GREECE AND THE SEA succinctly, saying simply that "it seemed that investments in property ashore required less work and risk than the sea trades." But the contribution of Venice to the coming modem age had been inestimable. Her galleys ran regular service to the Mediterranean ports, to the Crimea in the Black Sea, and to places as far di stant as Southampton in the English Channel and the great north European market in Antwerp. These trade routes helped nouri sh the growing trade of the Hanseatic merchants in the North Sea and the Baltic (from which Mediterranean sailors were effectively barred) and undoubtedly helped the confused, slow-paced evolution of the Russ ian superstate in coming centuries. As early as the late 1200s, Genoese and Venetian "great galleys"-sailing ships which used oars as a powerful auxiliary-were running on regular schedules to the northern markets. And in their tum the Northerners, who had swept into the Mediterranean in the almost obsessive attacks on Islam known as the Crusades, were becoming a real presence and growing influence in the Mediterranean. As the 1400s open, the Northern European strand of the story of the breakout into the ocean world joins up effectively with the Mediterranean story. Plato 's frog at the edge of a pond is developing into a new, deepwater animal. J,
The versatile trading ships of the ancient Greeks set the patterns of trade that kept civilization alive through the vicissitudes ofthe Middle Ages and ultimately delivered the Greek message to the Italian republics of the Renaissance. Here, the little Kyrenia ship leaps and rolls along her course, driven by the same strong meltemi wind that powered her predecessor through these waters over 2000 years ago.
In the long stretch of time we've looked at here, many fascinating byways dwindle from sight-the long struggle of Islam to control the Mediterranean, for example, fighting from its disadvantageous position on the southern shores, or the Viking incursions and the setup of a Norse kingdom in Sicily and southern Italy. The Greek experience, however, towers in the distance, at the origins of Mediterranean navigation, and it contributed powerfully to the Renaissance, ushering in the modem age. Clearly this was not just because of Greek energies, though these were formidable; it had to do with a Greek vision of man 's destiny. And that, as Sir Maurice Bowra sets forth memorably for us in The Greek Experience, had everything to do with their relationship with the sea:
Its "watery ways ," as Homer calls them, bind most districts in Greece, whether mainland or islands, to one another. It plays a larf?er part there than in any other European country because for most places it is the best, and for many the only, means of communication. There are few districts from which it is not somewhere visible. Often in isolated solitudes among the mountains a man will feel that he has lost sight of it, only to see it again round the next corner. Mastery al it was indispensable to survival, and once mastery was gained, new vistas inspired to adventure. The Greeks were sailors from the dawn of their history, and, because they were bred to ships, they were saved from sinking into the narrow, parochial round which would otherwise have been the lot of dwellers in small city-states. The sea drew alike those who wanted profit and those who wanted excitement, and was the chief means by which the Greeks expanded their knowledge of men and manners. But it was more than this. Its special enchantment, "the multitudinous laughter of the sea-waves," of which Aeschylus speaks, took hold of the Greek consciousness and helped to shape some of its most characteristic convictions .. .. But even when it seems to be most welcoming, it suddenly changes its temper and menaces with ruin on hidden reefs from merciless winds and mounting waves. By its unpredictable moods and its violent vagaries it provides a lesson on the precarious state of human life, which in the very moment when all seems to be lapped in golden calm is overwhelmed in unforeseen disaster. It is not surprising that when Sophocles sang of the unique achievements of man, he put seafaring first in his list: He makes the winter wind carry him Across the grey sea Through the trough of towering waves . Command of the sea was indeed something of which to be proud, and it left an indelible mark on the Greek character.*
To this Bowra adds a cogent appreciation of the very Greek mixture of practicality and poetry with which the Greeks confronted life and seafaring: The Greeks were conscious of the humble nature of human origins, but saw in them a summons to unrealized potentialities.* *C. M. Bowra, The Greek Experience (World Publishing, 1957)
NOTE ON CAPE HORN: On 20 March The Times of London carried an announcement that the National Maritime Historical Society and the Drake Navigators Guild had determined that Francis Drake was the actual discoverer of Cape Horn, having landed there during his circumnavigation of 1578. A discussion of this finding will be published in a future Sea History. 13