume). 16 Also see Rogelja (2015, 191). For “mal de debarquement” see Papadopoulou (this volume). For bodies and place tuning together see Casey (1996, 24). 17 On a boat serving as a protective “sanctuary” see Bailey (2015, 3).

References Agius, Dionisius A., Cooper, John P., Zazzaro, Chiara & Jansen van Rensburg, Julian, 2010, ‘The dhow’s last redoubt? Vestiges of wooden boatbuilding traditions in Yemen’, in Starkey, Janet (ed), Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 40, Papers from the Forty-Third Meeting of the Seminar for Arabian Studies Held at the British Museum, London, 23–25 July 2009, Oxford, Archaeopress, pp. 71–84. Argenti, Nicolas, 2014, ‘The love of flowers: Boats, time and the navigation of catastrophe in the Aegean’, Paper presented at ASA14: Anthropology and Enlightenment, Edinburgh, UK. Bailey, Kevin M., 2015, The Western Flyer; Steinbeck’s Boat, the Sea of Cortez, and the Saga of the Pacific Fisheries, Chicago, the University of Chicago Press. Casey, Edward S., 1996, ‘How to get from space to place in a fairly short space of time: Phenomenological prolegomena’, in Feld, Steven  & Basso, Keith (eds), Senses of Place, Santa Fe, School of American Research Press, pp. 13–52. Christensen, Arne Emil, 1972, ‘Boatbuilding tools and the process of learning’, in Hasslöf, Olof, Henningsen, Henning  & Christensen, Arne Emil (eds),

Boatbuilding and socialities

39

Ships and Shipyards, Sailors and Fishermen: Introduction to Maritime Ethnology, Copenhagen, Copenhagen University Press, pp. 235–259. Conrad, Joseph, 1897, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, New York, Dodd, Mead & Co. Damianides, Kostas A., 1998, Hellinike Paradosiake Naupigike, Athens, Politistiko Technologiko Idryma ETVA. Damianides, Kostas A., 1995, Shipbuilding and Ships of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Exhibition Catalogue, Athens 5 June – 9 July 1995, Athens, Cultural Center of Municipality of Athens. Delis, Apostolos, 2015, Mediterranean Wooden Shipbuilding: Economy, Technology and Institutions in the Nineteenth Century, Leiden, Brill. Desmond, Charles, 1997, Wooden Ship-Building, Lanham, MD, Vestal Press. Dodds, James & Moore, James, 2005, Building the Wooden Fighting Ship, London, Ghatham (1st edition 1984, Hutchinson). Gourgouris, Euthymios N., 1983, To Galaxidi stoν Kairo ton Karavion, vol 2, Athens, Syndesmos Galaxidioton. Mack, John, 2011, The Sea: A Cultural History, London, Reaktion. Maragoudaki, Elena, 2010, Mykenaika Ergaleia Xylourgikis me Efarmogi sti Naupigiki, PhD thesis, University of Athens. Maragoudaki, Elena & Kavvouras, Panayiotis K., 2012, ‘Mycenaean shipwright tool kit: its reconstruction and evaluation’, Archaeological and Anthropological Studies 4(3), pp. 199–208. Maragoudaki, Elena, 2017, ‘Shipbuilding tools from the Bronze Age boatbuilder to the traditional shipwright: tracing the evidence in the Mediterranean basin’, in Frielinghaus, Heide, Schmidts, Thomas & Tsamakda, Vasiliki (eds), Schiffe und Ihr Kontext: Darstellungen, Modelle, Bestandteile – von der Bronzezeit bis zum Ende des Byzantinisches Reiches, Internationales Kolloquium 24–25 Mai 2013 in Mainz, Mainz, Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseum, pp. 233–247. Phelan, Jake, 2007, ‘Seascapes: Tides of thought and being in Western perception of the sea’, Goldsmiths Anthropology Research Papers 14, London, Goldsmiths Research Online. Pomey, Patrice, 2011, ‘Defining a ship: Architecture, function and human space’, in Catsambis, Alexis, Ford, Ben  & Hamilton, Donny L. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archaeology, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 25–45. Rogelja, Natăsa, 2015, ‘The sea: place of ultimate freedom? Ethnographic reflections on in-between places and practices’, Mobile Culture Studies 1, pp. 181–198. Slocum, Joshua Captain, 1900, Sailing Alone Around the World, London, Sampson Low, Marston. Symes, David, 2010, ‘Europe’s common fisheries policy: Changing perspectives on fisheries management’, Maritime Studies (MAST) 9(1), pp. 47–50.

40

Elena Maragoudaki

Vaitses, Allan H., 1980, Lofting, Camden, ME, Wooden Boat Publications. Ward, Cheryl A., 2004, ‘Boatbuilding in ancient Egypt’, in Ward, Cheryl A. (ed), The Philosophy of Shipbuilding: Conceptual Approaches to the Study of Wooden Ships, College Station, Texas A&M University Press, pp. 13–24. Ward, Cheryl A., 2006, ‘Boat-building and its social context in early Egypt: Interpretations from the First Dynasty boat-grave cemetery at Abydos’, Antiquity 80, pp. 118–129. Yates, Norris W., 1964 ‘Social comment in The Nigger of the “Narcissus” ’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America 79(1), pp. 183–185.

2

Seafaring in the Mediterranean: intercultural interaction and loneliness on board1 Giorgos Tsimouris

Introduction This chapter examines intercultural exchanges amongst sefarers on board ships and the loneliness they experience in their workplace. Drawing from Erving Goffman’s thesis that a ship is a ‘total institution’ where private and public space become hard to disentangle, I explore the interethnic communication and intercultural exchanges in the context of the liminal and restricted space of the ship in the course of the long days of coexistence on board. The primary question I answer can be summarised as follows: to what extent do the challenging living and working conditions on board drive people from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds to come close together and develop a sense of camaraderie and solidarity in spite of their cultural divides and the hierarchical structures of crews? Is it the case that interethnic solidarity develops amongst seafarers or are cultural stereotypes and ethnic prejudices further consolidated irrespective of the mariners’ spatial proximity aboard ships? Isolated from their families, significant others and broader communities, do seafarers develop close bonds with their colleagues on board or do they continue to interact in accordance to their diverse ethnic backgrounds and pre-existing cultural experiences? Drawing from participant observation on board an oil tanker for one and a half months I argue that close relationships on board are forged primarily on cultural and ethnic grounds. The latter – especially when crew members are off duty – can go so far as to overshadow even the strictest hierarchical structure onboard a ship.

The syndrome of the “detained” seafarer. Are rating(s) angry reprimand(s)?2 Parallelisms I’ve seen three things in this world that look closely alike. The bright-white yet mournful schools of Westerners,

42

Giorgos Tsimouris the dirty, dark bows of cargo ships and the dwellings of loose, lost women. These three have a strange affinity between them Despite their obvious and profound difference, They resemble each other closely, because they are devoid of movement, affluence of space and joy (Kavvadias 1990)3 It’s dangerous to run on deck, you might get injured badly; it’s better to walk. (A remark addressed to me repeatedly by the officer in charge)

It had been about a month since I went aboard and I was sitting alone in the officers’ mess in the hope that someone would come in and join me for a chat, whilst casually browsing yet again through a magazine of light, diverse content, full of photographs that floated around the living room for days. The captain joined me and spoke to me jokingly, saying, ‘What’s up, Professor? Already caught the sailor’s syndrome?’ ‘What’s this syndrome?’ I asked while speculating about the answer. ‘To leaf through the same magazine over and over again without expecting to find something,’ he replied laughingly. This answer addresses a core issue in seafarers’ lives and serves to highlight the monotonous, restrained pace of many a mundane day. When I narrated this event at a meeting with company executives after my research trip, laughter arose as well as positive comments for the apt response of the captain. The ship’s crew numbered 24 people. Ten of those were Greeks: nine officers and one sailor. Eleven crew members were Filipinos; all of them deck sailors except one, who was a third engineer. A second officer came from Russia, and the cook and electrician were Romanian. One of my main research aims was to find out how people of diverse cultural backgrounds interacted with each other, especially in their “free time” on board. Erving Goffman (1961, 5) classified the ship as a total institution, one which merges personal and professional life. According to him, a total institution may be defined as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no laws. (Goffman 1961, xiii)

Interaction and loneliness on board

43

In these institutions the composition of the staff, the personalities and actions of leaders and decision makers – especially the captain – and the dynamics of the relationships amongst all present are extremely important parameters for the quality of their communal lives. Typically there is a clear, almost militarised hierarchy (Sampson 2013, 77), which should not be called into question in order for the institution to be run efficiently. The Greek crew members of the 110,000-ton oil tanker, a medium-sized ship by current international standards, stressed on all occasions the value of collaboration and teamwork on board. I was told repeatedly of the importance ‘of being paired with a good crew and a good, competent captain’. The significance of a good captain in particular was emphasised on several occasions, both directly and indirectly. Once I was warned by a sailor not to draw the wrong conclusions judging from the good relations they had on board this ship, since the friendly environment present was largely the result of the current captain’s leadership and skills: ‘here, we are “a pleasant school-like atmosphere”, however I’ve been aboard ships where half the crew members wouldn’t have anything to do with the other half’. I regularly received similar positive responses about the captain, while I cannot recall any negative comments passed in my presence against any of the high-ranking crew members and their professionalism. As I shall explain later, this could have been a consequence of the fact that I was largely identified as a person close to the captain. ‘The performance of the captain with regard to the social wellness on board is absolutely central and unique’, I  was informed by the shipping company executives before embarking. Indeed, as I had many opportunities to reflect on this aboard, the captain embodied the group’s soul and leading voice, and crew members sought from him support that was not only practical and technical but also psychological. The ship’s captain, a man in his early forties, outgoing, cheerful and competent, undertook in his spare time a leading role in generating topics of conversation. He cheerfully encouraged crew members to get involved in the discussions he instigated. He never shouted at his officers and ratings, and refrained from passing negative remarks in public. Instead he endevoured on several occasions to appease work tensions that had arisen. When he came across one of the young officers shouting aggressively at a young cadet, the captain asked rather indifferently, ‘What’s going on here?’ and the incident ended without any further repercussions. The importance attributed to discipline and the existent hierarchy was easily recognisable in most bodily and language interactions, and was also indirectly remarked upon by the ship’s officers. From the very first days of my embarkation, the officers repeatedly drew my attention to an epigram by Isocrates, posted on the wall in the officers’ mess, which advocated discipline over anarchy as a marker of freedom. On another occasion, an officer, taking into account that I  was a university professor, expressed his objection  – if not profound distaste – to the provocative attitudes of university students.

44

Giorgos Tsimouris

Aside from these, the presence of a well-attended hierarchy and its significance became apparent on numerous occasions in the course of discussions. Specifically, it was observable in the dynamics of conversations where there appeared to be unspoken codes regarding the passing of the verbal baton from one speaker to another. Except from the very young crew members, all others expressed their opinions freely, without any self-censorship, and, if necessary, supported these fervently. In these conversations the onboard hierarchy was reflected in the order and manner each speaker took the floor from the other. It was also evident in the presence or lack of interruptions, since not everyone could interrupt his interlocutor and those who could would attempt this at particular times and in specific ways. For example, even though the captain was very rarely interrupted, especially when there was a heated conversation, he in return interrupted others frequently, despite the fact that he was a gentle person who kept a low profile. As for me, the facts that I had gained access to the ship through the company’s headquarters and that I regularly joined the captain’s and chief engineer’s dining table impinged greatly in the designation of my place in the hierarchical chain by the other crew members. Still, since I was systematically present within the limited space of the ship for one and a half months, it was easy for me to observe the dynamics of this hierarchy and simultaneously selfreflect on my position in it. On several occasions crew members addressed me respectfully, asking me for my opinion on matters, and even the captain himself addressed me in the polite, plural form, mentioning my title, ‘Professor’ (Kyrie Kathigita) or more jokingly called me ‘Herr Professor’ – after the nickname assigned to me by a young officer. The topic of “onboard isolation”, although never discussed openly as a problem, emerged repeatedly in evocative and self-sarcastic ways in conversations or comments passed on amongst the mariners. It came up often when crew members teased each other, e.g. one would ask the younger members of the crew or me: ‘Where are you off to tonight, lads?’ and laughingly continue without expecting a response: ‘I suggest the opera’. On other instances, when there was a heated discussion and people talked loudly and over the top of others, one of the older officers would usually intervene and say, ‘Don’t shout, you’ll wake up the children’ or ‘You’ll wake up the neighbours’. Excluding their work tasks, framed by onboard regulations, and scheduled daily proceedings (coffee at ten am, lunch at 12 noon and dinner at five pm), the officers and Greek sailor passed most of their time in the officers’ mess, where they smoked, talked and watched TV. Owing to the travelling of the ship, setting and tuning the TV antenna was a recurrent activity; they had to move it every now and then in search of an antenna signal. The TV at times constituted the only channel of communication between the onboard community and the outside world. As such, their attempts to establish an antenna signal represented their wish to maintain contact with the rest of the world.

Interaction and loneliness on board

45

Especially when the ship was on open sea and neither mobile phones nor the internet were of use, their endeavours for the proper functioning of the television set intensified. Anyone entering the mess would ask, ‘What’s happening today?’ (Ti ginetai simera), thus expressing his interest to learn any and all news worth mentioning. The answers, depending on the moment and the mood, varied, some being serious and others playful. For example, the answers pertained to anything from the statement of a political party leader, since this took place during a pre-election period, or the results of the latest polls, to the dress code of a TV presenter: ‘Sia [Kossioni] felt hot today and dressed too lightly’ or Aleka Papariga’s (the leader of the Greek communist party) hairstyle: ‘Alekaki [an overly familiar and therefore sarcastic address] finally changed her hair; you had to see it in all its beauty’. As they proudly pointed out to me, theirs was one of very few ships that had a TV set with such an elaborate antenna-tuning mechanism, all because of the advanced technical knowledge of the crew: ‘We invented this patent to tune the antenna’. The officers’ mess lay almost deserted only when approaching ports, since the workload increased demandingly, or when we were ashore. As soon as the ship was in port most crew members tried reestablishing contact with their families electronically using “on the go” cards of the Italian branch of Wind (a phone company). The officers’ mess was the “public space” of the ship where I spent most of my research time, sometimes speaking, other times listening to the crew members’conversations without interfering. While in the first few days I had come up with a preliminary interview guide, which I used in interviews with

Figure 2.1 A view from the bridge. Source: author’s photograph.

46

Giorgos Tsimouris

officers and ratings, I  soon realised that my guide was redundant, since in most cases the issues I had been interested in since the beginning would regularly come up in conversations anyway. Their hard lives on board, their nostalgia for their families and favourite pastimes ashore, and their relations with intercultural “others” onboard were indeed amongst the main topics of their usual conversations. They nevertheless rarely discussed their adventures in ports since, according to them, it was the older mariners only that had the chance to stay in ports long enough to have stories to tell.

The ship as a stage for hierarchical, intercultural interactions: diversity as a power relation. Advice offered to me by an ex-mariner before embarkation: ‘Onboard, there is only God and the Captain . . . [lowering his voice] but if you want my advice there is only the ship’s captain.’

As I have already argued, cooperation and good communication on board are highly valued. As Oldenburg et al. (2009, 103) stress, the fact that ‘approximately 80% of the world merchant fleets are manned with multinational crews’ is a cause of social isolation and ‘can affect the safety on ships’. In a conversation I had with an officer, he stressed to me the importance of attending seminars on effective communication on board so that ‘a sailor will be able to understand the seriousness of commands, because our job here relies heavily on teamwork’. On several occasions officers referred to the interdependence of crew members as well as the need for everyone to act professionally as crucial aspects of their onboard safety. The chief engineer expressed this in his own way: ‘Look, if the engines stop working due to poor maintenance, we’ll be the ones in danger  – not the shipowner,’ he said laughingly. When I  raised the issue of the language barriers amongst crew members of diverse ethnic origins an officer replied that verbal exchanges pertain predominantly to work issues and everyone’s English is adequate enough to communicate on these. Despite the emphasis placed on the smooth cooperation amongst crew members, which appears to promote equality onboard, ships indisputably remain highly hierarchical places. Helen Sampson (2013, 11) has good reasons to argue that ‘hierarchy is a defining feature of life on board’. The very architecture of the ship not only promotes hierarchical relations but also reminds us of Foucault’s (1979) panopticon, since it is designed to allow visual inspection and control. Briefly, on the ship I boarded, which is typical in terms of its architecture and spatial organisation of oil tankers this size, there were two levels for the crew in the accommodation area. In the lower level there were cabins for the boatswain (deck foreman), the cook and the deck sailors, while the upper level held cabins for officers, the chief engineer and the captain. The

Interaction and loneliness on board

47

space and amenities of each cabin reflected the onboard hierarchy (see also Mitakou, this volume). The cabins of the captain and the chief engineer were located at opposite sides of the corridor in order for the highest-ranking officials to have views of the corridor, which also served as the sole passageway for crew members to get on and off deck. Similarly, there were two separate messes and dining rooms for crew members: one mess and dinning room were open to officers only and the remaing ones were for the ratings of the deck. One of my aims was to explore how people of different ethnic backgrounds used the ship’s communal spaces when they were off duty – since their onduty activities and interactions were after all dictated by strict regulations, the onboard hierarchy and their professional ranks. Their leisure time, on the other hand, was a lot less restricted and left intercultural interactions and the use of messes largely unregulated. I was also especially interested to identify the extent that ethnic and cultural familiarities impinged (or not) on the existent onboard hierarchy. I came to realise, almost as soon as I boarded the ship, that the use of communal spaces when sailors were off duty was largely contingent on the sailor’s cultural backgrounds instead of the onboard hierarchy. In fact, the latter was partly overwritten in favour of the former. Interestingly enough, while there was excellent cooperation during work hours, the interaction between seafarers of different ethnic origins was very limited in their free time. As observed in other such onboard studies, the interaction between Greek officers and Filipino ratings remained rather formal and was mainly work-oriented (Acejo 2012, 78). It was also partly shaped by negative stereotypes (Serck-Hanssen 1997, cf. Østreng, 2001a). Consequently, the two ethnic groups interacted as little as possible in their free time, when there was no work-related reason for them to do so. Specifically, I never saw in the officers’ mess the third engineer from the Philippines, unlike the only senior sailor of Greek origin, who visited the place regularly. The officers’ mess was the place frequented by the captain, the officers, the young officers, the cadet captains and the engineer cadet, all of whom were Greek. More interestingly, the captain, chief engineer, officers and the visitor had designated seats on the sofa and chairs. After dinner most Greek crew members went into the officers’ mess and stayed there until late at night, chatting or watching TV. The captain confided in me that he departed earlier than the others, in order to allow young officers to loosen up and behave more casually than when he was there. To my surprise, I never saw in the officer’s mess the young Russian officer apart from a few specific instances when he had come seeking the captain’s advice or following the captain’s explicit invitation to come and watch a football game. Along the same lines, the electrician and the cook, the two Romanian crew members, visited the mess only twice during my time on board after the captain had invited them to come and watch European Championship football games. Naturally, none of the Filipino sailors ever joined us in the officers’ mess. After all, ‘ratings are not permitted to enter the spaces of officers (any

48

Giorgos Tsimouris

spaces, not just cabin spaces) unless expressly invited, or instructed to do so’ (Sampson 2013, 215–216). Apparently, the Filipinos were never ‘instructed to do so’. I, nevertheless, came across no complaints from any of the Greeks regarding the senior Greek sailor who exclusively frequented and socialised in the officers’ mess without deeming an invitation necessary. Correspondingly, during my visits in the sailors’ mess, I was only met by hospitable sailors from the Philippines who were not to be found in any other communal area of the ship. Even the third engineer from the Philippines made a habit of having lunch in the sailors’ dining room together with his other compatriots instead of the dining room, which was suited to his rank. The Russian officer sometimes had lunch in the officers’ dining room – on his own as others had already finished – shortly after the designated lunch time. It is possible that he intentionally delayed his lunch because he had no particular attachments to anybody so as to have lunch with them. In the course of my visits in the sailors’ mess I was treated in a kind, but obviously detached, manner. This was due to the fact that the sailors either saw me as one of the captain’s men or a company representative – if not both, for that matter. The only Greek who used to socialise from time to time in the sailors’ mess and play electronic games with the Filipinos his age was a young engineer cadet. These were rare instances when the similar ages and interests of the players briefly bridged both ethnic and hierarchical divides on board. From the early days of my research, I noticed that, while I spoke to the cook in English, the official language of the ship, he replied to me in Greek. This was repeated several times until I began communicating with him in Greek about the food. I thought back to this rather strange linguistic interaction later, when I realised that the officers too spoke to the cook in Greek. When I posed a natural question to a senior officer – ‘you talk to the cook in Greek: does he understand Greek?’ – he replied, ‘After so many years with us he learned Greek.’ One afternoon when I  came across the Russian officer in the dining room he wished me ‘bon appétit’ in Greek (kali orexi). I asked him then to teach me the equivalent expression in Russian. After he taught this to me, he smiled politely and added, ‘It is hard for you to remember’. This incident made me realise that Greek was the predominant language on board. Since most officers were Greek, it appeared that through them Greekness or at least the Greek language had come to dominate the space of the ship. The sailors from the Philippines with the boatswain and the third engineer totalled 11 people, and used to gather together in the sailors’ mess, talking, watching TV or singing karaoke. The electrician and the cook, both Romanian in origin, used to visit from time to time the sailors’ mess and gradually developed an amicable relationship with the Filipinos. In one of our outings at the port of Augusta, Sicily, I tagged along with a large group of young Greek officers. The two sailors from Romania, who always did things together, came with us too. They nevertheless sat at the end of the table in the café. I  thus observed that, even in ports, where crew members were allowed to go out in

Interaction and loneliness on board

49

large groups, these outing groups were formed in accordance with the crew members’ nationalities. The Russian officer used to spend many hours alone in his cabin and I had not noticed him socialise much with anybody else. He was a tall, blond, joyful young man, a stereotypical Russian. I thought him very amicable and approachable and when I interviewed him he was eager to answer all my questions. He told me that he was pleased with the conditions on board the ship, especially the captain and the rest of the crew. When I commented that it must be hard for him to be the only Russian and consequently have no compatriot friends on board, he again replied that he was very happy with the captain and as far as he was concerned ‘the captain is the most important person on board’. He then added that he always sought to serve under this particular captain on board ships. When I asked why he had not developed any amicable relationships with other crew members and whether there were reasons related to ethnic origins that had prevented him from doing so, he replied in English: ‘It’s not a matter of origin; it depends on the personality of each one of us so it depends on whether you match or not with somebody.’ He added that in a previous journey he had become good friends with a Greek guy named Yiorghos, pronouncing the name in perfect Greek. I accepted his interpretation without being fully persuaded of the lack of significance of cultural differences and linguistic barriers in the dynamics of interethnic relations on board. Such an interpretation contrasts with the broadly observed discontent on the seamen’s part with the multinational composition of crews and their coexistence onboard (see Østreng 2001a, Oldenburg et al. 2009, 103, Oldenburg et al. 2010, 252). Compulsory coexistence of different ethnic groups within the small space of the ship does not normally lead to intercultural exchanges and mutual understanding but, as will be shown below, tends to consolidate further pre-existent ethnic prejudices and stereotypes (Østreng 2001a). Since the captain and most of the officers were Greek, as noted previously, the Greeks were the dominant ethnic group on board. Even though Greeks did not outnumber the sailors from the Philippines, their power advantage in the hierarchical, isolated, “total institution” of the ship was obvious. Moreover, the facts that the ship owner was also Greek and that the ship sailed under a Greek flag served to establish the Greek hegemony aboard further. As aforementioned, the hierarchical structure of the crew highlighted the captain’s crucial social  – apart from practical and administrative  – role on board. For instance, alcohol was prohibited on board, including possession of alcohol in the crew’s cabins. It was up to the captain to decide on which day alcohol could be consumed and this was usually allowed in the officer’s mess. Such allowances were made irregularly but on average once a week and were usually prompted by the absence of urgent work to attend to, or on account of a major celebration, or by the captain’s concern regarding the psychological well-being of the crew and crew members’ relations. These small celebrations

50

Giorgos Tsimouris

normally occurred on open sea or whilst anchored in wait for the next commission, never at port or when loading oil at the platform. Along with the regular Greek officers, the sailors from Romania and the Russian officer occasionally joined the celebration. The Filipinos, on the other hand, never participated and always organised a separate event of their own in the mess allocated to sailors. During one such feast, held in the kitchen a few days after Easter, where all the members of the crew participated except the mariners from the Philippines, we were standing for about six hours around the cook’s large counter, which was full of roasted meats, appetisers and alcoholic drinks. One of the young officers undertook the responsibility of playing – mainly Greek – dance music on the DVD apparatus, and as he gradually turned up the volume the music played well over our voices. The event turned into pandemonium, the mood reached its zenith, and people started laughing, crying, teasing their colleagues, dancing and periodically making a show of dancing as heterosexual couples. The intensity and openness of this event reminded me of school parties on the occasion of the final-year excursion and outings with fellow soldiers during my military service days in the Greek army. I was one of the last to leave the ‘playground’, as one cadet characterised this event. The feast had started at 12 noon and ended around six pm. The next day, a young engineer, famous for his refreshing sense of humour, approached me and said, ‘It is unfortunate that you left early yesterday. Shortly after your departure a Russian ballet group joined us. These women were truly terrific.’ I recognised again in his self-sarcastic tone, the desire to present things as if they were happening on land and not in confinement. ‘We need to act like children from

Figure 2.2 A party in the kitchen of the tanker. Faces are blurred. Source: author’s photograph.

Interaction and loneliness on board

51

time to time in order to keep ourselves entertained and get rid of our stress,’ commented another officer. Returning to the issue of multicultural interactions, it is important to point out that on Easter Sunday only, and following the captain’s instructions, all members of the crew had lunch together in the officers’ dining room. For this specific occasion, the cook and his assistant had rearranged the room and added more tables. Still, Greek officers and Filipino sailors sat at separate tables. There was only one table where Greeks (young cadets and a sailor) and Filipinos sat together, and even this rare occurrence was not the result of free choice but of the restrictions imposed by the limited number of tables.

Multicultural heterogeneity onboard: In-between first-hand experience and preestablished cultural stereotypes. While it has been argued that heterogeneity within small groups in extreme environments promotes the growth of conflict and tension, and negatively affects the behaviour and actions of the group members (Gushin, Pustynnikova and Smirnova 2001, cf. Vinokhodova and Gushin 2014), this was not the case on board the oil tanker, despite the fact that crew members’ interactions were strongly mediated by cultural differences. In the period of my research, 45 days in total, I did not notice any friction in the workplace associated with cultural diversity. Instead, Greeks spoke positively about the work performance and discipline of the sailors from the Philippines. The only exception was a very young Filipino sailor, who had boarded a ship for the first time and was considered largely ineffective at his job. He worked as a waiter (kamarotos) and as the cook’s assistant. Still, even in this case, the inefficiency of the sailor was not in any way perceived to be related to his ethnic origin. In addition, a senior officer entrusted to me that ‘in the past, in ships this size there were at least five people staffing the kitchen and not just two. That’s why they run all the time [the cook and the waiter] without being able to meet their workload.’ Unsurprisingly, the young Filipino sailor submitted his resignation before the termination of his contract. Overall, the sailors from the Philippines were commented on positively: ‘they are disciplined people’, ‘polite’, ‘they concentrate on their work’, ‘they are well educated’, ‘their English is good’ etc. Greek officers too stressed their good collaboration with the Filipino crew members, who constituted the largest ethnic group on board. Specifically, they pointed out that Filipinos preferred boarding ships with Greek officers, because they found their compatriot officers particularly demanding and authoritarian, and thought of them as making their working conditions and lives very hard. The Filipinos’ preference for working under Greek officers was further corroborated by one of the company’s executives. As the latter was keen to explain, owing to his position he had full knowledge of staff requests and job applications submitted. Similarly, Greek officers also praised

52

Giorgos Tsimouris

repeatedly the character and professional ethos of the Russian officer, as well as the performance and professionalism of both the cook and the electrician. Considering all these positive comments concerning the working aspects of their intercultural interaction, I was surprised to hear a senior Greek officer call the Filipinos ‘Filipinia’. This gender-neutral, negative characterisation can be seen as an act of infantilisation, pointing to underlying prejudices. The latter could be related to the inferior ranks of Filipinos on board (McKay 2007, 630) and to them having been subjected to a colonial rule in the past. I also heard derogatory remarks from at least two officers regarding Filipino sailors: ‘Until the 80s they still lived in tribes; it was the Greeks that taught them seamanship [naftosini].’ ‘They still bear this habit from colonial times when you approach them: they make a slight bow to greet you and hold their hands forward for you to see they’re not holding a knife.’ ‘They hold on to some strange habits . . . on board another ship they had left the eggs to spoil and the smell permeated through their dining room. They wanted to use the spoilt eggs in a magic recipe as part of a ritual and eat them rotten . . . When I figured this out, I  got angry and threw the eggs away in a rubbish bin.’ ‘On another vessel they caught pigeons on deck and kept them in cages so that they would drink their blood. It is a Filipino tradition, I learned later, pertaining to a magic rite.’ Another Greek officer added: ‘Filipinos cover their heads when they work under the sun not to protect themselves but because they’d hate to get darker than they already are. They prefer to look white.’ As Østreng (2001a, 17) argues, in his research on the life of sailors on board ‘there is no clear evidence stating the role of contact in reduction of intergroup hostility and elimination of stereotypes’. A similar point is raised by Sampson (2013) in her recent research on life on board. She writes: In addition to rank, nationality and occupational culture there is evidence that language barriers can arise . . . it is also apparent that in a few cases seafarers can seemingly transcend all of these factors and forge friendships across nationality and rank of a deeper and more binding nature. (Sampson 2013, 127, emphasis added)

Furthermore, not even first-hand experience of coexistence with diverse ethnic groups could aid in overcoming or toning down existing, well-established prejudices. Thus, conventions formulated by nationalist hegemonic ideologies and euro-centrism prove more powerful than experience itself (Gramsci 1971). Alcoholism seems to be a major problem on board ships. As Oldenburg et al. (2010, 249) substantiate, ‘fatal injuries during off-duty hours are often associated with alcohol consumption’, since ‘some seamen compensate shipboard isolation with high alcohol consumption’ (ibid. 252). While alcholism was never an issue in this ship due to strict control over drinking by the captain, it came up often in the crew’s stories. The established stereotype for Russian sailors is that of ‘petty communist drunkards’ (bekrokommounia),

Interaction and loneliness on board

53

Figure 2.3 Working on deck: two Filipino sailors bending down, a Greek officer on the left and two more Greek sailors on the right. Source: author’s photograph.

because, as was explained to me, ‘Russians usually drink heavily even when they are themselves in charge, and they are alcoholics’. One of the young officers added: ‘don’t take our Russian officer as an example; had he been amongst his compatriots, he wouldn’t have behaved as he does now’. In order to support further this generalised assertion that most – if not all – Russians drunk excessively, they gave me accounts of specific incidents. In one such incident, the protagonist was a Russian captain who fell into a coma from excessive alcohol consumption and had to be taken by helicopter to the hospital. The chief engineer narrated the story of a Russian officer who came regularly to the engine room and made a project out of welding together various copper pipes and fittings. The engineer expressed his wonder about the potential usage of such an elaborate gadget. ‘My wonder was over,’ he continued, ‘when I was asked to add a teakettle to the construction, which was to serve as a distillery cauldron.’ In a third story, the same officer reported in full technical detail how one Russian sailor managed to collect alcohol out of slices of bread placed underneath electric lamps with the assistance of pieces of sponge. ‘He would then squeeze the sponge directly into his glass,’ the officer concluded. They also used to call the Egyptian inspectors and fishermen jokingly and in a rather friendly way ‘Little Hassans’ (Chassanakia). Usually, these designations were accompanied by funny stories. In one of these, the Greek crew members exchanged metal ropes, scrap iron and various other waste materials with baskets of fish brought by the Egyptian fishermen. When upon receipt of

54

Giorgos Tsimouris

the basket the officer began to examine its contents – because, as the narrator explained, in a previous transaction, the baskets contained a top layer of fish and algae underneath – the Egyptian fisherman broke into laughter, saying, ‘you are more Chassanakia than we are’. The chief engineer reported another funny occurrence where cultural and class differences resulted in a problem in the engine room of another ship: On that ship there were two Indian fellows working in the engine room. The third engineer was a Brahmin, whilst the chief engineer came from an inferior caste to his, as I learned later – I don’t know how the caste system works exactly. . . . It was funny, because the third engineer never took the orders of the chief engineer seriously and he used to walk around the engine room all day like a proper lord.’

Despite the ship having been described as a ‘hyperspace and a space of cosmopolitanism, a community that is formed by downplaying landed norms and values’ (Sampson 2003, 276, emphasis added) and the fact that ‘stereotyping diminishes with contact’ (Kahveci, Lane and Sampson 2001, i), this study managed to show that this is not always the case. An onboard community can suffer from cultural disruptions, be dispersed despite its spatial proximity, and only come together provisionally in accordance to its work needs and relevant regulations. Such communities do not overcome ethnic prejudices and refrain from attempting to bridge their cultural differences. If anything, these communities enhance prejudices further and create new stereotypes such as the ‘Chassanakia’. In this respect, Papadopoulou (this volume), drawing from Bachelard, is right to utilise the metaphor of the ship as a ‘shell’. Mariners indeed are members of ‘hybrid socialities’ and live in ‘the world in a shell’. Nevertheless, this shell does not transform them drastically. Instead, the degree of their transformation remains contingent on their cultural backgrounds and does not transcend these.

The loneliness and hardships of seafarers: ‘Places where only prostitutes, mariners and other such criminal elements socialise in’ - How do you trust your wives and partners to stay faithful to you during your numerous, long months of absence at sea? Listen closely, my friend. If my wife sleeps with another man it will be because she needed to. If your partner does this whilst having you around, then there is a real problem at hand. (An officer’s narration over beers in Sicily)

Interaction and loneliness on board

55

If I ever loved something more than you, this would be cigarettes, alcohol, books (less than anything else) and brothels. (Nikos Kavvadias 2011, 113)

I borrowed the title of this section from a commonly used statement in Greek cinema, which was often quoted as a leitmotif by ratings on board, repeated over and over again self-sarcastically. This expression summarises the negative stereotype of seamen, which the latter naturally disapprove of. It was reiterated once more over morning coffee in the context of a conversation regarding mariners’ pensions. An elderly sailor expressed his frustration over their services being insufficiently recognised and the fact that state authorities only remembered mariners when taking measures which would make mariners’ lives even harder. It was my third day on board and I was in the crowded officers’ mess when a senior officer asked me, ‘Why are you here? What are you searching for?’ I began explaining the aims of my research in accordance with the proposal I had submitted to the company’s headquarters and which had already been forwarded to the officers on board in order for them to be aware of my purposes in advance of my boarding – as I found out later. When I mentioned that as part of my research I wanted to learn about the life of seafarers at ports, the officer interrupted me and asked rather triumphantly: ‘What do you mainlanders [sterianoi] imagine? That we became seafarers just for the sex [mono gia to mouni]?’, instigating laughter amongst the officers. He went on in this triumphant manner: ‘Tell me something. Who is providing for the thousands of whores and hookers in Athens? Us sailors?’ This whole incident can be perceived as a performance encapsulating the seafarers’ demand for greater recognition and simultaneously their efforts at reducing the negative stereotypes that “people of the land” hold for them. Other similar incidents made me realise that seamen more often than not adopted a defensive stance when having to justify their life choices and themselves. To make matters worse, labels seem to follow seafarers everywhere. The stereotypical perception of seafarers as people of the underworld and potential criminal elements, for example, seems to be transcultural (Østreng 2001b and Serck-Hanssen 1997, 77). The captain, expressing his complaints for the depreciation and insufficient recognition of seafarers’ crucial socioeconomic role by both the authorities and the public, supported that ‘the severe environmental restrictions and controls imposed after 9/11 resulted in no one liking us. All they like is the stuff we carry: oil. Everybody wants a big car, a boat, a house, energy and a comfortable life but nobody wants us.’ ‘Right,’ I agreed with him, ‘someone has to do the dirty job without getting recognition.’ The facts that their profession was completely disregarded by all and that they never received the appreciation they had earned came up often in conversations.

56

Giorgos Tsimouris

Additional difficulties of life at sea pertain to the mariners’ prolonged absences from loved ones and significant others, and from the fact that they are forced to coexist on board and work closely for long periods of time with people they may find disagreeable, Greek or other (also see Carotenuto et al. 2012). There are numerous complexities arising from this on board confinement and the mariners’ resulting inability to follow and maintain their social and family lives on land. First, they eventually develop the feeling that mainlanders, even their relatives and friends, cannot adequately understand them, and that their bonds with their families and friends have been severed, if not altogether cut. This feeling is assisted further by the stereotypes that many mainlanders hold for them. From our conversations and their arguments amongst themselves I noted that they were often overwhelmed by the feeling that they had lost entire chapters of their families’ lives and that they were completely forgotten “out there” in the silent ocean. The following incident took place in a pub in Sicily (without my involvement) and is representative of the issue I just presented. The discussion was instigated by Greek officer X, who was expressing his profound grievance after looking at his mobile phone: Fuck, no phone call today either! Although they know we are around, in the Meditererranean, nobody, nothing . . . Even your own people forget about you, even your own mother . . . [at this point another officer cut in, arguing laughingly: ‘If I encouraged my mother to call me there would be no getting rid of her’] Only when you disembark everybody seems to remember you. They invite you to do things with them, go out, do this, do that, go sailing on your own boat . . . they fall on you like bees on honey. Somebody remembers to borrow money from you, another remembers out of the blue what good friends you used to be.  .  .  .  They owe me some 11,000 euros in total and I don’t think I’m even getting this money back, but I will change my ways!

On several occasions they expressed bitterness on account of being isolated from the rest of the world, cut off from their social networks. They spoke of their loneliness and the feeling that they were being financially exploited even by their own friends and partners. The latter, which was also attested to in the previous quote from officer X, brings us to another complexity that arises from mariners’ prolonged absences. Sampson (2013, 126) has also drawn attention to this matter when recounting a captain’s belief that seafarers are seen by their spouses as banks. Since, as aforementioned, mariners often feel that their loved ones cannot understand them and sometimes even forget about them, they deduce that their loved ones’ interest in them lies primarily in financial exploitation. ‘When I return home they treat me like Santa Claus,’ I was told by an officer. This feeling is intensified by the fact that people ashore have access to both the money mariners send in from afar and to numerous means of spending it. As such, people ashore truly are in a position of knowledge, experience and

Interaction and loneliness on board

57

power so as to exploit mariners financially if they choose to. The same young officer as before continued after his ‘Santa Claus’ comment: ‘Us seamen take our word and promises seriously, but on the mainland this sort of behaviour is not valued much. That’s why we feel like children when we disembark.’ They also spoke about efforts made by either them or colleagues they knew to change their lives and ‘set up a business’ ashore. The majority of such efforts had failed because the mariners had fallen victims of financial exploitation from their land-based associates, or they were not suited to a land-based job, or because their values, and codes of conduct and communication were incompatible to the prevailing ones ashore. One of the senior officers confided in me adopting a confessional style and a manner as if he was speaking to himself: ‘I earn from my job about one hundred thousand euros per annum and I am still in debt.’ From his colleagues I had already learnt that his attempts to set up a small business on land had failed because he was cheated by his business associate. Subsequently he decided to embark again having lost money and time. Instances like this make mariners all the more sceptical regarding the intentions of people ashore, including their friends and families. In addition to these, mariners often spoke about their difficulties in managing their finances and putting money into savings. A 58-year-old sailor who first boarded ships at the age of 16 said: There are very few sailors who manage their money adequately, especially amongst the old ones of my generation. You disembark and for the first month ashore you may spend two, three or four thousand euros. As time passes, of course, you realise that you can’t continue spending like this. Myself, if you can imagine, when I  was young, I  would spend money all around just for my amusement . . . but now that I’ve grown old and became a grandfather, I do not want to talk about those things. On land a man may have a smaller income but it’s easier to follow a path and organise his life around his resources. I do not know of many sailors who have done well managing their money. I would normally say ‘easy come, easy go’ [anemomazomata, diaoloskorpismata],4 but this does not hold true in this case, since our money comes from hard work. There are captains and chief engineers that reach 60, 63 or even 65 years of age and still can’t get off the ship. Can you tell me why? I’ll tell you why: if they stop working they won’t have enough to get by.

One of the officers laconically described these issues relating to the (financial) naivety of seafarers and the ease with which they could be taken advantage of as ‘the sailor’s innocence’, sighing whilst speaking the words. His phrase is also reflected in the quote ‘we feel like children when we disembark’. Finally with respect to finances, mariners also mentioned the difficulties they faced with Greek bureaucracy, since they were cut off from relevant contacts on land and missed timely access to instrumental pieces of information.

58

Giorgos Tsimouris

In these complexities, as perceived by mariners, one can discern an attempt on the mariners’ part to construct an idealised collective identity for all seafarers and draw a distinct line between “the us” (hardworking seamen who risk their lives and well-being for the profit of their significant others and land-based people in general) and “those ashore”, who lead pleasant lives in more humane conditions. Still, there is objectivity to be found in some of their arguments. Seafarers indeed lead hard, isolated lives, being cut off from their partners, friends and communities and lacking access to what Bourdieu and Passeron (1990) have called ‘social capital’. Another complexity that arises from living in the contained environment of the ship pertains to health issues. Unexpected illnesses and accidents are what every sailor is afraid of and the captain dreads. Out of the Greek crew members on board, at least two officers had first-hand experiences of onboard health emergencies. When these occur, the captain has to make quick decisions, since a delay in his emergency response can prove fatal for the patient. He is expected to diagnose the patient, assess the severity of the health problem and accordingly decide whether he will take the ship ashore or not – since it is hard for helicopters to pick up patients when the ship is in the open sea, far from the coast. Another issue mariners expressed their deep concern for was the wellbeing of their loved ones, since if health issues arose or death struck they would not be able to return immediately to shore. ‘I shudder at the idea that my mum may die and I will be unable to attend her funeral’ said emphatically an officer whose mother was a widow and lived by herself in the Piraeus. They also reported the incident of a sailor whose sister died whilst on the phone with him. The man was shocked and stood frozen, looking at the handset in his hand. Although there are similarities between being on board and having migrated abroad with respect to emergency responses in case of severe illness of a loved one, i.e. in both case the sick person is far away, seafaring remains the hardest situation to be in. Apart from the fact that access to relevant health services and information is much harder on board than ashore, it is also harder to physically get to the sick or deceased loved one, especially when the ship is in the ocean, far from land.

Concluding remarks: assorted heterotopias on the same boat? Brothels and colonies are two extreme types of heterotopia, and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in itself and at the same time is surrendered to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from watch to watch, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteenth century until

Interaction and loneliness on board

59

the present, the great instrument of economic development (I have not been speaking of that today), but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. (Foucault 1984, 49)

Ships with multicultural crews are socially if not vocationally segregated spaces rather than uniform floating communities. Following from Foucault’s dictum ‘the ship is the heterotopia par excellence’ I would like to argue that the ship under discussion consisted of numerous heterotopias and that this can also be the case for other ships managed by multinational and multicultural crews. This study showed that the ship is not a single ‘floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself’ (ibid.) but that it is constituted by several cultural places bound by the same hull. As such the ship is made of multiple floating spaces conjoined by necessity, yet isolated enough from each other so as not to communicate in intercultural terms. After all, intercultural interactions in the crew’s “free time” were kept to a minimum. Despite the fact that onboard hierarchy was extremely important for the organisation and management of the crew, cultural affinities disrupted the hierarchical order during off-duty periods and within the designated off-duty spaces. Both the Greek sailor and the Greek officers took for granted that the appropriate topos for them was the officer’s mess. And, while interactions in the workplace and during workhours were contingent on the hierarchical divisions on board, off-duty interactions were coloured by ethnic and cultural identifications. As another scholar put it, seafarers are more ‘locals’ than ‘cosmopolitans’ (Østreng 2001b, 19). What sustains their “localism” at the expense of developing a “cosmopolitanism” and/or “transnationalism” is the temporariness of their coexistence aboard, a fact that has been largely overlooked by scholars. To use Clifford’s (1997) terms, in the age of neo-liberalism seafarers, unlike other mobile multinational groups, are more ‘rooted’ in their communities of origin than ‘routed’ on board. Unlike other transpirations of transnationalism, however, ships are characterised by their temporariness, since crews change regularly and ships are perceived as pro tem workplaces. Paradoxically, while ships as spaces traverse multiple geographical borders and boundaries – especially if we take into account ship ownership, flag registration, cargo agents, technical management, ports of departure and destination, and manning agents – the ones which mariners venture crossing are few. Despite the mariners’ spatial proximity to ethnic ‘others’, the ethnic groups’ close daily interactions in the workplace and their isolation from the rest of the world, mariners remain resistant to “cosmopolitanism”. Consequently, social interactions in their free time are framed by cultural familiarity and intimacy even more so than by hierarchy and rank. One could argue that in the age of global, neo-liberal capitalism borders were relativised for the purposes of the flow of capital and goods. They were

60

Giorgos Tsimouris

nevertheless not expanded to accommodate spaces for genuine, intercultural interactions and transnational subjectification. On the contrary, as I was told on several occasions during my fieldwork, ship companies exploit cultural differences, particularities and divisions for their own interests (Sampson 2005, 82). Since employment contracts, which regulate salaries and work conditions, follow national standards, each sailor and officer is classed and paid in accordance with their nationality, instead of their rank only – as one might expect. This increases the profits made by ship companies, because it allows them to pay less to mariners from countries with low costs of living (Kahveci, Lane and Sampson 2001, i). It nevertheless has a profound, undesirable side effect: it reinforces cultural stereotypes and consolidates further cultural differences and hierarchies on board. It thus results in the conversion of the ship into a cluster of assorted monocultural heterotopias, instead of allowing it to transform into a single heterotopia inhabited by a cosmopolitan community. What has been argued for passengers on cruise ships, that they view their surroundings ‘as a space and time apart from their ordinary lives, characterized by suspensions in landed norms’ (Rankin and Collins 2017, 19, emphasis added), is not valid for seafarers. The latter (are encouraged to) remain faithful on board to their landed norms and stereotypes and refrain from suspending these.

Notes 1 This study became possible with the assistance and encouragement of the Maria Tsakos Public Benefit Foundation – Centre for Maritime Research and Tradition, based on Chios. 2 ‘Angry reprimand’ is one of the possible meanings of the word ‘rating’ according to the Mac OS built-in dictionary. 3 The translation from Greek is mine. 4 He used this Greek proverb, which literally means ‘what the wind brings in, the devil disperses’.

References Acejo, Iris, 2012, ‘Seafarers and transnationalism: ways of belongingness ashore and aboard’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 33(1), pp. 69–84. Bourdieu, Pierre & Passeron, Jean Claude, 1990, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, London, Sage. Carotenuto, Anna, Molino, Ivana, Fasanaro, Angiola M. & Amenta, Francesco, 2012, ‘Psychological stress in seafarers: A  review’, International Maritime Health 63(4), pp. 188–194.

Interaction and loneliness on board

61

Clifford, James, 1997, Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Foucault, Michel, 1979, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York, Random House/Vintage. Foucault, Michel, 1984, ‘Dis et écrits, 360, Des espaces autres’, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuitè 5, pp. 46–49. Goffman, Erving, 1961, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, New York, Anchor Books. Gramsci, Αntonio, 1971, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Hoare, Quintin & Nowell Smith, Geoffrey (ed & trans), London, Laurence and Wishart. Gushin, Vadim I., Pustynnikova, Julia M.  & Smirnova, Tatyana M., 2001, ‘Interrelations between the small isolated groups with homogeneous and heterogeneous composition’, Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments 6(1), pp. 26–33. Kahveci, Erol, Lane, Tony & Sampson, Helen, 2001, Transnational Seafarer Communities (Research Report), Cardiff, Seafarers International Research Centre, Cardiff University. Kavvadias, Nikos, 1990, Marabou, Athens, Agra. Kavvadias, Nikos, 2011, Grammata stin adelfi tou Genia kai stin Ega (Letters to Genia’s sister and to Ega), Athens, Agra. McKay, C. Steven, 2007, ‘Filipino sea men: constructing masculinities in an ethnic labour niche’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33(4), pp. 617–633. Oldenburg, Marcus, Baur, Xaver & Schlaich, Clara, 2010, ‘Occupational risks and challenges of seafaring’, Journal of Occupational Health 52, pp. 249–256. Oldenburg, Marcus, Jensen, Hans-Joachim, Latza, Ute  & Baur Xaver, 2009, ‘Seafaring stressors aboard merchant and passenger ships’, International Journal of Public Health 54, pp. 96–105. Østreng, Dοrte, 2001a, Does Togetherness Make Friends? Stereotypes and Intergroup Contact on Multiethnic-Crewed Ships, Paper 2–2001, Tønsberg, Vestfold College, Publication Series. Østreng, Dorte, 2001b, Sailors – Cosmopolitans or Locals? Occupational Identity of Sailors on Ships in International Trade, Paper 1–2001, Tønsberg, Vestfold College Publication Series. Rankin, Jonathan R. & Collins, Francis L., 2017, ‘Enclosing difference and disruption: assemblage, heterotopia and the cruise ship’, Social & Cultural Geography 18, pp. 224–244. Sampson, Helen, 2003, ‘Transnational drifters or hyperspace dwellers: an exploration of the lives of Filipino seafarers aboard and ashore’, Ethnic and Studies 26(2), pp. 253–277. Sampson, Helen, 2005, ‘Left high and dry? The lives of women married to seafarers in Goa and Mumbai’, Ethnography 6(1), pp. 61–8.

62

Giorgos Tsimouris

Sampson, Helen, 2013, International Seafarers and Transnationalism in TwentiethFirst Century, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Serck-Hanssen, Christoffer, 1997, The Construction of Distance and Segregation Onboard Ships with Mixed Crew, Unpublished manuscript for a speech presented at the fourth International Symposium on Maritime Health, Oslo, June 1997. Vinokhodova, Alla, G., and Gushin, Vadim Igorevich, 2014, ‘Study of values and interpersonal perception in cosmonauts on board of international space station’, Acta Astronautica 93, pp. 359–365.

3

A woman on a fishing boat: an ethnographic account of wilderness, familiarity and gender relations1 Brigida Marovelli

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. Publilius Syrus

This chapter is an ethnographic account of my experiences on board a Sicilian fishing vessel and examines the fishermen’s perspectives on the “art of fishing”, the sea and femininity. After months of participant observation on Placido Giuffrida and his crew’s fishing boat, where my gender was continuously challenged and my abilities and limits tested, I was finally granted a state of exception and accepted as a respectable crew member, despite the fact that I was a woman. This chapter presents the experience of a woman in a maledominated environment, the boat, and shows how gender differences under special circumstances can be suspended. Specifically, this chapter has a bipartite division. The first part focuses on the role of the body and the senses in the acquisition of competences on board and presents some of the many difficulties faced when fishing. The second part examines how fishermen perceive the sea and femininity, and concomitantly how my gender played a key role in my interactions with them. This part explicates the gendered dimensions of the fishermen’s environment and their relationship to the sea. It shows that the crew of the fishing boat drew a distinction between the safe, domestic sea of the gulf and the wild, dangerous high waters. This distinction was extended to women, some of whom were domesticated (wives) whilst others wild and uncontrollable (mistresses).

From a Sicilian fish market to a fishing vessel The present discussion is informed by ethnographic material collected during 18 months of fieldwork conducted between 2008 and 2009 and it has been further augmented by many subsequent visits to Catania. This coastal Mediterranean city has traditionally had strong links to its surrounding landscape,

64

Brigida Marovelli

namely the sea and the volcano on Mount Etna. The city is located at the foot of Mount Etna, an active volcano, on a small bay facing the Mediterranean Sea and is close to one of the few flat plains in Sicily, the Piana di Catania (the Catania plain). Catania’s first municipality hosts La Pescheria, one of Catania’s historical and traditional food markets,2 in the part of town regarded as the city centre. Although fish is the prime attraction for customers shopping in Catania’s historical market, after one year of ethnographic research at the market I still had no access to the fishermen’s square. Within the market, there is a designated area for fishermen, where they sell their catch directly. Customers in this area go around quickly and compare prices and the quality of the fish. It is a loud, intense part of the market. I approached the square many times, but I failed to find a way to connect to the vendors. One day at the market, I was introduced to a fisherman selling anchovies in the main square. Placido Giuffrida was the epitome of the fisherman, or at least of the way I had imagined fishermen to be. Dark-skinned and blueeyed, he had been a fisherman his entire life, like his father. At the time he was 59 years old and had already spent 45 years on his boat. His face had wrinkles caused by prolonged exposures to the sun. During our meeting that day he neither smiled nor welcomed me to the market. To him I was yet another journalist interested in writing about how exotic the fish market was.3 Our first attempts to communicate were anything but successful. At the market, he seemed unwilling to talk and his mumbling through his teeth made understanding him even harder. Nonetheless, I tried to interview Placido there. He seemed annoyed by my questions; he had all too often read in the papers stereotypical representations of fishermen as uneducated and desperate, and he never missed an opportunity to express his disagreement with this image. He made sure I understood that he was neither poor nor desperate. He owned properties in Catania, he and his family enjoyed a good standard of living, he had managed to build a house for each of his four children, and his son had a high school degree. When I asked him to speak about his profession, Placido was reluctant to answer. After all, he felt that his primary field of operations was not the market but the sea. So Placido offered me a laconic answer: ‘Fishermen fish’. Then he added that, if I wished to know about his profession, I had to join him on board and watch him work. His suggestion was meant more as a challenge than an invitation; he was testing my courage and determination, and was furthermore trying to understand how far a young journalist would be willing to go. When I took him up on his offer enthusiastically, he replied, ‘Meet us at the harbour café, tonight at one am,’ in an attempt to make it as unattractive for me to go as possible. I nodded yes, with my childish enthusiasm intact, and he looked worried. Afterwards he revealed to me that he had pushed it too far, because the harbour was hardly an appropriate place for a woman, especially at that time of night. At the time, however, it was too late for him to go back

A woman on a fishing boat

65

on his word. So, on that night, as instructed, I went to the harbour’s café and waited for two hours for him to show up, drawing the scrutinising glances of the bartender and the other puzzled and amused fishermen. To my relief, when Placido and his crew finally arrived, he welcomed me with his warm smile and kissed me on the cheek. This gesture immediately resulted in dissipating the tension surrounding me. Placido’s son, Gaetano, asked me immediately, ‘Have you ever been on a boat?’ ‘Yes, a few times,’ I replied, ‘travelling to Sardinia, and sailing’ (all quotes are extracts from field notes collected between 2008 and 2009). Gaetano looked at me and said with a mocking tone: ‘Sailing, mmm . . . [the crew laughed] it is not quite the same. We shall see. C’è mare oggi’. C’è mare’ (there is sea). He stood to say, ‘the weather at sea is bad today.’ The wind blew strong and there were small breaking waves, which I did not know what to make of at the time. Once on board, the crew started overhauling the gear. The bridge was very small and there was hardly enough space to move on deck. The stern was occupied by the power winch. We left the harbour and travelled for ten miles, heading south. While steering the boat, I remember Placido proudly explaining to me the kind of fishing technique they were using. It took me another ten times aboard really to understand what he was talking about. As predicted, the weather was bad that night and swells caused the boat to rock violently. I tried concentrating on what took place on board; nevertheless, all this movement began to upset my stomach. I asked questions about everything, but once I took my notebook out and started writing Placido told me, ‘Don’t sit down and write. It will make you sick in this weather,’ and Jacopo, another crew member, made fun of me: ‘Look at the doctor, she is green. She might throw up.’ I was already throwing up in the water before he even finished his sentence. I probably could not have found a better ice-breaker than vomiting on my first trip with the fishermen. My notes from this first onboard experience were useless, but the fishermen really liked me, especially when I boarded the boat again despite this initial, traumatic experience. The second time on board I had the feeling that I had passed my initiation challenge. Still, this was only the beginning; there were more tests to come.

Acquiring bodily competence on the boat The first few times on board the crew teased me about my many mistakes, especially with regard to the ways I physically positioned myself on deck. My inability to move appropriately on board posed a danger to both my safety and the rest of the crew’s. One day Placido shouted at me while I was sitting on the prow: ‘Are you babba [stupid]? You can lose an arm sitting there, while we pull the nets’. Babbo in Sicilian applies to a person who is not competent, in contrast to ‘sperto/a’, which translates as expert, experienced but also smart. In

66

Brigida Marovelli

2011, when I returned to Sicily, there was a new crew member, whom I met on his first day on board. Placido said jokingly, You see, Brigida, finally you are more sperta [experienced] than a fisherman. A fisherman? He still needs to become one! I am sure you will do better than him today. Look at him, he doesn’t even know how to stand on deck.

The mockery continued for the entire duration of our journey; the new assistant was under the spotlight, watched by everyone. His apprenticeship had only just begun and he was required to develop the bodily competences to allow him “to be” on board. Accordingly, a sperto moves, assesses and interacts efficiently in the familiar space of the boat. (S)he deals confidently with the other crew members’ jokes and knows his/her way around the boat. Being sperto was often explained to me as ‘being able to move around’. The latter has an obvious spatial connotation but also implies a broader sensory awareness. On board the crew is always alert, watching constantly the horizon, checking if the engine is making strange noises, consulting the navigational instruments and so on (see Bowles, this volume). As such, being on board is an ardent bodily experience. The fishermen’s horizon is what Tim Ingold (2012, 199) has called the ocean-sky.4 After many times on board, I began helping out the crew with their daily activities. Many friends were also invited to the boat; photographers, filmmakers and artists, who joined us in our nocturnal excursions. One night, when my Greek friend Thanassis was completing a photo-reportage for a website, Placido told me before leaving the harbour: ‘Darling, you have been on this boat too many times to act like a guest. You have to work and earn your portion of the fish. So be ready, because we are short of hands today.’ I thought this was a joke, but soon I realised that two crew members had not shown up and Placido meant what he had told me. When they hauled out the net, they realised that the school of fish they had spotted on the radar had swum underneath the net and they had only managed to catch a few anchovies (masculine). Placido was upset, and Gaetano and Jacopo were waiting for him to decide what they should do next. It was already late and there was not much time before the market opened. Placido said, ‘We throw the net again.’ They looked at each other; Jacopo was shaking his head and Gaetano asked his father: ‘Are you sure?’ – and, turning towards me, he added – ‘there’s going to be a massacre,’ ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘You will see’, he answered. In cases when the net is to be thrown back in the sea, there is not enough time for the anchovies to be removed one by one by hand from the net while the latter is already drifting in the water. Instead of being handled manually, the fish-full net is hauled in with the power winch, which cuts the fish in two at the point these are caught in the net. Placido stuck his head out of the bridge: ‘Dottoressa, this is the chance for you to earn your bread. You can’t be on our boat without doing anything! Come on! Help us out with this bloody fish.’

A woman on a fishing boat

67

Figure 3.1 The anchovies massacre. Source: photograph by Thanasis Lomef Zacharopoulos; used with permission.

This was the first time I had a living organism dying in my hands; I had to grab the body of the anchovy with one hand, pulling it firmly out of the net, while spreading the mesh open with the other. It looked easy whilst I observed their experienced hands, but, once I started doing it myself, I realised how rough the net was and how slippery the anchovies. We stopped after half an hour and the massacre commenced. Plastic crates were placed under the net for the collection of the cut-in-half, falling fish. Blood and fish scales splattered everywhere on deck and the quality of the catch was compromised. After that, the fishermen had to select the bigger fish, missing only their heads, and discard the smaller ones, split in two by the power winch. This meant that their catch would be sold at a lower price due to its poor quality and the fact that they would get it to the market late. The selection took a long time and huge amounts of fish were thrown back in the sea, to the delight of the seagulls following us. ‘Brigida, come here’ – Placido screamed from the bridge in the most anxious state I had ever seen him in – ‘you have to drive the boat’. ‘What? Me?’ ‘Yes, yes, you! It’s easy. Can you see that black spot over there? This is the harbour; you have to take us there. Hold the steering wheel and keep the needle of the compass stably here, in-between this black space. You see? Do you understand?’

68

Brigida Marovelli

‘Placido, are you sure?’ ‘We don’t have another option; you drive and we select the fish’. I drove the boat and we almost collided with other fishing vessels twice. Placido ignored my screams for help coming from the bridge. Besides, the engine made too much noise for us to hear each other. In the end we got to the harbour safely and Placido declared happily: ‘And for the first time it was a woman that took us home.’ This was one of the instances that the gender difference between me and the fishermen had been suspended. After having acquired the bodily competence to move on board and thus qualified as a sperta, or at least as not a total babba, I then proved that I could be of assistance when difficulties arose at sea. I had gradually passed several stages of initiation into the “art of fishing” and was slowly becoming accepted as a member of the team instead of only as an anthropologist on board. As evident in Placido’s phrase, quoted above, I was accepted despite my gender. The latter was acknowledged and then bypassed in the face of me having proved my worth in the male-dominated environment of the boat.

The domestic sea and the wild sea Placido is a silent man who does not like to waste words. To a certain extent he embodies the Sicilian notion of menza parola (half a word). This expression is used broadly in Sicily and means ‘half a word is enough; I don’t need to say more’. When I  started interviewing people at the market, they would often make use of this expression in their answers. It is also similar to saying ‘You already know, everybody knows, there is no need to explain’. Placido would rather say a word too few, than one too many; he weighed his words carefully. Despite his reluctance to talk, Placido shared with me his sense of belonging in Sicily and its landscape. You are learning to love this place, Brigida. You know a lot about our food already, now you are learning where it comes from. (Placido, 59)

I soon discovered that for fishermen “the sea” is not a generic term. Since this is the element they spend more than half of their day in, they have learnt to distinguish between types of seas. Accordingly, they often spoke of the differences between the local, familiar sea (the Gulf of Catania) and the deep waters. This distinction also pertains to the differing types of fishing activities carried out in each of the two environments. The local, familiar sea of Catanian Gulf is dotted with small fishing vessels, preying on small fish, such as anchovies and sardines, which are indigenous to the Mediterranean and the easiest to catch within the gulf. This is the sea that fishermen perceive as domestic

A woman on a fishing boat

69

Figure 3.2 The landscape: Mount Etna and Catania seen from the boat. Source: photograph by Thanasis Lomef Zacharopoulos; used with permission.

and domesticated, familiar and therefore not dangerous. This was clearly expressed in Placido’s words: You see, this landscape is familiar to me. I was a child when I started fishing here. I never get scared here. This sea is like home to me. You can see Catania and the volcano from here. You easily recognise where you are and you don’t get lost. This is like home.

The view from the boat is exactly as Placido described it. One can see the volcano and, when closer to shore, Catania stands out as the largest city on the coastline for miles. This bay is a comforting space for Placido and the other local fishermen, because it is close to home and far less dangerous than the high seas. According to the fishermen, here in the gulf it is possible for one to familiarise oneself with the sea and be less frightened of it. Placido remarked that even I had become accustomed to the sea after having fished in the gulf: ‘In the gulf you get more used to it. Like you, do you remember the first time on the boat? [We both laughed] You were more scared and you got sick. Now you are trained.’ In other words, Placido told me how the gulf with its unique qualities and powers had trained me in seamanship. Placido perceived the Gulf of Catania as an extension of the city. Since the latter is his home, the sea too is perceived as a domestic environment. It is still

70

Brigida Marovelli

risky, as the sea always is, but it is nevertheless domesticated, tamed and by extension safer than the open, undomesticated waters. The fisherman’s activities within the gulf become normalised, in the same manner that domestic activities can become a routine. The working hours remain tough, but still, they are more compatible with family life. Placido used to say: I like my home, I like going back every night. It is much better to go fishing close to Catania, and then go home. This way it feels just like other people, who go to work and get back home for lunch.

On the other hand, the deep waters house activities such as trawling and fishing for bigger species, like tuna and swordfish, which are considered wilder. Fishermen view trawling and fishing in deeper waters as far more dangerous than fishing in the gulf. It requires considerably longer periods of time spent on board and also a greater financial investment. As one of the regular customers in the market pointed out, while buying some tuna that a fisherman had caught that morning, ‘the sea is dangerous, unknown, full of perils. It is the same sea Ulysses got lost in.’ The two local species of fish that are valued the most by customers, tuna (tonno in Italian, tunnina in Sicilian) and swordfish (pesce spada in Italian, pisci spata in Sicilian), are also the most challenging catches. In the past, tuna and swordfish fishing in Sicily was accorded a different status to that of fishing for other species, and was thought to be complying with a unique set of rules. Fishing for swordfish in the Messina strait, for example, was associated with hunting, since swordfish are predatory and are considered wild (Collet 1984). Collet (1984) also discussed how fishing for swordfish has traditionally been regarded as a form of art instead of a profession, namely an art representing the power struggle between man and nature. This power struggle was surrounded by rituals and magic, and this was also the case with tuna fishing. The latter has a long history in Sicily (Longo and Brett 2012). According to my informants, the tonnaroti (a local term for tuna fishermen) held the highest status among fishermen. They were the ones performing the mattanza inside the Sicilian tonnare. A tonnara is a trapping mechanism designed to capture migrating tuna before or after spawning (Longo and Brett 2012). The mattanza, from the Spanish matar (to slaughter), is the final stage in the process of catching tuna and was performed in the tonnara’s camera della morte (chamber of death) (Longo and Brett 2012). It was within this ritualised context that tuna and swordfish were caught. Note that the amount of blood coming out of a slaughtered tuna cannot be compared to the blood pouring out of any other fish. Additionally, unless tuna is properly bled out, its meat is less tasty. Nowadays the industrialisation and modernisation of fishing have challenged the importance attributed to this activity (Mondardini Morelli 1990a, Mondardini Morelli 1990b), and fish and animal farming have altered our relationship to animals (Fitzgerald 2010).

A woman on a fishing boat

71

Placido does not enjoy going too far out from the shore. He says, ‘I don’t like to go far away. I like to fish like this. In this area.’ His attitude was mocked by the younger crew members, who teased him constantly: ‘He is scared [Si scanta]. For him fishing means this [pointing to the sea around the boat]. He doesn’t like the deep waters. A  few weeks ago we went for tuna. We were away for three days and Placido could not sleep at all on the boat.’ Fishermen who trawl and fish in deeper waters view, to this day, fish as gifts which they have the right to collect if they prove themselves brave enough to face the sea. Theirs is a very similar concept to the one Hell (1996, 207) described in his presentation of the perception of the ‘wild’ and of hunting practices in Europe: In southern European countries and in the major part of France, hunting is associated with the notion of free right of gathering. Hunters reject any idea of reasoned management of the wild fauna, considering that game “grows on its own”; they prefer the beating method, which is described as an ancient and traditional hunting custom. In this hunting as “gathering”, everything is done to maintain a wide separation between the domestic and the wild.

This parallelism between fishing and hunting is very important, since both activities take place in environments viewed as wild and dangerous. In addition, they are both male-dominated activities, which pertain to the separation between domesticated and wild spaces. Fishermen are exposed to the dramatic sight of blood and dirt. There, nature exhibits itself as uncontrollable and dangerous. The presence of fishermen, however, in this environment emblematises their victory over the unknown sea. The role of the fishermen is to ‘domesticate the wild’, and to do so they need to ‘draw it into the boundaries of the known, to “fix” it into a (hopefully) secure state’ (Anderson 1997, 481). New generations of local fishermen, as shown below, push the boundaries of this significance even further, to the extent that their relationship to the landscape, as well as to women, bears a distinct, generational difference to that of their predecessors. Gaetano tried to convince his father to invest his life savings in the purchase of a new boat, fully equipped for tuna fishing. Placido’s response to his son’s ambition was ambivalent. On the one hand he was proud of him carrying on ‘the art of fishing’ (l’arte della pesca, Placido’s words) and on the other he feared that he would lose his capital in a risky project: ‘I remember being young. When you are young, you tend to take the wrong steps, in order to go further than your abilities allow [Fare il passo più lungo della gamba, which literally means to take a step longer than your leg].’ Gaetano’s vision, nevertheless, was not impaired in the least by his father’s concerns. He told me about his dream: It is going to be big. You will have a place to sleep there. Because if we take you with us for tuna [per tonni, meaning fishing tuna], we will be away for

72

Brigida Marovelli at least a week. Will you cope? It is hard stuff, but this is my dream. I don’t want to keep doing the same thing here in the gulf for my entire life. I want more money and more fun.

Wild and domesticated women This generational difference is also reflected in the way these fishermen speak about their relationships with women. One of the fishermen spoke to me openly about his extramarital affairs, without disguising his pride in being a predator: I have some amichette.5 You know, women. But my wife is my wife. I respect her and my family. I have a special friend, she is a bit wild, out of control. One night we held a dinner with a bunch of my friends and my wife was there too. While cooking, my amichetta was teasing me. She came to me to help her open a bottle of wine, and touched my muscles to show how strong I was. Then she kissed me on the cheek, but in a very implying way. My wife got so upset. I explained to her that it was nothing. She is very reserved, shy. She is not extravagant. She is a good wife.

Placido also suggested that he was able to conquer any woman, even the wild ones and said: ‘Have you ever heard of this proverb? In Sicily we say “vavvaluci a sucari e fimmini a vasari um puonnu mai saziari” [you will never be fully satisfied of sucking snails and kissing women].6 It’s true, isn’t it?’ In this phrase women are related to the physical pleasure of sucking snails, which are also considered aphrodisiacs. In the fishermen’s view, as long as a man was a good provider for his family and a respectful husband, he was allowed to enjoy the company of other women, especially of the wild ones. Placido, like many other fishermen I spoke to, extended their division of the wild and the domesticated sea to women, who were accordingly grouped as either good wives or uncontrollable women. Respectable wives lived mainly indoors and took good care of the house and children. They were housewives with no interest in finding a job. Modern girls, on the other hand, who go to school, get married at a later age, do not like cooking and spend too much time outside, were characterised as wild, tempting but not good wife material. I was also included in this latter category, but only conditionally. Specifically, one day, having returned to shore after a night out fishing, Placido introduced me to a friend of his like this: ‘She is an extravagant femmina.7 She won’t get married, she is not afraid. She travels the world all by herself, without a man. But she deserves respect’. I think that the key word in this description is the adversative conjunction ‘but’ in the last sentence. Despite being a “wild” woman, I needed to be respected, not least because of my role on board.

A woman on a fishing boat

73

Returning to the hunting parallel, Gaetano, Placido’s son, described his relationship to women like this: My wife is 21. When we met, we were 16. After one year we got engaged. Now we are expecting our second child. You know, she doesn’t like to go out. She is very reserved. She likes to stay at home. For me it is different. I need to go out with my friends, have a few drinks. I am not interested in other women. When we go to a club, I like to flirt, to have girls around. My friends are always surprised that I can control myself. It is not a matter of control. I like the hunting process, I like to flirt, but it is not a matter of consuming. I like it this way. When I go back home, even if it is three am, I always fight with my wife. This is normal I guess. She gets upset. She is right, but I have different needs, you know. She is content being at home with the kid. I like that too, but a good night out is also necessary for me. What do you think? I am 22.

In Gaetano’s account his power as a man is self-realised in the hunt; so much so that he does not even care to proceed to consuming his prey. He simply needs to hunt even though he is not hungry. This powerful, masculine metaphor brings to mind the bravery that Placido recognises in his son for wanting to go tuna fishing. Gaetano is not afraid of the wilderness, ventures there as often as he wishes, and afterwards decides for himself what to do with his catch. From Placido’s and Gaetano’s accounts it is evident that they both differentiate between the domestic sea of the gulf and the wild open waters, and then project this differentiation to women. Their attitudes towards wilderness are dissimilar but consistent. Placido prefers fishing in the gulf, because he enjoys returning home. To him the sea of the gulf as well as his boat, which is suited to the needs of this type of fishing, are extensions of his home (for the notion of the boat perceived as a home, see also Bowles and Papadopoulou, this volume). He ventures in the wild by fishing occasionally in the deep waters and having mistresses, but in his own words he is ‘a good provider for his family and a respectful husband’ who will return home (to familiar waters and his wife). Wildness is seen as the exotic “other” with which he likes to interact from time to time, in order to reassert the importance of the familiar and return to the latter even more appreciative and determined to stay there than before. Gaetano is a generation further from the age of the tonnaroti than his father. The lure of the myths and rituals surrounding the tonnaroti is powerful because it is followed by a higher degree of ignorance of the associated perils. As a result, the wild does not frighten Gaetano and is not treated by him as an “other” to his normality. Instead he aims at weaving wilderness into the fabric of his everyday life. He does not mention a need to return home every day so he does not mind spending weeks at sea fishing for tuna. He wishes to

74

Brigida Marovelli

be surrounded by the open sea as he needs to have wild women around him. He too respects his wife, but, unlike Placido, he states that his needs are different to hers. Consequently, the perspectives of the father and the son start from the same solid base, which is the importance of the familiar, but diverge in their approaches to wilderness. The generational difference between them plays a major role in this divergence. Specifically, their differing temporal distances from the age of the tonnaroti, which result in their varying degrees of knowledge of that age and its perils, have determined their dissimilar attitudes towards tuna fishing, the wild open sea and women.

Conclusions In this chapter I showed through my ethnographic accounts how I slowly acquired the bodily competence to be on board the boat and how I became a member of the crew. I  also described the distinction drawn by fishermen between the domestic sea and the wild, deep waters, and how fishing practices determine the different significance attributed to the two environments. I then showed how this separation between the domestic and the wild extended to the fishermen’s perception of women. Overall, the boat provided me with a space where cultural rules were suspended. It is worth mentioning that the majority of conversations I had with fishermen on illegal trade, the mafia and mistresses were held on board and not at the market. The openness of the landscape in conjunction with the heterotopic place that is the boat granted our conversations a higher degree of disclosure and secrecy at the same time (on boats as heterotopias, see Foucault 1986, 27). The fishermen felt reassured to touch on sensitive topics because they were far enough from the shore, where such disclosures could put them in harm’s way. They also recognised the fact that I too took part in the creation and maintenance of this heterotopic place. After all, I had not only learnt how to be sperta on board by adjusting my corporeality to suit the environment, but I had also proven my worth in the face of a distressful situation. As a result of all these efforts, for the duration of our journeys, being on board granted me the status of being one of them. As such, I could be trusted with sensitive information that is best kept secret. Moreover, since I was one of them, my gender was necessarily suspended, because I  too was part of the boat’s male-dominated environment. Having been ascribed a place in this environment, I was worthy of respect, despite the fact that I otherwise fell into the category of “wild” women. This suspension, however, was temporary, because as soon as we reached the shore I went back each time to being a woman, albeit an unconventional one. The powerful masculine metaphor of taming nature, whether this was the sea or women, was grounded on the existence of a wilderness, which allowed men to assume the role of tamers or mediators between the wild and the domestic. It is therefore understandable that once ashore I returned to my prior state as female and

A woman on a fishing boat

75

wild, so that I could be tamed anew next time I boarded the ship. This reassured the men that natural order was only suspended and not overthrown altogether. As Mary Douglas has shown (1966), when something wild enters society, it needs to be contained. The fishermen, accordingly, view it as a constant duty to contain i.e. to transform the intimidating powers of the sea, the volcano and women into less threatening entities. Finally, I  would like to observe that it appears that the fishermen see the sea in everything. Their perception and relation to the sea(s), as shown in their accounts, affected profoundly how they perceive, approach and categorise the people around them. The sea(s) has thus become an indispensable part of their identities, which determines the ways they lead their lives. What is more interesting is the fact that it was my gender that sparked the conversations on mistresses and wild women, and thus allowed me to see the extent to which the sea infiltrates fishermen’s perceptions. Moreover, even though the sea is viewed by them as a male domain par excellence, difficult for women to enter, and, despite (or possibly because of) my challenged identity as an unmarried woman, it was my gender that encouraged fishermen to declare their appreciation for their wives. These declarations allowed me to see the extent to which the concepts of wilderness and domestication pervaded all aspects of fishermen’s lives.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Chryssanthi Papadopoulou for the valuable assistance in the editing of this volume. My gratitude goes to Isak Niehaus and Adam Kuper for being my mentors and an endless source of inspiration to continue improving my anthropological knowledge. 2 The significance of the market and its relationship to history and tradition have been the main focus of my doctoral thesis (see Marovelli 2014). 3 At the market traders thought at first that I was a journalist, some sort of spy or an inspector sent by the European Union to check their compliance with the food hygiene regulations. It took some time and many subsequent visits to the market to show them that I was none of the above. 4 Criticising the term seascape, Ingold (2012, 199) highlights the kinaesthetic nature of seafaring and the fluxes of the sea, wind and weather, which characterise the mariner’s daily experience, introducing the notion of ocean-sky. Fishermen inhabit a space whose only limit is the ocean-sky. In this fluid view, the landscape can be experienced and understood through movement (Ingold 2000). 5 Amiche means female friends and bears no sexual connotations. Amichette, on the other hand, is a word full of innuendo and points to a particular type of relationship. 6 Placido also translated this phrase for me in Italian: Succhiare lumache e baciare donne non possono mai saziare. 7 Femmina in Sicilian is the opposite of masculo. It can serve to describe a woman, but its exact translation is “feminine”.

76

Brigida Marovelli

References Anderson, Kay, 1997, ‘A walk on the wild side: a critical geography of domestication’, Progress in Human Geography 21, pp. 463–485. Collet, Serge, 1984, ‘II territorio, il ferro, il segno e la parte. La pesca al pesce spada nello Stretto di Messina’, La Ricerca Folklorica 9, pp. 113–119. Douglas, Mary, 1966, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London, Routledge. Fitzgerald, Amy J., 2010, ‘A social history of the slaughterhouse: From inception to contemporary implications’, Research in Human Ecology 17, pp. 58–69. Foucault, Michel, 1986 [1984], ‘Of other spaces (trans. J. Miskowiec)’, Diacritics 16(1), pp. 22–27. Hell, Bertrand, 1996, ‘Enraged hunters. The domain of the wild in north-western Europe’, in Descola, Philippe  & Pálsson, Gísli (eds), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives, London, Routledge, pp. 205–217. Ingold, Tim, 2000, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling & Skill, London, Routledge. Ingold, Tim, 2012, ‘The shape of the land’, in Árnason, Arnar, Ellison, Nicolas, Vergunst, Jo & Whitehouse, Andrew (eds), Landscapes Beyond Land. Routes, Aesthetics, Narratives, New York, Berghahn, pp. 197–208. Longo, Stefano B. & Clark, Brett, 2012, ‘The commodification of bluefin tuna: The historical transformation of the Mediterranean fishery’, Journal of Agrarian Change 12(2–3), pp. 204–226. Marovelli, Bridiga, 2014, Landscape, Practice and Tradition in a Sicilian Market, PhD thesis, School of Social Sciences, Brunel University London. Mondardini Morelli, Gabriella, 1990a, ‘Introduzione. La cultura del mare’, La Ricerca Folklorica 21, pp. 5–6. Mondardini Morelli, Gabriella, 1990b, ‘Saperi e cattura nella pesca. L’accesso al territorio del mare nel Golfo dell’Asinara’, La Ricerca Folklorica 21, pp. 43–49.

4

Dwelling, Pollution and the rhetorical creation of “nature” on inland waterways1 Benjamin O.L. Bowles

The Boaters This chapter describes how itinerant boat-dwellers or Boaters, those that live permanently aboard steel narrowboats, fibreglass river cruisers, and riveted steel “barges” on the canals and rivers of south-east England, come to experience and understand nature and pollution through processes of dwelling in and dealing with their watery environment. These “Boaters” are the population with whom I lived over the course of my doctoral fieldwork between July 2012 and August 2013. They are a demographically diverse group, particularly around London, where a “housing crisis” (see Hill 2013) has led to a lack of affordable housing and a rise in the number of individuals and families purchasing boats so that they can live in the capital. The problems that force people to resort to boat living are not unique to the UK. Boat-dwelling is increasingly popular in continental Europe, particularly in Belgium and the Netherlands (Laurie Daffe, personal communication) and in “liveaboard communities” around the Mediterranean (Rogelja 2015). Nevertheless, UK Boaters’ practices are largely shaped by the specific histories and unique legal situation of the nation state in which their travelling occurs (Bowles, forthcoming). These Boaters often do not have a “home mooring”, which is expensive, but rather act as “continuous cruisers”, moving from location to location in the city and its environs every 14 days, in accordance with a piece of legislation that dictates that such travel is legal, as long as the vessel is used ‘bona fide . . . for navigation’ (British Waterways Act 1995). The lack of definition of ‘bona fide . . . navigation’ in the text of the Act has led to a number of longrunning legal and direct confrontational disputes between Boaters and the authorities that control the waterways. In the UK, the latter authority is the Canal and River Trust (CaRT), a charitable trust that took over from the quasigovernmental organisational British Waterways (BW) in 2012. It is important to note that Boaters rarely foreground the “housing crisis” and the economic motivations that led them to boat-dwelling. Instead, they tend to speak of boat-dwelling as an affectively and qualitatively utopian way

78

Benjamin O.L. Bowles

of being in the city. Accordingly, they ground their motivations for moving aboard on a deep-seated love for their environment and this particular lifestyle. Rogelja (2015, 185), who studied liveaboards in the Mediterranean, has found a similar situation there and notes: ‘a migration that started for aesthetic qualities is thus prolonged due to economic reasons, or simply because my interlocutors acquired new skills and an awareness of “parallel” economic paths’. Both the legal tensions between the Boaters and sedentary others and this sense of loving life afloat become important facets of this chapter as it unfolds.

Nature and dwelling Boaters become part of a community of practice on the waterways by acquiring requisite maritime skills and vital knowledge in a richly textured, daily interaction with other Boaters and aspects of their environments (Bowles, in press). Gradually, and through the acts of dwelling in and learning from the world of the waterways, Boaters come to see themselves as closer to “nature” and subsequently as bastions of environmentalism. Especially experienced Boaters, who are deeply embedded in the “taskscape” of the waterways, perceive their relationship to the world around them as distinctly different to the relationship sedentary dwellers develop with their environments (Ingold, 1993). They ground their difference to sedentary dwellers on two primary bases. First, Boaters often speak about their choice of housing as one that allows them to enjoy proximity to “nature”. This is despite the fact that they have chosen to live aboard man-made vessels floating upon waterways made or modified by man. As ungrounded as it may first sound for Boaters to make claims of proximity to a “natural order”, this chapter shows that through the constitutive acts that take place in the course of dwelling upon the waterways, Boaters learn to experience and interact with their surroundings, neighbours, animals and aspects of their environment in a manner which is more immediate and less alienated than sedentary house dwellers’. The ‘fragile shell(s)’ that are the hulls of the Boaters’ boats do little to distance the boat-dwellers from the dynamic watercourses which surround them, the fickle British weather, the passage of the seasons, their own by-products and waste, and the public space of the towpaths (Serres 2008, 278). The second base on which Boater’s difference to sedentary dwellers is grounded is time-perception and -management. Boats are described by Boaters as places where a specific type of elastic or fluid temporality is experienced (Bowles 2016). My informants speak of this “boat time”, which is contingent upon the emergent complexities of life aboard and therefore necessarily adherent to “natural, ideal rhythms”. Using anthropological work on temporality, including Munn (1992), Ingold (2000), and Gell’s concept of timemaps (1992) as modified and expanded by Bear (2014), I  argue that Boaters

Rhetoric of “nature” on inland waterways

79

construct time-maps which privilege slowness of pace and a tempo of activity that emerges from what they see as being “natural” rhythms and flows. By this, I  mean tempi of activity that do not comply to the precise and clockfocused features of “modern time”. Instead these emerge from the interactions between humans and the weather, seasons and animals, and afford interferences from the chaos that are fate and chance. An indispensable part of the process of becoming a Boater is the relaxing of the unbending structure and rigidity of prevalent forms of time-management, which are present in the wider capitalist world, and also in the actions of CaRT. Bear (2014) writes about the need to view Gell’s personal time-maps against a Marxist-inspired backdrop, which acknowledges the fact that collective representations of time are cultivated and controlled by institutions. If we compare “boat time”, which is the context of Boaters’ time-maps, to other collective representations of time, we can immediately see how the former is oppositional or resistant to the latter. This is why Boaters think of themselves, with regard to their temporal experience, as being in a state of immediacy and proximity to the “natural” world surrounding them – especially in comparison to sedentary people. At this point I should state that I contend that Boaters emically begin to utilise a ‘dwelling perspective’ when they describe themselves as living closer to “nature” (Ingold 2000, 5). In clarifying this, I hope to avoid here the controversy found in ethnographies of New Age Travellers, wherein some authors offer over-voluntaristic accounts of the motivations that lead one to a travelling life. For example, the sociologist Greg Martin states that, in his experience working with New Age Travellers, they are like Bauman’s vagabonds, who in Bauman’s (1998, 92) words are ‘on the move because they have been pushed from behind – spiritually uprooted from the place that holds no promise’. Martin argues this against Hetherington (2000), who in his ethnography of a New Age Traveller group, outlines a situation where the travellers adopt their lifestyle voluntarily and have an unrealistic level of personal choice, making them, Martin (2002, 733) suggests, resemble ‘the vagabond’s alter ego, the tourist, whose experience is one of postmodern freedom’. Hetherington is not the only author to make such a voluntaristic argument. Phillips, a New Age Traveller herself, notes in an online article that: the Travellers did not want to live under conventional arrangements and were well aware that they would not be able to live in a way that would be acceptable to them if they did conform to convention. Living in caravans and vehicles was the only way they could avoid the confines of urban life and was considered to be more economical and more ecological. (Phillips 2015)

I suspect, from my conversations with some of my informants who had previously been New Age Travellers, that the latter, just like the Boaters, take to

80

Benjamin O.L. Bowles

the travelling life for a number of reasons, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some Boaters are clearly pushed into boat-dwelling by social and political problems, such as poverty, unemployment and homelessness. Others are more voluntaristic and idealistic in their dwelling choice. This is also the case with Mediterranean liveaboards. Rogelja (2015, 189) writes that: a unifying feature for all liveaboards is that they have taken a conscious decision to take up a mobile life. Ethnographic details however show that the balance between choice and necessity has to be taken in consideration when talking about the reasons for adopting this kind of life.

In any case, whatever the reasons Boaters were led to the waterways, what is important and constitutive of the Boaters’ identity is the subsequent act of dwelling on the waterways. It is the latter that has a particular set of effects, which, as I demonstrate in the ethnography below, come to change the ways in which individuals think of and describe their relationship to the environment, to nature and even to the flow of time. This particular relationship aligns Boaters against sedentary forces, including state agents, which are viewed by Boaters as alienated from the natural order. The latter view plays an instrumental role in the Boaters’ rhetoric of difference and ethical superiority. The waterways, in this way, become differentiated and separated from the world of the banksides and the rest of the city. Specifically, the waterways become a type of ‘heterotopia’, sites of experimentation, where a new social order can be made in relative isolation (Foucault 1986). There, just like aboard ships, it is the qualities of the watery environment that allow this experimentation in relative isolation. As Strang (2004, 2014) has shown, the particular material quality of water in volume encourages new forms of engagement, and the emergence of new characteristics. In this case, the emergent characteristic is the sense of proximity to the natural world, and all of the ethical and rhetorical weight that this sense carries.

Tales of Boaters in “nature” I begin with two vignettes from my fieldwork with which I aim to introduce the complex relationship between Boaters and the concept of “nature”. The first of these events occurred quite early on in my fieldwork. I was moored in Reading and had been spending quite a bit of time with the younger travelling Boaters of the area. One day, as was a relatively common occurrence, I  was taking two plastic shopping bags full of litter across the field near our current mooring in order to dispose of my refuse in public council bins. I was joined by Tom, a boating friend. Tom was occasionally inclined to launch into rants concerning the things that annoyed him about the boating community or the

Rhetoric of “nature” on inland waterways

81

river authorities, usually with eloquence, humour and vitriol. Out of nowhere, Tom launched into one of these rants. ‘This is what pisses me off,’ he began. All of these Boaters saying that they’re part of nature, that they’re living aboard to be ecological and to reduce their carbon footprints and all that bullshit, and then, look, they’re dumping their plastic food wrappers in council bins! And they’re burning diesel and Calor gas. I mean, how do they think they can ignore that?

This rant continued in a similar vein for a while. In our position, across the field and away from the other moorers, Tom clearly thought that he could speak freely and unleash his controversial and unorthodox opinion. The second event occurred several months later when I had moved onto the canals of London. I was travelling through the beautiful stretch of the Regent’s Canal that meanders through London Zoo and is, because of this, a popular spot for walkers, joggers and tourists. I was “buttied up” alongside my friend Asha’s boat (meaning that our boats were tied together side by side so that we could have company whilst driving). Asha’s boat was pulling us through the park; her engine is raw-water cooled, meaning that it takes in water from the canal, circulates it around the engine to cool it, and jettisons it from an exhaust. When the engine is hot, the water comes out as clouds of steam. A man in a kaftan began walking quickly alongside our boats with his hands clasped in a prayer position. He was bobbing his head and talking, clearly trying to attract our attention. We slowed down and neutralised the noisy engine, expecting the man to launch a cheery greeting, a ‘what a lovely day for it’ or a ‘you’ve got a lovely life’, as we were used to being told from most passers-by. Instead, and unexpectedly, we found the man to be saying, ‘Peace, peace, please stop polluting my environment. Peace, peace’. Asha was clearly shocked and revved the engine in order to escape the complainant. Later on, when we came to talk about the event, Asha was noticeably upset. ‘How could he say that? How could he think that?’ she was asking. ‘I bet he goes back to his air-conditioned apartment and doesn’t think about where his gas or electricity comes from or how much he’s destroying the environment when he plugs in a socket or turns on a tap. We are so much more kind to nature than people like that, but they don’t seem to understand.’ I understood Asha’s opinion. But what was interesting was not only her shock and how personally she took the verbal attack, but also how she failed to comment on the fact that, in reality, there were diesel exhaust fumes coming from her boat along with the steam from the cooling. Most boats do burn diesel for fuel to travel, and often when stationary in order to charge their domestic batteries. From these two stories it can be seen that many Boaters react badly to the disconcerting suggestion that they are polluting or damaging to nature; especially since they consider themselves to be, to a greater or lesser degree, in harmony with nature and living lives that are ecologically sound. At this point,

82

Benjamin O.L. Bowles

it is important to recognise that many Boaters do take steps to ensure that they have a low carbon footprint.2 Namely, they use solar and wind power, which, apart from being environmentally friendly, also happen to be the cheapest and easiest ways of producing domestic power for narrowboats.3 Boaters who pollute their environments by allowing oil spillages to exit their bilges, as well as those who overfill canalside bins or do not use “eco” (non-harmful) washing up liquid, are criticised and shamed on online mailing lists, forums and boating group pages. Boaters, thus, lay down the basic prerequisites for one to be truly considered a member of their “community”.

Why “nature”? In short, Boaters invest a great deal of time and energy trying to prove that they are ecologically responsible agents, and tend to react badly to suggestions to the contrary. Adjectives such as “green,” “ecological” and “kinder” to the environment abound in Boaters’ narratives of their life-aboard trajectories. A typical such statement came from Vale, a young Boater who settled aboard after moving to London from Italy. Vale explained to me why she had wanted to live on a boat in the following words: ‘I’d grown up on a farm anyway and I wanted to go back to that, to living a different life, to be with the nature’. Boats that have achieved carbon neutrality through the use of solar and wind harvesting technology, are held up as examples towards which all Boaters should strive. Jedrek, who had installed solar panels aboard his boat, stated proudly that he had calculated his boat’s carbon footprint and found it to be ‘a fraction’ of that of his house-dwelling neighbours. It would be a mistake, however, to take these statements as face value. Boaters do generally go to great lengths to ensure that they are as “green” as possible. Still, their rhetoric tends to go even further than reality, as shown in the stories narrated in the previous section. It is also worth mentioning that Boaters do not live in some sort of wild, rural idyll; my participants mainly lived in Central and East London, in the midst of the city. Rather than living in structures built from natural materials (e.g. a wooden house), they lived on noticeably man-made, steel or fibreglass boats. Even the waterways they lived on are artificial, since they are man-made canals or canalised rivers. After all, a canal is often referred to as a “cut” due to the fact that it is, quite unnaturally, cut from the earth. Why, then, considering the variety of environments through which the canals and rivers pass (from the urban to the most overgrown and rural), and the varying environmental impact or carbon footprint of liveaboard boats, do so many Boaters feel themselves to be in tune with a natural order? In order to answer this central question, it is necessary to explicate how my informants perceived and used the terms “nature” and the “environment”. Most of the Boaters I  met and spoke to are products of “Western” upbringings.4 As such – and the same goes for their sedentary neighbours – they

Rhetoric of “nature” on inland waterways

83

have the ingrained conviction, which dates to the Enlightenment, that natural spaces are the antipode of cultural spaces. The latter are inhabited by men and the former are distanced and distinct from man-populated places. Natural spaces only accommodate wild animals and untouched flora. In most Westerners’ Cartesian, dualistic thinking “nature” and “the environment” are synonymous and are summarised by the phrase “out there”. As Ingold (2000, 67) shows, Westerners tend to think that the only environments that still exist in a genuinely natural condition are those that remain beyond the bounds of human civilisation, and therefore comply to the dictionary entry of the wilderness: ‘A tract of land or a region  .  .  .  uncultivated or uninhabited by human beings’. Ingold (2000, 42) correctly identifies this tendency as a product of a specific philosophical trend which has infiltrated “Western” imaginations, and which is, nevertheless, not shared by other peoples in the world. It is thus apparent that Boaters, in their conflation of “nature” and “the environment”, are not entirely immune from the aforementioned dualistic model. Ingold – when insisting that hunter-gatherers dwell within the environment and not out “in nature” as the myth of the ecologically noble savage (see Hames 2007) would have it – is particularly clear on this point, stating that the concept of the environment ‘should on no account be confused with the concept of nature. For the world can exist as nature only for a being that does not belong there’ (Ingold 2000, 20). It is clear that Boaters use language emanating from the previously presented dominant, Western conviction. What is most striking, though, is that they do so in order to place themselves on the “nature” side of the divide, outside of “culture” and in a conceptual space that we, as Westerners, do not usually consider a place possible to live in. Instead, this is more of a place for Westerners to visit briefly and enjoy: a place where some “indigenous” people may enjoy an unsullied, Eden-like existence. It is, therefore, interesting to examine the ways in which Boaters feel themselves to be partially disconnected from what they see as a hegemonic sedentary society resting on the “culture” side of the dyad, and by extension why they consider themselves to be closer to the “nature” side. Boaters, in using the terms “nature” or “the environment,” are not imagining themselves to live in an untouched Eden, where they make no negative impact upon their surroundings. Indeed, Boaters know that they burn diesel and petrol, that the wood smoke from their fires releases carbon into the atmosphere, and that the rubbish which they put into the large “Boaters’ bins” ends up in landfills. When Boaters state that they are living lives that are more “natural,” “green” or “ecological” (near-synonyms in the discourse), they are, I contend, describing three different but linked experiences. First, there is the fact that they produce fewer carbon emissions and waste products, but, more importantly, the fact that such waste products are immediate and evident, and must be dealt with practically by the Boater him- or herself. As Asha stated with regard to the complaining man in the zoo, he does not engage in reflexive thought when he switches a plug or opens a tap.

84

Benjamin O.L. Bowles

Asha, as a Boater, has generated every amp of her electricity and extracted every pint of water from a slow, communal hose. Equally, her engine smoke is inescapable and immediate, and her toilet waste will be around until she, personally, empties it. Second, Boaters insist on the fact that the environments of their waterways are generally more richly textured with elements that are not man-made, at least when compared to the environments of most sedentary house-dwellers (particularly those in urban settings). Boaters, for example, live in close proximity to animals, trees, the weather that can easily permeate their cabins,5 and the changing seasons. Moreover, they have to negotiate so as to deal with these parts of their environments on a daily basis. Third, and as aforementioned, Boaters feel that their lives are governed by natural rhythms, flows and patterns which form a particular boat-bound form of temporality, often referred to as “boat time”. The link between these three constituent parts of Boaters’ experience of a life closer to “nature” is that these three experiences put Boaters in direct contact with the parts of their environments from which sedentary people are characterised as being unnaturally alienated.6 Most sedentary people, for example, at least from the perspective of the Boaters, have no idea of their energy usage, where their electricity comes from or where the contents of their toilets are removed to. Equally, sedentary people are thought to be ignorant of how to dwell in the natural world replete with trees and animals. An example from my field notes will illustrate this point well: Steve had recently had a trainee start as an unofficial apprentice and the ‘lad’ had accompanied him on his last couple of runs. The man had come ‘from the houses, never been aboard’ and Steve had been shocked at how badly he understood the natural world around him. Apparently the trainee had shouted ‘what’s that!’ as he saw mist curling up around the boat early one morning. ‘It’s mist, it’s, you know, what makes up a cloud’, Steve had replied incredulously. The naive apprentice had then replied, ‘I ain’t never seen that before, I thought it was a ghost!’ ‘A ghost! Ha!’ Steve shouted, to make his point. Steve continued with his story, ‘later on we were at Cheshunt, by that big pear tree and I picked a pear and, you know, crunch [I ate the pear], and he said, “you’re taking a chance aren’t you?” I said “what?” “You’re taking a chance having one from the wild and not from a shop!” I mean, good grief! But that’s the attitude these days, of these folk.’ (Field notes, 13 April 2013).

Many Boaters feel that they, in contrast to many sedentary residents within the city, dwell in an environment that is richly varied and has many facets that are neither man-made nor within the usual gamut of what in the West is seen as “urban” or “cultural”. Ingold (2000) suggests that it is dwelling in an environment which constitutes us as persons. As such, Boaters’ intimate dwelling amongst what Western dualists would consider parts of the “natural”

Rhetoric of “nature” on inland waterways

85

world, shapes them into people who are closer to, and in greater harmony with the worlds of trees, animals, winds, and water. As stated above, Boaters emically begin to utilise what Ingold (2000) called the ‘dwelling perspective’ when they speak about their own proximity to the natural world and others’ alienation from it. This is the result of them recognising that their lives are formed through their engagements with an active environment that changes and reacts, and does not simply serve as a backdrop upon which one can impose “culture” or “order”. This can be seen, for example, when many Boaters refuse to remove the spiders from their boats as these spiders ‘live there too’ and even provide a service by spinning webs over draughty windows. It can also be seen when Boaters throw their leftover food to passing ducks rather than throwing it away for landfill. Most importantly, the actual act of navigating a narrowboat necessarily brings them into direct contact with the dynamic world of water, where interaction with certain natural forces is vital. Notably, the act of navigating a boat through water, especially on a river which has flows and cross-currents, involves feeling the flow of the water around the rudder through small vibrations and pressures in the tiller, and adjusting the tiller with tiny movements accordingly, in order to maintain direction or make a turn. At the same time, the Boater’s attention is directed towards sensing the most minor of changes in the vibration coming through the deck boards, since these may suggest that the engine is straining or has a mechanical problem, as well as minute changes in the tone and pitch of the engine noise, changes in the colour and consistency of the exhaust fumes and waste water from the cooling, and finally changes in the wave of the water breaking against the bow. Each of these may suggest mechanical problems, underwater obstacles or potential hazards such as the presence of thick weeds wrapped around the propeller or caught in the cooling system. Even if everything is running smoothly, these signs will be the only way that the Boater knows how fast they are travelling and at what level of its potential the engine is running. Over time, Boaters become part of their boats as they begin to read these signals without thinking and respond to them on a subconscious level. In this way, the Boaters’ environment is constantly feeding back into the Boater and the act of navigation becomes a dialectic between the flow of the water, the propeller and engine, and the Boater’s body. The navigating Boater is a part of his/her boat as well as the boat’s environment (on boats becoming part of the seafarer’s corporeality, also see Maragoudaki, Marovelli and Papadopoulou, this volume). Whereas a sedentary person in a car, suspended above the road, remains at the wheel and uses instruments, dials and tools (which all serve to distance the user from the outside world), Boaters have only a few dials, if any at all, and are out in the open, using a barge pole to free their vessels from the bottom when they get stuck on a shallow section, and jumping to the bankside with ropes in order to stop the boat before a lock, swing bridge or mooring site. In many ways, the Boater’s body becomes a trained part of the machine which (s)he operates. Foucault’s theory of ‘man-as-machine’ or

86

Benjamin O.L. Bowles

‘man-the-machine’ (1975, 176) describes exactly this process of bodies becoming disciplined into harmony with the tasks they are required to complete. As Ingold (2000, 413) similarly notes, the use of tools for the experienced performer is a process of deeply embodied engagement with a tool or machine which one has come to understand over time. He describes how tools, when one is proficient in their usage, are not so much “used” as “played”, in the way that an experienced musician may plays his/her instrument, without thinking about rules, patterns and mechanics but rather by fully engaging his/her total self in the performance. This is only one, limited example of the ways Boaters experience their environments immediately, intimately and in such a fashion so as to attune their movements to the landscape. Boat navigation is more of a negotiation than a dominance or mastery of the “natural” world by a man-made machine. The Boaters sense their way through their environment in a complex manner, attending to the interplay of numerous man-made and “natural” forces. These themes of craft and negotiation with materials and the environment are core to two other chapters in this volume (Maragoudaki and Marovelli) and in the wider literature concerning watercourses and navigation (Pálsson 1994, Rogelja 2015). All of this is not to say, however, that sedentary people do not, to use Ingold’s terminology, ‘dwell’ in their ‘environments’; dwelling is not just for hunter-gatherers and for other non-Western peoples. Indeed, this point is explicitly made by Ingold (2000, 44) when he states that: for hunter-gatherers as for the rest of us, life is given in engagement, not in disengagement, and in that very engagement the real world at once ceases to be ‘nature’ and is revealed to us as an environment for people.

Sedentary people – even if one were to stereotype them as living in centrally heated homes, driving to work insulated from the weather, not engaging with any non-domestic animal, buying their food from supermarkets, and living by the clock – still live in environments. The difference is that their environments are more controlled or even artificial, and the vagaries of the wild, the weather, that which we are prone to consider to be “nature”, are less likely to make an impact upon them. The environments in which they dwell are removed from certain realities of the world which are beyond their doors. As an example, after almost five years aboard a boat (at the time of writing this), I find it extremely uncomfortable to be in an air-conditioned room. The dry feeling of processed or “unnatural” air makes me feel ill, and I have heard boating friends make similar claims. Of course, the creation of this archetype of sedentary life is the creation of a “straw man”. Accordingly, it is unlikely that any house-dweller is as alienated from the external world, or as ignorant of the provenance of their food produce and environmental consequences of having utilities, as the stereotypical sedentary resident that I described so as to provide the antithesis of the Boater. This is not, I believe, an insurmountable

Rhetoric of “nature” on inland waterways

87

issue, as I  am relating Boaters’ perspectives and understanding, which are, of course, presented from within the boating community looking outwards, towards those stereotyped by Boaters as “other”. In summary, the gap between the dominant sedentary experience and that of the Boater is, as I have described, created by their varying levels of engagement with their environments. The Boater needs to be intimately attuned to it, whilst the sedentary resident is presumed to be largely detached from it. Another brief example to demonstrate this is that Boaters tend to experience the weather and the changes in the seasons in ways which those living in air-conditioned or centrally heated homes in the city do not. The Boaters become acutely aware of the limitations imposed by the short days and low temperatures of the winter. These might include lock closures, channel freezes which restrict movement, lack of solar power, increased difficulty in starting the engine etc. Owing to the dependence of the Boaters on these “natural” imponderables, they necessarily grow sensitive to these as well as to their boats’ requirements in the face of such imponderables. In fact, ethnographic data concerning the importance of the seasons and the unpredictability of the weather for Boaters are so vast that they can constitute an extensive, separate topic of study. Below, I offer another example of this difference in engagement with the wider dwelt-in environment; namely, the difference in Boaters’ and sedentary residents’ ideas of pollution.

Pollution The question of “pollution” holds great, rhetorical importance in the relationship between Boaters and their opponents or challengers (sedentary residents and agents of the state). On the one side, and as explained previously, Boaters make claims to be ecological agents, who work hard to protect the waterways and oppose sedentary life, which is viewed as polluting and alienating. By alienating I mean that Boaters are forced to handle everything that they throw away themselves and also understand exactly where their electricity, fuel and water come from, whereas those living in houses are distanced from these realities. As an informant stated, ‘they need only flick a switch or turn a tap’. Boaters, thus, think of themselves as particularly sensitive to the “environment” and proceed to make the point that they clearly care for the waterways far more than CaRT, the authority tasked with their upkeep. Specifically, Boaters speak frequently with pride of their daily upkeep of the waterways, including their dredging work, water management at locks and protection of local wildlife. On the other side, there are accusations levelled by local communities, who claim that Boaters are polluting the waterways. Understandably, Boaters find these deeply troubling. For example, in Noel Road (Islington) a number of local residents have a long-standing campaign, dating back to at least

88

Benjamin O.L. Bowles

my first arrival in the neighbourhood in early 2013, against the Boaters who moor at the stretch of Regent’s Canal which emerges from the Islington tunnel and passes the ends of their gardens. They have launched a systematic battle, through both verbal confrontations and official channels including the local council and the London Assembly, against some of the Boaters’ practices. In order to strengthen their arguments against Boaters, they make sure to include in all of their complaints pollution-related arguments. For example, alongside the complaints concerning overstaying on the moorings (for they are aware of the 14-day rule), the residents added concerns regarding smoke and noise pollution. They argued that the noise of engines and generators is audible from their houses and that smoke from the Boaters’ stoves becomes trapped in the natural gorge the canal lies in and makes its way into their homes. The residents thus utilised the tactics and language of official council reports that had been sent in the past to the Environmental Health Executive. Their stratagem led, in the summer of 2013, to a London Assembly investigation of the matter followed by an official report issued in November  2013 (London Assembly Environment Committee 2013), as well as a flurry of meetings and consultations. Even a local councillor was involved and pledged his support for the residents’ cause. This is to show – amongst other factors – how far a complaint can go if it employs pollution-related arguments and language. The accusation of causing “pollution” or being “polluting” is, as seen here, a powerful tool of critique which can be used by either side of the battle. Mary Douglas (2002) noted that we find polluting that which does not fit into our categorical frameworks: that which we find out of place. This helps us understand better the complaints against Boaters which do not always target literal pollutants such as smoke or engine fumes but also involve noise pollution and general aesthetics (e.g. one of the complaints mentions ‘unsightly’ boats). Certainly for those who live in the unclean, traffic fume-affected centre of London, it seems unlikely that the argument that boats are a major damage to air quality would be particularly effective. Still, the London Assembly report into the complaints suggests that ‘along most stretches of waterway, air and noise pollution from boats is not an issue. However, in some locations where it is a problem, for permanent residents it is a legitimate and serious concern’ (London Assembly Environment Committee 2013). Pollution implies that something is dirty, infectious and unsettling. As such, an accusation of being a source of pollution is a powerful one to be levelled against a group. It is of note that one Islington resident whom I met professed to not minding the boats per se, but rather revealed that they do not like ‘those kind of boats, the dirty boats’. The residents’ problem with the Boaters does not thus seem to concern pollution of the waterways as such but rather the dirtiness, unsightliness and noise that residents claim to have to contend with. This recalls Okely’s contention that the Traveller-Gypsies with whom she worked had a different understanding of pollution to that of their Gorgio (non-Gypsy) neighbours. The Gypsies’ idea was primarily based on the notion of symbolic purity, whilst

Rhetoric of “nature” on inland waterways

89

the Gorgios’ on the presence of visible detritus and refuse (Okely 1983). That which the Boaters have on their roofs (coal, tools, wheelbarrows etc.) may be considered unsightly and therefore visual pollution by Noel Road residents. To Boaters, however, these things are necessary. Consequently, the sedentary dwellers’ dislike of these items is interpreted by the Boaters as a sign of alienation from reality, or even as a class-inflected, ideologically motivated critique. Boaters with whom I  have spoken are offended by these accusations of pollution but generally see them as further examples of sedentary residents’ alienation. For example, Boaters cite the ‘ignorance’ of residents who do not realise that a small amount of kindling, wood and paper materials are needed to get a fire going and that residents’ requests that Boaters ‘just burn smokeless coal’ are unrealistic. One Boater told me in desperation that ‘they don’t know anything about our lives’ and recounted how, when it was explained to one that Boaters needed to run engines and generators for their domestic electricity needs, the resident asked if they could instead be provided with free canalside power points. These statements are taken as examples of residents’ privileges and alienation from their environment and feed into the Boaters’ argument that residents do not know where their own heating and electricity comes from. This argument supports the idea that the residents are far more polluting than the Boaters, but are too unnaturally removed from their environment to realise this. In short, the Boater and the sedentary resident seem to have differing understandings concerning the terms “pollution” or “polluting” and their relevance to the other group. Sedentary residents see the smoke from Boaters’ fires, the exhaust from their generators and engines or Boaters’ untidy roofs, and perceive a “polluting” influence in their immediate environment. Boaters, by contrast, recognise that they are faced with the immediate effect of their life’s waste products and thus know how to minimise these and their impact. For Boaters, the sedentary residents are those who are truly polluting, as they burn fossil fuels to produce the high levels of heat and electricity needed in most domestic houses; they are just a distance removed from such processes to acknowledge their impacts.

Conclusions I hope to have shown that Boaters are focused fundamentally on the concept of dwelling within a landscape and of being attuned to its vagaries and emergent characteristics. In their relationship to nature, pollution and, as I have written elsewhere, time (Bowles 2016), they see themselves as being different, and for some qualitatively superior, to an alienated, sedentary manner of being. In this way, Boaters’ temporal experience is created through “dwelling” and is not formalised or made alien to the immediacy of the environment. Similarly, Boaters’ understanding of pollution is focused on

90

Benjamin O.L. Bowles

what Boaters themselves believe is a direct understanding of their own environmental impact, in opposition to sedentary people, who are alienated and “ignorant” of their own impact on the world. Boaters do not, I have shown, have a “non-Western” or “non-Cartesian” understanding of nature and culture, and are influenced by the same pervasive ideas of mankind’s hegemony over the landscape as any person raised in the contemporary Euroamerican milieux (as most Boaters certainly have been). In fact, they utilise this dichotomy and project themselves as closer to nature – albeit a nature shaped by the machinations of culture – instead of cocooned against nature’s vagaries, changeabilties and harshness. This is central to understanding not just Boaters’ sense of community and belonging but also the rhetorical content of the disputes between Boaters and their sedentary challengers. Returning to Foucault’s (1986) concept of the ‘heterotopia’, it is only through the separation accorded by the Boaters’ environment, its peculiar qualities and particular challenges, that Boaters can experiment with other ways of being in the world and other forms of political and economic organisation (which this chapter cannot begin to detail). It has been demonstrated that, even in a setting of inland waterways rather than at sea, on many boats rather than one, where interaction between Boaters is not governed by the economic relationship of captain and crew but rather by voluntary association, there is something common to the human waterborne experience. The striking level of cross-over between this and other chapters in this volume should demonstrate this relationship. To attend to life afloat, and to be forced to adjust to life aground (see Tsimouris and Papadopoulou, this volume), is a great levelling universal that links seafarers and inland boat-dwellers across oceanic distances. Central to this experience is the sense in which the boat-dweller is experiencing what they understand to be “nature up-close and unmediated”. With nature proximate, and the abstractions of cultural alienation and comfort at arm’s length, boat-dwellers can translate their unique experience into a powerful rhetoric of difference (also see Tsimouris, this volume).

Notes 1 I acknowledge the support and funding offered to me by Brunel University, London, where I studied for my PhD, and which allowed the collection of this data. There my colleagues and supervisors, including Peggy Froerer, Eric Hirsch and Nicolas Argenti, were particularly supportive. I also acknowledge the hard work of the editor and reviewers of this volume, and would also like to thank the organisers and participants of the ‘Humanity at Sea’ panel at the ASA Decennial Conference in Edinburgh 2014. Lastly, I wish to acknowledge the role of the London Boaters in the collection of this data. The insights here are theirs, and the mistakes my own. 2 The discussion of the ‘carbon footprint’ of individuals comes in a contemporary milieu where climate change is a growing concern and individuals and companies

Rhetoric of “nature” on inland waterways

91

endeavour (or appear to do so) to limit their environmental impacts, particularly in terms of burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon by-products (see Crate and Nuttall 2009, Crate 2011). The Boaters’ desire to appear ecologically friendly must be viewed within this broader context of current, social awareness of polluting agents and ecological responsibility in terms of carbon units released. 3 It is important to note that there are no scientific data on the relative ecological impact of living on a boat as opposed to living in a house. One Boater calculated his carbon footprint and found it to be ‘very low’ in comparison to the one he previously had, when he lived in a flat. His calculations, however, are not necessarily indicative of the wider boating populations. 4 For a discussion on the problematics of the term “West”, see Ingold (2000, 6). 5 A boat seller in the East End tried to convince a friend of mine to buy a cheap hull that he was selling using the words: ‘it’s only a grand [thousand pounds] and she’s a nice cabin on top, no weather’ll get in her’. My friend and I laughed at this on the way home as the only thing common to all boats is that the weather will always get in. 6 While I believe that the terms “alienated” and “alienation” are useful analytical shorthands for what is being referred to when sedentary people are criticised in this way, Boaters do not use such terms when referring to sedentary people. Rather they say that such people are “removed” or “out of touch” or “don’t know anything” or are lacking in “common sense”.

References Bauman, Zygmunt, 1998, Globalization: The Human Consequences, Cambridge, Polity. Bear, Laura, 2014, ‘Doubt, conflict, mediation: The anthropology of modern time’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20(1), pp. 3–30. Bowles, Benjamin Oliver Leonard, 2016, ‘ “Time is like a soup”: Boat time and the temporal experience of London’s liveaboard Boaters’, The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 34(1) pp. 100–112. Bowles, Benjamin Oliver Leonard, in press, ‘ “Can’t trust”: The Boaters of the waterways of south-east England versus the charity that makes you homeless’, in Cortesi, Luisa  & Joy, K. J. (eds), Split Waters: Examining Conflicts Related to Water and Their Narration, Water Conflict Forum. Bowles, Benjamin Oliver Leonard (forthcoming), ‘Muddy waters: How, and to what extent, particular historical, geographical and material conditions created south east England’s waterways as a space that encounters enclosure and resists elements of the state’, in Camargo, Alejandro, Cortesi, Luisa & Krause, Franz (eds), Amphibious Anthropologies: Living in Wet Environments. British Waterways Act 1995 (c. 3), [Online], The National Archives, Available from: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/1995/1/section/17/enacted (accessed 19 May 2015).

92

Benjamin O.L. Bowles

Crate, Susan A., 2011, ‘Climate and culture: Anthropology in the era of contemporary climate change’, Annual Review of Anthropology 40, pp. 175–194. Crate, Susan A. & Nuttall, Mark, 2009, Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions, Walnut Creek, CA, Left Coast Press. Douglas, Mary, 2002, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London, Routledge. Foucault, Michel, 1975, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London, Penguin. Foucault, Michel, 1986, ‘Of other spaces’ (trans by Miskowiec, Jay), Diacritics 16(1), pp. 22–27. Gell, Alfred, 1992, The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images, Oxford, Berg. Hames, Raymond, 2007, ‘The ecologically noble savage debate’, Annual Review of Anthropology 36, pp. 177–190. Hetherington, Kevin, 2000, New Age Travellers: Vanloads of Uproarious Humanity, London & New York, Continuum. Hill, Dave, 2013, ‘London housing crisis: What is it, exactly?’ The Guardian, 28 October, available from: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/davehillblog/ 2013/oct/28/london-housing-crisis (accessed 8 September 2016). Ingold, Timothy, 1993, ‘The temporality of the landscape’, World Archaeology 25(2), pp. 24–174. Ingold, Timothy, 2000, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, London, Routledge. London Assembly, Environment Committee, 2013, Moor or Less: Moorings on London’s Waterways. [Online] Greater London Assembly, available from: www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Moorings%20report%20agreement% 20draft%20FINAL.pdf (accessed 15 February 2015). Martin, Greg, 2002, ‘New Age Travellers: Uproarious or uprooted?’, Sociology 36(3), pp. 723–735. Munn, Nancy D., 1992, ‘The cultural anthropology of time: A critical essay’, Annual Review of Anthropology 21, pp. 93–123. Okely, Judith, 1983, The Traveller-Gypsies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Pálsson, Gisli, 1994, ‘Enskilment at sea’, Man 29(4), pp. 901–927. Phillips, Ruth, 2015, The Politics of Mobility: A Case Study of New Age Travellers [Online] Arasite, available from: www.arasite.org/phillipsBA.html (accessed 2 May 2015). Rogelja, Natasa, 2015, ‘The Sea: place of ultimate freedom?’, Mobile Culture Studies 1, pp. 181–198. Serres, Michel, 2008, The Five Senses: Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, New York, Continuum. Strang, Veronica, 2004, The Meaning of Water, Oxford, Berg. Strang, Veronica, 2014, ‘Fluid consistencies. Material relationality in human engagements with water’, Archaeological Dialogues 21(2), pp. 133–150.

PART II Shorefaring ships

5

Ships in the sky: maritime mythistories in the Pindos Mountains1 Daniel M. Knight

Introduction: on the wave of fantasy As early as the sixteenth century the ancient Bajorans were conquering new frontiers of interplanetary exploration in crudely fashioned sail ships designed to drift on solar rays. Propelled by light pressure provided by the Bajoran sun, the ship was equipped with a complement of five solar sails: two mainsails and two sprit sails, one of each located on the port and starboard sides, and a jib on the top protruding between the upper portions of the mainsails. Hand winches equipped with brakes deployed and retracted the sails. The design of the lightship was inspired by the Kon-Tiki, named after the Inca sun god, a sailing craft designed by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl that set sail for Tahiti from Peru in 1947 in an attempt to prove that pre-Columbian inhabitants of South America could have settled in Polynesia by means of a trans-oceanic voyage. An unsuspecting Bajoran lightship might occasionally catch a tachyon eddy – a wave of subatomic particles travelling at faster-than-light velocities – sending the vessel careering off into unknown star-systems. Since the ship was not designed to endure the stress of warp speeds, the sails could be severely damaged as a result, while the hull itself was sturdy enough to protect the crew. On one occasion, the story goes, a Bajoran lightship was thrust beyond an infamous area of stormy space known for its temporal distortions and discovered a new world, Cardassia. Centuries later the Cardassians, with their own mythistories of dominance and technological superiority, would invade Bajor, signalling a brutal occupation lasting some 50  years. The voyages of Bajoran solar lightships were for a long time dismissed as pure fairy tales, the folklore of a subjugated people staking a claim to a grandiose history. Not until the journey was successfully replicated almost a millennium later would the mythistory of the Bajoran lightship and the discovery of Cardassia rewrite the ancient interstellar history textbooks. The above mythistory of a future past taken from the science fiction series Star Trek – Deep Space Nine constitutes a platform upon which an entire planetary identity is built. It is an example, although located in the minds of its scriptwriter creators no doubt somewhere in the Californian hills, of how

96

Daniel M. Knight

mythistories (mythic histories) are pivotal to communal belonging, notions of social hierarchy, and in imagining the past that is absent from written historiography. Topological or “messy” histories have generally been studied under the rubric of myth; accounts that do not conform to a tidy linear progression of the past (Stewart 2017, 132). Contesting the conventional opposition between myth and history, Joseph Mali (2003) advocates their reconciliation and acknowledges the role of myth in the construction of personal and communal identities. Myth and history are close kin as methods of explaining the past and present through affective narratives that are specific to local communities and whole nations. The common practice in the Western discipline of history to reckon myth to be “false” while history “true” plays into ethnocentric and essentialist views of how the past is archived, dismissing locally meaningful – and to their own audiences, truthful – methods of explaining the world. Accordingly, acclaimed historian William H. McNeill2 (1986, 1) suggests: ‘a historian who rejects someone else’s conclusions calls them mythical, while claiming that his own views are true. But what seems true to one historian will seem false to another, so one historian’s truth becomes another’s myth’. The musings of archaeologists over what material finds might tell us about the functioning of ancient societies often takes the form of competing mythistories; whole societies are (re)imagined based on the piecing together of stories gleaned from the material ancient past and shaped by the theories of modern academic disciplines. Even the great scholar of myth, Claude LéviStrauss (1966), while claiming that myth is structured by affect and history by chronology, recognised that history was written for someone, to be digested by a particular audience, and was thus open to interpretation and manipulation. Anthropology has a progressive track record of incorporating alternative, conflicting, folkloric versions of the past into accounts of Others’ world-views, even in a Western context (see, for instance, Herzfeld 1986). The realisation that Western historicism is but one way of recording the past that has developed under specific social, technical and historical conditions associated with the Enlightenment and modernism has widened empirical horizons (Stewart 2012, 197, Knight and Stewart 2016). A reading of mythistories is closely linked to the academically popular notion of historicity – the appraisal of the past in relation to current events, needs and cultural forms for political and communicative purposes (Hirsch and Stewart 2005, 262). Mythistories affect people’s decision-making in the present and orientation to the future by providing a set of pedagogical structures and precedents that are filled with meaning and social relations (Lévi-Strauss 1958, 210–211). They provide intelligibility to the past and the present, adding another layer of information to the selective input of hegemonic or “official” historical accounts. Mythistories capture the compelling truth of myth that local people ‘live by’, structuring thought and feeling; there is no need for scientific verification (Stewart 2012, 4).3 Mythistories are prominent in many walks of life in twenty-first-century Greece; mythistoric and folkloric accounts of contemporary Greek lineage

Maritime mythistories

97

with the ancient past form the basis of nation state belonging (Herzfeld 1986, 130, Sutton 1998). The imagination of national pasts is facilitated through the blending of historiography and myth spanning at least 4,000 years, a timeline knitted together through the material remains of the magnificent past (Hamilakis and Yalouri 1996, Yalouri 2001). The Ottoman Empire and the role of the Turk in recent history are particularly open to mythologisation that creates a fantastical affective and effective boundary between “us” and “them” (McNeill 1986, 5, Theodossopoulos 2007). Charles Stewart (2012) has written at length on how the ‘myth-dream’ on Naxos knits historical imagination together with present concerns and future projections, mythistories that continue to guide the everyday activities of locals. In the context of economic crisis, the ungraspable absurdity and injustice of new renewable energy projects on Greece’s central plains and the Aegean islands that dispossess locals of their land are confronted through mythistories of colonialism and historical exploitation (Argenti and Knight 2015). While the potentiality of the ancient past to shape prominent contemporary issues is strikingly captured in how the excavations at the Amphipolis tomb have been appropriated for political posturing in the face of foreign economic tutelage (Vournelis 2016). In this chapter it is a mythistory of an unlikely maritime culture that takes centre stage. The mythistoric image of ships in the mountains has been portrayed as the ultimate paradox in Greek poems and popular songs. For instance, Odysseas Elytis’s (1971) famous poem ‘The Crazy Ship’ speaks of ‘An ornate ship’ appearing in the mountains, manoeuvring and ‘Dropping anchor in the pines’. Writing during the military dictatorship, the crazy ship is Greece, skippered by innumerable, sometimes dubious, captains. Greece will always survive stormy weather, Elytis suggests, with the mountains representing the characteristic feature of the nation, a safe haven when the sea is tempestuous. Another instance of ships in the sky is evident in Michalis Gkanas’s popular song ‘Ships Came Ashore’ (1997), in which Gkanas paints a surreal picture of boats in the mountain ranges of Chelmos in the Peloponnese and Metsovo in Epirus. The present chapter gives this artistic surrealism a grassroots slant by telling another story of ‘ships in the sky’: the mythistory of a maritime past located over two thousand metres high in the Pindos Mountains, three hours’ drive from the coast. On the mountain known as Karava (from karavi, meaning ‘boat’) tales of artefacts from ancient ships found in deep valleys and on sheer cliff faces play a vivacious role in fuelling historical imagination. Myths abound of unearthed ships and their treasures, shaping the way that people talk about the history of the landscape and their ancestors; narratives that often contradict official regional historiography. Although never seen and not displayed in any museum, pieces of ships, such as metal rings for mooring, are mythistoric artefacts that have a special place in how villagers affectively retell the history of the region, explain peculiar local characteristics and carve a narrative of community based on maritime culture. Not an attempt to find these claims true or false, this chapter is an exercise in demonstrating the strength

98

Daniel M. Knight

of mythistories in shaping the collective identities of local communities and nations alike.

Coming round the mountain Standing 2,184 metres high in the Pindos Mountains in the administrative unit of Karditsa, in the region of Thessaly, the mountain of Karava and nearby villages might seem like unusual places for stories of an ancient maritime culture to abound. A popular destination with climbers and nature lovers, the imposing peaks of this part of the Pindos range are second in altitude in Greece only to the magnificent Mount Olympus to the east. Karava is situated a twisty 90-minute drive from the often-scorching Plain of Thessaly, which was once an ancient sea dating back to the Mesozoic period (252 to 66  million years ago). On the plain, if one knows where to look, primeval aquatic treasures may catch the eye, including maritime fossils protruding from the prehistoric seabed (Knight 2017). There is scant archaeological or geological evidence to suggest, however, that the ancient sea reached anywhere near as far as Karava. But locals claim that Karava was later situated on the shores of a large Bronze Age lake or inland sea. Maritime culture is central to life in many regions of Greece (see, for instance, Just 20004) and is a pillar of national history from Jason and the Argonauts to merchant shipping that continues to form the basis for great wealth within a small sector of society in Greece today. Yet, this stretch of the Pindos Mountains, three hours’ drive from the nearest coastline, does not usually spring to mind when one thinks of boats, buccaneers and barnacles. I had heard the stories of pieces of ships being found in the high mountains of the Pindos while conducting research in the town of Trikala on the Thessalian plains of central Greece, but until 2016 I had not had the opportunity to visit the region myself – an earlier trip was cancelled because of snow drifts blocking the main road into the foothills. I had always been cautious about the stories of ships in the sky and tales of ancient maritime artefacts discovered after landslides, while shepherds drove their flocks over remote outcrops, and by villagers on mushroom-hunting expeditions on the densely forested slopes below Karava. So it is with much scholarly anticipation and personal intrigue that on this glorious spring morning in mid-May 2016 I am accompanying a local women’s association from the plains village of Livadi on a day excursion to the mountain villages around Karava. Since commencing field research in Thessaly in 2003 I have participated in roughly a dozen such trips with two different local associations to places as diverse as Xanthi in Thrace, the monasteries around the northern city of Kastoria, the island of Lefkada, and the ski slopes of Arachova. Our usual guide, Nikos, a balding yet ruggedly handsome gentleman in his late fifties, is well known as a fountain of general knowledge, reading up in advance on our destinations through internet and library sources. Although

Maritime mythistories

99

susceptible to hyperbole, the former hardware store owner is a trusted guide who knows how to get a smile out of the 30–50 retired men and women that pack the hire-bus in anticipation of some piped klarino music and a good gossip. As per usual on the association trips, some people are ignorant of their destination for the day, signing-up blindly to the outing, just making sure to let their middle-aged sons and daughters know that there will be no dinner on the table tonight and that they will have to arrange alternative childcare. At a price of ten to 15 euros, the excursion is a nice opportunity to meet with friends, have a hearty taverna meal and reminisce about the good old pre-economic crisis days. After stopping for coffee at the foot of the mountain range  – where my widowed chaperone seems oblivious to the advances of an eligible bachelor in his seventies – the old bus steadily creaks its way up the winding potholed road towards Karava. As the top of the mountain appears over a nearby crest and into view, Nikos, gaining his balance by hanging onto the overhead luggage compartment with one hand, grasps the microphone and begins to narrate the “history” of the region. ‘This area is full of historical importance,’ Nikos announces passionately. ‘You will have to keep your eyes open, ladies, because you could find treasures, you could become rich . . . enough money to find a new husband!’ he cheekily exclaims. Nikos tells us that millions of years ago, when Thessaly was an ancient sea, the area around Karava was a shoreline made up of sandy beaches and small fishing ports. Ancient people with a rich culture would live off the sea, setting sail from secluded coves. These were probably some of the first real Greeks to be living off the land, he postulates. ‘Just over there’ – he gestures with his right hand, letting go of the overhead locker and momentarily risking being thrown onto the lap of Katerina in the front row as the bus takes a particularly sharp hairpin bend – ‘was where they found the first of many iron rings [krikoi] that were used when mooring the boats, to tie them to the piers.’ According to Nikos, who tells me later that his sources are internet pages and discussions with locals, ‘there have been many metal rings found along the base of the mountain . . . locals go out looking for parts of ancient boats and apparatus used for fishing’. The retirees on the coach trip seem impressed, producing noises of marvelled satisfaction and intrigue. Nikos triumphantly continues: that is why they call this place Karava. In these mountains that now seem so high, so far away from water, the ancient people were seafarers. The people you will meet today are their descendants. You can almost smell the salt in the air.

We stop for dinner in a taverna in a village a few kilometres from the base of Karava Mountain. I take the chance to enquire with some resident elderly men sitting on a drystone wall overlooking the village square. Crouched over his crudely fashioned wooden walking stick, Giannis, who is in his late seventies,

100

Daniel M. Knight

has lived in the area all his life. I ask him how the name Karava came about and whether there was any truth in the stories of villagers “stumbling over” pieces of ancient boats while walking the mountainsides to tend to their flocks. He repeats the story of Karava being at the edge of an ancient sea or lake – to which the two other men in the company nod vigorously and make sounds of agreement. He has never found an artefact, but he knows people who have. Old man Mitsos and his son have both found iron rings while out with their goats and, according to Giannis, tourists and climbers come to the area for the sole purpose of tracking down their piece of ancient treasure. The second man suggests that Panagiota’s son also found a metal strap from an old boat while hoeing his vegetable patch on the outskirts of the village – but this claim seems to be disputed by the other two men as not a real story about maritime debris. All three men say that they have seen pieces of old boats, including metal hooks used for fishing, but none of them has been lucky enough to find anything themselves. But the fame of the mythistory of Karava is enough to draw tourists from miles around and Giannis, placing his right hand over his heart, proclaims: it is inside every one of us. We might wake up in the morning and look out the window to see only rock, but we are part of something much bigger. The sea goes much deeper into our history, into our folk stories, into our bodies.

The taverna owner, Michalis, 52, spends much of his spare time walking in the forests around Karava. He is well-versed in the mythistories of ancient ships and says it has long been his dream to find a piece of ancient treasure. He walks the mountains either picking mushrooms in the spring and autumn or hunting hares and birds in the summertime. ‘I always carry a small pick-axe in my kit, along with my hunting knife. I have come across some unusual things over the years, items that cannot be explained.’ Michalis falls short of categorically claiming to have discovered pieces of ancient boats. He continues: One morning five or six years ago I was out in a valley not five or six kilometres from here picking mushrooms after a heavy rainfall the night before. I  came across these strange stone structures with inexplicable man-made bosses and holes.

I ask him to describe in more detail his finds; ‘[they were] three very heavy stone blocks, almost perfect squares, with spherical holes dug out of one side’. He gestures with his fingers that the holes were about ten centimetres in diameter: Like a ball and socket joint. A rusty red colour of heavy stone. I found all three not more than 200 metres apart. Then, further up the valley I noticed a bunch of rocks that had fallen from an overhang, covering the goat path ahead and partially slipped over the downslope on the other side of the track.

Maritime mythistories

101

Michalis looked them over, flipping some on their side with his little pickaxe. ‘Then I noticed it. A perfectly round boss on one side of the rusty red stone blocks. It would have been a perfect match to fit in the holes I found in the stones just a few hours earlier.’ Michalis found these features interesting enough to come back up the mountain with his brother later that day and carry the substantial boulders to the nearest road where he struggled to lift them into the boot of his car. He now says that they are ‘somewhere in my wife’s back garden, as part of a flower bed or rockery or something ornate’. I quiz Michalis as to what these features might be; could they be related to the myths of ancient seafaring? ‘Well, that is where the mind goes first. That is what I was thinking.’ After asking around, I learnt that numerous other villagers had discovered similar rock features and had theorised that they were part of old moorings for boats on the ancient lake (I later discover that this is a familiar story further north in the Pindos range where, in one instance in a village near Grevena, somebody has collected over 200 almost perfectly circular rocks, many with corresponding bosses and holes, and sells them as curiosities as far afied as Thessaloniki). ‘They certainly looked man-made’. Michalis has never shown the stone features to an archaeologist or taken them to be expertly assessed: ‘there is no need to confirm my belief,’ he says, now on the defensive, ‘what do they know that I don’t? We all know it up here; ask anyone.’ He insists that unexplainable features in the local topography are common around Karava. As a footnote to Michalis’s story, in January 2017 I was walking the snowy pathways of a mountainside some 95 kilometres (a twohour drive) away in another part of the Pindos Mountains, overlooking Kalampaka and the geological wonder that is Meteora. Imagine my surprise when I arbitrarily peered down through the snow-tipped evergreens onto a pile of rocks which seemed to be part of a recent landslide and noticed a spherical boss, perfectly smooth and centralised on one side of a square block of rubble. Not far away is the matching socket, scooped out of one side of a rocky cuboid. Our party collected three bosses and two sockets which now adorn flowerbeds in the family home in Trikala. To my untrained eye, the features seem perfectly natural, the result of harder and softer geological strata sitting side-by-side. Back on the bus and our master of ceremonies, Nikos, seizes the microphone. ‘So, ladies, find any golden rings? . . . Oh, well, there is time yet . . . we have more mountains to explore.’ As the coachload of retirees are digesting their three-course meal with more klarino ipeirotiko (Epirot clarinet music) and discussing the possibility of getting attacked by bears while urgently relieving themselves in the woods, I take the opportunity to enquire with Nikos in more detail about the “great archaeological finds”. ‘I have never seen them, but the stories are very well known, even to people who live on the plains.’ He concedes that ‘it might be all myth, but it is what people believe’ and ‘it makes sense if you think about it. We all know that Thessaly was an ancient sea, so why shouldn’t there have been seafaring people living in villages around

102

Daniel M. Knight

Karava?’ It is, Nikos insists, common sense: ‘there is no need to know about the ancient geographers and philosophers who recorded the area being an ancient sea. I tell you simply, why else would the area be named Karava?’

Back on terra firma Nikos’s argument seems to go down well with his audience and the local people I meet in the villages around Karava that day. On returning to the plains I discuss the mythistories of Karava with my landlady, Dorothea, a universityeducated, former school teacher in her mid-sixties, and other friends in and around the town of Trikala. As is so often the case when discussing narratives of national history and cultural tradition with Dorothea, the answer I get to my probing is quite simply ‘I don’t know why, it just is’. This is the stock answer when enquiring, for example, ‘why is Macedonia Greek?’ or ‘why would America meddle in Greek politics?’ Less controversial and politically charged perhaps, on this occasion I ask if she believes that Karava is an area of ancient fishing villages. ‘Yes, of course. It is called Karava for a reason. They have found many iron rings up there belonging to ancient boats.’ Our relationship of some 14 years allows me to push further. There are some points, I suggest, that just don’t add up. First, during the era when Thessaly was an ancient sea in the Mesozoic period there were no humans walking the face of the Earth, let alone building fishing boats with metal chains. There is radiocarbon-dated evidence of human activity at Theopetra Cave, near Kalampaka, on the Plain of Thessaly, going back to approximately 50,000 BC, at the border of the Upper and Middle Palaeolithic period. Other reputable sources claim inhabitation of the site stretches back to 130,000 years (Hamilakis and Harris, forthcoming, KyparissiApostolika 2017 blog).5 During the Upper Palaeolithic there was a marked increase in construction artefacts and there appeared the first evidence of human fishing, particularly interesting in our case as Theopetra was thought to look onto a large inland lake. However, and here is my second point, Theopetra is at an altitude of 330 metres and only 100 metres above the valley floor; Karava is 2,184 metres up in the heart of the Pindos Mountains, so the two sites were not necessarily linked by the same body of water as locals claim. And, of course, at Theopetra we are talking a few million years later than the “ancient sea in the mountains” theory. Third, I suggest to Dorothea, the name Karava is a modern attribution – most village names were changed after Thessaly was annexed from the Ottoman Empire in 1881 – and some villagers have pointed out to me that it might have something to do with the shape of the mountain rather than the (pre)historic connotations of a maritime culture. Finally, I offer the insights of some of my Greek archaeologist friends and colleagues who have also heard stories of maritime pasts in the Pindos Mountains while excavating sites in Thessaly. While they agree that history is inevitably tied up with

Maritime mythistories

103

landscape in central Greece (e.g. see Knight 2017, Kalantzis 2014, Hamilakis 2007), they have never found stone or metal artefacts associated with boats and, to quote one ethnoarchaeologist, ‘things just don’t add up. This is another line of fiction, another myth’ (personal communication, February 2017). The archaeologists have been told numerous variations of seafaring histories of the high Pindos Mountains, where the whole plateau is portrayed as being a giant lake or shoreline to an ancient sea. Nevertheless, the professionals insist, there are no confirmed finds to back up these claims. ‘It is like people searching for Noah’s Ark in Armenia. It is a wild goose chase’, one respected ancient historian who wants to remain anonymous asserts (personal communication, January 2017). Dorothea’s response to my caveats is predictable: ‘Well, I don’t know, it just was [an ancient sea]!’ I decide that it is time to pay a visit to one of my best friends, a highly educated, well-travelled doctor by the name of Sotiris. As well as being a reliable and exceedingly sensible fellow in his sixties, he is also especially well equipped to assist with the current case in hand, for Sotiris is both well-versed in the sociocultural anthropology of Greece (he has an unhealthy secret fetish) and he originates from a village along the winding road towards Karava. I ask him directly if he has heard of the stories of ships in the sky and whether he believes them. With a grin as wide as the River Lithaios that flows beneath his balcony and into the centre of Trikala, he heartily replies, ‘Of course, of course.’ Sotiris recites the well-trodden story path of an ancient body of water, this time a Bronze Age lake rather than a sea. He too has heard stories of locals ‘literally tripping over’ archaeological finds of stone and iron ship fastenings, anchor chains and paraphernalia that suggest ancient docks. Yet he has never seen any of these objects and almost seems embarrassed to admit that nobody in his village has come across anything in his lifetime. Clutching an olive on a cocktail stick and pouring a glass of his home-made tsipouro, Sotiris reflects that everyone has heard the stories and takes them for granted but nobody has ever seen the evidence: ‘perhaps the key to any version of history is belief’, he suggests. If artefacts are so abundant and easy to come by, why have none of his friends or kin from those villages ever found anything? It is always a story, someone else’s narrative, something very difficult to pin down in any material sense. After a lengthy pause, his head slightly raised, his gaze fixed on the top corner of the room, Sotiris sighs. ‘It doesn’t really matter though, does it?’ he asks rhetorically. ‘It doesn’t matter if it is true or false, archaeologically proven or not. It is a story that fuels life in Karava.’ A whole society has been built, he says, on the idea that the people of the region are descendants of a maritime culture. He has an aunt and uncle, Eleni and Odysseus, still living in a village at the base of Mount Karava. They are obsessed with tales of their illustrious ancient ancestors and say that they can feel the sea in their blood, despite both being born and raised in the highlands. One of their sons spent his two years of national service in the navy based on a small island in the Aegean Sea and

104

Daniel M. Knight

loved every minute of it: ‘he felt like he belonged; it came naturally to him’. One might say that he took to it like a duck to water. I suggest aloud that for his aunt and uncle the history of seafaring is a way of explaining the world, of crafting their very own place in the overarching timeline of grand histories of nation and locale. That may be the case, Sotiris concurs, but that does not mean that the mythistories do not have a basis in “truth” or “real history”, he insists. Sotiris’s wife, Maria, adds her valuable two cents to the conversation: ‘Unfortunately, until now nobody we know has found any rings [krikoi] or any other element of ancient life to indicate that there were people living up there.’ She has a long-standing interest in the myths of the mountains from where her husband originates. ‘Other people have been interested in this topic and they have researched it meticulously. I am still searching myself [for krikoi and for information], asking other people what they know.’ She states that, although Sotiris still maintains that the ancient sea that was evident around Theopetra and Meteora existed high in the mountains until the Bronze Age, the information is contradictory and things “don’t make sense”. ‘I think it is a beautiful myth that sells well and instils a sense that the region is special, that people can claim their area to be unique and full of mystery.’ Indeed, on my visit to Karava the remoteness of the small villages, inaccessible for much of the year, does lend itself to inimitable historical imaginings. ‘We all like looking for treasure,’ Maria concludes. ‘All Greeks are treasure-hunters at heart, especially when trying to prove the impossible. And we are always ready to believe a good tale if it excites the imagination.’

Tall tales of treasure Much has been written in the anthropology of Greece on the topic of hunting for ‘findables’ (vresimata) or treasures. According to Stewart (2012, 117), findables or treasures are objects of desire which have an ‘inviting aura of knowability’ and the term can refer to objects ancient (in the case of fossils or ‘Triassic treasure’, see Knight 2017, 30) or of the recent past (for instance, gold hidden during World War II). On the Greek island of Naxos, Stewart recounts mythdreams of hidden religious icons and hoards of gold guarded by demonic spirits. Treasure stories, he suggests, provide moral instruction and often dictate that inside information on the whereabouts of treasure remains with the individual; sharing causes the treasure to disappear or turn to coal (Stewart 2012, 121).6 Could this be a reason for the abundant material finds in Karava never to have been publicly shared? Similar to what I have written on the competitive practice of mushroom-hunting in Greek Macedonia, the idea of keeping treasures to oneself may be related to the concept of ‘limited good’ that is everpresent in rural Greek social life (Knight 2014, 192). There is only so much “good” to be distributed throughout society, resulting in intense rivalry for

Maritime mythistories

105

limited resources such as land, health, honour and even treasure (du Boulay and Williams 1987, 15–16, Foster 1965, 1972).7 The result is an image of limited good in which all good things exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply. In other parts of Greece the significance of ancient materiality to contemporary political ideology has been discussed by scholars including David Sutton (1998), Eleana Yalouri (2001), Yannis Hamilakis (2007) and Leonidas Vournelis (2016). Often, treasure – gold coins, fossils, antique artefacts, religious icons, even some items of food8 – provides a connection to the past and the historicity of the local area, offers value (monetary and social) in the present, and stimulates imaginaries of the future. Treasure helps shape the temporalities of local and national belonging. Buried remains such as ancient artefacts, Hamilakis (2007) argues, are inalienable possessions that are priceless to the historical construction of the national story. One example is how in 2014, Vournelis (2016) tells us, the Greek government rhetorically appropriated the archaeological excavations at the tomb of Amphipolis – once rumoured to be the final resting place of Alexander the Great. They promoted a nationalistic narrative of the power of ancestral land to reward and protect people from the dangers of external forces (the Troika and particularly the Germans) meddling in the future of the Greek nation at a time of socio-economic crisis. Treasure narratives, Vournelis (2016, 131) suggests, ‘encompass local moral economies, as well as identity claims’, providing ‘moral tales of personal enrichment, adventure, or misfortune’. On the island of Kalymnos, Sutton (1998) discusses how the sensory landscape facilitates an ongoing search for the relevance of the past in the present. When discussing numerous types of treasure that are lost or found on the island, Sutton (2014) notes that findables can only be discovered by individuals possessing the relevant cultural knowledge of the past in all its localised complexity. In all the aforementioned cases there is an undeniable intimacy with and relevance of the distant past in the present and projections of the future, and a belief in the active role of the physical environment in the composition of local and national identity. Antiquated and ancient material remains play a significant role in shaping historical consciousness (Yalouri 2001). Blending a folkloric capacity with an underlying ability to influence historical imagination of both moral and economic value, buried objects provoke a response that could be described as historicisation (see Stewart 2012, 129, 195) or even archaeologisation. When people tell stories of ancient maritime artefacts in Karava they ‘implicitly address their historicity in an affective expression of relationship to the place they live in’ (Stewart 2012, 196). This historical dimension may be contested or go unrealised by researchers – so-called “experts” – but the stories of ancient boats and associated findables are indexes of the past that help form the historicity of the region. In the case of Karava, locals have found a link to their own glorious past, a different version of ancient grandiosity to that provided by the Greek state.

106

Daniel M. Knight

Conclusion Mythistories offer alternative versions of the past to what is provided by official historicism, they challenge the status quo of accepted historical narratives, and they can be “unsettling”, even “uncanny” – what Stewart (2017, 130) defines as ‘partaking of a supernatural character; mysterious, weird, uncomfortably strange or unfamiliar’. In the case of the Bajorans and Karava, a whole society or cultural movement can be pinned to unlikely stories that provide a taste of a grand, superior or unusual past. This is particularly the case during eras of political upheaval, when alternative pasts can provide imaginary and fantastical (that is not to imply fictive) refuge when more conventional seas are becoming choppy. For ancient Bajorans during a brutal occupation, for the Greek poet Elytis at the time of the military dictatorship, for Greeks as Vournelis suggests during the current economic crisis, mythistories offer access to alternative timelines, the comforting intimacies of local historicities, claims to a magnificent culture and superior past. There appears to be an ephemeral release from a binding, hegemonically produced version of history. Greek lyricists Gkanas and Elytis alike see ships in the sky as representing the most implausible situation that reveals the endurance, innovation and resolute nature of a particular group of people. Levitating ships provide an air of the magical to stories of the past, but must not be approached as nonsensical – it is through the unlikely that the component traits of local identity are fashioned. Perhaps one should pose the question why, out of all possible mythistories that could have been circulated to place Karava in the limelight of history, did a maritime story prevail and not, let us say, a mythistory of an ancient ten-eyed beast or a great warrior king or dinosaur bones? Sotiris has thought long and hard about this. Seafaring is a significant part of Greek history, he says, and is something that every Greek feels proud of; ‘it is a national pastime’. Imaginations of the sea are related to communication, trade networks, wealth. ‘A young girl on the plains still dreams of marrying a sea captain in the merchant navy. Captains command respect, they are cultured by all the travel. The young girl will be wealthy and have a secure future.’ The remoteness of Karava could be one explanation for the prevalence of a maritime mythistory that helps connect the local topos to both the shared past of Thessaly and a prestigious aspect of national culture. The sea is central in many much-loved Greek films of the 1960s and 1970s, is ever-present in poetry and song and is the heart of the Greek economy during the tourist season; the inhabitants of remote mountain villages generally talk excitedly of summer trips to the coast. ‘My father was a shepherd, my grandfather was a shepherd, my greatgrandfather was a shepherd,’ Sotiris begins. ‘I became a doctor but there are mountains in our blood. Yet the highlands can be a lonely place.’ Sotiris remembers that as a child he and his father would lie out under the stars at night next to his flock of goats on a hillside not far from Karava. They had nothing but a shared woollen blanket to cover their chilled bodies. His father

Maritime mythistories

107

would dream of the sea, what it might look like, how a wave might feel lapping against his naked skin, spray glistening on his face. In his thirties, Sotiris’s father eventually got his wish and took the whole family to the coast for an overnight break. My father didn’t know what to do. There in front of him was something that he had only seen in pictures in magazines and heard of through folk songs. Fabled, mythic. Yes, the sea was a myth to him until that moment. But he knew that this entity, the liquid blue mass, was important to him, to his existence, his identity.

Sotiris says that he does not know whether the sea was of particular import because his father was from Karava or whether this was a shared trait of ‘all Greeks’. ‘It had been calling him for years. Decades. But now it was in front of him he was speechless, frozen to the spot.’ Sotiris’s grandmother was terrified and ‘let out an almighty scream . . . her generation had no concept of the sea’. The effect of the sea in popular imaginations of collective history and culture should not be underestimated. The Bajorans were told that mythistories of their solar lightships were nonsensical, but they continued to invest great energies in spiritual devotion and the production of material artefacts commemorating the events. The mythistories of Karava might also seem like historical sci-fi created by a people looking for their own moment in the limelight of the past. However, it is clear that the mythistories of maritime culture set deep into the Pindos Mountains have become part and parcel of everyday life for locals, shaping notions of belonging based in the affective nature of social reproduction and the physical landscape. Ships and ancient seas are pivotal to notions of communal belonging, social hierarchy and a reimagination of historiography where myth has become a form of history. As such, I suggest that it does not matter whether archaeology and geology support local claims. Perhaps Dorothea’s succinct assessment of why the maritime culture is to be found in Karava is the most insightful: ‘it just is’. To paraphrase Fox Mulder in another sci-fi series, The X-Files, it boils down to just one question: ‘Do you want to believe?’

Notes 1 I am most grateful to Chryssanthi Papadopoulou for the invitation to contribute to this innovate collection and for encouraging me to pursue a unique avenue in my research. Kostis Kalantzis and Stavroula Pipyrou provided insightful and engaging comments on the chapter – both in the form of oral and written feedback. 2 As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, McNeill sat through anthropology lectures on folk society delivered by the distinguished Robert Redfield (Gilkeson 2010, 238).

Daniel M. Knight

108

3 It is worth noting that Herzfeld (1986) dedicated a whole book to the connection between myth, folklore and modern fables. 4 However, Just (2000, 64) is also careful to point out that simply because Lefkada is an island does not mean that it is noted for its maritime culture. Many of the islanders are landed peasantry and distrustful of the sea. Even on the small neighbouring island of Meganisi, where the majority of Just’s research is based, there is a distinction between villages specialising in agriculture and fishing. 5 www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2015/10/05/theopetra-cave-thessaly-130000-yearold-prehistory-part-1 6 Stewart (2012, 202) also tells the story of when people in Naxos stumbled upon prehistoric bones and devised their own story about a cave-dwelling Christian ascetic who had been turned to stone for molesting women. In another cave by the sea, a fossil-laden rock-face was dynamited in the hope of finding hidden treasure. 7 Gilmore suggests that “limited good” transcends the material as: brothers and sisters are competitors . . . they fight for the family patrimony and the equally limited good of parental affection . . . such minor treasures mean the difference between a grinding, humiliating poverty and a relative luxury measured by degrees of simple security. (Gilmore 1987, 46)

8 In the context of south Italy, Pipyrou (2014, 2015) has discussed ‘treasure hunting’ at second-hand clothes markets. She claims that her research participants transform ‘trash into treasure’ through complex social modes of ‘waste management’.

References Argenti, Nicolas  & Knight, Daniel M., 2015, ‘Sun, wind, and the rebirth of extractive economies: Renewable energy investment and metanarratives of the crisis in Greece’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 21(4), pp. 781–802. du Boulay, Juliet  & Williams, Rory, 1987, ‘Amoral familism and the image of limited good: A critique from a European perspective’, Anthropological Quarterly 60(1), pp. 12–24. Elytis, Odysseas, 1971, The Crazy Ship (poem). Foster, George M., 1965, ‘Peasant society and the image of limited good’, American Anthropologist 67(2), pp. 293–315. Foster, George. M., 1972, ‘A second look at limited good’, Anthropological Quarterly 45(2), pp. 57–64. Gilkeson, John S., 2010, Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886– 1965, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Gilmore, David, 1987, Aggression and Community: Paradoxes of Andalusian Culture, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.

Maritime mythistories

109

Gkanas, Michalis, 1997, Ships Came Ashore (song). (Karavia sti Steria), available from: www.stixoi.info/stixoi.php?info=Lyrics&act=details&song_id=297 (accessed 24 August 2018). Hamilakis, Yannis, 2007, The Nation and Its Ruins: Archaeology, Antiquity and National Imagination in Modern Greece, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Hamilakis, Yannis & Harris, Kerry, forthcoming, ‘Humans and other animals in Neolithic Theopetra’, in Kyparissi-Apostolika, Nina (ed), Neolithic Theopetra, Philadelphia, PA, INSTAP Press. Hamilakis, Yannis & Yalouri, Eleana, 1996, ‘Antiquities as symbolic capital in modern Greek society’, Antiquity 70(267), pp. 117–129. Herzfeld, Michael, 1986, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece, New York, Pella. Hirsch, Eric & Stewart, Charles, 2005, ‘Introduction: Ethnographies of historicity’, History and Anthropology 16(3), pp. 261–274. Just, Roger, 2000, A Greek Island Cosmos: Kinship and Community on Meganisi, Oxford, James Currey Press. Kalantzis, Konstantinos, 2014, Dowsing the Past: Materialities of Civil War Memories (Ethnographic Film, Greece, 48 minutes). Knight, Daniel M., 2014, ‘Mushrooms, knowledge exchange and polytemporality in Kalloni, Greek Macedonia’, Food, Culture & Society 17(2), pp. 183–201. Knight, Daniel M., 2017, ‘Fossilized futures: Topologies and topographies of crisis experience in central Greece’, Social Analysis 61(1), pp. 26–40. Knight, Daniel M. & Stewart, Charles, 2016, ‘Ethnographies of austerity: Temporality, crisis, and affect in southern Europe’, History and Anthropology 27(1), pp. 1–18. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1958, Structural Anthropology, London, Penguin. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1966, The Savage Mind, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Mali, Joseph, 2003, Mythistory: The Making of a Modern Historiography, Chicago, Chicago University Press. McNeill, William H., 1986, ‘Mythistory, or truth, myth, history, and historians’, The American Historical Review 91(1), pp. 1–10. Pipyrou, Stavroula, 2014, ‘Cutting Bella Figura: irony, crisis and secondhand clothes in South Italy’, American Ethnologist 41(3), pp. 532–546. Pipyrou, Stavroula, 2015, ‘Porter la crise: Vêtements usagés, ironie et valeur à Reggio de Calabre, Italie du Sud’, in Ortar, Nathalie & Anstett, Elisabeth Gessat (eds). La Deuxième Vie des Objets. Recyclage et Récupération Dans les Sociétés Contemporaines, Paris, Petra, pp. 113–132. Stewart, Charles, 2012, Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Stewart, Charles, 2017, ‘Uncanny history: temporal topology in the PostOttoman world’, Social Analysis 61(1), pp. 129–142. Sutton, David E., 1998, Memories Cast in Stone: The Relevance of the Past in Everyday Life, Oxford, Berg.

110

Daniel M. Knight

Sutton, David E., 2014, ‘The concealed and the revealed: buried treasures as sense of place in neoliberal Greece’, Paper presented at invited workshop – The economic and the political: locating the Greek crisis within history and anthropology, Durham, UK. Theodossopoulos, Dimitrios, (ed), 2007, When Greeks Think about Turks: The View from Anthropology, London, Routledge. Vournelis, Leonidas, 2016, ‘Alexander’s great treasure: Wonder and mistrust in neoliberal Greece’, History and Anthropology 27(1), pp. 121–133. Yalouri, Eleana, 2001, The Acropolis: Local Fame, Global Claim, Oxford, Berg.

6

The ship as the symbol of emigration in Greek cinema1 Eleni N. Mitakou

About cinema – an introduction What is a film? On the one hand it is a particular product, manufactured within a given system of economic relations, and involving labour. . . . It becomes transformed into a commodity, possessing exchange value, which is realized by the sale of tickets and contracts, and governed by the laws of the market. On the other hand, as a result of being a material product of the system, it is also an ideological product of the system . . . (Comolli and Narboni 1977, 29, emphasis added). Two answers have been given to this question. Some scholars think that movies open a window onto reality . . . or . . . they are often fictional answers to urgent questions raised by a situation (Sorlin 1991, 5).

A great number of definitions can be quoted on what a film is. A product governed by the laws of the market that opens a window onto a reality which at the same time ‘unveils secrets and shows the underside of a society and its lapses’ (Ferro 1988, 29). In many ways, the previously quoted descriptions underline the important role of cinema in preserving (hi)stories and historical memory in general. But, since it is not the purpose of this chapter to focus on the relationship between cinema, ideology and history, it will suffice to quote Pierre Sorlin (1995, 5) on the matter: ‘[Historians have admitted] that films are important pieces of evidence for any study of the twentieth century, and it is no longer necessary to justify an incursion into this field’. A film is a “prisoner” of the time it was filmed in and as such, it constitutes an historical testimony, reflective of the mentality and culture of an era. Still, Marc Ferro (1988, 29) notes: ‘film, image or not of reality, document or fiction, true story or pure intention, is History’ and after all, he continues, ‘that what has not occurred

112

Eleni N. Mitakou

(and even what has occurred) – beliefs, intentions, human imagination – is as much history as History’. This chapter discusses the way Greek emigration has been presented in Greek films of various periods. It presents the similarities and differences of the various Greek filmic eras, and the progressive change in the portrayal of Greek emigration. It focuses on ships and shows how these were employed as visual stereotypes2 by Greek film directors, specifically how ships were used as the cinematic symbol of Greek emigration. Through the years, the image of the ship evolved from the symbol of the victorious return of the successful emigrant into the symbol of the escape of the desperate protagonist. Accordingly, films that originally aimed at entertaining the audiences by presenting stories with happy endings were gradually replaced by films confronting the phenomenon of Greek emigration, offering glimpses of its “underside” and involving the audience emotionally in this unfortunate historical circumstance. Following a historical approach, and through the presentation of 13 films,3 this chapter examines the affective impact of cinema on its audiences and the meanings invested in ships as reminders and symbols of a phenomenon with broad social, economic, political and psychological implications for Greeks. On another level, this chapter also explores the relation between film, memory and the Greek migratory movement.

Greek cinema Pierre Sorlin (1991, 19) wrote with respect to Greek cinema that, despite some excellent films which deserve close attention, the cinematic output in Greece is largely inconsistent and lacks any unifying characteristics which would allow it to be recognised as a ‘national cinema’. Marios Ploritis and Friksos Iliadis both added how the main problem for the majority of Greek films lies in their scenarios (Sotiropoulou 1995, 41). It is indeed very difficult to identify in Greek films any common features which have been passed on from one director to another, in order to be able to pinpoint specific cinematic periods, trends or genres. As a result, one cannot discern any distinct nationwide movements within Greek cinematic production. It is also worth mentioning that, until recently, there was no long-term, state strategy to support the seventh art and that since World War II, throughout the Greek Civil War that followed, and for the better part of the 1960s and 1970s, films in Greece were censored (Sotiropoulou 1989, 44–56). In order for producers to be allowed to distribute their films and subsequently make a profit on them, a number of restrictions pertaining to film content needed to be observed. Unless producers complied with these regulations, they were not granted screening rights or permits to film exterior scenes. Censorship intensified after World War II and during the subsequent Greek Civil War. Consequently, most films produced in these four decades were comedies or

The ship and emigration in Greek cinema

113

romantic dramas, with hardly any references to nationwide concerns or current sociopolitical phenomena like emigration. The prevalent cinematic genre of that period was designed for cinematic mass consumption. It largely beautified reality and revolved around a protagonist’s urban adventures. The latter were characterised by naivety, frivolousness, idleness and a comic randomness. Producers during that time focused on increasing their profits by exploiting their audience’s need for light, immediate entertainment. As a result, a great number of films with easily understandable visual codes and stereotypes appeared on screen. Specifically, these producers released cheap, funny and easy-to-understand films, knowing that their audience, consisting mostly of an urban population with a rural background, faced a grim socioeconomic reality and was in need of ways to escape it temporarily. By addressing these escapist tendencies, Greek cinematic production in the 1950s and 1960s bloomed and managed to capture its audience’s interest, so much so that, for the first and only time in the history of Greek cinema, some Greek films sold more tickets than American ones. Between 1960 and 1970 Greek films sold the highest numbers of tickets ever recorded and Greek producers increased their profits considerably. Specifically, whilst in 1954–55 only 12.81 per cent of the tickets sold were for Greek films, in 1960–70 these percentages ranged between 27.22 per cent and 37.50 per cent (Sotiropoulou 1995, 65). Still, American films continued to sell more than 45 per cent of cinema tickets. Greek producers, therefore, continued to take their cues from Hollywood: they involved famous Greek actors in their films, recycled stories that had already proved to be popular, and – as aforementioned – invested primarily in comedies or melodramas with happy endings. Between 1960 and 1965 a new government decree attempted to frame cinematic production.4 No specific measures were taken, however, to protect films from censorship and from the producers’ craving for larger profits. Furthermore, no relevant state agency (e.g. a national film school, a national film archive) was founded. As a result, the upcoming crisis in Greek cinema was not prevented. In any case, these early attempts were abruptly interrupted by the military junta (Xanthopoulos 2004, 28). Once again, in the years 1967–74, the arts were heavily censored and references to emigration, as well as to most other contemporary sociopolitical phenomena, were banned. Producers opted for comedies and melodramas or went for state-approved films aimed at inspiring admiration for the nation (Sotiropoulou 1989, 84). In the years 1970–80 Greek cinematography underwent serious transformations. Between 1966 and 1981 a new cinematic movement appeared, The New Greek Cinema (NEK),5 largely influenced by contemporary European movements. Films of that period were produced by smaller companies that wanted to take a stand against their contemporary, large, Greek film-producing firms. They had very limited budgets, involved primarily unknown actors, and most importantly tackled issues that the current political regime frowned upon (Valoukos 2003, 528–538). Thus, the films of this period developed as an answer to the crisis in the production–distribution system of the time. This resulted in

114

Eleni N. Mitakou

the film production line changing, but it also transformed the previously established relationship between films and their audience. It is worth noting that during this period the spread of television served as an additional cause of rupture of this relationship. According to the National Statistics Department, in 1980 92 per cent of households had a television set. Around the same time the number of cinema tickets decreased by two-thirds in comparison to the number of tickets sold in previous decades (Sotiropoulou 1995, Hairetakis 1988). Still, some of the films of this period constituted a “cultural upgrade” for Greek cinema. Directors, apart from their own role, often played the part of producers too. They were therefore wholly responsible for the films they created and in a better position to experiment with their scenarios. After all, they bore the consequences of the distribution restrictions themselves. The producers of the previous decade, who had already made money from films, turned to other, more profitable investments and left the new directors/producers free to choose a cinematic language of their own, as well as to experiment with their narratives and choice of actors. It was during this phase that the most decisive steps scenario-wise were taken towards cinema earning its freedom of expression. These steps paved the way for the subsequent 1986 law that abolished film censorship (Sotiropoulou 1995, 148). Under the 1986 law cinematic production was recognised as a form of cultural expression and a national cultural asset, and directors were acknowledged as artists. Finally, the state established monetary awards for film producers and accredited to the recently founded Greek Film Centre the status of a national institution. As previously shown, three trends in Greek cinematic production are discernible up until the 1986 law. First came the films of the 1950s and 1960s, which refrained from touching on sensitive sociopolitical matters such as emigration, and, as will be shown below, only alluded to them vaguely. In the short time before the military junta, few films appeared that made direct references to emigration and its impacts on Greek society. In the years of the military junta (1967–74), however, these efforts were silenced and the majority of producers reverted to continuing to fund comedies and melodramas, avoid complex plots and evade references to issues of current sociopolitical concern. Finally in the years 1974–86 Greek films and producers/directors were able to address directly phenomena like emigration. The 13 films examined in this chapter, dating from 1956 to 1984, span all three periods of Greek cinematic production and were selected from Valoukos’s (1984) film collection. As is shown below, some of them only allude to emigration while others explore the phenomenon in all its implications.

Emigration There have been two large waves of Greek emigration since the formation of the modern Greek state (Venturas 2004, Laliotou 2004, Papasotiriou 2000, 44,

The ship and emigration in Greek cinema

115

Clogg 1999). The first dates to the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries and the second to the period immediately after World War II. The first wave of Greek emigration was triggered by the 1893 economic crisis. Emigrants moved to countries around the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea – especially Egypt (Gorman 2009). This started as a sporadic and unorganised migratory movement, but soon after, between 1900 and 1921, the Greek authorities actively encouraged and coordinated emigration abroad. This resulted in almost onesixth of the population fleeing the country. The economic emigrants of these two decades headed almost exclusively to the USA (Venturas 2004). The years between the two World Wars and after the deportation of Greeks from Asia Minor (1922) saw a considerable decrease in overseas ​​migration up until the end of WWII and the following Greek Civil War, when the second wave commenced. This migratory wave continued until 1973. For the first ten years Greeks moved to countries in Central Europe and the Eastern Bloc. The next decade (1950–60) witnessed large population transfers to America, Australia and Canada. These were economic emigrants who left Greece as a result of the contemporary, considerable increase in unemployment rates. After 1955 some emigrants also moved to European countries, mainly Belgium and West Germany. This emigration movement too was well-organised and supported by the Greek state (Venturas, 2004). In the years 1967–74, when Greeks emigrated to save themselves from the military junta, they headed primarily to European countries. These latter emigrants returned to Greece after 1974, when the junta was overturned, and after a three-decade-long wave of emigration there followed a period of gradual decline in the number of people leaving the country (Clogg 1999). As will be shown below, films of the first and middle periods presented only economic emigrants mainly going to or having returned from the USA. They made no mention of political emigrants. Films of the later period most commonly omitted details pertaining to the reasons for emigrating or the country of destination. They increasingly viewed the phenomenon of emigration holistically and diverted their attention to the psychological impacts of this phenomenon on the emigrant. Whilst films of the previous periods focused primarily on the perspectives of those that stayed behind, films of the later period directed their interest towards the emigrant himself and also to the implications as opposed to the causes of emigrating. Returning emigrants portrayed in films of the later period could have belonged to any of the two major migratory movements. The ship endured as the main visual symbol of emigration throughout all three periods. In the later one, this was no longer due to the historical fact that ships had carried the emigrants in these films abroad; after all, we often do not learn where the emigrant came from. Instead, directors of this later period consciously chose to maintain ships as visual symbols of emigration and also to enrich these with additional, subtle references pertaining to the psychological state of the emigrants. Accordingly, they used the image of the ship in their films as an allusion to an unknown future, a reference to

116

Eleni N. Mitakou

a spatially and temporally distant past, and an indication of the protagonist’s internal turmoil.

The films Emigration was overlooked for many years by the Greek film industry. It is possible that these memories were too recent and upsetting to be relayed in films. The first film alluding to the phenomenon, Dollars and Dreams, came out in 1956, 15 years after the commencement of the second major wave of emigration. From that year onwards the number of films taking note of emigrants increased, as did the images of ships in Greek cinematography. Even though Patras was the main port of embarkation for emigrants, owing to its geographically convenient location it was only the Piraeus (the port of Athens) that was shown in films. Moreover, and as aforementioned, most emigration-related stories of the first two periods mentioned the USA, despite the fact that during that time numerous emigrants headed for other destination. Dollars and Dreams (1956) revolved around the return of a US emigrant to Greece. As alluded to in the title, this emigrant had made a fortune abroad and was returning home, ‘as a deus ex machina’, with the sole purpose of supporting financially his relatives (Xanthopoulos 2004, 27). This “success story” of the return of the wealthy emigrant became one of the stereotypical themes in the films of that period. Since at that time audiences had slim chances for a better (financial) future, films provided them with a plausible dream. In this movie, the rich uncle in the States had died, and requested in his will for his young nephew to return to Greece, find their closest relatives (other nephews) and divide amongst them the uncle’s fortune. The emigrant nephew was in search of local nephews called ‘Papadopoulos’, which is the most common Greek surname. Consequently, his quest to find relatives in the Peloponnese, from where most Papadopouloi originate, was next to impossible and bore no fruit. In the end, though, a nephew miraculously appeared at the port in the Piraeus. From there, the two nephews travelled onboard the same ship back to the USA, the recently found nephew with his newly acquired wealth and the emigrant one with a new wife. As Aglaia Mitropoulou (2006, 226) commented in her book on Greek cinema, during that time the whole of Greece, not only the characters in this film, was in perpetual expectation of financial aid from US relatives. The first scenes of the movie were filmed on the cruise ship Queen Frederica, which sailed during that time from the Mediterranean to North America.6 Real archival film was used for the scene of the arrival of the ship. In 1960–61, and as a result of modifications, this ship’s capacity was increased to 174 firstclass passengers, 650 second-class and 1,005 economy. As with most ships, the cheaper a cabin was, the lower it was located amongst the numerous decks. First-class cabins were located on the upper decks and the cheapest economy

The ship and emigration in Greek cinema

117

ones were deep within the ship’s hull. It is worth noting that testimonies, preserved in national and private archives (such as ELIA) corroborate the desperation of emigrants prior to their departure and the harsh conditions on board ships. According to these, the number of passengers exceeded the capacity of the ships, and the emigrants not only felt uncomfortable onboard but also disrespected and abandoned. Some of these testimonies focus on the moment of departure, when the emigrant took his/her last look at the homeland port and his/her family waving goodbye from the jetty. Prior to 1960, when this film was produced, the capacity of the Queen Frederica was smaller, but the arrangement of the cabins remained the same. Consequently, the social stratification of the people on board, i.e. their (lack of) affluence, was reflected in the spatial placement and comforts of their lodgings. In Dollars and Dreams this stratification is presented only briefly. Specifically, there is a scene filmed from inside an elevator with open doors showing the ascent from the lower deck to the top one. Other than this, all other scenes were filmed in the luxurious bars and spacious lobbies of the first class. After all, in this film, the Queen Frederica was carrying back a wealthy emigrant whose intentions were to distribute his riches. Images of the lower decks and their passengers would have only disrupted the flow of a hopeful film with a happy ending. Thus the ship was presented in this film as the luxurious carrier of hopes and riches and was intentionally distanced from the realities of the emigrant-carrying ships of its time. The rich relative returning to Greece to save the day continued to be promoted as the solution to everyone’s problems in the films of the years that followed, mainly because of the success of the film The Aunt from Chicago (1957), who sadly came by plane. Two years later, Uncle from Canada (1959) was released and soon after this, in The Girl Has Got an Uncle (1959), another rich uncle came to Greece to rescue his niece from her oppressive family and enable her financially to marry the man she loved. The uncle arrived at and departed from the Piraeus by ship. There was no mention in the film, however, of the name of the ship and the original country of departure or subsequent destination of the uncle. The image of the ship itself was enough to indicate that someone rich was returning to Greece to make all problems disappear. A reference to the USA was deemed unnecessary. Additionally, there was no need to present the life of this character before his arrival in or after his departure from Greece. He was instead presented as a “caricature”, a twodimensional figure, who came by ship to Greece with the sole aspiration to give money to his beloved family, who until that point hardly knew he existed (Vamvakas 2004, 45). Many of the emigrants who had left Greece at the beginning of the century had already adapted and prospered in their new countries and were shown to be returning mainly for two reasons: to see their relatives and give them money, and to find a woman to marry. These films affected their audiences to the extent that for over a decade Greek families truly believed that the myth of

118

Eleni N. Mitakou

an inheritance from a forgotten relative abroad was real; a possible, tangible solution to their problems. For ten years after Dollars and Dreams producers released similar films with subtle references to emigration  – the majority of these being comedies. As previously explained, censorship and the audience’s expectations prevented the film industry from showing real-life conditions onboard emigrant-carrying ships. They instead restricted themselves to presenting the amenities and comforts of first-class accommodation located on the upper decks, with their numerous lounges and pools. The ship was thus invested with additional meanings. It was no longer (only) shown as the carrier of riches. It was also portrayed as the manifestation of these riches and also as the accommodator of convenient, comic encounters and great love stories. This can be seen clearly in Girls for Kissing (1965). Tzeny and Rena, the two female protagonists, had made enough money as tourist agents abroad to want to establish a company branch back in Greece. They therefore returned to their homeland to take photos of the Greek islands for the purposes of their advertising campaign. The girls in Girls for Kissing travelled to their homeland by boat. (Note that, once in Greece, the girls travelled by plane to Rhodes.) Specifically, they are shown onboard a luxurious cruise ship relaxing, enjoying the onboard amenities and meeting men. There are many scenes of the two protagonists sitting by the pool gossiping or flirting. Even though by that time wealthy people could travel to Greece by plane,7 the cruise ship continued to be used as the luxurious means of transportation par excellence. It denoted that its passengers had a social standing and could afford both the money and time to travel first class and enjoy themselves. In this film emigration is only a minor theme serving the unravelling of the plot. The fact that the girls were returning emigrants is not emphasised, only that the girls achieved success abroad. Consequently, the ship was not employed so much as the carrier but more as proof of their success and wealth. This becomes evident in the scene of the ship’s arrival in port, which was treated as an occasion for a family celebration. All the relatives had gathered in wait on the jetty in order to welcome the ship with the girls. Since the ship had been converted into the symbol of the girls’ accomplishment, its arrival in port needed to be treated as a celebratory family event. The ship in this movie goes beyond the vehicle carrying emigrant fortunes for distribution. After all, the girls had no intention to share their wealth with their relatives. The ship was instead portrayed as the manifestation and accommodator of the emigrant girls’ success and hopeful future life prospects. A more detailed presentation of the journey and the ship is found in the film A Ship Full of Papadopoulos (1966), where the rich uncle once again travels back to Greece. This time he has his nieces and nephews already with him onboard and aims at getting to know them better whilst they are all travelling together. Note that the nieces and nephews had travelled to America in order to find their uncle after his invitation, but had failed to do so. Instead, they stumbled on him unexpectedly on board the ship taking them back to Greece,

The ship and emigration in Greek cinema

119

at a gathering the uncle had organised. The story begins with all of them on board the ship. In this film we are shown sun beds under the sun for first-class passengers and ones placed below the upper deck, in the shade, for all other passengers. This is one of the few instances that social stratification on board the ship is visually alluded to. Moreover, even though numerous first-class cabins are shown, these vary in size and luxury. It is thus clearly indicated that social stratification was present even amongst those travelling first class. In this film the rich uncle had ensured that all family members would be in first class. Thus the wealth of the uncle and the level of care for his family were reflected in the ship’s quarters, where much of the plot was filmed. In this film too the ship acts as an emblem of the affluence of the returning emigrant and also serves as the locus of many promising encounters with his relatives. In January  1955 the ship Olympia made its inaugural journey from the Piraeus to New York and afterwards made nine to 11 round trips per year, calling at all major Mediterranean ports along its way. Twelve years after its 1955 journey, the ship debuted on the big screen in the film Boat of Joy (1967). By the time this film was produced, transatlantic passenger navigation was already on its way to obsolescence owing to the expansion of the aviation industry. It is possible that this film, together with the previous two, were aimed at sustaining and possibly reviving the former glory of cruise ships, and also at advertising shipping companies. In the opening titles the narrator states that it was the tolerance and participation of hundreds of emigrants and the crew on board the Olympia that made filming possible. He also informs the audience that the ‘Olympia, every year and on every journey, carries hopes, dreams, memories and torments from one side of the great ocean to the other’. This film was shot onboard the Olympia during one of its journeys from Greece to New York. Two of the leading characters were the captain’s daughter, who was naturally travelling first class, and an emigrant, who was in economy. The emigrant’s cabin was well below deck and the film made a point of showing the labyrinthine structure of the lower decks with their numerous tiny cabins, since the protagonist always found it hard to (re)locate his cabin and kept asking for directions. The film had a happy ending, and even though it showed some of the issues the emigrants faced it did not focus on these so as to maintain its cheerful, light character. Similarly, even though the Olympia was called for what it was by the narrator, an emigrant-carrying ship, it was mainly shown in this film as a promising place of beneficial encounters, i.e. as a carrier of hope. As already demonstrated, emigration was commonly used in comedies as a mere light reference which served their plot. In Captain Out of the Blue (1968) the protagonist of the film, a famous Greek actress called Maro Kontou, played the part of a poor singer who needed to emigrate to Australia but could not afford to buy a ticket. She therefore hid in one of the ship’s fridges in hopes of travelling unnoticed. The issue of stowaway emigrants, many of whom died in their efforts to leave their countries unseen or illegally, was presented in this film as a highly amusing – and in the case of the protagonist

120

Eleni N. Mitakou

fortunate  – occurrence. Thus, even though reference to the hardships (she was poor) that led to emigration was made, this was done in a funny way that would not trouble the audience. After the ship had set sail and the singer was discovered hiding in the fridge, she was taken to the captain, who fell in love with her, married her (after numerous adventures) and they lived happily and comfortably ever after. In the film the ship is almost not shown. The takes were filmed in the captain’s office. Since the theme of emigration was only used as the excuse for the leading characters to meet, the ship too played a minor part in the film; namely of a featureless backdrop to a love story. The same goes for Carefree . . . Nut (1971), where the protagonist, another famous Greek actor, called Thanassis Veggos, hid in a small container in order to travel as a stowaway to a destination never disclosed. During embarkation, the container was dropped on the ground and he was discovered before even getting on board. Again in this film emigration played a minor part, since the protagonists did not emigrate despite his best efforts. The only scene involving the ship was when it left the port. In this scene the ship was once more presented as a carrier of hopes and dreams. Only this time it served to take these away from the protagonist, who had failed to board. This scene basically serves as an element in the building of the character of the protagonist. The fact that he preferred to travel abroad any way he could, instead of staying in Greece, revealed his desperation and alluded to his less-than-fortunate past (also see Vamvakas, 2004, 47–50). The films that are examined below were released in the same years with the last five films discussed. Even though the ones already presented were created for the sole purpose of offering audiences easy amusement and therefore revolved around stereotypical characters and used clichés in their aesthetic approaches (Sotiropoulou 1995, 41), the films that follow ventured to present emigration for what it really was and refrained from succumbing to their audiences’ escapist tendencies. In the mid-60s, as aforementioned, there was an effort to renew Greek cinematic language. One of the outcomes of this effort was a change in the treatment of the Greek diaspora in Greek films. Moreover, the increase in the overall number of movies produced resulted in an increase in movies with references to emigration. In The Migrant (1965), ten years abroad proved hardly long enough for the protagonist to make enough money to return home to “save” his family and his island. Despite his toils in unsanitary working conditions in the USA, he did not manage to become rich. In this film, the director adopted a more realistic approach to emigration and showed the protagonist returning to his village as a failure: without riches, suffering from a serious illness and with his spirits broken. The people in his village, on the other hand, were in denial of the fact that such a thing was possible and had pressing expectations of him returning rich and successful. On the occasion of his arrival, and upon the appearance of the ship in the harbour, they threw a welcome celebration. It was common

The ship and emigration in Greek cinema

121

practice for villages to put money together in order to assist someone with emigrating. After having done so, they expected this person to return and pay the village back in some way or another. This was possibly the case with the protagonist in this film. In the end, and despite the fact that he was ill and needed money for his treatment, he gave the few savings he had to his sister as a dowry. He was then left with no hope of recovery from his illness, and feeling already old and tired. In this film the director addressed the long-term effects of emigration on the individual (exhaustion, frustration, desperation) and contrasted these with the unrealistic expectations of the ones left behind (Delveroudi 2006, 21). The ship bringing the emigrant back represented his complicated, burdened past, which remained unknown to the people in his village. Since emigration in the film was presented as a harsh reality, the ship escaped its frivolous stereotype as the carrier of riches and saviours. A small boat, instead of a cruise ship, was employed. The scenario for this film is an adaptation of a novel by A. Papadiamantis (The American, 1891). Despite the fact that a particularly popular actor (A. Alexandrakis) played the part of the protagonist, the film was the forty-fourth most watched out of the hundred films produced that year. The audiences were not happy to be confronted with the realities of emigration. The true dimensions of the emigrants’ and their families’ troubles, as well as the reality of the depopulated rural landscape were first presented in . . .Until the Ship (1966). This too was one of the first attempts to explore emigration in its true dimensions in Greek cinema. The protagonist travelled for longer than a month from his village up in the mountains to the port in the Piraeus. In this land journey his desperation was shown to be escalating as a result of unfortunate encounters along his way. His need to escape Greece was thus constantly underlined. The “descent to the sea” from the mountains was employed as the everlasting symbol of escape (Rafaelidis 1983, 101).8 The protagonist set off alone and along the way met a woman who had been abandoned by her husband. In one of the final scenes that takes place somewhere in Athens we follow their preparations for their departure, struggling to gather all relevant documents and permits. When the ship finally arrives they stand in anticipation on the jetty in front of it, uttering their silent goodbyes to their pasts. All other people around them are crying whilst bidding farewell to those they are leaving behind. The two of them remain composed and silent. The final scene of the film shows the Patris, a cruise ship which sailed at the time from Greece to Australia.9 After having shown all the reasons why neither of these two people could remain in Greece, in the embarkation scene the director used the ship as the symbol of hope for a better future (Xanthopoulos 2004, 33). The cruise ship was shown full of people, whilst the port was empty and lifeless. The protagonists had nothing to look back to and were consequently left with a single choice: boarding. In this film the ship was portrayed as a promise for a future. After all, as the title indicated, the ship setting sail was a terminus; possibly for the heroes’ past and troubles.

122

Eleni N. Mitakou

Nevertheless, in numerous other films of this period ships were also used as visual references to the heroes’ past torments. Directors involved either a disembarkation scene or simply an image of a ship to communicate to their audiences that the protagonist had had a complicated past which would not be discussed further. For example, in The Man Who Returned from the Pain (1966) the film opened with a panoramic scene of the port of the Piraeus, thus communicating to the audience that the protagonist had had a difficult time as an emigrant and had returned from abroad. No further explanations were offered. This visual language was explicit enough for the audience to understand as much as it needed to. In such cases emigration and the image of the ship were employed as tools to increase suspense. The fact that a single frame of a ship could communicate a specific message shows that this image had already become an established, self-explanatory visual symbol. The image of the ship immediately underlined the harsh past of the hero. As such the ship became a crucial element in the creation of the persona of a character. Only a year after . . .Until the Ship (1966) and The Man Who Returned from the Pain (1966) the military junta halted every attempt towards rejuvenating cinematic production and elevating it into an art form (Sotiropoulou 1989, 94). In the seven years of the dictatorship films revolved around historical battles, military heroes of the past and other stories glorifying the Greek military. Their primary goal was to inspire admiration for the nation and the military regime. State authorities provided directors with equipment and financial assistance in order to create state-approved films (Sotiropoulou 1989, 84). In the meantime, political emigrants headed to destinations other than Australia and the USA, and there were no mass embarkations on ships. The cinematic language changed and the place denoting an arrival or departure became the airport in Elliniko, not the port in the Piraeus. Ships at the time were only used for travelling to the Greek islands. Films aimed again at mass entertainment and producers returned to the recycling of stories that had already proven successful, like the return of the Greek-American emigrant who saves the day. In the majority of these films emigration was presented comically and superficially. A notable exception is Theo(doros) Angelopoulos’s Reconstruction (1970), where the director defied the regime by addressing issues related to emigration. He showed the abandoned rural landscape and presented the psychological and social impacts of the emigrants’ separation from their families. With respect to emigration, this film marked a new era in Greek cinematography. Angelopoulos brought emigration once more to the foreground in Voyage to Cythera (1984), where he focused again on the impacts of the phenomenon on the emigrant and his family. In this film the director centred on the loneliness and existential angst of the protagonist who had been unwillingly separated from his homeland. His aim was not so much to present the reasons for emigrating but to explicate the psychological effects of the phenomenon. The protagonist was a father of two and a communist who had lived abroad, in exile, for 32 years before finally returning to his family. After all this time

The ship and emigration in Greek cinema

123

he had become a stranger to them, as well as to his friends and his entire village. In the words of his daughter standing waiting for him at the port, ‘After 32 years, father or no father, what is the point? Why should we get short of breath chasing a shadow?’ The ship was shown arriving in a cloudy, blurry and almost black-and-white port, which represented the hero’s past, a collage of fading memories. The scene was filmed in a single long take, in the manner of Angelopoulos’s prolonged takes, which are burdened with ominous symbolic meanings. The ship carried only one passenger, the father, in the face of whom the audience was to recognise all emigrants. The ship, other than him, was empty and devoid of life. There was no movement on board and no voices to be heard. The ship itself was thus presented as a ghost, a reflection of how its passenger saw himself as well as how his family viewed him. After all, in the film the protagonist is shown to come to the realisation that his entire life had been wasted in anticipation of his return to his homeland.10 In the end, the authorities refuse to allow in the country a person without an identity card, and they force him to board the ship and go back where he came from. Nevertheless, since he has no identity card – as was often the case with political emigrants whom the regime erased all records of and turned them into ghosts as soon as they fled the country – he is not permitted to travel either, and the ship is shown leaving without him. The role of the ship in this film is instrumental, because it mirrors the emotional journey and psychological state of the emigrant. As such it is depicted as the symbol of emigration par excellence. At first it is shown as a ghost, as is the single passenger it carries to his family and homeland. Once the protagonist is forced to remain suspended with nowhere left to go, the ship sets sail without him for an unknown destination (also see Sotiropoulou 2006, 57). Thus, the ship stands for the protagonist’s future, which is uncertain. Further on in the film, and in the absence of the ship, a raft appears. Since the protagonist is not allowed in or out of the country, owing to the lack of an identity (card), he is shown on this raft. He remains at sea, because he cannot be on the land, but he is nevertheless not travelling, since he is not permitted to. The director has him and his wife, the only person still looking forward to his return, standing on a raft tied to the jetty. After a few minutes of silent reflection, the two of them cut the rope keeping the raft in place, having realised that there is no point in remaining attached to the port, their people or reality in general (Xanthopoulos 2004, 39). As the emigrant protagonist in this film is reduced to a man with no purpose or place, the ship is reduced into a fragment of itself, a raft. As aforementioned, by 1974 the waves of emigration ceased. Directors turned their attention to more current sociopolitical phenomena. Emigration and its cinematic symbol, the ship, with the notable exception of Voyage to Cythera (1984), were not included in the new, developing cinematic language. In addition, aviation had gained ground over navigation. As a result of this, even in the few instances when returning emigrants featured in films, they were shown getting off airplanes.

124

Eleni N. Mitakou

Conclusions Baudrillard (1987, 14) wrote that ‘the immense majority of present day photographic, cinematic, and television images are thought to bear witness to the world. . . . We have spontaneous confidence in their realism’. He also showed how cinema does not only promote products, but also paradigmatic ways of living, and that modern mass behaviour, which is characterised by conformity, ensures compliance with the paradigms promoted in films (Baudrillard 1987, 14). This is to say that the way a phenomenon is presented in films impinges greatly on the way it is perceived and dealt with by audiences. The films previously examined fall into two categories. There were those seeking to beautify reality and those aiming to provoke the audiences and motivate them to deal with reality. Accordingly, these films attest to the differing ways emigration was handled by the Greek state and Greeks in general. There were those who turned a blind eye to the phenomenon and those who were majorly affected by it and wished to address its causes so as to contain its aftermaths. The films beautifying and romanticising the phenomenon focused on emigrants who had acquired wealth abroad and presented emigrants’ prosperity as a general and undeniable truth. The centre of their attention was the successful emigrant protagonist whilst emigration was only viewed as a backstory of limited relevance. In this way, the emigrant’s burdened past became ameliorated. This treatment of emigration, and of Greek reality at large, lasted for more than two decades (1945–70) and resulted in the economic growth of production companies. The latter aimed at making films for mass consumption and making larger profits. They therefore consciously abstained from addressing national and sociopolitical problems, which would have unsettled their audiences. Censorship played a crucial part in ensuring that this remained the case. Ships in these films served as symbols of success and carriers of wealth and good fortune. They were used as tools in the simplification or omission of the protagonist’s past since their presence was enough to show that (s)he was an emigrant. As Schweinitz (2011, xiv) has shown, ‘stereotypes of popular films simultaneously become cultural signs’. Consequently, after the first few uses of ships in films, viewers became trained into what the symbol of the ship stood for and understood the part of the story omitted from the scenario. In these films, we find mostly luxurious cruise ships full of amenities, which serve to highlight the affluence of the retuning emigrant. References to realities of emigration such as the conditions and social stratification on board were largely omitted, since they did not fit the requirements of the plot. Most of the films aiming at raising the audiences’ awareness of the causes and implications of emigration were produced by smaller companies where the director also played the part of the producer and could therefore afford the right to communicate his views on the phenomenon to the public. These films never attracted as large an audience as the previous ones, since their content

The ship and emigration in Greek cinema

125

was not amusing, and Greek reality at the time was harsh enough as it was for people to want to revisit it in films. Still, emigration was explicitly addressed, instead of used as the protagonist’s backstory. Concomitantly, ships were elevated into complex, polyvalent symbols standing for uncertainty and the unknown. In the independent films The Migrant (1965), . . .Until the Ship (1966), and Voyage to Cythera (1984), ships respectively represented the unknown burdened past of the emigrant, the unknown future of emigration which could only be better than the unbearable present, and finally the uncertain status and troubled state of emigrants. Especially in the last film, the symbol of the ship was invested with unprecedented levels of polyvalence. The director, Theo Angelopoulos, appears to have been captivated by the idea of the journey and everything this denoted (e.g. movement in time and place, the promise of the unknown, uncertainty). In his film the ship merged with the hero, highlighted his past as an emigrant, accompanied him in his journey to the homeland and foreshadowed his future of placelessness. The uses of ships in Greek films and the ease that these communicated messages to the audiences highlight the fact that ships carry, amongst others cargoes, symbolisms (also see Papadopoulou and Stallings, this volume). This was evident to both film directors, who purposefully involved ships in their films, and audiences, who would immediately recognise the meanings conveyed to them without further explanations. The crucial involvement of ships in the two Greek migratory waves which depopulated rural Greece and permanently ruptured social and family bonds was a historical reality that elevated ships into one of the most heavily emotionally invested symbols of modern Greece and Greek identity. Images of ships departing, carrying away with them family members and loved ones, were engraved in people’s memories for decades. Ships were loathed because they epitomised the vehicle of separation and they were simultaneously worshipped as the enablers of a return and of a better future by generations of Greeks.

Notes 1 I would like to thank the editor of this volume, Chryssanthi Papadopoulou, for inviting me to contribute a chapter, and for her support and comments, which benefited my paper considerably. 2 For the use of the word stereotype see Schweinitz (2011, 5): Stereotypes are thought to be (1) the relatively permanent mental fixtures of an individual (stability); (2) intersubjectively distributed within certain formations, for which they assume the functions of consensus building and standardization (conformity); (3) they do not, or only seldom, rely on personal experience but are primarily socially communicated (second-hand nature); in addition (4) they are limited to the simple combination of a few characteristics (reduction) and accompanied by strong feelings (affective

126

Eleni N. Mitakou coloration). Finally (5) functioning automatically, stereotypes are considered to substantially interfere with the processes of perception and judgement, which they influence and even determine (cliché effect).

3 The films will be presented alongside brief descriptions of the political events of the time in which they were made and their contemporary state regulations concerning cinematography. These films were selected because they include images of ships, not on the basis of their aesthetic qualities or impact on Greek audiences. The risk of some relevant films eluding mention in this study is present and directly related to the absence of an organised national film archive. 4 Law 4208/61 FEK 176A/19.09.61 was introduced in order to support big production companies already active in Greece. It also paved the way for foreign production companies to come to Greece. Specifically, one of its aims was to attract foreign currency by promoting Greek tourism and motivating foreign producers to film in Greece. It granted foreign producers, amongst others, tax exemptions, currency-exchange facilities and clearance from customs fees. 5 The abbreviation NEK stands for Neos Ellinikos Kinimatografos and was introduced by film critics after 1970. On NEK, see Soldatos (1999) and Valoukos (2003, 528–538). 6 The cruise ship Queen Frederica, previously known as the Atlantic, before this as the Mastonia and further back as Malolo, was an American ocean liner built by William Cramp & Sons, in Philadelphia. It sailed from 1926 until 1971. On 23 December 1954, upon its arrival in the Piraeus and in the presence of the Greek royal family and various other officials, it was renamed the Queen Frederica ​​and commissioned under a Greek flag. The managing company of the ship was Greek-America Lines. For ten years this cruise ship travelled around the Mediterranean and to and from North America, and was in competition with the Greek cruise ship Olympia, owned by the Ormos Shipping Company. In 1971 it was decommissioned and left to decay in the shipyards of Eleusis until 1977. In 1978, when it was decided that its interiors should be stripped off, the ship caught fire and was completely destroyed. 7 Ellinikon International Airport, the airport of Athens, was constructed in 1937. It welcomed its first passengers in 1938 and became established as an international airport between 1955 and 2001. 8 See Xenophon (Anabasis 4.7 19–27) when the exhausted Greek army finally reaches the top of a hill that offers a view of the sea and the soldiers shout ‘The Sea! The Sea!’. This view affords them hope of a return to safety. 9 Patris travelled from Greece to Australia from 1959 until 1975 and completed 91 journeys. It was commissioned under a Greek flag in 1959 by Chandris Hellas. Around the same time the ship was modified so as to increase its capacity to 36 first-class passengers and 1,036 economy ones. Up until then, there was no distinction in the classes the passengers travelled in. From 1975 it sailed around the Mediterranean Sea until its decommission in 1987 in Pakistan. 10 The ‘return is an overarching theme in Angelopoulos’ poetics. It runs through many of his films . . . and is organically paired with a return to memory, childhood and the trauma of history’ (Papanikolaou 2009, 262).

The ship and emigration in Greek cinema

127

References Baudrillard, Jean, 1987, The Evil Demon of Images, Sydney, Power Institute of Fine Arts. Clogg, Richard, 1999, ‘The Greek Diaspora: The historical context’, in Clogg, Richard (ed), The Greek Diaspora in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke, Macmillan. Comolli, Jean Louis  & Narboni, Jean Paul, 1977, ‘Cinema/ideology/criticism (1)’, in Ellis, John (ed), Screen Reader 1: Cinema/Ideology/Politics, London, Society for Education in Film and Television, pp. 2–11. Delveroudi, Eliza-Anna, 2006, ‘The immigrant’s gift’, in Kartalou, Athena, Nikolaidou, Afroditi  & Anastopoulos, Thanos (eds), Immigration in Greek Cinema 1956–2006, Thessaloniki, Egokeros, pp. 18–21. Ferro, Marc, 1988, Cinema and History (trans Greene, Naome), Detroit, MI, Wayne State University Press. Gorman, Anthony, 2009, ‘Repatriation, migration or readjustment: Egyptian Greek dilemma as of the 1950’s’, in Tziovas, Dimitris (ed), Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700: Society, Politics and Culture, Farnham, Ashgate, pp. 61–71. Hairetakis, Manolis, 1988, ‘Dieisdesi tis tileorasis kai to koino tis stin Ellada’, in Navrides, Klemes (ed), Tileorasi kai Epikoinonia, Thessaloniki, Paratirites, pp. 197–208. Laliotou, Ioanna, 2004, Transatlantic Subjects: Acts of Migration and Cultures of Transnationalism between Greece and America, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press. Mitropoulou, Aglaia, 2006, Ellinikos Kinimatographos, Athens, Papazisis. Papanikolaou, Dimitris, 2009, ‘Repatriation on screen: National culture and the immigrant other since the 1900s’, in Tziovas, Dimitris (ed), Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700: Society, Politics and Culture, Farnham, Ashgate, pp. 255–269. Papasotiriou, Charalambos, 2000, Diaspora kai Ethniki Stratigiki, Athens, Ellinika Grammata. Rafaelidis, Vassilis, 1983, Leksiko Tainion, Volume 5, Athens, Aigokeros. Schweinitz, Jörg, 2011, Film and Stereotype: A Challenge for Cinema and Theory, New York, Columbia University Press. Soldatos, Ioannis, 1999, Istoria tou Ellinikou Kinimatographou, Volume B, Athens, Aigokeros. Sorlin, Pierre, 1991, European Cinemas, European Societies 1939–1990, London, Routledge. Sotiropoulou, Chrysanthi, 1989, Elliniki Kinimatographia 1965–1975, Athens, Themelio. Sotiropoulou, Chrysanthi, 1995, I Diaspora ston Elliniko Kinimatografo, Athens, Themelio. Sotiropoulou, Chrysanthi, 2006, ‘Flights and returns on the borders of myth and human endurance’, in Kartalou, Athena, Nikolaidou, Afroditi  &

128

Eleni N. Mitakou

Anastopoulos, Thanos (eds), Immigration in Greek Cinema 1956–2006, Thessaloniki, Egokeros Publications, pp. 56–59. Valoukos, Stathis, 2003, Istoria tou Kinimatografou, Athens, Aigokeros. Valoukos, Stathis (ed), 1984, Filmografia Ellinikou Kinimatographou, Athens, Etairia Ellinon Skinotheton. Vamvakas, Vassilis, 2004, ‘I “metanasteusi” tou ellinikou kinimatographou apo to emporiko sto politico stigma’, in Tomai-Konstantopoulou, Photeini (ed), I Metanasteusi Ston Kinimatographo, Athens, Papazisi, pp. 41–62. Venturas, Lina, 2004, ‘Divergent routes to the study of the diaspora in post-war Greece and the USA’, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 30, pp. 121–142. Xanthopoulos, Lefteris, 2004, ‘I elliniki diasporas ton kinimatographo’, in Tomai-Konstantopoulou, Photeini (ed), I Metanasteusi Ston Kinimatographo, Athens, Papazisi, pp. 25–40.

7

What we think about when we think about ships: a journey through philosophical metaphors1 Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

Introduction This chapter explores the mental representations of ships as these are shaped by experiential knowledge (or the lack of), memory, imagination and dreams. The ships that are discussed below may not be all inhabited by mariners. They nevertheless inhabit themselves the (un)consciousness of both mariners and non-mariners. This chapter aims to show that studies on immaterial objects and places, like the mental representations of ships, are complementary to studies focusing on the tangible. Specifically, it shows that key questions in the relation between mariners and ships, and the multiple symbolic functions that ships have diachronically served in cultures can only be adequately answered through close examination of how ships are perceived by both those aboard and those ashore. This chapter has a tripartite division. The first part discusses the concept of the ‘immaterial’, its relation to the tangible, and its importance for any study on materiality. It thus places this chapter in a wider theoretical movement with representatives in several disciplines – namely anthropology, archaeology, cultural geography and psychoanalysis. The second part presents the source provider of glimpses into how ships are perceived. The choice of provider rests solely on the investigator. Here philosophical metaphors have been employed, because, in my opinion, the combination of the space of freedom (see Serres 1995, 104) that philosophy occupies, and the free associative thinking that metaphors express and encourage, allows the most detailed – yet intimate – insights into perception and the immaterial. Poetry, painting and fairy tales would have also been excellent providers (see Stallings this volume). Still, my preferred choice remains philosophical metaphors. The third part of the chapter discusses what we think about when we think about ships by presenting the philosophical metaphors that implicate ships. These metaphors are divided into thematic units, which are discussed separately. This part presents how ships are perceived by mariners and

130

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

non-mariners in the manner of a puzzle; each subsection constitutes another piece of the puzzle that is the perceived – and is shown, omnipotent – ship. The puzzle is left unfinished, because unlike most puzzles, this one is magic. First, it is designed to be incomplete so as to remain open to the imagination. In the manner of all immaterial places the purpose of the perceived ship is not fixity. Second, the pieces of this magic puzzle fit together in an infinite number of ways, as opposed to a single one. After all, the role of the immaterial is to be in constant flux so as to invite a number of syntheses. It is this capacity that allows the immaterial constantly to permeate the tangible with meanings. Third, the pieces of this magic puzzle interact with the player by inviting the latter to project her/his thoughts and emotions on them in the manner of the cards in a Rorschach test. The pieces that I present are therefore necessarily subjective: a property which also characterises the immaterial. The latter is hardly ever objective, because, as aforementioned, it is neither fixed nor static. As a result, this study does not exhaust the perceived ship, because this is not its purpose. Instead, it places this ship in the waters of our attention and lets it travel (or sink, for that matter) where it wishes. Through movement the meanings residing in its hull will continuously unravel on the waters. As indicated so far, this chapter is amongst other things an exercise in synthesis, as opposed to a clinical analysis. If a study of the immaterial employs the same method of investigation that has been used in studies of the tangible, i.e. analysis, then its scope and outcome will appear concrete and this is not a quality representative of immateriality. The importance of studies of the immaterial is that they value the philosophical ‘aporia’ and the ‘unanswerable question’ (on aporia, see Plato, Meno 84a–b; on the unanswerable question, see Baudrillard 1983, 122). They thus allow new meanings to arise and old ones to change. I would therefore ask the reader to interact with this text as one would play with a magic puzzle: place the pieces in different configurations, discard pieces, alter the pieces by adding onto them personal projections, and most importantly control the basic human desire for closure. Flux is challenging but it captures reality, including thoughts, better than concreteness.

Part I: On the immaterial Spatial theorists have shown how places comprise both material and immaterial aspects. Lefebvre (1991, 12), for example, demonstrated that ‘products of the imagination such as projections’ play an important role in the creation and perception of places. Edward Soja (1996) coined the term ‘scamscape’ for places where reality and imagination cannot be separated, and wrote of the role of ‘conceived places’ in the construction of place. Additionally, broader studies on the multiplicity that is materiality by anthropologists and archaeologists draw attention to the role of the immaterial facets of materiality in our holistic perception and interpretation of it (see Buchli 2015, 2010, Bille et al. 2010a,

Ships in philosophical metaphors

131

Fontjin 2013, Knappett 2013, Runia 2006, Papadopoulou 2016). These immaterial facets include the agency of objects, symbolic and/or emotional value invested in places and artefacts, mental representations of physical absences in the form of reminiscences, and so on. Here I briefly mention two concepts which I believe show clearly what ‘immaterial facets’ are and their potency. The first concept is that of absence. As Bille et al. (2010b, 4) have shown, ‘a paradox exists in the properties of presence and absence showing that they inherently depend on one another for their significance to be fully realised and even conceptualised’. So, what anthropologists draw our attention to is that presence and absence, and by extension the material and the immaterial, work together. There is no conflict between the two; they are not opposing but complementary elements. As a result, in order to comprehend an entity fully, we need to investigate the ways it functions as both a presence and in absentia. As the aforementioned anthropologists have put it, ‘the question of why some things matter to people can be paralleled by the question of why some absent things matter’ (Bille et al. 2010b, 13). The second concept is more complex and builds on the first: the interdependence of absence and presence. It is the concept of ‘the negative’. Note that this concept alludes to photographic negatives and bears no relation – let alone a conflicting one  – to positivity. André Green (1999), who was one of the leading figures in modern psychoanalysis, wrote that, when we are faced with an absence that we perceive as a loss, we cope with this sense of loss by creating a representation of that which is absent. This representation is ‘the negative’ of the absent or latent entity, and it constitutes a fictional reality. The sense of loss, however, compels us to displace the negative from the sphere of fiction to the sphere of what we perceive as our current reality. This way we can cope efficiently with the grief caused by the loss. In other words, the negative, which is but a representation, can effectively substitute material presence in the face of absence of this presence. When the material presence reappears, the negative does not disappear. Instead the former is required to negotiate with its negative in order to reclaim the position it once held in our perception. In many cases the physical presence is never again experienced the same (the way it was experienced prior to its temporary absence), because physicality can become irreversibly saturated with representations. To make this concept clearer, I  offer an example implicating the mother figure, which psychoanalysts so commonly employ in their work. When a mother leaves her infant, the latter experiences a strong sense of loss even if the mother only went to the next room. The infant creates a representation of its mother in order to cope with this sense of loss. This representation, which is termed by Green ‘the negative’, is an immaterial presence which the infant shapes mentally, and which keeps it company in the absence of the mother. This negative can be the representation of an extremely loving mother who never leaves her infant’s side (a positive negative). When the mother returns from the next room, the infant, instead of straightforwardly discarding her

132

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

negative, may choose to hold on to it and compare it with the mother. The latter will in this case fall short of her idealised negative and will be subsequently perceived as inadequate, even if the cause of her absence was to warm up milk for the infant. Additionally, the mother may never succeed in reclaiming the position she held in her infant’s perception prior to the appearance of her idealised negative. This serves to show the potency of the negative and exemplifies the power that the immaterial facet of materiality holds over the entire multiplicity that is materiality. Accordingly, this chapter shows the workings and potency of the perceived ship, and its indispensability for studies on ships and life at sea.

Part II: On the source provider With the exception of object- or place-conceptions which materialise in the form of sketches and blueprints, it is challenging to discern and describe the representations or mentalscapes that permeate materiality. These cannot be studied systematically, and are therefore sidestepped by most disciplines in favour of empirical data. Philosophy is one of the few disciplines that treats the immaterial and flux as primary topics of investigation, because: philosophy tries to think what the sciences do not think, what they do not want to and cannot think, what they sometimes forbid, what they keep one from thinking, what they are not yet thinking, what they have forgotten, what they have covered up, what they do not know how to project. It keeps as its most precious possession a freedom of thought that the sciences, in their procedures, can never allow themselves. (Serres 1995, 104)

Most importantly, phenomenology views materiality as a multiplicity and does not treat the immaterial as its antipode but as one of its ingredients. This space of freedom is my choice of provider of insights into what we think about when we think about ships. More specifically, the perceived ship is sought in metaphors woven by phenomenologists and poststructuralist philosophers. Metaphors constitute a mode of comprehending the world and lie at the core of the interpretation process, since, in order for one to understand something new, one projects this on the already known (Tilley 1999). Metaphorical thinking thus creates new, broadened realities and as Lakoff and Johnson (2003, 147–157) have shown, even guides action so as to fit these reconsidered realities (also see Ricoeur 1978, 146, 1974, 96 and Jackson 1989, 142). In the space of freedom that philosophy occupies, where literal meanings are customarily contested, the power of metaphors is amplified further. As a result, the combination of philosophy and metaphors arguably is reality’s prebiotic matter. The perceived ship will be

Ships in philosophical metaphors

133

subsequently presented as it pours out of the reality-producing and -reflecting spring of philosophical metaphors.

Part III: We think of ships as omnipotent The ship-related metaphors that phenomenologists and poststructuralist philosophers have woven communicate numerous mental representations of ships. Ships are perceived and described as (the extension of) the mariner’s body, hybrid environments with a sui generis potential to transform their inhabitants, permeable structures allowing the communication between the self and the world, metaphysical places produced in or themselves weaving dreams, and material manifestations of the notion of the in-between. Each of these metaphors is examined separately below and all together show how rich and complex the perceived ship is. This mentalscape, as will be shown, reflects in varying degrees the experiences and/or imaginations of both mariners and non-mariners, and underlies all tangible, travelling ships.

The ship as the mariner’s body Michel Serres (2008, 277–278), a philosopher with experiential knowledge of ships from the time he was a mariner, sings ‘of the happiness given by a boat calling in at ports after having planed the knotted plank of the ocean, the delightful pleasure of going to sleep amidst familiar things, but in the vicinity of strangeness’. He speaks of the ‘stay-at-home sailor’, who can go ashore with the certainty that he will return to his nook, where he eats from the same dish and is engulfed by familiar smells (Serres 2008, 278). Serres clearly identifies the place of the ship with a home and continues by stating that the ‘stay-at-home sailor’ has embodied this home, the ship, to such an extent that it became part of his corporeality: the sailor is ‘welded to the helm, incorporated in the vessel, his nose the prow, his back the stern, moustache wrapped around the stem, hair streaming at the masthead’ (Serres 2008, 278). Thus he thinks of the ship as both a literal and a metaphorical home. First, it is the familiar, protective habitat one lives in. Second, the ship is the mariner’s body. It therefore necessarily is his home, in the fashion of the commonly employed metaphors of the body as a place, e.g. ‘my body is my temple’, ‘the body is the house of the soul’. So the place of the ship is simultaneously a habitat for the mariner and the extension of the mariner’s self. It does not only house his body; it incarnates his existence. As aforementioned, Michel Serres was a mariner. He spent part of his life onboard ships and the latter are a recurrent theme in his writing. In his books he recounts true incidents onboard, narrates powerful imaginings revolving around ships or maritime themes, and finally employs ships as vehicles for communication with the reader by frequently involving these in his

134

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

metaphors (Serres 2008, 1995, 1989, 27–40). Specifically, he projects his complex philosophical concepts onto maritime realities, which are more easily understood by the reader than the ideas themselves. And, although for the reader these metaphors render ships and life at sea easily relatable representations, for Serres ships are evidently much more than a convenient ingredient of metaphors. For him the absence of the time when he lived and worked aboard may be experienced as a loss. Consequently, his ship representation is a powerful negative, which emerges frequently and arguably autonomously in his writing – as negatives do. This is why out of the many phenomenologists that implicate ships in their metaphors, Serres is the only one who uses the ship-as-the-mariner’s-body metaphor so explicitly. For him this metaphor is more than a literary device; it is an embodied reality. After all, Lakoff and Johnson (2003, 26, 59) have identified a non-fictional type of metaphor, which they termed ‘ontological’ and which is firmly ‘grounded within experience’ (Lakoff and Johnson 2003, 59). The ability of ships to merge with the mariner’s body features primarily in sailors’ and Boaters’ perception and narratives (see Maragoudaki, Marovelli and Bowles, this volume). In a 1929 documentary film about the journey of a squarerigger (a historic type of sailing ship) entitled Around Cape Horn and filmed by a mariner serving onboard the ship, the narrator/filmmaker/mariner captured with his camera and narrated an episode onboard: the ship got caught in a violent storm and the sails needed to be secured so that they would not be torn by the wind. The third mate bravely climbed the high mast and whilst risking his life unhesitatingly, because ‘she [the ship] needed him’, he hung from the footrope and caught the sail whilst his ‘body was flapping like sail, vibrating’. The narrator/filmmaker saw and showed a fellow sailor’s body temporarily converting into a sail. Further on, the narrator admitted that ‘the chafing and the wear and tear [was to be found] not only on the ship but on the individual too’. He thus verbalised the same experience that Serres communicated previously: that the mariner can become one with his ship. This non-philosophical example serves to show that the ship-as-body notion, which is best expressed through literary devices, is a thought reflecting an embodied reality for many mariners. Consequently, this thought can offer plausible answers to questions such as ‘why have so many captains voluntarily gone down with their ships?’. Answers like this, which address the effect of ships, are best sought in mariners’ perceptions and Serres’s ship negative. Even though they are rarely (straightforwardly) expressed, they occupy mariners’ thoughts and they encapsulate the power ships hold over some of their inhabitants.

The ship as a hybrid, conditioning environment Bachelard (1994, 107) has offered a lyrical description of the nature of shells and the organisms inhabiting them. He wrote that the shell along with its

Ships in philosophical metaphors

135

accommodated creature is a hybrid entity: ‘half fish, half flesh, half dead, half alive, and, in extreme cases, half stone, half man’. He wrote that shells are of such significance that they constitute one of the substances of dreams. The dreamer views the shell as ‘a refuge in which life is concentrated, prepared and transformed’ (Bachelard 1994, 120). This perception of the shell is instrumental in the interpretation of Serres’s (2008, 278) metaphorical description of boats: ‘a boat is a small hamlet with several hearths in a fragile shell’. This complex metaphor offers numerous, condensed insights into the immaterial ship. First, the hearth alludes to the previously examined notion of the boat as the mariner’s home. Only this time there is mention of several hearths, so the boat consists of many homes: one for each sailor. By presenting each sailor as a home, this metaphor also alludes to the notion of the body as home. Once these mariners/homes/hearths become surrounded by seawater, they transform into a small hamlet, an island micro-society. Owing to the obvious lack of earth, though, this island is separated from the sea not by its shores but by its hull, which Serres describes as ‘a fragile shell’. ‘Fragile’ because it is dependent on the temperament of the elements and a ‘shell’ because it does not only shelter creatures but also shapes their nature. The notion of the ship as a shell addresses the core of the relationship between the mariner and the ship. Once the ship houses the mariner then the two become a single, hybrid entity as Bachelard has shown: half man, half wood, simultaneously in motion (the ship) and at a standstill (the mariner), half submerged and half aerial. As Bowles (this volume) has written about Boaters, ‘their lives are governed by natural rhythms, flows and patterns’. As such, the ship-as-shell concept overlaps with the ship-as-body concept. In the ship-as-shell metaphor, however, the notion of hybridity is not restricted to the nature of the ship-man creature, but also refers to the interaction between the hearths. Each mariner/hearth is to an extent the bearer of the sociocultural reality that shaped him prior to his boarding the ship. These realities can be similar but never identical. Once these unique hearths find themselves engulfed in the same shell, a multiplicity is created; a new, hybrid sociocultural entity with its own habits, customs and codes of conduct. As such, ships produce not only hybrid humans, but also hybrid socialities and the ship-as-shell metaphor alludes to the commonly employed metaphor ‘the world in a shell’. The ship-shell encloses its sui generis world of multicultural ship-men. Within the hull’s containing boundary, identity and relations are forged and balances negotiated. Through these processes the ship-shell ‘concentrates and transforms’ (permanently or temporarily) lives (Bachelard 1994, 120). This metaphor offers the first glimpse into the metaphysics of the ship which is examined in depth further on in the chapter. The metaphor shows that ships are extraordinary spatialities because they hold metaphysical powers, in this case the power of transformation. In an international survey regarding stress factors onboard merchant ships, mariners complained about the configuration of the crews. In particular, 65–80

136

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

per cent of the world’s merchant fleet operates with multinational crews (Oldenburg et al. 2010, 252, Oldenburg et al. 2009, 103; see also Tsimouris, this volume). This causes ‘linguistic and intercultural problems’ amongst boat micro-societies which have been noted as common causes for operational malfunctions and casualties onboard (Oldenburg et al. 2009, 103). The casualties do not result from accidents only but also suicides. Note that a 1996 survey showed that suicide incidents onboard ships are three times as frequent as those ashore (Oldenburg et al. 2010, 252). Thus the ship-shell, as far as many mariners are concerned and as Tsimouris (this volume) has clearly shown, does not shelter and transform life but crushes individuality and forces disagreeable sociocultural experiences. This offers an alternative interpretation to the adjective ‘fragile’, which Serres (2008, 278) used to describe the ship-shell. Accordingly, the shell is fragile, because it can implode. For the non-mariners, however, who are neither familiar with the statistics quoted above nor have asked mariners about their life at sea, the shipshell described in the preceding paragraph remains largely a terra incognita. Even though Serres’s shell metaphor, once dissociated from its textual context, can be placed anywhere on the romantic-pragmatic scale, non-mariners are likely to internalise it as an idealised negative, because the words hearth (home, warmth) and small (miniature, approachable) exude intimacy. This ensures the perpetuation of mariners’ common complaint that most people hold ungrounded and occasionally offensive views about life at sea (see Tsimouris this volume). In defence of the general population, as its textual context clearly demonstrates (see Serres 2008, 277–279), this ex-mariner-woven metaphor contests the reality expressed by the statistics and aims at drawing an alluring picture of ships. The ship-shell metaphor shows inter alia that retired mariners may choose to communicate idealised negatives of life at sea instead of the challenging aspects of life aboard.2 This is the result of the workings of memory, which favours positive as opposed to traumatic experiences and is keener on drawing appealing instead of appalling pictures. These idealised images, disseminated through various media (texts, art, narrations), diffuse in the general population, and are adopted and perpetuated as positive, personal or collective perceptions of ships. Travelling ships thus get saturated with emotional meanings and attributes fabricated by both mariners and non-mariners. Some of these attributes are contradictory to the realities of life at sea. Nevertheless, the perceived ship, unlike the tangible ship, travels also on land (see Knight, this volume). This is another way the perceived ship assists us in our studies on travelling ships. It shows us why ships are often viewed by non-mariners differently to how they are actually experienced by mariners. The fact that the former place life at sea on the romantic side of the scale means no disrespect to mariners. It is, instead, the result of the character of memory and reminiscences, which tend to favour the idyllic over the troublesome. We therefore tend to

Ships in philosophical metaphors

137

think of ships as holding a great seductive power despite the fact that not all mariners corroborate this.

The ship as a merger of dualities Bachelard (1994, 186) used the forest as a metaphor of how ‘infinity can accumulate within boundaries’. He explained how spaces of intimacy, like the home and the ship, and ‘world space’, which is vastness or infinity, are both immense, and how these two immensities blend when ‘human solitude deepens’ (Bachelard 1994, 203). He also metaphorically described the process by which a child matures to the discovery of the immensity of the self implicating the place of the boat in his description: the child has just discovered that she is herself, in an explosion towards the outside, which is a reaction, perhaps, to certain concentrations in a corner of her being. For the recess in the boat is also a corner of being. But when she has explored the vast universe of the boat in the middle of the ocean, does she return to her little house now that she knows that she is herself, will she resume her game of ‘playing houses’, will she return home, in other words, withdraw again into herself? (Bachelard 1994, 139)

In this metaphor the ship itself stands for a merger. It is viewed holistically, as both a home (where the little girl rests) and a body (a corner of being) but the emphasis here is placed on the ship’s function (what can it do?) as opposed to its nature (what is a ship?). Accordingly, the place of the ship serves as the meeting ground and fuser of seemingly opposing notions. The ship-home allows its inhabitant to take time out of the world. The ship-body allows introversion and introspection. Yet, this place, which contains and alienates, simultaneously forces the immersion into vastness, which is the boundlessness of the oceans and the limitlessness of extroversion. The little girl is enclosed and separated from the world by the boundary that is the hull of the ship, until she suddenly discovers that her ship is vast; its boundary extends into openness. The hull possesses the capacity not only to contain but also to negotiate immensity. The ship-home is an intimate, contained space which is nevertheless half submerged and therefore it is in and of the sea. The ship-body shelters the self whilst forcing it to float in and consequently be of the world. According to Foucault (1986a), the boat does not stand as a metaphor of the amalgamation of intimate and world space; it physically accomplishes this in its spatiality. Foucault (1986a, 27) identified the boat as the ‘heterotopia par excellence’ because it ‘is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea’. Note that, unlike utopias, heterotopias are places that have materialised. They are sensorially perceived. Unlike Bachelard, Foucault

138

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

aims at discussing the spatiality per se of the travelling ship separated from the meanings residing in its hull. Still, despite discussing only one facet (the material facet) of the multiplicity that is the ship, Foucault reaches a similar conclusion to Bachelard’s: that ships bring down dualities. They do not introduce a dialectic between limitation and infinity, they merge the two in their unique, floating spatial configuration. Deleuze’s ship-metaphor is presented as a Foucauldian quote. Specifically, Deleuze claimed that Foucault in Madness and Civilisation viewed ‘the boat as interior of the exterior’ (Deleuze 1988, 123; also see Foucault 1988, 11). Note that, even though Foucault used the expression ‘interior of the exterior’ in a chapter devoted to ships (specifically the ‘ship of fools’), contrary to Deleuze’s (1988, 97) claim, he did not apply it to ships per se. Deleuze, consequently, employed this expression the exact opposite way to Foucault’s: he applied it to ships in a chapter that does not discuss ships further. Deleuze mentioned ships in passing only, as examples of Foucault’s ‘topology of thought’ (Deleuze 1988, 118). This metaphor, however, which does not reflect but paraphrases Foucault’s thinking, unravelled further in Deleuze and Guatarri (2005, 478), where the sea and the boat were respectively used as examples of a ‘smooth place’ and the method of venturing in it: in striated space, lines or trajectories tend to subordinate to points: one goes from one point to another (this is the space of the city). In the smooth, it is the opposite: the points are subordinated to the trajectory. The dwelling is subordinated to the journey; inside space conforms to the outside space: tent, igloo, boat. (Deleuze and Guatarri 2005, 478)

Here the boat is presented as an alternative site of dwelling, which incarnates the nomadic mode of living. The boat accomplishes and therefore represents the unison of dwelling and moving, here and there, inside and outside. Further on, Deleuze and Guattari (2005, 482) write that ‘voyaging smoothly is a becoming, and a difficult, uncertain becoming at that’. In this metonymy the voyaging boat transcends the representation of the nomadic mode of living, and stands for the process of becoming: the constant shaping of the existence (flux). It thus surpasses its vague function as a merger of opposites, presented in early Deleuze (1988), and reaches the accomplished status of a producer of the self. This last quote shows that even though Deleuze’s initial ship-idea sprang from Foucault, it developed into a concept that echoes more than anything Bachelard’s (1994, 139) ship, where the little girl discovers ‘herself’. The quality of ships to “merge” allows them to gather and negotiate an infinite number of opposing attributes. A  demonstrable fact, namely that ships are in Foucault’s (1986a, 27) words ‘a floating piece of space, a place without a place’, shows how ships hold the ability to deconstruct seemingly

Ships in philosophical metaphors

139

unsurpassable dualities like movement and halt, self and other, intimacy and immensity. In a way the existence of ships wrecks bipolar thinking and structuralism. As a result, the broad ship-as-merger concept constitutes a key puzzle piece of the perceived, omnipotent ship and takes us a step further into the metaphysics of ships. It shows why ships serve as convenient screens for abstract meanings (e.g. intimacy and vastness) to be projected on, and as a consequence of this why we treat ships as bearers of complex symbolisms, e.g. symbols of Greek emigration (see Mitakou, this volume). After all, Michel Serres has written the following regarding the link between ships and metaphysics: leaving your house behind is the beginning of metaphysics  – what exists beyond; but as fear takes hold of him, the adventurer builds a boat. He will not leave behind his cradle. The first truly metaphysical object holds the promise of elsewhere without leaving the here and now. Invents a moving equilibrium, stability around its fluctuations, but also movement . . . a kind of fixed agitation (Serres 2008, 278)

The ship as the vehicle of dreams and mariners’ ship-dreams The most fascinating group of metaphors implicating boats and showing how variedly we think about ships are those identifying the place of the ship as an oneiric/metaphysical place or the space of dreaming par excellence. Jung (1980, 18–20) showed how the commonest symbol for the unconscious is water. He identified water as the most objective mirror of the human psyche, and wrote that whoever looks into it sees himself stripped of all the masks one casually wears in everyday life. He wrote that in ‘the world of water, all life floats in suspension. There I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me’ (Jung 1980, 21–22). His metaphor of water as the representation of the unconscious where self and other, introspection and extrospection become one and the same, closely resembles the previously examined metaphor of the ship as a merger, the place where selfdiscovery is accomplished. After all, Bachelard, who wrote this metaphor, was heavily influenced by Jung. Jung nevertheless identified water and not the ship per se as a merger. The ‘world of water’ appears to have affected Jung’s (1980, 21) thought so profoundly that, apart from the water-metaphors consciously employed by him as clarifications to his theory, one can find numerous, subtler maritime allusions in his work. He describes, for example, the journey to the unconscious, which is psychoanalysis, as follows: it is generally believed that anyone who descends into the unconscious gets into a suffocating atmosphere of egocentric subjectivity, and this blind alley

140

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou is exposed to the attack of all the ferocious beasts which the caverns of the psychic underworld are supposed to harbour. (Jung 1980, 20, emphasis added)

Even a quick venture into Jung’s unconscious can arguably show that his account of introspection alludes to scuba diving. It involves a descent and exposure to the dangers of the depths. Besides, the Psychology of the Unconscious, where he discusses his theory of the unconscious was published at the time when decompression sickness was observed and studied systematically for the first time. By the time he wrote the The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, where the previous quote is extracted from, decompression chambers were already in use. Thus, Jung knew that any deep descent equals an analogous increase of atmospheric pressure and therefore entails serious dangers for the human body. Returning to ships, which float in the literal and metaphorical world of water, Jung (2002, 180, 279) perceived these as the vehicles of dreams. According to his theory, one of the ways to elucidate (dive into) the unconscious (the waters) is through the interpretation of dreams. Thus, unsurprisingly for Jung, the ship is the carrier par excellence of the diver/dreamer and by extension the transporter of dreams. Foucault (1986a, 27) appears to be of the same opinion since he wrote that ‘the boat has been the greatest reserve of the imagination’ and that, ‘in civilizations without boats, dreams dry up’. In this last metaphor dreams are liquid and allude to Jung’s ‘world of water’. The ship is the only means of approaching this world, since the latter loses its raison d’être (dries up) in the face of absence of ships. Both Foucault and Jung, albeit in varying degrees, present the ship as the carrier of dreams, and a symbol of the imagination, which is inter alia expressed through dreams. In other words, they present the ship as the gatekeeper to the unconscious. In the third volume of the History of Sexuality, Foucault, using the words of Artemidorus, once more referred to ships in a dream-related context. Artemidorus, the Roman author of Oneirokritikon (The Interpretation of Dreams), included numerous passages in his multi-volume work on what ships stand for in dreams, and which dreams are ominous for those onboard or about to embark a ship (Artemidorus, Oneir 1.2, 2.12, 2.23, 2.37, 4.prol). In his fourth book he wrote, for example, that: when one is in love with a woman, he may not dream of his loved one but something else connoting a woman like a horse or a mirror or a ship or the sea or a female animal or a female attire. (Artemidorus, Onir 4.prol).3

In the manner of this quote, maritime themes in Artemidorus’ work appear among non-maritime ones and do not exceed the latter in number.

Ships in philosophical metaphors

141

Foucault, nevertheless, unintentionally placed emphasis on the former themes. Specifically, the passages he (1986b, 11) chose to extract from Artemidorus’ text in order to present the character of theorematic and allegorical dreams revolve primarily around ships: an analogous difference obtains in event dreams. Some of them directly designate, by showing its actual appearance, that which already exists in the future mode: one sees in a dream the sinking of a ship on which one will later suffer shipwreck; one sees oneself struck by the weapon by which one will be wounded the next day. These are the so-called theorematic dreams. But, in other cases, the relation between image and event is indirect: the image of the ship that breaks apart on the rocks may signify not a shipwreck, or even a misfortune, but, for a slave who has this dream, his emancipation in the near future. These are the ‘allegorical’ dreams. (Foucault 1986b, 11)

Note that the first part of this passage comes directly from Artemidorus’ (1.2) description of theorematic dreams. The second part reflects Foucault’s choice of an explanatory example, since Artemidorus presents numerous other allegorical dreams that do not include ships (Book 2). It is possible that Artemidorus’ linking of the ship with sexual desire through the suggestion that the former can represent in dreams the desired person affected Foucault’s thinking to the extent that he placed emphasis on ship-related dreams in the History of Sexuality, as opposed to horse-related ones, to mention one example. This connection between ships and dreams, where the former are carriers and subject matter of the latter, establishes further that ships are thought of as metaphysical objects. Through their capacity to contest opposing notions and actions, they allow one to dream or dive into the unconscious, whilst guaranteeing a safe return to pragmatism and consciousness. Jung’s, Foucault’s and possibly Artemidorus’ linking of boats with dreaming, dreams, desires and the imagination indicates that these authors were sentient to the metaphysics of ships. Whilst prying in forums for sailors, in my attempt to acquire emic perspectives of ships and life at sea, I found the description of the following dream: the mariner finds his ship on land and has to navigate it amongst narrow city-streets. In total 11 mariners reported having had the same dream, most of whom wrote that it is recurring. (On another sailor dreaming of ships, see Maragoudaki, this volume.) Some of them only referred to this dream as the ‘aground dream’ or the ‘city-streets dream’ and offered no further description of it, because their colleagues in the forum knew well which dream they were talking about. One of the sailors wrote that he knows that it is time to go ashore when he has this dream. Others reported to have had this dream whilst at home, on land.

142

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

I took this dream to a practising psychoanalyst, Michalis Petrou, and asked him if he was willing to examine it with me. As most dreams, this one too proved to be multi-layered. First of all, dreaming of navigating in narrow streets can be for mariners what Freud (2010, 259–293) has called a ‘typical dream’. In other words it can be a common stress dream for navigation in tight, perilous passages. The psychoanalyst noted that one would expect mariners who work on the bridge of the ship to have this dream, as opposed to those sailors who do not navigate (engineers, deckhands, cooks etc.). Unfortunately, I  could not find information in the forum on the specialisations of the sailors that reported having had this dream. Still, as a typical dream, the aground dream points to the physical properties of the ship and the objective dangers sea-travelling entails. Moving to a deeper psychoanalytical level, the displacement of the ship to the land can stand for the displacement of the mariner himself; it is not the ship that is aground but the mariner. When one becomes accustomed to his floating habitat after a long journey, only to have to go ashore again and readjust to a different environment, one naturally experiences a sense of frustration. Tsimouris (this volume) quoted a sailor who said that when they disembark ‘they feel like children’, thus indicating the level of frustration they experience in their new, land environments. The puzzlement over how to navigate ashore reflects the sailors’ concern at entering a different mode of living. They view themselves as ships aground: out of context and also partly incapacitated. Leaving their ships is embodied by them as leaving some of their bodily features behind. After all, their ship is part of their body, as the ship-as-themariner’s-body metaphor has shown. Ashore mariners’ sense of corporeality is challenged. They cannot operate naturally, like the ship cannot be navigated on land.4 This dream shows empirically Artemidorus’ and Jung’s theory that ships are a substance of dreams. Additionally, the examination of the aground dream shows how the ship-as-body and ship-as-shell metaphors are embodied by mariners. The mariners see themselves in their dreams as ships and experience their separation from the ship as a corporeal incapacitation, similar to the ripping of the shell off the organism it is attached to. Equally importantly, this dream offers additional insights into the relationships forged between mariners, which complement the previous discussion on the dynamics between different hearths engulfed in a single shell. The psychoanalyst pointed out to me that not all mariners having reported to have had this dream necessarily had it as a result of personal psychic processes. Kaës (2009, 237–270) has shown that oneiric space is commonly shared between members undergoing group psychotherapy. Once the participants in such a group start sharing their dreams and traumas, a common psychic, and by extension oneiric, reserve is created which supplies the contents of the dreams of the whole group. In addition, he showed how people that share intimate bonds (in his case study a pair of brothers) can share the same dreams and

Ships in philosophical metaphors

143

even arrange in advance when to share one (Kaës 2009, 253–255). Even though this forum for mariners was not coordinated by a psychoanalyst and its reason for being was not (at least admittedly) psychotherapy, the mariners shared in this digital space experiences, anxieties, jokes and dreams. The aground dream was reported by different mariners within a time frame of several months. It is therefore possible that the first mariner reporting this dream triggered similar unconscious processes to some of his colleagues which resulted in them experiencing the same dream at their own time. This exchange of dream content was aided by the fact that all these mariners were bound by their shared, experiential knowledge of ships and life at sea. After all, as Bowles (this volume) has shown, boat-dwellers are all ‘part of a community of practice on the waterways’. This shows that there is a space of intimacy and camaraderie which contains and partly conditions all those serving onboard ships. This space is ‘a world in a shell’.5 Finally, the aground dream seems to me to be the psychological equivalent of mal de debarquement syndrome (MdDS). This syndrome ‘is usually described as an internal sense of rocking, bobbing or swaying that appears after disembarking from a vessel in which one has been passively moved’ and is very common amongst disembarking mariners (Cha et al. 2008, 1038, Gordon et al. 1992, 363). The causes of this syndrome are largely undetermined. Most recent evidence points to this syndrome resulting from ‘a disorder of multisensory adaptation’. In particular, neurologists note that this is the result of a memory: the internal representation of the rocking of the boat prevailing over the subsequent experience of stability on land (Cha et al. 2008, 1043, Clark and Quick 2010, 1166). In other words, the memory of being aboard governs the mariner’s subsequent land experience. The denial of the fact that he is aground exhibits itself in a somatised manner: the mariner continues to rock as if onboard the ship.6 Only, since there is no ship on land for the mariner to be rocked by, his body transforms itself into the rocking mechanism. In order to substitute for the absence of his ship, instead of creating a ship negative, he opts for transforming himself into the absent ship. Thus, as the mariner’s body converts into a rocking ship in his conscious life ashore, similarly the ship appears as the projection of the mariner’s self in the aground dream. Both the dream and MdDS show the power that ships, even in absentia, hold over mariners. This power cannot be conveyed verbally and straightforwardly, because it is rooted in bodily memory and the unconscious. It can only be sought in metaphors and dreams, and underscores the potency of the immaterial over the whole of the multiplicity that is materiality and in this case the ship. This puzzle piece portrays ships as metaphysical carriers of dreams, symbols of the process of dreaming, gatekeepers to the unconscious and polysemous contents of (mariners’) dreams. The presentation of this complex piece best serves to demonstrate a point made in the introduction, that this chapter is an exercise in synthesis. The dream ship is a fusion of elements and evidence drawn from various disciplines, mariners’ experiences, and ancient and

144

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

modern texts. It is unsystemic, polyvalent and complex. Most importantly, it shows the distances that thinking about ships can cross: from sea to land to psychoanalytic treatises to dreams to neurological conditions and back. The ship is thus omnipresent. No wonder that, as Stallings (this volume) shows, shipwrecks are everywhere too.

The ship of fools, the in-between and death As previously mentioned in passing, Foucault devoted chapters in Madness and Civilisation and in the History of Madness to the ‘ship of fools’, borrowing this term from literature (namely Brandt) and painting (primarily Bosch). Foucault (1988, 3–37) wrote that in the fifteenth century, prior to the construction of institutions for the treatment of mental illnesses, madmen went aboard ships. The captains would either let them travel on the waterways or unload them in harbours far enough from the madmen’s places of origin. Thus madmen took flight or refuge in maritime travel (primarily river travel) and entrusted themselves to the caprices of the waters. Foucault was intentionally ambiguous in this chapter as to whether these ships truly existed, as to who placed the madmen onboard the ships, and as to whether this act went against the madmen’s wishes (Megill 1992, 86–89; for critiques of Foucault’s work, see Midelfort 1980 and Gordon 1992, 32–33). Here Foucault’s ships of fools will be treated as a philosophical metaphor which is reflected in art and by extension in the way we think about ships and their passengers. Foucault (1988, 10) wrote that ‘it is possible that these ships of fools, which haunted the imagination of the entire early Renaissance, were pilgrimage boats, highly symbolic cargoes of madmen in search of their reason’. A ship carrying a symbolic cargo heading for a non-existent port (the port of reason) is necessarily a metaphysical object.7 Since its destination cannot be sought on a map or in the landscape, it is the journey itself that represents the quest for a ‘cure’. The madman’s journey on board is in itself a rite of passage to sanity; regardless of whether the actual crossing is accomplishable (Foucault 1988, 10).8 The vehicle chosen to accommodate the madmen and represent an unattainable and therefore perpetual quest is the ship, and the latter is hardly a choice at random. The travelling ship is in-between destinations. In addition, and returning to the ship-as-merger metaphor, its passengers are in an inbetween state: they are travelling without moving in a placeless place. The ship thus appears as the embodiment of the notion of the in-between. Being “in-between” is the closest to being nowhere, since the in-between is beyond any description or classification. It therefore appears natural that fifteenthcentury art and much later Foucault drew a connection between madmen and travelling by ship. After all, the state of in-between best describes the position of madmen in fifteenth-century society. Similarly, seafaring has been viewed

Ships in philosophical metaphors

145

as a rite of passage, since both passengers and initiates go through the state of in-between in order to reach a destination.9 Thus, the ship of fools is one of the dimensions of the broader metaphor of the ship as the embodiment of the in-between. The latter metaphor constitutes the essence of the metaphysics of ships and dates as far back as ship construction and seafaring. ‘When once asked who were more numerous, the living or the dead, he replied: what do those at sea count as?’ Anacharsis, the ancient philosopher who offered this answer, was Scythian and as such he was presented by Diogenes Laertius (1.8.104), a Roman biographer, as a stereotypical hater of sea travel. After all, when Anacharsis ‘learned that the hull of ships is four fingers thick, he said in response that this must also be the distance between sailors and death’ (Diogenes Laertius 1.8.103).10 How could Anacharsis have been fond of sea travel if he thought about people onboard ships as merely four fingers away from death? The Roman biographer, through Anacharsis’ mouth, cynically expressed a diachronic truth about seafaring, namely that it is dangerous. In Foucault’s (1988, 11) words, ‘navigation delivers man to the uncertainty of fate; on water, each of us is in the hands of his own destiny; every embarkation is, potentially, the last’. Consequently, people onboard ships can be thought about as in-between life and death. This renders ships magical places since they carry a strange breed of humans who are neither completely alive nor dead. At the same time it is ships that float in the uncertainty of water and thus create the circumstances for the in-between state to exist and engulf those aboard. A bidirectional relationship is thus created where ships and their crew weave together the metaphysics of ships. Since ships carry humans that are in-between life and death, it appears that ships themselves can travel between life and death. This can explain why ships acquired the status of supernatural vehicles and have served as the carriers par excellence to the underworld or the afterlife in so many cultures. Charon’s boat, the Bag an Noz and the Shoryobuni are but few examples of such ships from different cultures and time periods. To these should also be added the numerous ships and boat depictions found in burial contexts. The connection between ships, the dead and the afterlife dates as far back as ship construction and is acknowledged as broadly as cargoes have travelled. Returning to Foucault and his ship of fools, another reason why ships were chosen as the (symbolic) carriers of madmen is because madmen were commonly perceived as dead: ‘the head that will become a skull is already empty. Madness is the déjà-là of death’ (Foucault 1988, 16). The madmen were therefore (symbolically) placed inside the only vehicle perceived as appropriate to carry cargoes of dead men, the ship. The fact that madmen were perceived as almost natural ship cargoes gradually gave rise to the thought that all mariners are characterised by a latent madness. After all, they inhabit a place that represents the in-between and is known to accommodate death and madness. Goffman (1961) in his treatise on mental patients and inmates keeps referring to mariners as if they too belong in the aforementioned categories. In a recent

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

146

handbook written for sailors in order to educate them on physiological and psychological conditions that appear onboard, and train them in delivering preliminary diagnoses or offering first aid, there is the following passage: ‘typical of the illness is also craving for adventure and a sense of not belonging anywhere. That is why, in the past, people with a personality disorder often went out to sea’ (Saarni and Niemi 2007, 111). These two examples serve to show how ideas – in this case of ships and seafaring – diffuse and become distorted through time and cultures. Once an idea arises, its proportions and impact are unpredictable, and its connotations fluctuate between deification and insult. A  simple, observable fact about ships, that they float in an unstable and therefore dangerous element (the waters), has been internalised and interpreted in such complex ways so as to create a never-ending mythology of ships, seafaring and mariners. This mythology connects ships to madness, rites of passage, death and the afterlife. This puzzle piece shows again that ships are omnipresent in art, text and the imagination and have unlimited power over their cargoes. It is due to the fact that we think about ships like this that mariners have occasionally been viewed as madmen, dead men and hybrid ship-men.

Conclusions I conclude this journey through philosophical metaphors with a quote from the mariner-philosopher. In his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, Michel Serres contemplates on the purpose and nature of the philosopher and writes: what I mean by this is that we must think on the side of the thinkable, that we must tack toward science, toward the same, toward the one and stability, but that we must then be ready to think the unthinkable, that we must then change our tack, toward the pure multiple, we are continually tacking back and forth, the method being a fractal meander, to one side for safety, to the other for freedom, to one side for the regulation of our thoughts, to the other for boldness and discovery, to one side for rigor and exactitude, on the other side for mixture and fuzziness.  .  .  .  This is philosophizing, this is how we were able to pass from one ocean to the other, the passage fringed with ice and landfalls to the waters of the northwest. Plato is a master in the arts of navigation. (Serres 1995, 114)

In this metaphor for the wanderings of the philosopher, the unravelling of his thought is described as sailing; he tacks back and forth. His skill as a philosopher depends on his capacity to navigate effectively between ice and landfalls. Serres’s mental representation of the ship views the latter as the medium not only for sailing but also for thinking and by extension being.11 This shows

Ships in philosophical metaphors

147

the powerful affect of the perceived ship. And since, as mentioned in Part I, the immaterial is but a facet of the multiplicity that is materiality, albeit a facet harder to straightforwardly verbalise, then all travelling, tangible ships have such affect. They are omnipotent. We only need to think about them, in order to experience their alluring powers. This chapter has placed the mentalscape of the ship in the waters of our attention. It tacked back and forth between mariners and non-mariners, statistics and metaphors, philosophy and psychoanalysis, dreams and corporeal knowledge. It passed from the dangerous straits of personal projections, the fearful promontory of subjectivity, did its best to avoid the shallows of analysis, and paid tribute to the omnipotent, maritime god of the in-between. The port is nowhere in sight and so it shall remain. After all, questions such as why the captain went down with his ship, why ships are the metaphysical carriers to the afterlife in so many cultures, why ships’ symbolic meanings are acknowledged by non-mariners and why non-mariners sometimes think about ships differently from mariners do not have a single, definitive answer. The reader was forewarned that the immaterial dislikes closure. This chapter presented pieces of the puzzle that is the perceived ship as they poured out of the spring of philosophical metaphors. Faithful to this metaphor, the pieces were presented in a fluid manner. They flowed through imaginings, maritime experiences and clinical studies without stopping and solidifying at any single port. This chapter showed that the complex ways we think about ships elucidate to varying degrees all studies on ships, mariners and life at sea. Finally, and most importantly, I hope to have shown that in any culture, genre, discipline and time period that bipolars gain ground unjustifiably, the omnipotent ship can serve as a vehicle for purging that ground of short-sightedness.

Notes 1 This research was conducted in the library of the British School at Athens. It was this place that made me realise the importance of place and the degree that the latter impinges on and delightfully alters perception. I am therefore deeply thankful to our library and its staff for creating and maintaining a mighty inspiring heterotopia. I would also like to thank everyone that participated in the ‘Humanity at Sea; Hybridity and Seafaring’ panel, ASA14, where a short version of this chapter was presented. The discussion after the presentation enriched the original ideas.  This title of this chapter paraphrases Raymond Carver’s (1981) short story (and homonymous collection of short stories) title ‘What we talk about when we talk about love’. Carver’s title has also been paraphrased by Haruki Murakami (2008) in the title of his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. 2 In addition, not all mariners have the same experiences on ships. Deck hands face much harsher realities than officers. As a result, a retired officer may share positive reminiscences more often than other crew members. Finally, note that

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

148

Michel Serres was an officer in the French Navy as opposed to the merchant fleet. He was therefore not exposed to multicultural crews, which are typically found in merchant ships. 3 εἰ μὲν τύχοι ἐρῶν γυναικός, οὐ τὴν ἐρωμένην ὄψεται ἀλλ’ ἵππον ἢ κάτοπτρον ἢ ναῦν ἢ θάλασσαν ἢ θηρίον θῆλυ ἢ ἐσθῆτα γυναικείαν ἢ ἄλλο τι τῶν σημαινόντων γυναῖκα . This quote is also found in Foucault (1986b, 12). Also see Marovelli (this volume) who shows how fishermen think of women as personifications of the wild or domesticated seas. 4 I interviewed a second engineer on how easily he adapts on land after long periods of sea travel. Amongst others, he told me that he mechanically lifts his right leg when entering a room, as one does onboard when passing through a bulkhead door. 5 I am thankful to Michalis Petrou for our examination of this dream and for the provision of relevant bibliography. 6 Even though MdDS is unrelated to the nervous system per se, this syndrome appears remarkably similar to the ‘phenomenon of the phantom limb’. In the case of a phantom limb, the amputated patient preserves the bodily memory of his missing limb and continues to act as if it was really there. Similarly, the mariner with MdDS preserves the bodily memory of being onboard and his body propagates the rocking of the ship. On the phenomenon of the phantom limb and the prevalence of past memories over the experienced present, see Merleau-Ponty (2005, 88–96). 7 Or, as Mitakou (this volume) has shown, a ghost, which also is a metaphysical entity. 8 This particular rite is doomed to remain unfinished. The madman will either be forced to disembark too early or forever remain onboard. He will therefore stay trapped mid-rite and will not reach sanity’s shores. 9 On travelling by ship as a rite of passage see Lévi-Strauss (1970), Schneider (2015, 32, 46) and Rogelja (2015, 185–186). On rites of passage and the concept of ‘in-between’, see Turner (1967, 93–111). 10 I would like to thank Professor David Braund for drawing my attention to these passages. Diogenes Laertius 1.8.103: μαθὼν τέτταρας δακτύλους εἶναι τὸ πάχος τῆς νεώς, τοσοῦτον ἔφη τοῦ θανάτου τοὺς πλέοντας ἀπέχειν, 1.8.104: ἐρωτηθεὶς πότεροι πλείους εἰσίν, οἱ ζῶντες ἢ οἱ νεκροί, ἔφη, “τοὺς οὖν πλέοντας ποῦ τίθης; the translations are mine. 11 Also see Stallings (this volume), who writes that Epicurean philosophers too used nautical metaphors to describe an optimum state of mind.

References Bachelard, Gaston, 1994 [1958], The Poetics of Space; The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places (trans Jolas, Maria), Boston, MA, Beacon Press. Baudrillard, Jean, 1983, Simulations (trans Foss, Paul, Patton, Paul  & Beitchman, Philip), New York, Semiotext(e).

Ships in philosophical metaphors

149

Bille, Mikkel, Hastrup, Frida & Soerensen, Tim Flohr (eds), 2010a, An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss, New York, Springer. Bille, Mikkel, Hastrup, Frida  & Soerensen, Tim Flohr, 2010b, ‘Introduction: An anthropology of absence’, in Bille, Mikkel, Hastrup, Frida & Soerensen, Tim Flohr (eds), An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss, New York, Springer, pp. 3–22. Buchli, Victor, 2010, ‘Presencing the im-material’ in Bille, Mikkel, Hastrup, Frida & Soerensen, Tim Flohr (eds), An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss, New York, Springer, pp. 185–203. Buchli, Victor, 2015, An Archaeology of the Immaterial, London, Routledge. Carver, Raymond, 1981, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories, New York, Vintage. Cha, Yoon-Hee, Brodsky, Jae, Ishiyama, Gail, Sabatti, Chiara & Baloh, Robert, W., 2008, ‘Clinical features and associated syndromes of mal de debarquement’, Journal of Neurology 255, pp. 1038–1044. Clark, Brian, C. & Quick, Adam, 2010, ‘Exploring the pathophysiology of mal de debarquement’, Journal of Neurology 258, pp. 1166–1168. Deleuze, Gilles, 1988 [1986], Foucault (trans Hand, Sean), Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Félix, 2005 [1980], A Thousand Plateaus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia (trans Massumi, Brian), Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press. Fontjin, David, 2013, ‘Epilogue: Cultural biographies and itineraries of things: Second thoughts’, in Hahn, Hans Peter,  & Weiss, Hadas (eds), Mobility, Meaning and the Transformation of Things, Oxford, Oxbow, pp. 183–196. Foucault, Michel, 1986a [1984], ‘Of other spaces’ (trans Miskowiec, Jay), Diacritics 16(1), pp. 22–27. Foucault, Michel, 1986b, The History of Sexuality, Volume III, New York, Vintage. Foucault, Michel, 1988, Madness and Civilization; a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, New York, Vintage. Foucault, Michel, 2006, History of Madness, New York, Routledge. Freud, Sigmund, 2010, The Interpretation of Dreams, New York, Basic. Goffman, Erving, 1961, Asylums; Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, New York, Anchor Books. Gordon, Colin, 1992, ‘Histoire de la Folie; an unknown book by Michel Foucault’, in Still, Arthur & Velody, Irving (eds), Rewriting the History of Madness, London, Routledge, pp. 19–42. Gordon, Carlos R., Spitzer, Orna, Doweck, Iliana, Melamed, Yehuda  & Shupak, Avi, 1992, ‘Clinical features of mal de debarquement: adaptation and habituation to sea conditions’, Journal of Vestibular Research 5, pp. 363–369. Green, André, 1999, The Work of the Negative, London, Free Association. Jackson, Michael, 1989, Paths Toward a Clearing; Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry (African Systems of Thought), Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press.

150

Chryssanthi Papadopoulou

Jung, Carl Gustav, 1980 [1959], The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (trans Hull, Richard Francis Carrington), Princeton, NJ, Bollingen. Jung, Carl Gustav, 2002, Dreams (trans Hull, Richard Francis Carrington), London, Routledge. Kaës, René, 2009, Enas Plithyntikos Enikos: I Psychanalysi sti Dokimasia tis Omadas, (Un Singulier Pluriel, trans Dyovouniotou, Ninetta), Athens, Kastaniotis. Knappett, Carl, 2013, ‘Imprints as punctuations of material itineraries’, in Hahn, Hans Peter, & Weiss, Hadas (eds), Mobility, Meaning and the Transformation of Things, Oxford, Oxbow, pp. 37–49. Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark, 2003, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press. Lefebvre, Henri, 1991 [1974], The Production of Space (trans Nicolson, Donald), Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1970, Tristes Tropiques, New York, Atheneum. Megill, Allan, 1992, ‘Foucault, ambiguity and the rhetoric of historiography’, in Still, Arthur & Velody, Irving (eds), Rewriting the History of Madness, London, Routledge, pp. 86–104. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 2005 [1945], Phenomenology of Perception (trans Smith, Colin), London, Routledge. Midelfort, Erik H.C., 1980, ‘Madness and civilisation in early modern Europe: A reappraisal of Michel Foucault’, in Malament, Barbara (ed), After the Reformation, Essays in Honour of J.H. Hexter, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 247–65. Murakami, Haruki, 2008, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, London, Vintage. Oldenburg, Marcus, Baur, Xaver & Schlaich, Clara, 2010, ‘Occupational risks and challenges of seafaring’, Journal of Occupational Health 52, pp. 249–256. Oldenburg, Marcus, Jensen, Hans-Joachim, Latza, Ute  & Baur Xaver, 2009, ‘Seafaring stressors aboard merchant and passenger ships’, International Journal of Public Health 54, pp. 96–105. Papadopoulou, Chryssanthi, 2016, ‘The phenomenon of the phantom place: archaeology and ships’, Journal of Material Culture 21(3): 367–382. Ricoeur, Paul, 1974, ‘Metaphor and the main problem of hermeneutics’, New Literary History 6(1), pp. 95–110. Ricoeur, Paul, 1978, ‘The metaphorical process as cognition, imagination and feeling’, Critical Inquiry 5(1), pp. 143–159. Rogelja, Nataša, 2015, ‘The sea: place of ultimate freedom? Ethnographic reflections on in-between places and practices’, Mobile Culture Studies 1, pp. 181–198. Runia, Eelco, 2006, ‘Presence’, History and Theory 45(1), pp. 1–29. Saarni, Heikki & Niemi, Leena, 2007, Medical Handbook for Seafarers, Helsinki, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. Schneider, Arndt, 2015, ‘An anthropology of the sea voyage; prolegomena to an epistemology of transoceanic travel’, Mobile Culture Studies 1, pp. 31–53.

Ships in philosophical metaphors

151

Serres, Michel 1989 [1986], Detachment (trans James, Geneviève & Fererman, Raymond), Athens, OH, Ohio University Press. Serres, Michel, 1995 [1982], Genesis (trans James, Geneviève & Nielson, James), Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press. Serres, Michel, 2008 [1985], The Five Senses; A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies (trans Sankey, Margaret & Cowley, Peter), London, Continuum. Soja, Edward, W., 1996, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-andImagined Places, Oxford, Blackwell. Tilley, Christopher, 1999, Metaphor and Material Culture, Oxford, Blackwell. Turner, Victor, 1967, The Forest of Symbols; Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, New York, Cornell University Press.

8

Shipwreck is Everywhere A.E. Stallings

Si recte calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est, (Reckoned correctly, shipwreck is everywhere) Gaius Petronius Arbiter

Scale of the winds Some of the most ravishing descriptions of the sea being whipped up into a tempest are contained in an empirical scale of wind force as encountered on sea and on land, the modern Beaufort scale. Escalating from zero, ‘Calm’ (‘Sea like a mirror; smoke rises vertically’), up through ‘Fresh Breeze,’ ‘Gale,’ ‘Storm’ and so on, it goes on to a hurricane force of 12, where the ‘Sea is completely white’ and ‘debris and unsecured objects are hurled around’ (Singleton 2008). The observations have the keen-eyed perceptions of a poet: ‘well marked streaks of foam are blown along the direction of the wind’, ‘small flags extended’, ‘dust and loose paper raised’. The scale is in fact a favourite with poets, Don Paterson’s ‘Scale of Intensity’ being perhaps the most successful homage. Alongside the stranger symptoms in Paterson’s scale, such as the change in weight of ordinary objects, or reversed vortex in the draining bath, Paterson makes sure to begin ‘the Sea is still a mirror’ and to end on that paradoxical phrase of howling violence and visual stillness (one imagines a Turner painting) ‘Sea white’.1 While the Beaufort scale is still named after Sir Frances Beaufort, upon whose 1805 scale the modern one is based, his observations had a nautical briskness and reflected not the wind’s effect on the sea, or the land, but on the sails of a British Navy frigate, from calm, ‘or just sufficient to give steerage way’, to hurricane, ‘or that which no canvas can withstand’ (poetic phrases which incidentally tend to natural iambic pentameters). Because this was wind force as experienced by a ship at sea, there was no reason to go higher than this – above this force, the ship would not survive: 13 is shipwreck. Beaufort’s effort was part of a more general movement to make observations of the weather less subjective and more widely transferable as scientific measurement. In 1802, a pharmacist named Luke Howard delivered a lecture in London on the classification of clouds. Moving away from the openly whimsical, ‘a cloud that’s dragonish’, he proposed a Latin taxonomy which

154

A.E. Stallings

had perhaps its own poetry: ‘cirrus’ (‘a ringlet of hair’) ‘cumulus’ (‘heaped’) and ‘stratus’ (‘strewn’), as well as hybrids thereof, vocabulary that still informs the contemporary International Cloud Atlas (Hamblyn 2001, 34). The original Beaufort scale itself has a literary connection, going back a century to Daniel Defoe’s ‘Scale of Winds’ of 1704 (Singleton 2008, 37). (Defoe probably was also working from some sort of existing definition of wind force.) Defoe witnessed the Great Storm of 1703, probably the most severe storm to hit England in recorded history, and wrote a book, The Storm, on the event, which included first-hand accounts from numerous witnesses. On land, the lead tiles of Westminster Abbey were blown off and 2,000 massive chimney stacks in London toppled. Scores of ships were wrecked, including 40 merchant vessels and 13 Royal Navy ships, with some 1,500 seamen drowned at Goodwin Sands alone; some ships were blown hundreds of miles out to sea, others inland to end up beached 20 miles from the water. The ferocity of the storm beggared description. Defoe (2005, 53) wrote: ‘No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it’. Defoe had experienced it, however, and collected and published the firsthand experiences of others. He had been so shocked at the depth to which the mercury plummeted in the barometer at the outset that he thought at first that his kids must have meddled with the instrument. He was moved to produce a numbered scale for the winds themselves, the 12-toned ‘Scale of Winds’, ranging from zero (‘Stark Calm’) to 11 (‘Tempest’), with intermediary steps such as ‘a fresh gale’ (5), or ‘a fret of wind’ (9) (Defoe 2005, 24). Yet he too was keenly aware that one man’s fresh breeze was another’s gale. Defoe is most famous now for his 1719 novel, one of the first in English, Robinson Crusoe; it was at least partly based on the real castaway Alexander Selkirk, a privateer who had survived alone on a deserted island from 1704 to 1709, and whose story was widely discussed in the press. (The case of shipwrecked surgeon Henry Pitman may also be a source.) In Robinson Crusoe Defoe dramatises the difference with which seasoned sailors and a landlubber on his virgin voyage interpret a squall, in an exchange that seems almost written for the stage, or the cinema. Crusoe is sea-sick and terrified from the experience; the other sailors tease him (Chapter One): How do you do after it? I warrant you were frighted, wer’n’t you, last night, when it blew but a capful of wind?’ ‘A capful d’you call it?’ said I; ‘twas a terrible storm.’ ‘A storm, you fool you,’ replies he; ‘do you call that a storm? why, it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship and sea-room, and we think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but you’re but a fresh-water sailor, Bob. Come, let us make a bowl of punch, and we’ll forget all that; d’ye see what charming weather ’tis now? (Defoe 1994, 7)

Shipwreck is everywhere

155

Like the scale of winds itself, the weather and narrative are destined to escalate, and a second storm, soon after, turns out to be one worse than the seasoned sailors have ever seen. Crusoe’s one advantage is that he does not know the meaning of the “founder”: However, the storm was so violent that I saw, what is not often seen, the master, the boatswain, and some others more sensible than the rest, at their prayers, and expecting every moment when the ship would go to the bottom. (Defoe 1994, 10)

By the time of Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula, which pivots on a tempest and a shipwreck, the author can casually pepper Mina’s epistle on the coming storm with scientific observations, like a captain’s log: The day was unusually fine till the afternoon, when some of the gossips who frequent the East Cliff churchyard, and from the commanding eminence watch the wide sweep of sea visible to the north and east, called attention to a sudden show of ‘mares tails’ high in the sky to the northwest. The wind was then blowing from the south-west in the mild degree which in barometrical language is ranked ‘No. 2, light breeze’. (Stoker 2004, 85)

Those watching on shore (some of whom will scramble to take salvage from the ship, which might legally be considered derelict but for the complication of a dead man tied to the wheel; the only survivor appears to be a large dog that leaps ashore) take aesthetic pleasure in the experience of watching the approaching storm from shore: The coastguard on duty at once made report, and one old fisherman, who for more than half a century has kept watch on weather signs from the East Cliff, foretold in an emphatic manner the coming of a sudden storm. The approach of sunset was so very beautiful, so grand in its masses of splendidly coloured clouds, that there was quite an assemblage on the walk along the cliff in the old churchyard to enjoy the beauty. Before the sun dipped below the black mass of Kettleness, standing boldly athwart the western sky, its downward way was marked by myriad clouds of every sunset colour, flame, purple, pink, green, violet, and all the tints of gold, with here and there masses not large, but of seemingly absolute blackness, in all sorts of shapes, as well outlined as colossal silhouettes. The experience was not lost on the painters, and doubtless some of the sketches of the ‘Prelude to the Great Storm’ will grace the R. A and R. I. walls in May next. (Stoker 2004, 85–86)

156

A.E. Stallings

It is unclear to me who exactly changed Beaufort’s sail-based descriptions to the more evocative sea conditions (and corresponding land conditions) but it may well have been Sir George Simpson, who updated the Beaufort scale in 1926 for steam ships and observers on shore, including the drift of smoke and the rustling of leaves, giving the scale its modern overlap of scientific observation and poetic precision, as well as its simultaneous observation of wind at sea and wind on shore, both places at once (Singleton 2008, 39). The ability to imagine conditions at sea from the shore, and to think of the shore from the sea, is an important imaginative leap, and one that infuses literature and the development of one of modern literature’s notable components, empathy.

‘How sweet it is to watch from dry land . . .’ Storm and the threat of shipwreck, or actual shipwreck, turn out to be the embarkation point for many narratives, and maybe one of the starting points of literature itself. The Odyssey (circa seventh century BC) begins with Odysseus already a castaway and sole survivor of his whole armada, The Aeneid (19 BC), with Aeneas, a refugee fleeing the devastation of Troy, in a tempest with his flotilla off the coast of Carthage. The first words spoken by a mortal in Virgil’s poem are Aeneas’ in terror of the storm, and in dread of a watery grave. Lifting his palms to heaven he exclaims (1.94–96): Three times, four times luckier were those Who died before their parent’s eyes Under Troy’s high walls! A blast of wind from the North strikes the sail as he speaks [1.102–107]: . . . Waves shot to the stars. The oars shattered. The prow swung around, Exposing the side to the waves, and then A mountain of water broke over the fleet. The crew of some ships bobbed high on the crest, While the wave’s deep trough revealed to others The deep seafloor churning with sand (translation by Lombardo)

Many are drowned, at least one shipwrecked, but Aeneas and his own ship make nearest land, the coast of Libya. There Aeneas utters some of the poem’s most famous words, ‘forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit’ (1.204): ‘Some day, perhaps/ It will help to remember these troubles as well’ (translation by Lombardo). It turns out there is something mirror-like about the sea (‘the sea-like sea’ as Alice Oswald describes it),2 not just its reflective surface in fair weather: it has the effect of doubling current experience as premonition or nostalgia. At

Shipwreck is everywhere

157

sea, Aeneas wishes himself on shore (if dead and buried), and on shore he casts his mind back to the struggle at sea, as well as forward into a future time when thinking about it will bring pleasure. Iuvabit in the Latin, here translated as ‘will help’, can also be translated as ‘will gratify or please’. This counterintuitive association of a ship in distress at sea and pleasure on shore is not coincidence. The Roman poet Virgil throughout the Aeneid is engaged in conversation with, or maybe rebuttal of, one of his strongest influences, Lucretius and his didactic Epicurean epic De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things (circa 50 BC). Epicurean philosophy, with its emphasis on pleasure as the greatest good, and its belief in a purely material universe of atoms drifting through the void, looked to nautical metaphor to describe the serene state of mind that philosophy aimed at: ataraxia – ‘untroubledness’, or ‘smooth sailing’ as it were. And when Lucretius wants to describe the philosophical man looking upon the troubles of others in Book Two, he describes a spectator on shore watching a ship in a tempest (2.1–4): How sweet it is to watch from dry land when the storm-winds roil A mighty ocean’s waters, and see another’s bitter toil— Not because you relish someone else’s misery— Rather it’s sweet to know from what misfortunes you are free. (translation by Stallings)

Aeneas is both the sailor in difficulties and the philosophical observer on shore who can find pleasure in being out of harm’s way. For us, Lucretius’ formulation of the sweetness of watching a ship in a storm, and the possible shipwreck, might seem shocking, or callous. But, traditionally, shipwreck to those on shore was potentially both entertainment and enrichment (especially when cargo washes ashore – one man’s wreck is another man’s salvage). Take Dickens’s (1995, 797) description of the excitement engendered by a potential shipwreck in the ‘Tempest’ chapter of David Copperfield: ‘What is the matter?’ I cried. ‘A wreck! Close by!’ I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck? ‘A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! It’s thought, down on the beach, she’ll go to pieces every moment.’

Nor is this pleasure at the spectacle of shipwreck confined to realistic fiction. In Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid (1837), the mermaid of the

158

A.E. Stallings

title witnesses the foundering of a ship during a storm, not from the vantage point of someone safe on shore but from a creature who is in her native element and cannot drown: A dreadful storm was approaching; once more the sails were reefed, and the great ship pursued her flying course over the raging sea. The waves rose mountains high, as if they would have overtopped the mast; but the ship dived like a swan between them, and then rose again on their lofty, foaming crests. To the little mermaid this appeared pleasant sport; not so to the sailors. (Andersen 2001, 12)

Lucretius has more to say, though, about ships and storms, shipwreck and mortality, and indeed is prompted by the same desire to rationally categorise the world as the Beaufort scale. (He attempts to explain clouds and other meteorological phenomena at length, for instance, in Book Six.) The relief of watching a ship tossing at sea involves an act of imagination – picturing what it must be like to be on board. The safety of shore can only be appreciated by the apprehension of danger on the water (also see Blumenberg 1996, 26–46). Shipwreck for many writers (as with Petronius, whose quotation heads this chapter) is a metaphor for our mortality, and until recently was a risk that nearly all travellers had to take and most cargo was subject to. Not so in Lucretius. Shipwreck ends lives, but for Lucretius life begins with shipwreck. What is an infant but a shipwrecked sailor, naked and helpless, washed up on the shores of light, that is, the shores of life? (5.222–225): A human baby’s like a sailor washed up on a beach By the battering of the surf, naked, lacking the power of speech, Possessing no means of survival, when first Nature pours Him forth with birth-pangs from his mother’s womb upon Light’s shores . . . (translation by Stallings)

Likewise, in another strange reversal of metaphor, where shipwreck might be reasonably assumed to symbolise – and to be – destruction, Lucretius posits the wreckage of a ship as a metaphor for the churning matter that makes up the universe, shipwreck as material. His argument here is that matter is infinite, because if it were finite it would be scattered like shipwreck and not combine together to create anything, and yet his description still gives a sense of ‘matter’s seething tide’, and compares atoms to flotsam (2.552ff): But as with major shipwrecks, when the vessel’s torn to tatters, And the mighty sea, as is her wont, tosses about and scatters Floating transoms, sip ribs, sail-yards, spars prow, masts, planks, oars, And bobbing pieces of the stern are littered on the shores . . . (translation by Stallings)

Shipwreck is everywhere

159

The wonderful asyndeton in the Latin (I’ve tried to retain the effect in the English), embodying the chaos of strewn wreckage, has its double in Dickens, again from the ‘Tempest’ chapter of David Copperfield: the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge. (Dickens 1995, 798)

Lucretius also goes on later to describe an historical shipwreck in a passage on the futility of superstition. This time he put us not in the mind of the philosopher snug on shore but of the person tossed in a tempest and beseeching the gods not to let him die. As with foxholes, there are no atheists on a ship in a storm (5.1226–1232): Or when a tempest rises up, when winds of gale-force sweep The seas, take the commander and his fleet out on the deep With all his mighty legions and his elephants of war— Does he not pray to the gods for peace, and terrified, implore The squall to die down, and beseech more favourable winds to blow? But all in vain, since often the violent whirlwind won’t let go, But snatches him up and dashes him upon the shoals of Fate. (translation by Stallings)

This commander could, aside from the war elephants, be Aeneas, or Odysseus, or even Jason. The war elephants are something of a give-away, though, and any Roman reading the passage would have immediately been put in mind of their old foe, King Pyrrhus. As we learn from Plutarch (Vit. Pyrrhus 15.1–5), King Pyrrhus, setting out for Italy from Epirus (northern Greece blending into Illyria, or modern Albania) in a flotilla of ships with a force of 20 elephants, 3,000 horse, 20,000 foot, 2,000 archers and 500 slingers, is caught halfway through the crossing in a tempest when unseasonable winds strike. Many vessels are lost, or driven off course, and many drowned. Pyrrhus flings himself into the sea. This is where the history parts ways with the poetic example, as Pyrrhus is such a strong swimmer, that he makes shore. (Two of the elephants also survive.) Lucretius’ act of imagination, though  – the obverse side of the coin from the observer on shore – is even stranger when you consider that he puts an event from the distant historical past (the Pyrrhic war lasted from 280–275 BC; Lucretius is writing around 50 BC) in a sort of nebulous present, and puts us in the sandals of an enemy of Rome in fear of his life. The ability to imagine oneself at sea from the shore, or from sea to imagine oneself at the shore, to leap into the future or the past, seems to be part and parcel of seafaring. (One of the Iliad’s most famous similes involves Hera zipping as swiftly as the thought of a traveller who wants to be elsewhere, 15.80–83.) When the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge’s ballad describes setting

A.E. Stallings

160

out on his doomed voyage, it is simultaneously in terms of the high spirits of those on board, and from the view of those watching the ship depart from shore: The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the lighthouse top (Coleridge 1970 [1834], 4)

Dropping below the horizon is not something the sailors themselves experience, but is an illusion to spectators created by distance and the curvature of the earth – the sort of illusion in fact that Lucretius enjoyed describing in Book Four, on the senses. Likewise, when the ship is becalmed the Mariner famously describes it as ‘a painted ship upon a painted ocean’, from the viewpoint not only of someone looking at the ship but of someone viewing the ship framed by genre as a figure in a seascape; not just from shore, but snug in a furnished room.

Sea song, rubato Shipwreck tends to refract time as water refracts the image of sunken things. Perhaps the most famous sea shanty – and everyone associated with the sea, from mermaids and sea-witches to pirates and sailors, sings  – in literature comes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The spirit Ariel cruelly teases Ferdinand, who has swum to shore like King Pyrrhus (or Odysseus, or Twelfth Night’s Sebastian, or Robinson Crusoe), with the image of his father’s corpse under the sea: Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. (Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1.2.474–479)

Even if Ferdinand’s father, Antonio, the King of Naples, had drowned in the tempest (and we know he is alive, likewise fearing that his son is dead), he would merely be bobbing about as a fresh corpse, doing the dead man’s float, and would not have had time to sink to the bottom, much less become

Shipwreck is everywhere

161

a skeleton petrified into coral. The Tempest is one of only two Shakespeare plays that observe the Aristotelian unities of time and place, the action occurs within a single day, but Ariel’s sea shanty casts the imagination into both the counterfactual (Ferdinand’s father is, as the audience knows, very much alive; his clothes aren’t even wet), and the distant future, or rather the chilling future perfect, when his eyes will have turned into pearls. Something described as contemporary may be (per Lucretius) ancient history. Often a shipwreck written about as of the distant past, or the far future, may have happened last year or last month. Consider the ballad form, and particularly Gordon Lightfoot’s brilliant and popular hit of 1976, ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’. A nearly perfect example of the genre, with its efficient storytelling, its lyrical melancholy (Lake Superior, a bit like a sea-witch herself, ‘sings in the rooms of her ice-water mansion’), its archaisms (‘a good ship and true’), its ring structure, its elliptical storytelling via direct speech, it has the feel of a folk song. Take the devastatingly swift and uncluttered storytelling of these lines: When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck Saying, ‘Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya.’ At seven PM a main hatchway caved in [original version] He said, ‘Fellas, it’s been good to know ya.’3

As the song itself says, the waves ‘turn the minutes to hours’, but here hours are telescoped into minutes. Even the ship’s name, The Edmund Fitzgerald, sounds like it comes straight out of a collection of ancient Scottish ballads, and holds its own with an anonymous masterpiece such as the fifteenthcentury ‘Sir Patrick Spens’. Yet Lightfoot’s song is written in 1976, hardly a year after the actual wreck, lost on 10 November 1975 in Lake Superior with all of her 29 hands. The context of the song, though, places the accident in the distant, even legendary, past: The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee The lake it is said never gives up its dead When the skies of November turn gloomy . . .

With the native-American name for Lake Superior, Lightfoot harkens back to Longfellow’s 1855 saga, ‘The Song of Hiawatha’. Yet if ‘Gitche Gumee’ (‘Big Water’) tips us off that Lightfoot is thinking of Longfellow, the Longfellow poem that influences this is ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’. The title is now better known than the poem, but it was popular enough in its day that it is still lodged in popular culture. (It gets a mention even in the TV show The Simpsons.) Like Lightfoot’s song, the poem is a pseudo-folk ballad, fluent in

162

A.E. Stallings

the genre’s conventions, the lyric moment, the archaisms, the direct speech. Sometimes all of these combine together, as in this stanza: Last night, the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!’ The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he. (Longfellow 1842, 43)

Despite the deliberate archaisms inherent to the ballad form, the wind is described with a precision – by its visible symptoms – with a poet’s weather eye that reminds us of the modern Beaufort scale: The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South. (Longfellow 1842, 43)

(‘Flaw’, by the way, here means ‘squall’.) All of these elements – the doomed skipper, the daughter, the storm – are also to be found in the ‘Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens’, whose most famous lyrical moment also contemplates the moon: I saw the new moon late yestreen With the old moon in her arm; And if we go to sea, master, I fear we’ll come to harm. (Coleridge 1912, 1076. This version is from the epigraph to Coleridge’s Dejection, An Ode. For the original version, see QuillerCouch (1910, 329))

The ballad’s direct speech, its dialogue, is essentially theatrical. Interestingly the anonymous balladeer sees fit to compare the drowning noblemen who have accompanied Sir Patrick Spens on the journey back from Norway, with a play: O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords To wet their cork-heel’d shoon; But lang or a’ the play was play’d They wat their hats aboon. (Quiller-Couch 1910, 331)

Shipwreck is everywhere

163

(Again, note the efficiency and wit, which does not detract from the pathos, of the storm rising – at first they are loath to wet their shoes, but by the end, their hats are swimming in the tide.) It is thought that ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ may reflect an actual thirteenth-century marine disaster connected with Margaret the Maid of Norway. Certainly, Longfellow’s ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ was influenced by at least one, probably two, incidents from the Great Blizzard of 1839. In the space of two weeks in December of that year, gales wrecked over 50 vessels off the coast of Maine, strewing the shore with debris and the drowned. A ship called The Hesperus was damaged in Boston harbour, but the wreck that inspired the poem is probably that of the schooner Favorite, which was dashed against an infamous reef named Norman’s Woe. Seventeen hands were lost, and a woman (a Mrs Sally Hilton) was washed ashore tied ‘to the windlass bitt’, as in the poem the skipper’s daughter, a pious maiden, is washed ashore tied to the mast (Gale 2003, 292). The poem was published in early January of 1840. Also influenced by Longfellow’s ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’, Gerard Manley Hopkins has two famous poems on the subject of historical wrecks: ‘The Wreck of the Eurydice’ (which, though in his sprung-measure, has the look and feel of a ballad) and his masterpiece, the 35-stanza ode ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ (Gale 2003, 292). In both cases, the name of the ship is already laden with metaphorical possibilities. ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ describes a real event which carries symbolic weight, with its drowning of five Franciscan nuns fleeing the anti-Catholic Falk Laws in Germany. The title could not be more fraught. Can it be coincidence that the poet’s father, Manley Hopkins, was not only a pastor but the founder of a marine insurance company and the author of an 1873 book titled The Port of Refuge, or Advice and Instruction to the Master-Mariner in Situations of Doubt, Difficulty and Danger? This title sounds metaphorical, advice for the storm-tossed soul, but ‘God’ only appears in the book, in the phrase ‘act of God’ (Hopkins 1873, 41, 131, 132, 157) Other books by the same author include A Handbook of Average (1859) and A Manual of Marine Insurance (1867). No wreck in modern history has produced as much poetry as the Titanic. Newspapers were inundated with poetic responses after the disaster. Most of these were dross, but at least one arguably great poem came out of it, Hardy’s ‘Convergence of the Twain’. Published less than a month after the event, the poem appeared in the 14 May 1912 programme of the ‘Dramatic and Operatic Matinee in Aid of the Titanic Disaster Fund’ given at Covent Garden, an event at which such celebrities as Sarah Bernhardt and Anna Pavlova performed (Pinion 1968, 489, Mezey 1998, 218). In the poem, the recent wreck seems not to have just settled on the sea floor but to have been there for an age: Over the mirrors meant To glass the opulent The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. (Mezey 1998, 70)

A.E. Stallings

164

The poet’s mind not only leaps to some future point when the ship will be bleary with sea creatures but leaps to the bottom of the sea, that rich and strange place where poets and writers from Homer to Shakespeare to Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Mermaid) imagine sunken treasure and palaces under the sea: Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind. V Dim moon-eyed fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear And query: ‘What does this vaingloriousness down here?’ . . . (Mezey 1998, 70)

‘The Convergence of the Twain’, as the title suggests, twins the ship and the iceberg, but also embodies the doubling of the sea in its nonce metrical form. The first two lines of each stanza, trimeters, are arguably hemistiches, which collide in the stately hexameter that closes each tercet. It is another curious trick of this poem that, although this is a fairly current event described as being in a distant past, it is yet full of doom and foreboding, diving back before the maiden voyage, when the bridal ship is being prepared for her ‘sinister mate’ to which she will be welded/wedded. The poem ends with the moment of impact, a blow so great that it shudders back up through the poem and splits the world: Till the Spinner of the Years Said ‘Now!’ And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres. (Mezey 1998, 71)

The poem, set in the future from the disaster, detonates at Time’s epicentre, Now.

Plagiarism and piracy The word ‘plagiarist’ is introduced into literature in its current meaning by the first-century AD Roman poet Martial; originally plagiarius meant ‘kidnapper’ (often of slaves); Martial uses it as a kidnapper of words (Seo 2009). Kidnapping and selling into slavery is of course commonplace in the literature of ships and wreck from Homer on. (Stevenson’s 1886 Kidnapped is one obvious example.) Plagiarism is also a charge that gets brought against those who rig imagined shipwrecks with the details of actual ones. The second canto of Byron’s

Shipwreck is everywhere

165

Don Juan contains harrowing descriptions of the tempest, the shipwreck, the lifeboat of castaways, cannibalism, and the sole survivor, themes that emerge again and again in the literature of shipwreck. Many of the details come from accounts of actual disasters, particularly from Dalyell’s 1812 Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, among them the recent wreck of the Medusa (whose raft was the subject of Gericaux’s famous painting) off the coast of Mauritania in 1816, and the earlier mutiny of the Bounty in 1789 (Riding 2013). Byron was accused of plagiarism for making use of first-hand accounts for his fiction. In a letter he wrote to his editor John Murray from Ravenna, dated 31 August 1821, he remarks with frustration: Enclosed are the two acts corrected. With regard to the charges about the shipwreck, I  think that I  told both you and Mr.  Hobhouse, years ago, that there was not a single circumstance of it not taken from fact; not, indeed, from any single shipwreck, but all from actual facts of different wrecks. (Quennell 1950, 661)

The poet in fact had ‘an inheritance of storms’ from his grandfather, John Byron, ‘Foul-Weather Jack’, so-called because he never embarked on a voyage without a tempest. Vice-Admiral John Byron published a memoir of his experience of shipwreck, mutiny and desertion, and exotic islands, on the ship implausibly named The Wager and commanded by a Captain Cheap, in 1768 as The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron. The memoir of The Wager (‘my granddad’s Narrative’) includes John Byron’s having to eat his dog, a gruesome detail his grandson the poet would take for his shipwreck canto of Don Juan. Yet the poet Byron had also been on ships in storms, and had experienced near shipwreck first-hand; he did not need to go to a library for details to flavour an account. In a letter from 1809 to his mother, Byron describes nearly being shipwrecked off Corfu, that is to say, the same general patch of water where Pyrrhus encountered a tempest, and not far from the Illyrian coast where Viola and Sebastian are shipwrecked in Twelfth Night: Two days ago I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship of war owing to the ignorance of the captain and crew though the storm was not violent. Fletcher yelled after his wife, the Greeks called on all the Saints, the Mussulmen on Alla, the Captain burst into tears and ran below deck telling us to call on God, the sails were split, the mainyard shivered, the wind blowing fresh, the night setting in, and all our chance was to make Corfu which is in possession of the French, or (as Fletcher pathetically termed it) ‘a watery grave’. I did what I could to console Fletcher but finding him incorrigible, wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak) and lay down on deck to wait the worst,’ adding, ‘I have learnt to philosophise in my travels, and if I had not, complaint was useless’. (Quennell 1950, 61)

166

A.E. Stallings

This is Stoic. But also, perhaps, Epicurean. Looking back on the terrifying moment (a weeping captain is never reassuring), he is able to be amusing about it, even to take pleasure in its description. It is sweet to gaze out into the offing of the imagination and realise you are free from those terrors you had once experienced. Byron becomes two people at once – the man on board a ship in a squall, huddled under his Albanian capote awaiting the worst, and the Englishman abroad, high and dry, who tosses this off as a wry and amusing travel anecdote. While there is humour and pathos and sardonic asides leading up to the sinking of the ship, the Trinidada, the moment of her going down is one of precision, including the exact time, a scientific measurement which shipwreck literature is partial to (Canto 2, LI): At half-past eight o-clock, booms, hencoops, spars, And all things, for a chance, had been cast loose That still could keep afloat the struggling tars, For yet they strove, although of no great use: There was no light in heaven but a few stars, The boats put off o’ercrowded with their crews; She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port, And, going down head foremost—sunk, in short. (Page 1970, 666)

Adrift with little in the way of rations (the hard tack has been soaked in salt water, just as had happened with the Medusa), the survivors on the raft die of thirst, and then starvation, sons dying in their fathers arms. Some resort to cannibalism, eating Don Juan’s religious tutor, Pedrillo, who becomes a twisted embodiment of Christian communion. Even Don Juan’s dog is devoured (as John Byron’s had been). The men on the raft die of ‘famine, despair, cold, thirst, and heat’, and those that resort to cannibalism go mad. Finally, only Don Juan is left, and, a strong swimmer (Byron boasts that, like himself, he might have been able to swim the Hellespont), he makes shore on a Greek island.

Etiquette for shipwrecked sailors (and stranded princesses) Here the realistic shipwreck narrative meshes with myth and folklore. A naked, handsome, shipwrecked sailor washed up on a seemingly deserted island. What could go wrong? Or right? Naturally he will be found and rescued by a beautiful virgin, the daughter of the island’s chieftain, the lovely and doomed Greek maiden (actually half Moorish, in an interesting twist; her dead mother had hailed from Fez), Haidée (Canto 2, CXXIX): And walking out upon the beach, below The cliff,—towards sunset, on that day she found

Shipwreck is everywhere

167

Insensible,—not dead, but nearly so,— Don Juan, almost famish’d, and half drown’d; But being naked, she was shock’d, you know, Yet deem’d herself in common pity bound, As far as in her lay, ‘to take him in, A stranger’ dying, with so white a skin. (Page 1970, 675)

Don Juan’s nakedness elicits physical desire. This is exactly what Odysseus will try to avoid when he arrives on Scheria, the island of the Phaeacians, by modestly covering his nakedness. The little mermaid, who in many ways plays both the role of the rescuing princess and the shipwrecked sailor, and is thus doubly doomed, desires the shipwrecked sailor she has saved so much that she bargains away her magical voice, and becomes the naked person washed ashore, exposed to the gaze of the prince: He fixed his coal-black eyes upon her so earnestly that she cast down her won, and then became aware that her fish’s tail was gone, and that she had as pretty a pair of white legs and tiny feet as any little maiden could have; but she had no clothes, so she wrapped herself in her long, thick hair. (Andersen 2001, 25)

Shipwrecks in literature often end in weddings (Andersen’s The Little Mermaid does, but not the one we are rooting for), but weddings also end shipwrecks. (Shakespeare’s The Tempest will do both.) Much can go wrong en route. If we go by literature – and Don Juan has left the hyperrealism of shipwreck now and entered the fantasy world of islands – a sailor who has landed in a strange country could end up on an island with monsters or cannibals, one ruled by a witch or wizard, could be turned into a pig (or a rock or a tree), could become the captive and/or love slave of a witch or a goddess, could end up being offered the kingship of the island and/or immortality, but at the price of his destiny and destination, could end up jilting a princess on a desert island, or, in very rare cases, could end up married to the princess and living happily ever after. Things are not much better from the girl’s point of view. The arrival of a handsome sailor is romantically exciting, but his promises are probably false, he might be a pirate, he might already be married, you might sell your voice for him only to discover that’s what he was attracted to in the first place, he might leave you pregnant and jilted, he might leave you jilted and childless and suicidal: he might be only a ship passing in the night. Odysseus (in his seafaring self a double of Jason, captain of the Argo) is of course the pattern for both good outcomes and bad for the shipwrecked sailor scenario. He has already, or so he says, experienced monsters and magic, witches and demigoddesses, shipwreck and disorientation, suffered mutiny,

168

A.E. Stallings

and lost his crew to drowning, accidents, whirlpools and man-eating monsters before he sets foot on the island of the Phaeacians. This island, Scheria, as with other utopias, is almost too good to be true, enchanting but not quite enchanted, a land of miraculous peace and plenty. With his raft dashed to pieces in a storm, he manages to make shore by swimming, assisted by a sea-goddess’s magic sash. Naked, wild-looking, crusted with salt, he encounters a bevy of beauties playing ball at the seaside. All the girls but one run away in terror. Princess Nausicaa stands her ground, a model of poise and self-possession. Only just ready for marriage (14-ish, let’s say), she is younger than Odysseus’ son Telemachus, and could be his daughter. Covering himself with an olive branch – ‘the first gentleman in Europe’, as James Joyce remarks (Budgen 1972, 17) – Odysseus addresses her as all shipwrecked sailors should address a strange woman to whom they have not been introduced (Homer, Odyssey 6.149): ‘Are you a goddess?’ (translation by Fagles). She is not a deity, as it happens, merely a virtuous princess in need of a husband; her father even offers her in marriage to the sailor (who could, after all, be, and indeed arguably is, a pirate), as well as his kingdom. Her name, suggestively, might mean ‘burner of ships’, someone who might, Cortez-like, prevent explorers from returning home. Disaster is averted by the proper behaviour of both sailor and princess – he covers his nakedness and addresses her with reverence; she is careful to avoid island gossip by not bringing him into town with her. The suspicion and xenophobia, the flip side of hospitality that Nausicaa describes, could belong to a small village on a modern Greek island. (One might compare the doomed widow in Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek, who is murdered for having an affair with a stranger.) Some old salt might mock us behind our backs— we have our share of insolent types in town and one of the coarser sort, spying us, might say, ‘Now who’s that tall, handsome stranger Nausicaa has in tow? Where’d she light on him? Her husband-to-be, just wait! But who—some shipwrecked stray she’s taken up with, some alien from abroad? Since nobody lives nearby. Unless it’s really a god come down from the blue To answer all her prayers, and to have her all his days. Good riddance! Let the girl go roving to find herself A man from foreign parts. She only spurns her own— Countless Phaeacians round about who court her, Nothing but our best. (Homer, Odyssey 6.273–284, translation by Fagles)

She thus shows herself the equal to and double of Penelope, beset by suitors herself, and yet knowing how to avoid the stain of scandal.

Shipwreck is everywhere

169

Byron’s Haidée, on another (unnamed) Greek island, in the Cyclades, is both too innocent, including of the facts of life, and too sly for her own good, ending up as Don Juan’s lover but not his bride, and hiding him from her father, who is a pirate/slave-trader/smuggler. When she dies of heartbreak (actually a sort of stroke or seizure; Byron himself was subject to these), we learn it is a double death, for she is with child. This is one infant who will never be washed onto the shores of light but will sink with the vessel that carries it (Canto 4, LXX): She died, but not alone; she held within A second principle of life, which might Have dawn’d a fair and sinless child of sin; But closed its little being without light And went down to the grave unborn . . . (Page 1970, 707)

Before she dies, Haidée has a series of vivid nightmares such as a shipwrecked sailor might, all suggestive of drowning, or being a castaway, and imbued with the imagery, mythology, and lore of the sea (Canto 4, XXXI): She dream’d of being alone on the sea-shore Chain’d to a rock; she knew not how, but stir She could not from the spot, and the loud roar Grew, and each wave rose roughly, threatening her; And o’er her upper lip they seem’d to pour, Until she sobb’d for breath, and soon they were Foaming o’er her lone head, so fierce and high— Each broke to drown her, yet she could not die. (Page 1970, 702)

And then, about to die herself, she rather dreams that it is Don Juan who is dead: . . . and the sea dirges low Rang in her sad ears like a mermaid’s song. (Page 1970, 702)

In Byron this confusion of lover and beloved, of victim and rescuer, of the shipwrecked and the land-dweller, comes in the form of a dream. If the tempest is the confusion of sky with the sea, empathy is the confusion of the spectator and the spectacle. In Homer empathy lies not in the feelings of characters but in the poet’s similes, the confusion of vehicle with tenor (vessel and lading), perhaps never more thoroughly than at the simile that marks the recognition scene where Odysseus, the quintessential shipwrecked sailor, is

A.E. Stallings

170

reunited with his wife, Penelope. Although he has finally returned home to Ithaka and slaughtered the suitors, Odysseus must still prove his identity. An island queen has to be careful, for the sea is full of mirages and hallucinations; one must not get shipwrecked by a Fata Morgana. When Odysseus passes her test (knowing the secret of the rooted bed), husband and wife fall into each other’s arms and Penelope breaks down in joy. It is she, though, who is compared to the shipwrecked sailor who reaches dry land: the sight of her husband is safe harbour and the port in the storm. It is one of the sea’s rare happy endings. I give the translation by George Chapman (of Keats’s ‘On Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ fame), published in folio from 1614–1615: And as sad men at sea when shore is nigh, Which long their hearts have wish’d, their ship quite lost By Neptune’s rigour, and they vex’d and tost ‘Twixt winds and black waves, swimming for their lives, A few escap’d, and that few that survives, All drench’d in foam and brine, crawl up to land, With joy as much as they did worlds command; So dear to this wife was her husband’s sight. (Homer, Odyssey 23.233–240, translation by Chapman in Nicoll 2000)

Tempests and enchanted islands are the stuff of the Odyssey (or at least Odysseus’ elaborate backstory). It is tempting to consider whether Shakespeare knew the poem. He would have had other sources of these myths, through Ovid, Virgil and others. Was he aware that Chapman was translating the Odyssey at the same time as he was embarking on The Tempest (first performed in 1611)? Was something in the air? Shipwreck runs through the plays, but with The Tempest something seems to have changed.

A brave vessel Shakespeare uses shipwreck as a plot device in both The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, allowing for separation of families at sea and confusion of identity. But the shipwreck, though described in harrowing detail (in the Comedy of Errors, a father and mother, each with one of their children, as well as a slave child each, are separated at sea, the father having lashed himself to the mast), has already happened before the play begins. The Tempest, on the other hand, brings the storm to the stage. On Defoe’s 12-tone wind-scale, starting at zero for a stark calm, it is an 11. On the Beaufort scale, it is a 12: ‘that which no canvas can withstand’. SCENE I. On a ship at sea: a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard.

Shipwreck is everywhere

171

Enter a Master and a Boatswain Master Boatswain! Boatswain Here, master: what cheer? Master Good, speak to the mariners: fall to’t, yarely, or we run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir. (Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.1.1–4)

It is hard to imagine what the first audience would have felt, or expected. The play might as easily have been titled The Enchanted Island, as Dryden does title it when he rewrites it with a handful of extra characters. We have, in a play of pure fantasy, a scene of terrifying realism. The play begins at the brink of disaster, and the audience must have felt both the thrill of terror being in its midst, and of course the pleasure of watching safely from shore. It begins not in an elaborate depiction of events but speech shouted over the howling wind. The realism was probably amplified by hair-raising accounts of a recent, actual shipwreck. The play debuted in 1611, shortly after the 1609 wreck of the Sea Venture off Bermuda. The ship, headed from Plymouth to supply Jamestown with provisions and settlers, was blown off course in a hurricane and deliberately run aground on a reef in Discovery Bay so that it would not sink. (All 150 aboard, and one dog, made dry land safely.) After nine months stranded on the island, the survivors managed to build ships to sail away. The accounts, with details ripe for the picking, arrived as Shakespeare was writing his play (Morrison 2014, 46, 73–74). Elements of Shakespeare’s storm are familiar, from both literary and literal (or littoral) accounts – the differing reactions of seasoned sailors and landlubber passengers (the sailors know the danger they are in, while the aristocrats are getting in the way, helped perhaps only by not knowing the meaning of the word ‘founder’), and the moment of despair when the crew prays (‘All lost, to prayers, to prayers!’ 1.1.50) and everyone prepares to meet their maker. The Boatswain begs the aristocrats and the king, who are only in the way, to ‘keep below’ (1.1.10). Not perhaps understanding the degree of peril, they are offended by his tone. When told to remember who is aboard (the king), the Boatswain declares with exasperation, ‘None that I  love more than myself’ (1.1.20). Gonzalo, in the time-honoured mode of the storm-tossed, casts his imagination to shore, wishing himself on land, ‘now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of dry ground’, if only to die a ‘dry death’ (1.1.60–63). The closest contemporary equivalent to the violence and realism of this opening, segueing into an island setting rife with enchantment, monsters, and spirits, an island moreover of uncertain geographical position – though somehow on the route between Tunis and Naples, that is to say roughly at the coordinates of Lampedusa, Prospero’s island is also somehow close to Bermuda – is

172

A.E. Stallings

the opening of the television series Lost (2004–2010), which likewise begins with a terrifying and realistic wreck, the crash of an airliner, depositing the hodgepodge assembly of passengers on a mysterious and possibly unreal island full of strange sights and sounds, including a smoke monster. While Gonzalo is wishing for a dry death on the struggling ship, on shore, Miranda, whose name suggests both the wonderer and the wondered at, the beholder and the beheld, watches the ship with her father, Prospero. In fact, we are shown scenes back to back that are happening at exactly the same time; if Shakespeare had been a filmmaker, he might have used a split screen. Miranda skilfully paints a picture of the storm she is watching, as the sea is confounded with the sky, and for all we know (if we have ignored the playbill and its cast of characters) she could be a goddess pleading with a deity who is her sire, as Athena might plead with Zeus: If by your art, my dearest father, you have Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. The sky would seem to pour down stinking pitch But that the sea, mounting to th’welkin’s cheek, Dashes the fire out. (1.2.1–5)

So far, this is striking but conventional in its way. Then Miranda does something extraordinary: . . . O, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel, Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her, Dash’d all to pieces . . . (1.2.5–8)

By literary precedent, she should be both entertained and glad to be safe and dry, even if she pities those at sea. But her imagination and her heart go out to those aboard, and to the struggling vessel herself. She feels something new: empathy. Not only does she suffer ‘with those I saw suffer’, but then, as if in apposition, regards the ship, one of the few gendered nouns in English: ‘a brave vessel/ Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her’. A  maiden ripe for marriage is of course a potential vessel herself who might soon carry a child; the purpose of the shipwreck is partly to bring her a suitable mate. The nobleman Gonzalo, perhaps taking on the salty talk of sailors, has in the previous tempest scene made obscenely clear the simile between a ship and a woman’s body; a ship may be ‘as leaky as an unstaunched wench’ (1.1.46–47). While Shakespeare’s other plays that pivot on shipwreck are often about mistaken identities and the ensuing confusion, at the moment of shipwreck

Shipwreck is everywhere

173

(and it turns out that the ship is not destroyed after all  – it is an illusion) Miranda learns for the first time what her true identity is, she is the daughter of the duke of Milan. Furthermore, her instinctive empathy with the passengers aboard the storm-tossed ship turns out to be not only imaginative but imprinted from early childhood experience. She is herself, it turns out, a castaway. She learns from her father how they came to be on the island. During his description, Prospero drifts from talking about it in the past to reliving it in the present: In few, they hurried us aboard a barque, Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast—the very rats Instinctively have quit it: there they hoist us To cry to th’sea that roared to us, to sigh To th’winds, whose pity sighing back again Did us but loving wrong . . . (1.2.144–151)

The account, including the vessel without means of propulsion or steerage, is chillingly similar to many accounts of the treacherous sea-crossing refugees undergo (and which thousands have not survived) on the sea route from Turkey to Lesbos, or other Aegean islands, or from Libya to Italy’s Lampedusa, packed onto flimsy dinghies by unscrupulous smugglers. Looking back on this ‘sea sorrow’ from the safety of the present does not bring Prospero pleasure or relief. He had no need to cast his mind to shore during their time adrift, his grounding was present, his little daughter herself: . . . O, a cherubin Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile, Infused with a fortitude from heaven, When I have decked the sea with drops full salt, Under my burden groned, which raised in me An undergoing stomach to bear up Against what should ensue . . . (1.2.152–158)

Prospero has arranged this shipwreck for a number of reasons – justice, vengeance, a way off the island – but one of them is to marry off his nubile daughter, who has a dangerous paucity, rather than Nausicaa’s plethora, of eligible suitors. Ferdinand, the prince who washes ashore, is only the third man she has ever seen (and the first she has ever sighed for). The other two are the monstrous Caliban, whose name is a near-anagram of ‘cannibal’ and who has only just tried to rape her, and her own father.

174

A.E. Stallings

The threat of incest is scarcely hinted at in this Shakespeare play, but there is another, Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1607), where the danger is real, hanging heavily over the action from the very opening. There the daughter, a girl born at sea in a tempest, the child of shipwreck and vessel of hope, is named Marina.

Miranda in the looking glass Shakespeare may have taken over Pericles halfway through; it appears to be a collaboration (probably with George Wilkins). The scene of the storm, where the ship, itself a sort of pregnant vessel, is labouring in heavy weather, and the wife in the ‘travails’ of childbirth, is written with a sure hand. The prayers offered by Pericles, the prince in the storm, are at first familiar: Thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges, Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou, that hast Upon the winds command, bind them in brass, Having call’d them from the deep! . . . (Shakespeare, Pericles 3.1.1–4)

But they then diverge into an invocation to the goddess of childbirth, Lucina, to attend their ‘dancing ship’ (3.1.13). The midwife rebukes Pericles for his loud queries, with ‘Patience, good sir; do not assist the storm’ (3.1.21). (Shakespeare must have thought this line good enough to ‘kidnap’ and press into service in The Tempest 1.1.13–14, when the Boatswain addresses King Antonio: ‘Do you no hear him? You mar our labour/ Keep to your cabins! You do assist the storm.’) Pericles thinks his wife, Thais, has died while giving birth to a daughter on a ship in a storm. As with Prospero, the little daughter gives him courage: Courage enough: I do not fear the flaw; It hath done to me the worst. Yet, for the love Of this poor infant, this fresh-new sea-farer, I would it would be quiet . . . (Shakespeare, Pericles 3.1.44–47)

This baby girl is thus twin to the baby boy of Lucretius’s imagination, the infant as shipwrecked sailor washed ashore. But Marina begins life not as a shipwrecked sailor but as a fresh-new sea-farer. Pericles utters an ad-hoc blessing to the baby, that her stormy arrival may herald a serener life: . . . Now, mild may be thy life! For a more blustrous birth had never babe:

Shipwreck is everywhere

175

Quiet and gentle thy conditions! for Thou art the rudeliest welcome to this world That ever was prince’s child. Happy what follows! Thou hast as chiding a nativity As fire, air, water, earth, and heaven can make, To herald thee from the womb: even at the first Thy loss is more than can thy portage quit, With all thou canst find here. Now, the good gods Throw their best eyes upon’t! . . . (3.1.32–42)

Pericles leaves the infant at Tarsus in the care of others. As she grows, she turns out to be more beautiful than the couple’s own daughter, and they plot her murder. Marina, whose life is destined to be anything but smooth sailing, is ‘saved’ by being kidnapped by pirates, who sell the unaccompanied minor into prostitution on Lesbos. She nonetheless manages to keep her virginity by unnerving men with her virtue, and the brothel hires her out as a music tutor to respectable young ladies. Marina is given her name because she is born at sea. (‘When I was born the wind was north . . .’) It is natural that she, like all sea girls, is a singer. Pericles is told by the foster-parents in Tarsus that Marina is dead. He takes to sea in his grief, ending up on Mytilene (that is, on the island of Lesbos), so grief-stricken he can scarcely speak. Lysimachus, the governor of Mytilene, fancies that Marina, the virgin prostitute (actually a tempest-tossed princess), might be able to shake him out of his doldrums. This is a fraught moment that can obviously go horribly wrong. Rather than address her and ask if she is a goddess (again, the proper etiquette when meeting a strange woman on a Greek island), Pericles is mute. So it is up to Marina to boldly address her father, and answer the question he has not asked: MARINA Hail, sir! my lord, lend ear. PERICLES Hum, ha! MARINA I am a maid, My lord, that ne’er before invited eyes, But have been gazed on like a comet: she speaks, My lord, that, may be, hath endured a grief Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh’d. (5.1.92–96) Consider the scene where Ferdinand first addresses Miranda in The Tempest: FERDINAND

176

A.E. Stallings Most sure, the goddess On whom these airs attend! Vouchsafe my prayer May know if you remain upon this island; And that you will some good instruction give How I may bear me here: my prime request, Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder! If you be maid or no? MIRANDA No wonder, sir; But certainly a maid (Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.1.505–512)

(The Neapolitan prince Ferdinand is pleasantly surprised to find that she speaks his native language, that is to say, English.)

Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga? In the Pericles/Marina recognition scene, Pericles is sufficiently startled by her appearance and her assertion of good parentage that he finally blurts out: You are like something that—What country-woman? Here of these shores? . . . (Shakespeare, Pericles 5.1.113–114)

Marina’s answer is a riddle. She is not of these shores, nor of any shores. To her father’s question, ‘Where do you live?’ (5.1.125), she also answers with an enigma: ‘Where I am but a stranger: from the deck/ You may discern the place’ (5.1.126–127). All land is, for Marina, a foreign shore. The sea-born Marina and the seaborne Miranda are doubles: Miranda mirrors Marina. In a sense, it is Marina’s face Miranda sees in her looking glass – her own reflection reversed, the only woman she has ever laid eyes on. Even their names are near-anagrams. So too their recognition scenes reflect and invert one another: The Tempest sets out with Miranda’s father revealing her parentage to her, and Pericles pivots with Marina revealing her parentage to her father. (It turns out the mother is actually alive, and the family, sea-scattered, is reunited. Marina marries the governor of Mytilene.) Pericles was greatly admired by T.S. Eliot, whose poem ‘Marina’ is from the point of view of the father: Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat. I made this, I have forgotten And remember.

Shipwreck is everywhere

177

The rigging weak and the canvas rotten Between one June and another September. (the whole poem can be found at https://thefirstgates.com/2012/ 09/07/marina-a-poem-by-t-s-eliot).

The poem opens with an epigraph in Latin from Seneca’s Hercules: Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga? ‘What place is this, what region, what shores of the world?’

It is the question of every shipwrecked sailor on arriving in a new land. Miranda, who like Marina is both the island and the ship, refugee and refuge, as she sees more human beings coming ashore, exclaims like an explorer, or even an astronomer, with a wild surmise: ‘O brave new world that has such people in’t’ (Shakespeare, The Tempest 5.1.183–184). The winds of danger that buffet Marina have been screened from Miranda. The Tempest is assured of its happy ending from the get-go, and the suggested threats  – the tragedy of Dido’s false marriage to Aeneas is the ground against which the melody plays  – are elaborately prevented. It takes all the magic at Prospero’s command to engineer a happy ending. Thais, Pericles’s wife, the princess bride of shipwrecked sailor, the vessel carrying the cargo of life, now shipwrecked herself, washes ashore in her ‘close . . . caulked and bitumed’ coffin (Shakespeare, Pericles 3.1.71). (From mythology, one might think of the infant Perseus and his mother, Danae, washed ashore on Seriphos in a wooden box, or Ishmael in Queequeg’s coffin in Moby Dick). She is now shipwreck as salvage – the coffin laden like a merchant ship with expensive embalming spices, along with a note on a scroll. Thus, she arrives on the border complete with ‘a passport too!’ (3.2.77) as one of her finders on the shore off of Ephesus (modern Turkey) remarks. She, however, awakes disoriented: . . . O dear Diana, Where am I? Where’s my lord? What world is this? (3.2.120–121)

Odysseus, finally arrived home on Ithaka after 20 years of war and wandering, can scarcely believe it. As it happens, the first person he meets is a goddess. He addresses Athena, who is disguised as a shepherd boy: . . . I pray to you like a god, I fall before your knees and ask your mercy! And tell me this for a fact—I need to know— where on earth am I? what land? who lives here? (Homer, Odyssey 13.231–233, translation by Fagles).

178

A.E. Stallings

When they first arrive on Lesbos, the first question many refugees ask is ‘Where am I?’. As the International Rescue Committee has it, ‘Refugees who make landfall often do not believe they have arrived on Lesbos until they see the Greek flag’. The perilous journey, which in January of 2016 alone claimed the lives of nearly 250 people, can result in families being separated in the chaos, as well as sundered by death on ‘the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps’ (as Gerard Manley Hopkins in ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ describes the ocean). That winter, the rector of the University of the Aegean (based in Mytilene), Stephanos Gritzalis, distressed at the drownings, invoked a line from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (659–660), hoping that ‘we would cease to see “the Aegean blossoming with bodies” ’. It is a double quotation, though, since George Seferis (1940) uses the ancient Greek verbatim in ‘In the Manner of G.S.’, which also contains the famous line ‘Wherever I go Greece wounds me’. It ends with the only ship that sails being Agony 937. As with literary shipwrecks, families – from Tyre, from Carthage, from Antioch, from Tarsus, from Troy, from Homs and Mosul, Damascus and Kabul – are divided; end up in Ephesus and Mytilene, on Chios and Lampedusa; people drown and are transformed into something not human by the sea, or make land and yet do not know where they are. Families wash up on different shores, separated in the chaos, children taken up on a Turkish coastguard boat, while the smuggler’s vessel speeds with the mother towards Greece. People lose their papers, their clothes, their passports, their identities. Here is one of the many first-hand accounts of refugees arriving on the Aegean islands, this one from a 34-year old Syrian asylum seeker (Independent, 31 August 2016): We finally reached a highway and I knew we were close to the sea. I could smell the salt water. I saw the boat was a dinghy. It only seated 40 people but there were 54 of us. The smugglers had lied. But they only want to get your money. They don’t care if you die. We traveled on the sea for an hour. It was so slow. We then came across another boat. We didn’t realise it was the police. We were told by friends not to stop because they will take you back to Turkey. We don’t know the Greek language. We can’t understand what they are saying. They were saying stop the boat. We held the children and we shouted at the police ‘we have children’. I thought to myself ‘let me reach the beach and anything you say I will do.’ The boat was punctured and we fall in the water. I was in the sea for 45 minutes before they pulled me out. If I live 200 years, I will never forget it.

These accounts put one in mind of other people gathering on the shore of Turkey to travel westwards, fleeing their war-ravaged city. This is how Virgil,

Shipwreck is everywhere

179

at the end of Book Two of the Aeneid, describes the Trojan survivors gathering for exile. In the words of Aeneas (2.796–804): I was surprised by the great number Of new arrivals I found, women and men, Youth gathered for exile, a wretched band Of refugees who had poured in from all over, Prepared to journey across the sea To whatever lands I might lead them. The brilliant morning star was rising Over Ida’s ridges, ushering in the day. The Greeks held all the city gates. There was no hope of help. I yielded And, lifting up my father, sought the mountains. (translation by Lombardo)

The literature of the sea suggests that in watching the distress of others from safety we can do more than take pleasure in our own security. As Miranda suddenly knows, watching from shore, they could be us.

Notes 1 Don Paterson’s poem can be found at: https://ineedtoreadmorepoetry.tumblr. com/post/119993600384/the-scale-of-intensity-by-don-paterson. 2 Extract from ‘Sea Sonnet’ (Oswald 1996). 3 The lyrics of Gordon Lightfoot’s song can be found at: www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gordonlightfoot/thewreckoftheedmundfitzgerald.html.

Works consulted and references Andersen, Hans Christian, 2001 [1837], The Little Mermaid (Henry H.B. Paull, trans), Copenhagen, Carlsen. Blumenberg, Hans, 1996, Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence, Steven Rendall (trans), Cambridge, MA, MIT University Press. Budgen, Frank, 1972, James Joyce and the Making of ‘Ulysses’ and Other Writings, with an Introduction by Clive Hart, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, 1912, The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol II Dramatic Works and Appendices, Oxford, Clarendon. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1970 [1834], The Rime of the Ancient Mainer, London, Dover.

180

A.E. Stallings

Defoe, Daniel, 1994 [1719], Robinson Crusoe, Michael Shinagel (ed), New York, Norton. Defoe, Daniel, 2005 [1704], The Storm, New York, Penguin. Dickens, Charles, 1995 [1850], David Copperfield, New York, Penguin. Fagles, Robert (trans), 1997, Homer’s Odyssey, New York, Penguin. Gale, Robert L., 2003, A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion, Westport, CT, Greenwood Press. Hamblyn, Richard, 2001, The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies, New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Hopkins, Manley, 1859, A Handbook of Average, for the Use of Merchants, Agents, Ship-Owners, Masters and Others, London, Smith, Elder. Hopkins, Manley, 1867, A Manual of Marine Insurance, London, Smith, Elder. Hopkins, Manley, 1873, The Port of Refuge, or Advice and Instructions to the Master-Mariner in Situations of Doubt, Difficulty, and Damage, London, Henry S. King. Lombardo, Stanley (trans), 2006, Virgil’s Aeneid, Indianapolis, IN, Hackett. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1842, Ballads and Other Poems, Cambridge, John Owen. McConnell, Frank D. (ed), 1978, Byron’s Poetry: Authoritative Texts, Letters and Journals, Criticism, Images of Byron, New York, W. W. Norton. Mezey, Robert (ed), 1998, Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems, New York, Penguin. Morrison, James V., 2014, Shipwrecked: Disaster and Transformation in Homer, Shakespeare, Defoe, and the Modern World, Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press. Nicoll, Allardyce (ed), 2000 [1956], Chapman’s Homer: The Odyssey. With a new preface by Garry Wills, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Oswald, Alice, 1996, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, London, Faber and Faber. Page, Frederick (ed), 1970 [1904], Byron: Poetical Works. New Edition, corrected by John Jump, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Percy, Thomas, 1765, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Vol I, London, J. M. Dent & Sons. Pinion, Francis Bertram, 1968, A Hardy Companion; A Guide to the Works of Thomas Hardy and their Background, London, Macmillan. Quiller-Couch, Arthur Thomas, Sir, 1910, The Oxford Book of Ballads, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Quennell, Peter (ed), 1950, Byron: A Self-Portrait Letters and Diaries (2 vols), New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons. Riding, Christine, 2013, ‘Shipwreck, self-preservation and the sublime’, in Llewellyn, Nigel & Riding, Christine (eds), The Art of the Sublime, Tate Research Publication, available from: www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/ the-sublime/christine-riding-shipwreck-self-preservation-and-the-sublime-r1133015 (accessed 15 March 2017). Seo, Mira J., 2009, ‘Plagiarism and poetic identity in Martial’, The American Journal of Philology 130(4), pp. 567–593.

Shipwreck is everywhere

181

Seferis, George, 1940, Tetradio Gymnasmaton (Book of Exercises), Athens, Stef. N. Tarousopoulou. Shakespeare, William, 2007, The Tempest, Martin Butler (ed), London, Penguin. Shakespeare, William, 2015, Pericles, Eugene Giddens (ed), London, Penguin. Singleton, Frank, 2008, ‘The Beaufort scale of winds – its relevance, and its use by sailors’, Weather 63(2), pp. 37–41. Stallings, A. E. (trans), 2007, Lucretius: De Rerum Natura, London, Penguin. Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1886, Kidnapped, London, Cassell. Stoker, Bram, 2004 [1897], Dracula, London, Penguin. Wright, Sarah Bird, 2002, Thomas Hardy A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work, New York, Checkmark.

9

Afterthoughts John Bennet

Our planet famously looks like a blue marble when viewed from space: blue because 71 per cent of its surface is covered by water. As a genus, however, Homo diverged from ancestral hominin forms on land. Early humans were also explorers, extending and colonising new territories until – unsurprisingly, given the earth’s blue-marble quality – they encountered sea. A recent article in the Guardian (Davis 2018) bore the headline ‘Homo erectus may have been a sailor – and able to speak’. Although mute humanity is a difficult concept for us to contemplate in the modern world, the ability of our earliest ancestors to use language is debated (and probably unprovable either way), but the significance of linguistic capability is that its existence would imply that sea travel was not necessarily serendipitous: Homo erectus, according to Daniel Everett, whose views were being summarised in Davis’s Guardian article, was able to travel deliberately by sea because the species had linguistic ability. Other scholars, including Chris Stringer, also quoted in the article, are more sceptical and prefer the scenario in which humans were transported accidentally, swept along by tsunamis on rafts of matted vegetation, to reach and colonise new, pristine territory. Such adventures would have required considerable luck, not least in delivering a viable breeding population to the destination. Given the huge time spans involved, to say such constellations of chance factors never happened is impossible. But, if Everett is correct, then the odds against success for such ‘voyages of discovery’ are reduced considerably. Whatever the case, we can be certain that some pre-modern humans did travel across water – even in a period of reduced sea levels – to reach Flores in modern Indonesia by around 700,000 years ago (van den Bergh et al. 2016, Brumm et al. 2016). These humans seem to have been ancestral to the famous Homo floresensis, nicknamed the ‘hobbit’ when first revealed 15 years ago (e.g. Dennell et al. 2014). In the Aegean, it has recently been argued that humans reached the island of Crete in the Lower Palaeolithic over 100,000  years ago (Runnels 2014, Leppard 2014), while recent finds on Naxos suggest the presence of our closest human relatives, the Neanderthals, there as early as 250,000 years ago (Carter et al. 2014). It has long been recognised that the presence of Melian obsidian in the Franchthi Cave in the north-east Peloponnese, in stratigraphic levels around 11,000 years ago, confirms not only human voyages over (relatively short) stretches of sea but also active procurement of materials from the destination. Even more recently a Palaeolithic date (before

184

John Bennet

25,000  years ago) has been argued for art found in the Asphendou Cave in western Crete (Strasser et al. 2018). These expeditions, especially the more recent ones, were not chance landings but deliberate, to-and-from journeys to reach specific destinations and acquire food or raw materials. This implies that the craft employed were navigable and sufficiently reliable for those sailing them to survive to repeat the journey. Although none have been preserved in the Aegean, it is likely they were some form of dugout, or possibly rafts. Almost as important as the achievement of successful journeys from A to B and back again would have been the accumulation of knowledge and experience embodied in the sailors who made the voyages and passed these on through generations by oral transmission – another indication of the importance of language. Such is the pace at which the picture of maritime activity in the eastern Mediterranean is changing that we can imagine that hunter-forager groups around the Aegean had a collective “map” of routes, destinations and resources obtainable in each. Some years ago Broodbank and Strasser vividly evoked an early Neolithic voyage of discovery, effectively deconstructing the myth of a chance landing on the north coast of Crete by a small, pioneering group of agriculturalists (Broodbank and Strasser 1991). For such a colonisation to succeed, as it clearly did at least at Knossos around 7000 BC, it would have required a viable breeding population not only of humans but also of domesticates (cattle, sheep, goats and pigs) together with at least one season’s seed grain. Only with such provisions could the tiny colony which settled on the Kefala hill at the site of Knossos have survived its first winter and continued to flourish – as it appears to have done – for a further 8,000 years. Whether Knossos was the first such colony on Crete we will probably never know; that there were others is almost certain, but, not surprisingly, given their tiny size, none has yet been revealed. Broodbank and Strasser suggest 40 humans and a small flotilla of ten to 15 craft, probably logboats (i.e. dugouts) or possibly hide-boats, which would have hopped between intervisible islands from south-west Anatolia, stopping to feed and water humans and animals alike en route. Once they reached Crete, they would have made their way along its north coast until the particular configuration of the Kairatos valley, leading the eye to the dominant peak of Mount Iouchtas, invited them to stop and make their way the few kilometres inland to the Kefala hill (cf. Day and Wilson 2002). Such journeys probably became regular as the first colonists were joined by new waves and themselves explored the shoreline of the island. It is difficult for us to imagine the experience of travelling in the ‘fragile shells’ (Serres 2008, 278) that constituted the craft then available: low in the water, powered by paddles, not sails, every movement of the sea transferred to the boats and immediately affecting the bodies of animals and humans. A  mixed-gender group  – some passengers, some ‘crew’, so to speak, probably veterans of similar voyages, their knowledge of the sea and the configuration of islands acquired through oral tradition stretching back to pre-Neolithic

Afterthoughts

185

times, repurposed from the goals of the hunter-foragers who had exploited the islands for game and other resources, as vividly demonstrated by the eleventhmillennium BC site of Akrotiri Aetokremnos on Cyprus (e.g. Simmons 1991). These Palaeolithic and Neolithic craft were definitely ‘ships of the body’, actively managed and steered by bodily actions, almost as if extensions of the people involved: tools, rather than containers. They would have created in their passengers a passive bodily memory of the motions of the sea, the smell of beasts and humans, the anxiety for their safety and the relief of ultimate success once land was reached. The collection in this volume begins with four chapters that evoke the ‘ship of the body’. Closest to the picture presented above is Marovelli’s. Although experienced in a modern, motor-driven fishing boat, her retelling of her experience echoes the above: the motion, the actions of the crew (herself included), the terror and satisfaction experienced in steering the boat home in an emergency. Mechanisation has reduced the hard, rhythmical labour of fishing at sea, but, in July 1954, Alan Lomax recorded work chants of an earlier generation of Sicilian tuna fishermen at Sciacca, another form of bodily engagement with the sea. This aural feature of life on board is perhaps more familiar in sea shanties, songs linked closely to bodily actions, the hard work required in operating a ship and carrying out tasks like reeling in nets, hoisting sail or weighing anchor. Marovelli also successfully brings out how the boat and the sea affect her informants’ mental landscape: the dualistic division between life on land and the people (the women, exceptionally not Marovelli herself) left behind there, and also the sea as a metaphor for life. Her picture suggests not only “ships of the body” but also “ships of the mind”, a theme more deeply explored in the second set of four chapters in the volume. Continuing the theme of the “ship of the body”, both Bowles and Tsimouris, like Marovelli, present evocative pictures of “life on board”, but on very different craft. Tsimouris’s fieldwork was carried out among a tiny (relatively speaking) crew navigating a huge 110,000-ton oil tanker over long distances. The size of the craft shifts the emphasis away from the physicality involved in seafaring to the interpersonal relations, hierarchy and the construction and definition of the multiple spaces on board the ship. Relationships are intensified by ethnic and linguistic differences among the crew on this ship, which reflects contemporary practice in commercial shipping: the ship is Greek, carries a cargo from the Gulf, one assumes, while its captain is Greek and the majority of the crew members were Filipino, followed closely by Greek, then Romanian and a Russian. It is certainly “hybrid”, in the senses brought out by Papadopoulou in her later chapter. An echo of this situation is suggested by the famous Uluburun wreck, a ship that sank just before 1300 BC off the Kaş peninsula in southern Turkey (e.g. Pulak 2010). Its cargo originated in many parts of the eastern Mediterranean  – Egypt, Syria, Cyprus  – and some elements (such as the tin) had probably travelled long distances even to reach the circum-Mediterranean ports into which the ship called. On board, the material culture likewise implies multiple origins for the passengers and crew, who

186

John Bennet

may have been a polyglot and polyethnic group. The wooden diptych writingboard found on the site (Symington 1991), the wax into which signs would have been incised long gone, might have given us a clue to at least one of the languages of the ship. Unlike Stallings’s graphic fictional shipwrecks, this one is commemorated by the mute material remains of archaeology, but nevertheless reminds us that its crew and passengers were only ‘four fingers from death’. Bowles’s experience is different: he traverses the calm, human-constructed inland waterways of the UK. Solitary for the most part, he is part of a community of practice who share a water-based world view, minimising their waste and viewing the fixed communities  – not always sympathetic to onboard dwellers, or ‘liveaboards’ – as very different in their attitudes to the consumption of food and energy. Although rarely rocked by anything larger than the wash of a passing longboat, the throbbing of the engine becomes embodied in the onboard dweller, allowing identification and diagnosis of problems when the engine note changes. On boats with engines – from Tsimouris’s huge tanker to Marovelli’s small fishing boat – the constant throb and thrum of the motive power is a constant feature. If it falters, trouble awaits. This oneness with one’s boat is an important theme in Maragoudaki’s exploration of Nikos Daroukakis’s passion for crafting boats with methods and materials belonging to a long tradition. His body becomes part of the boat through his personal selection of materials and his bodily effort in crafting and assembling those materials into a seaworthy craft. Equally, he personally tests his products at sea, becoming one with the boat, as if it were a living companion, fully attuned to the elements, even finding that everything remains in motion when he returns to dry land; the sea also pervades his dreams. His products thus become extensions of his body, distributed across the waters of the Aegean. It is no surprise that he feels almost physically the destruction – by sawing in half – of wooden-hulled fishing boats dictated by an EU directive; it is as if a limb is being amputated. Returning to prehistory for a moment, some 4,500 years after the colonisation voyage to Crete sketched above, the oared longboat became a key component in the trans-Aegean cultures of the mid-third millennium BC. Broodbank points out the centrality of these craft to life in a network of (mostly) tiny towns spread throughout the marginal landscapes of the Aegean islands (Broodbank 1989). Communication by this means – probably with a daily range in the order of 40–50 km – not only ensured survival in times of stress but also enabled the distribution of commodities, finished products, people, knowledge and stories. The site of Dhaskalio-Keros appears to have been a focal point for these communities, a ritual centre and meeting-place every bit as important in the prehistoric Cyclades as Delos was later, in historical times (Broodbank 2000). No texts survive from the mid-third millennium BC Cyclades to offer us direct insights into how people then and there thought of their longboats, but since representations are quite common, especially on the enigmatic and

Afterthoughts

187

widely distributed clay “frying-pans” (e.g. Broodbank 1989, 326), we can assume that these craft were also “ships of the mind” for a larger group than just those who sailed in them, for whom they were very much “ships of the body”, a reminder of the way in which mariners’ perspectives are disseminated through entire communities. This is not surprising, given their centrality to communication (including probably marriage networks) and the fact that, as Broodbank has estimated, their crews, if all were strapping males in their prime and his estimate of the numbers of oarsmen is correct, represented a significant portion of the active adult male population in any but the largest communities of the day. Their absence on missions, probably up to two weeks, as determined by the agricultural calendar, would have been felt and their loss at sea, as must have happened on occasion, catastrophic. Ship symbolism is similarly rich in the coastal communities of Bronze Age southern Scandinavia, appearing in rock carvings and also on objects deposited in graves; here, in ways that echo Papadopoulou’s chapter, the sun and death are associated with the ship (e.g. Ballard et al. 2004). Near the close of the third millennium BC in the Aegean the introduction of sail-powered ships transformed communication, collapsing distances and raising the numbers of crew and the amount of cargo that could be transported. For the first time regular connections with the eastern Mediterranean cultures were established and it is no accident that this is the formative period for the Minoan palatial culture. From now until the introduction of steam-powered ships in the nineteenth century, maritime technology remained essentially similar. Refinements in sail technology enabled tacking against the wind, thus removing constraints on direction of travel, while navigation improved with the development of portolans from the thirteenth century and advances in chronometry that enabled the measurement of longitude in the mid- to late eighteenth century, facilitating long-distance exploration, such as Cook’s voyage to the Pacific. Ships too become larger, involving huge cargoes (like those of the massive craft transporting grain from Egypt to feed the Roman masses) and, before mechanisation, large crews to operate them, their work accompanied by song, as noted above. Conditions aboard ships of the British Navy at the turn of the nineteenth century are effectively evoked in Patrick O’Brian’s series of novels (e.g. O’Brian 1990). Language, too, is implicated: in the Mediterranean – and no doubt in other regions – terms from different languages are shared across the multiple groups plying the Middle Sea (Kahane, Kahane and Tietze 1988). Knight’s chapter marks a transition between the “ship of the body” to the “ship of the mind”. In the case of his nicely observed, but seemingly paradoxical ethnography, ships are more “in” rather than “of” the mind: no one Knight spoke to had ever seen the physical remains of seafaring high in the Pindos range, yet the belief that the region had once been under water was strong and unshakeable. A factor at play here is the construction of time: beyond the reach of transmitted memory  – around three generations –“deep” time

188

John Bennet

becomes conflated and historical events become detached from any sequence in an undifferentiated “prehistory” (e.g. Forbes 2007). In this instance deep geological time and the time frame of human activity have become conflated, combined with a strong desire to link even this most upland and inland area of Greece with the symbolic importance of Greece’s maritime tradition. The final three chapters return us to ships on the sea, but very much “ships of the mind”. Mitakou’s exploration of the ship as symbol of xeniteia, with that term’s profound associations, in times of emigration from Greece, when wealth and success were acquired abroad. As in the third-millennium BC Cyclades, the very appearance, or even the implication off-scene, of a ship engages these associations. The period following WWII until 1973 saw a large wave of emigration, the second in Greece’s modern history, but one about which the art of cinema remained silent until 1956, when the first of the 13 films Mitakou examines was released. Her discussion of life on board ship as a leisure activity – a cruise – brings to the fore the notion of the ship as a floating community, but one whose purpose is more about the journey itself than travelling from A to B, concepts also echoed in Papadopoulou’s chapter. On a recent trip to Monemvasia (itself almost like a huge ship, anchored by its narrow, connecting isthmus to the Lakonian coast) I encountered a passenger from a cruise ship anchored in the bay. The cruise originated from Marseilles, also its ultimate destination, so a completely circular journey through the Adriatic and the Aegean. The participants enjoyed regular on-shore visits to sites like Monemvasia, while concerts were staged every evening on the ship. Being on board was the critical point of the experience, a ship essentially going nowhere, although one hesitates to describe it as a “ship of fools”? Papadopoulou directs us once again to ‘ships of the mind’, in a rich and thoughtful chapter that complements Stallings’s closing chapter, which also draws on the imaginary. Starting from theory among phenomenologists and post-structuralist philosophers, Papadopoulou explores the ‘workings and potency of the perceived ship’ through a series of five metaphors, which she urges us to treat not as a linear, linked progression, but as ‘puzzle pieces’ that can be read in any order. Her exploration both echoes and enriches many of the other chapters in the volume. Thus the metaphor of the ship ‘as the mariner’s body’ reflects the contributions by Maragoudaki, Marovelli and Bowles; the ship as a ‘hybrid, conditioning environment’, or a ‘shell’, echoes not only Tsimouris’s chapter but also the cruise ships mentioned by Mitakou, as well as the prehistoric examples discussed earlier. Closely related, the metaphor of the ship ‘as a merger of dualities’, a containing structure but one that offers access to the vastness of the sea, resonates with most of the contributions in the volume, but perhaps most closely with Tsimouris’s or the feelings evoked by the ship as symbol in Mitakou’s. Dreams, Papadopoulou’s fourth metaphor, are mentioned in Maragoudaki’s account and a dream features in the traditional ballad of Sir Patrick Spens cited by Stallings. Papadopoulou, however, extends their significance beyond literal dreaming to include the physiological

Afterthoughts

189

effects of seafaring, like mal de debarquement syndrome. The final metaphor examines the ‘ship of fools, the in-between and death’, in which onboard communities are considered to be in a different reality, close to death, perhaps only ‘four fingers’ away, in the words of Anacharsis quoted by Diogenes Laertius, referring to the thickness of a hull. As Papadopoulou notes, it is this metaphor that connects the ship to death and the afterlife, as reflected in the symbolism visualised in the prehistoric depictions discussed above. The final chapter, by Stallings, is a wide-ranging set of reflections on literary representations of, and allusions to, shipwreck – the primal fear of all who travel by sea – either observed from shore or experienced. By definition, then, these are unreal, since they belong in works of fiction, ‘ship(wreck)s in the mind’. This literary rollercoaster takes us from Homer, Lucretius and Virgil, through Shakespeare, Defoe, Byron and Stoker, to folk song (‘Sir Patrick Spens’) and modern popular song (Gordon Lightfoot), even bringing in the ‘poetic qualities’ of the Beaufort scale’s descriptions of different wind intensities. It ends with a poignant reminder of the contemporary, local relevance of shipwrecks to those migrants seeking to reach Europe from troubled areas around the eastern and southern Mediterranean: a sharp juxtaposition of ancient and modern fiction with hypermodern reality. The sea and the various forms of “containers”, or “shells”, in which humans have – over many millennia – travelled on it are key features of life on our “blue marble”, particularly in coastal areas like the Mediterranean with its 46,000 km of coastline, one-third of it in the Aegean alone (Broodbank 2015, 75). This collection allows us to sample some of the ways in which the sea is experienced through our bodies and how we use the sea and ships as things with which to think. Like the tentative mariner, it merely dips a toe in a large ocean of relevant material, but it should encourage the reader to embark on a more extensive voyage among the rich experiences and traditions, explored across multiple academic disciplines, engendered by the sea and all who sail on it.

References Ballard, Chris, Bradley, Richard, Nordenborg Myhre, Lise  & Wilson, Meredith, 2004, ‘The ship as symbol in the prehistory of Scandinavia and Southeast Asia’, World Archaeology 35(3), pp.  385–403. https://doi. org/10.1080/0043824042000185784 Bergh, Gerrit D. van den, Kaifu, Yousuke, Kurniawan, Iwan, Kono, Reiko T., Brumm, Adam, Setiyabudi, Erick, Aziz, Fachroel & Morwood, Michael J., 2016, ‘Homo floresiensis-like fossils from the early middle Pleistocene of Flores’, Nature 534 (June), p. 245. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17999 Broodbank, Cyprian, 1989, ‘The longboat and society in the Cyclades in the Keros-Syros culture’, American Journal of Archaeology 93(3), pp.  319–337. https://www.jstor.org/stable/505584

190

John Bennet

Broodbank, Cyprian, 2000, ‘Perspectives on an early Bronze Age island centre: An analysis of pottery from Daskaleio-Kavos (Keros) in the Cyclades’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 19(4), pp.  323–342. https://doi. org/10.1111/1468-0092.00113 Broodbank, Cyprian, 2015, The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World, London, Thames and Hudson. Broodbank, Cyprian  & Strasser, Thomas F., 1991, ‘Migrant farmers and the Neolithic colonization of Crete’, Antiquity 65(247), pp. 233–245. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0003598X00079680 Brumm, Adam, van den Bergh, Gerrit D., Storey, Michael, Kurniawan, Iwan, Alloway, Brent V., Setiawan, Ruly, Setiyabudi, Erick, Grün, Rainer, Moore, Mark W., Yurnaldi, Dida, Puspaningrum, Mika R., Wibowo, Unggul P., Insani, Halmi, Sutisna, Indra, Westgate, John A., Pearce, Nick J. G., Duval, Mathieu, Meijer, Hanneke J. M., Aziz, Fachroel, Sutikna, Thomas, van der Kaars, Sander, Flude, Stephanie  & Morwood, Michael J., 2016, ‘Age and context of the oldest known hominin fossils from Flores’, Nature 534 (June), p. 249–253. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17663 Carter, Tristan, Contreras, Daniel, Doyle, Sean, Mihailović, Danica D., Moutsiou, Theodora & Skarpelis, Nikolaos, 2014, ‘The Stélida Naxos Archaeological Project: New data on the Middle Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Cyclades, Antiquity Project Gallery 88(341), available from: www.antiquity.ac.uk/ projgall/carter341. Davis, N., 2018, Homo erectus may have been a sailor – and able to speak, The Guardian 20 February: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/20/ homo-erectus-may-have-been-a-sailor-and-able-to-speak. Day, Peter M.  & Wilson, David E., 2002, ‘Landscapes of memory, craft and power in Pre-Palatial and Proto-Palatial Knossos’, in Hamilakis, Yannis (ed), Labyrinth Revisited. Rethinking ‘Minoan’ Archaeology, Oxford, Oxbow, pp. 143–166. Dennell, Robin W., Louys, Julien, O’Regan, Hannah J. & Wilkinson, David M., 2014, ‘The origins and persistence of Homo floresiensis on Flores: Biogeographical and ecological perspectives’, Predators, Prey and Hominins – Celebrating the Scientific Career of Alan Turner (1947–2012) 96 (July), pp. 98–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.06.031 Forbes, Hamish, 2007, Meaning and Identity in a Greek Landscape: An Archaeological Ethnography 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Kahane, Henry, Kahane, Renée & Tietze, Andreas, 1988, The Lingua Franca in the Levant: Turkish Nautical Terms of Italian and Greek Origin, Instanbul, ABC Kitabevi. Leppard, Thomas P., 2014, ‘Modeling the impacts of Mediterranean island colonization by archaic hominins: The likelihood of an insular Lower Palaeolithic’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 27(2), pp. 231–254. http://dx.doi. org/10.1558/jmea.v27i2.231

Afterthoughts

191

O’Brian, Patrick, 1990, Master and Commander, New York, W. W. Norton. Pulak, Cemal, 2010, ‘Uluburun shipwreck’, in Cline, Eric H. (ed), The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (ca. 3000–1000 BC), Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 862–876. Runnels, Curtis N, 2014, ‘Early Palaeolithic on the Greek islands?’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 27(2), pp.  211–230. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/ jmea.v27i2.211 Serres, Michel, 2008 [1985], The Five Senses; A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies (trans Sankey, Margaret & Cowley, Peter), London, Continuum. Simmons, Alan H., 1991, ‘Humans, island colonization and Pleistocene extinctions in the Mediterranean: The view from Akrotiri Aetokremnos, Cyprus’ Antiquity 65(249), pp. 857–869. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00080571 Strasser, Thomas F., Murray, Sarah C., van der Geer, Alexandra, Kolb, Christina & Ruprecht, Louis A., 2018, ‘Palaeolithic cave art from Crete, Greece’, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 18 (April), pp. 100–108. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.12.041 Symington, Dorit, 1991, ‘Late Bronze Age writing-boards and their uses: Textual evidence from Anatolia and Syria’, Anatolian Studies 41, pp. 111–123. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3642934

Index Abbey, Westminster 154 Aegean islands 21, 26, 178, 186 – 9 Aeneas 156 – 7, 159, 177, 179 The Aeneid 156 – 7, 179 Agamemnon (Aeschylus) 178 alcoholism 52 – 3 Alexander the Great 105 alienation 891n6 anchovies 64, 66 – 7, 67 Andersen, Hans Christian 157, 164 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Jung) 140 Around Cape Horn 134 ASA Decennial Conference 90n1 Athena (sailboat) 21 – 2, 24, 30 Bachelard, Gaston 134, 137 – 9 Bajoran lightship 95, 107 Baudrillard, Jean 124 Bauman, Zygmunt 79 Bear, Laura 78 – 9 Beaufort, Frances 153, 158 Beaufort scale 153 – 4, 156, 158, 162, 170 Bernhardt, Sarah 163 Bille, Mikkel 131 boatbuilding 19 – 38 Boaters, and pollution: description 80 – 2, 87 – 9; nature and dwelling 78 – 80; nature purpose 82 – 7; overview 77 – 8 Boat of Joy (1967) 119 boats, and feminnity 63 – 75 Bounty 165 Bourdieu, Pierre 58 Bowles, Benjamin O. L. 3, 5 – 7, 143, 185 – 6, 188 bowsprits 33 Braund, David 148n10 British Waterways (BW) 77 Bronze Age 98, 103 – 4, 187 Broodbank, Cyprian 186 – 7 BW see British Waterways (BW) Byron, John 164 – 5, 169

Canal and River Trust (CaRT) 77, 79, 87 Captain Out of the Blue (1968) 119 carbon footprint 90 – 1n2 – 3 Carefree ... Nut (1971) 120 CaRT see Canal and River Trust (CaRT) Carver, Raymond 147n1 Catania 6, 64, 68 – 9, 69 caulking mallet 27 Chapelle, H. I. 19 Chapman, George 170 Chassanakia (‘Little Hassans’) 53 – 4 Clifford, James 59 The Comedy of Errors 170 Conrad, Joseph 34 ‘The Convergence of the Twain’ 164 Couper, Alastair Dougal 11 – 12 ‘The Crazy Ship’ (poem) 97 Cyclades 186, 188 David Copperfield 157, 159 deck, working on 53 Defoe, Daniel 154, 170 Deleuze, Gilles 138 De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things (Lucretius) 157 – 61, 174, 189 Dhaskalio-Keros 186 Dickens, Charles 157, 159 Diogenes Laertius 145 Dollars and Dreams (1956) 116 – 18 domesticated women 72 – 4 Don Juan (Byron) 164 – 5 Douglas, Mary 75, 88 Dracula (1897) 155 dwelling, nature and 78 – 80 Eliot, T. S. 176 Ellinikon International Airport 126n7 Elytis, Odysseas 97, 106 The Enchanted Island (Dryden) 171 Environmental Health Executive 88 Everett, Daniel 183 Ferro, Marc 111 films/cinema, ships and 111 – 25

194

Index

First Nations Art 28 fishing boats, and woman see boats, and feminnity Foucault, Michel 46, 90, 137 – 8, 140 – 1, 144 – 5, 148n3 Froerer, Peggy 90n1 Gell, Alfred 78 – 9 Gilmore, David 108n7 The Girl Has Got an Uncle (1959) 117 Girls for Kissing (1965) 118 ‘Gitche Gumee’ 161 Gkanas, Michalis 97 Godfrey, Stephen 28 Goffman, Erving 41 – 2, 145 Goodwin Sands 154 Great Blizzard 163 Great Storm (1703) 154 Greek Civil War 112, 115 Greek Film Centre 114 Greek films, and emigration 111 – 25 Green, André 131 Gritzalis, Stephanos 178 Guardian 183 Guattari, Félix 138 Haidée island 169 Hamilakis, Yannis 105 A Handbook of Average (Hopkins) 163 Haruki Murakami 147n1 Hell, Bertrand 71 Hercules 177 Herzfeld, Michael 108n3 The Hesperus (ship) 163 Hetherington, Kevin 79 hierarchical interactions, in ship 46 – 51 Hirsch, Eric 90n1 History of Madness 144 History of Sexuality (Foucault) 140 Homer 164 Hopkins, Gerard Manley 163 housing crisis 77 Howard, Luke 153 Iliadis, Friksos 112 Iliopotissa 20, 20, 21, 22, 28, 31, 34 – 6 IMO see International Maritime Organization (IMO) Ingold, Timothy 66, 75n4, 78, 83 – 6 intercultural interactions, in ship 46 – 51 International Cloud Atlas 154

International Maritime Organization (IMO) 11 International Rescue Committee 178 International Transport Workers’ Federation 12 Johnson, Mark 132, 134 Joseph, Franz, II 1 Joyce, James 168 Jung, Carl Gustav 139 – 42 Just, Roger 12, 108n4 Kaës, René 142 Kalantzis, Kostis 107n1 Karava Mountain 97 – 103, 105 – 6 kitchen, of tanker 50 klarino ipeirotiko (Epirot clarinet music) 101 Knight, Daniel M. 3 – 4, 187 Kon-Tiki 95 Kontou, Maro 119 Kuper, Adam 75n1 Laertius, Diogenes 189 Lakoff, George 132, 134 Lefebvre, Henri 130 Lévi- Strauss, Claude 96 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 148n9 levitating ships 106 Lightfoot, Gordon 161 ‘Little Hassans’ (Chassanakia) 53 – 4 Little Mermaid (Andersen) 157 Lomax, Alan 185 London Assembly 88 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 161 – 3 Lost (television series) 172 Lucretius 157 – 61, 174, 189 McNeill, William H. 96, 108n2 Madness and Civilisation (Deleuze) 138, 144 magic puzzle 130 mal de debarquement syndrome (MdDS) 6, 143, 148n6 Mali, Joseph 96 A Manual of Marine Insurance (Hopkins) 163 The Man Who Returned from the Pain (1966) 122 Maragoudaki, Elena 3, 186, 188 maritime motifs 33 maritime mythistories 95 – 107

Index Marovelli, Brigida 3, 5 – 6, 185 – 6, 188 Martial 164 Martin, Greg 79 Martin, Mungo 28 material and immaterial aspects 130 – 2 mattanza 70 MdDS see mal de debarquement syndrome (MdDS) Medusa (Dalyell) 165 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 148n6 Mesozoic period 98, 102 The Migrant (1965) 120, 125 milling 24 Mitakou, Eleni N. 3, 188 Mitropoulou, Aglaia 116 Mobile Culture Studies 10 Mount Etna 64, 69 Mount Olympus 98 multicultural heterogeneity 51 – 8 Munn, Nancy D. 78 Mycenaean Woodworking Tools Used in Shipbuilding 21 The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron 165 National Statistics Department 114 NEK see New Greek Cinema (NEK) Neos Ellinikos Kinimatografos 126n5 New Age Travellers 79 New Greek Cinema (NEK) 113 Nicolas Argenti 90n1 Niehaus, Isak 75n1 The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (Conrad) 34 Nikos Daroukakis 7, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 30 – 7, 186; adzes and workshop 27 Nikos Kazantzakis 20, 22 O’Brian, Patrick 187 Odysseus 167 – 70, 177 Odyssey 156, 170 Oldenburg, Marcus 46, 52 Olympia ship 119, 126n6 Oneirokritikon 140 Ormos Shipping Company 126n6 Østreng, Dorte 52 Ottoman Empire 97, 102 Panama Canal 20 Papadopoulou, Chryssanthi 37n2, 75n1 Passeron, Jean Claude 58 Paterson, Don 153 Pavlova, Anna 163

195

perceived ship 132, 136 Pericles, Prince of Tyre 174 Petrou, Michalis 142, 148n5 Phillips, Ruth 79 philosophical metaphors, and ships 129 – 48 Piana di Catania 64 Pindos Mountains 4, 95 – 107 Pipyrou, Stavroula 107n1, 108n8 Placido Giuffrida 63 – 74 plagiarism and piracy 164 – 6 Plato 146 Ploritis, Marios 112 pollution, and Boaters: description 80 – 2, 87 – 9; nature and dwelling 78 – 80; nature purpose 82 – 7; overview 77 – 8 The Port of Refuge, or Advice and Instruction to the Master-Mariner in Situations of Doubt, Diffi culty and Danger ? (Hopkins) 163 Psychology of the Unconscious (Jung) 140 Pyrrhus 159 – 60, 165 Queen Frederica (cruise ship) 116 – 17, 126n6 “realisation” phase 24, 26 Reconstruction (1970) 122 Redfield, Robert 108n2 Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) 154 Rogelja, Nataša 78, 80, 148n9 Rorschach test 130 Sailing Alone Around the World (Slocum) 34 Sampson, Helen 46, 52, 56 ‘Scale of Intensity’ 153 scale of winds 153 – 6 ‘Scale of Winds’ 154 scamscape 130 Schneider, Arndt 148n9 Schweinitz, Jörg 124, 125n2 seafaring/seafarers: overview 41 Sea Venture (ship) 171 Seferis, George 178 Selkirk, Alexander 154 Serres, Michel 4, 133 – 6, 139, 146, 147 – 8n2 shipbuilding see boatbuilding A Ship Full of Papadopoulos (1966) 118 ‘Ships Came Ashore’ (song) 97

196 ship-shell metaphor 135 – 6 shipwrecks 153 – 79 Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea (Dalyell) 165 Simpson, George 156 skeleton-first technique 25 Slocum, Joshua 34 Soja, Edward 130 ‘The Song of Hiawatha’ 161 Sorlin, Pierre 111, 112 Spens, Patrick 162, 188 Stallings, A. E. 3, 188 – 9 stay-at-home sailor 133 Stewart, Charles 97, 104, 106, 108n6 Stoker, Bram 155 The Storm (Defoe) 154 Strang, Veronica 4, 80 Stringer, Chris 183 Sutton, David 105 The Tempest 160 – 1, 170, 174, 176 Theopetra Cave 102 Timaeus (Plato) 146 timemaps 78 – 9 Titanic 163 tonnara 70, 73 toolkit, boatbuilders 26 – 8 Traveller-Gypsies 88 treasure tales 104 – 5

Index Trinidada (ship) 166 Tsimouris, Giorgos 3, 6, 185 – 6, 188 Turner, Victor 148n9 Twelfth Night 165, 170 Uncle from Canada (1959) 117 Until the Ship (1966) 121 – 2, 125 Valoukos, Stathis 114 Vancouver Maritime Museum 20, 28 Veggos, Thanassis 120 Vlachos, Manolis 1 – 2 Volanakis, Constantinos 1, 4 Vournelis, Leonidas 105 – 6 Voyage to Cythera (1984) 123, 125 weddings, and shipwrecks 167 What I Talk About When I Talk About Running 147n1 wild and domesticated women 72 – 4 wooden boatbuilding see boatbuilding World War II 112, 115 ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ 163 ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ 161, 163 ‘The Wreck of the Eurydice’ 163 ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ 161 Yalouri, Eleana 105