The Navigators Blog

Tragic Lost Maps No. 3: The Peutinger Map

Simon Pratt — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 11:59:26 +0000

This astonishing map could more properly be called a Road Map of the Roman Empire, coming down to us from the fourth century AD. As such, it is a remarkable testament to the extent and sophistication of that empire, extending as it did at the time, from Britain to the frontiers of India.

While the surviving version of this map is a much later copy, the lost original it is based on was produced around 300 AD, probably modelled on earlier works that date back to the first century.

The most notable feature of the map that strikes you when you first see it is its width. It is nearly seven metres wide, and just 30 cm or so high. This allowed the whole empire to be rolled up into a standard capsa, or roll box, and easily carried on horseback. But it also meant that the vertical and horizontal scales differ greatly, and that north is not always upwards.

In that sense, it is more a stylised reflection of the girth of the empire to assist in travel, or perhaps military planning and strategy. Another suggestion is that its purpose was to reinforce the might, power and diversity of the lands under Rome’s sway, during a period when the vast empire was under threat from northern raiders and budgetary problems.

What is accurate though is the 200,000 km of roads shown in red ink, with distances marked in Roman miles–each of 1000 strides for a legionnaire– or, further to the east, in Persian leagues–the stretch a horse plods in one hour, or 6.38 km.

The distance a messenger could ride in one day is represented on the map between two settlements, generally shown as twin house structures. Apart from roads themselves, also shown are ports, lighthouses, mountain ranges, forests, thermal baths, even bridges. And of course, cities; over 550 of them, and another 3500 places are named, from far west to deep east.

The greatest cities of empire, Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch and Constantinople are highlighted, but other modern cities such as Rotterdam, Frankfurt, Augsburg, Milan, Athens, Alexandria, Ephesus, Bodrum, Damascus, Tbilisi, Tehran and Babylon can also be seen.

The eastern portion of the map–beyond the frontiers of Rome–range through the lands of the Persian Empire, beyond which the Romans knew little about. Campaigning Roman and later Byzantine armies reached as far as modern Armenia and Iraq at various times, but beyond that was the old satrapies of Alexander the Great’s empire.

In the far north-eastern quadrant of the map, in furthest Asia, a point is marked with the caption ’End of the Land of Alexander the Great’, which represents his most distant campaign, near modern Islamabad.

While the eastern land extent of Eurasia was something of a mystery to the Romans, they did have a much better understanding of the Indian Ocean. Egypt was a province of Rome from 30 BC and throughout Byzantine times to the mid-seventh century, and from it in the first few centuries AD, Roman vessels carried out substantial trade with India, using Muziris as their main port.

Muziris, whose modern location is contentious, but most likely in today’s Kerala state, was in southern India, and is marked clearly on the map. Nearby, to the west (should be east) lies a large island named Tabrobane, which is the old name for modern Sri Lanka. After Muziris, the coastline turns northward, passes through a land named ‘Pirate’–conceivably a reference to the corsair-ridden Malacca Strait–and we come to a great river called the Ganges. Beyond that is the lands of Scythia. It is all a little vague, as you would expect so far from Rome, but there are some locations, like Muziris, the Ganges and Tabrobane that we can recognise, even today.

Tabula Peutinger is an amazing piece of cartography, perhaps the most amazing there is, given its age and provenance. It is printed on parchment, cut into eleven sheets. The western most sheet was missing but was added by extrapolation early in the twentieth century, giving us the British Isles and Iberia.

While scholars date the surviving manuscript to a monk’s copy from the twelfth century, the chart it was copied from was made after 328 AD, because it shows Constantinople, later capital of the Byzantine Empire, which was founded that year. Destruction of some cities shown on the map occurred in the fifth century, and another named kingdom, Francia, only emerged at this time, so what we see today was probably created in the late fourth century.

It is also argued that the map was likely to be based on a system of regularly updated empire maps that began with the apparently magnificent–but also tragically lost–marble-carved world map by Roman general Marcus Agrippa once housed at the Porticus Vipsania in Rome.

The Peutinger Map’s name comes from the scholar/ collector who came across it in 1508, gifted from the librarian of the Austrian emperor (who is likely to have plundered it from elsewhere). Konrad Peutinger identified it as a copy of a much older Roman map and bequeathed it through his estate to eventually arrive in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna.

The map’s delicacy has meant is not on public display. It has been shown to visitors only once, for a single day in 2007. It is classified by UNESCO. I found a reprint by Turkish publisher Boyut which has a full, foldout map, with various notations and explanatory notes. It is great to get out at parties! If you go for Boyut, make sure you order the English version. Enjoy!

Whats left of Three Ancient Wonders of the World?

Simon Pratt — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:25:30 +0000

Lists of Wonders of the World go back a very long time, all the way to the era of Herodotus in the fifth century BC (this Greek historian and geographer, known as the ‘father of history’, was actually born at Halicarnassus, site of one of our Wonders).

But the generally accepted modern list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World comes down to us from Antipater of Sidon, a Greek poet who lived around 100 BC.

His list–in chronological order–starts with the great Pyramid of the Pharaohs at Giza, Egypt from 25 centuries before Christ; then to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; the Statue of Zeus at Olympia in Greece; the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, in Turkey; the Colossus of Rhodes; and lastly, the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

In terms of modern borders, two are in Egypt, two in Greece, two in Turkey and one in Iraq. The only Wonder still standing is the Pyramid at Giza. All the others succumbed, mostly to earthquakes, long ago. Apart from the Pyramid, the last two standing were the Lighthouse and the Mausoleum which were both toppled around the fourteenth century.

Historians know the least about the Hanging Gardens. It is not even clear where they were located, and if actually, they ever existed. Strike finding them off the list.

Zeus, king of the Gods, whose great statue at Mount Olympus was pilfered by the Byzantines, or alternately destroyed by fire or earthquake around the fourth century, is also lost without trace, though the ruins of the temple which housed mighty Zeus can still be seen at Olympia.

The Lighthouse at Alexandria stood for a thousand years, most of that as the largest man-made non-pyramid structure in the world, but toppled into the sea after a three-century series of earthquakes ending around 1300 AD. The ruins of the structure have been discovered, underwater in the Bay of Alexandria, and you can dive on them, if you feel inclined.

That leaves us with three Wonders closely geographically spaced which we will now visit; the Mausoleum at modern Bodrum in Turkey; the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, nearby in Turkey; and just a short hope across the blue Aegean, Rhodes, the site of the incredible statue of the sun-God Helios, known as the Colossus of Rhodes.

Of the last, there are no remains at all, and even the precise location on Rhodes is a subject of debate. Of the temple and the mausoleum, the sites are clearly identified, but sadly, only scattered remnants survive to give an idea of the once glorious majesty of these ancient monuments to gods and classical rulers.

TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS AT EPHESUS

If we progress by age once more, the Temple is the oldest of our three. More properly described as a temple to Diana, a mysterious goddess of the Lydians, this structure was rebuilt several times after first being raised around 700 BC.

The Lydians were a wealthy pre-Greek Anatolian tribe inhabiting what is now western Turkey, with their capital at Sardis, nearby to Ephesus. Initially a thriving port and temple city independent of Lydia, Ephesus was absorbed by Lydian ruler Croesus (from the saying ‘as rich as Croesus’) at the peak of the Lydian empire, around the mid-sixth century BC.

On the site of an earlier temple dating back at least two centuries but destroyed by floods, Croesus funded a new magnificent temple to Diana, and commissioned an architect from Crete, Chersiphron, to build it.

Chersiphon helped by his son, Metagenes certainly earnt their commission. The scale of the engineering required presented such a challenge that the father considered suicide when unable to devise a method to lift the 24-tonne entry lintel atop the 13-metre-high columns. Next morning, miraculously, the goddess had raised the 8.5-metre-long stone into place. So the legend goes!

Twice as large as the surviving Parthenon in Athens, the incredible structure was supposedly the first temple built completely of marble, the first double colonnaded temple, and was as long as two Olympic swimming pools and one wide (110 x 55 metres). There were 127 fluted columns capped with architraves nearly nine metres long, weighing 40 tonnes each.

The quarry for the marble was 11 km away, and Metagenes had to design a timber wheeled frame around each end of the giant blocks so they could be rolled as oxen teams hauled them to the temple site.

Alas, the magnificent temple to the goddess of hunting and wild animals stood for just two centuries before its destruction by a pyromaniac seeking immortality. Legend has it that Alexander the Great was born that same night just a four-day sail away in Macedonia; Artemis (also goddess of childbirth) so occupied with his birth she neglected to protect her own temple.

Alexander’s story crosses paths with all the Ancient Wonders of the World. As primarily a celebration of the Hellenic world, the seven wonders all stood in lands he conquered. After his first victory in (334 BC) against the Persians–who by then ruled the Lydian lands–Alexander paraded his army in front of the ruins of the burnt wreckage and offered to rebuild the temple.

The proud Ephesians declined, raising funds themselves to bring the third, and grandest, iteration of the temple, in Hellenic style, to completion at the time of Alexander’s death in 323 BC. This temple was higher, larger and much more embellished, with elaborate relief carvings, magnificent column-topping capitals, and a gold and silver decorated ebony statue of the goddess herself.

The sad end for the temple, once Lydian, next Persian, then Greek, and finally Roman, came with an earthquake in 262 AD. Rampaging Goths completed the pillaging a few years later. By 1200 AD the harbour at nearby Ephesus was silted up, and the site of the temple itself covered in a thick layer of mud, not to be rediscovered until found-and plundered–by British researchers in the nineteenth century.

THE TEMPLE RUINS TODAY

Today the temple site can be easily reached from the magnificent ruins of Ephesus, just two km away. The major city of Izmir–old Smyrna–with its international airport, is an hour’s drive along good motorways and normally the base for exploring the region, with also includes spectacular Pergamon.

To be honest, for a Wonder of the World, it is a little disappointing. The temple once stood on a marble pedestal several metres proud of the surrounding flagstones, but even this has long disappeared. The site is a swamp nowadays, bestrewn by weeds, mangy dogs and spruikers peddling faded postcards. No goddess in sight. Tour buses churn the dust as groups disgorge, impatient only for a quick selfie. There is no romance, no enduring link with the fabulous ancient temple.

Of the 127 soaring columns that graced the shrine, just one composite has been reconstructed to give an idea of the scale of the structure. The footprint needs to be imagined. The towering, gilded gables, the massive capital friezes, the lion-headed waterspouts are nowhere to be seen.

Not far away though, the Ephesus Archaeological Museum is worth a look. If only for the visual reconstructions of the temple and the superb statue of the goddess herself, amazingly decorated, most prominently with a chest-full of globules that are alternately described as milk-giving breasts or bull’s testicles.

For some further icons pillaged from the temple site, you can check out the Ephesus Room at the British museum, or the Ephesus Museum in Vienna.

THE MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSOS

When Alexander the Great invaded modern Turkey to take on the mighty Persian Empire in 334 BC, he started by crossing the Dardanelles into Asia and paying homage to Achilles at Troy. He went on to defeat the first army the Persians threw against him at Granicus, then captured the royal capital of Sardis. From there, he stopped at Ephesus, offering to rebuild Artemis’ temple, proceeding onwards to Priene which submitted to him peacefully, and to Miletus which did not. After storming Miletus, he marched south to the still impressive shrine to Apollo at Didyma. The sacred spring had not flowed for nearly two centuries, but started again with Alexander’s visit, so the legend has it.

His next target was Halicarnassus, a major Persian base, a powerful fortress and site of an existing Wonder of the Ancient World.

Neighbouring ancient Lydia to the south was the province of Caria. This too was a pre-Hellenic, pre-Turkic kingdom mentioned by Homer and in the Bible. The Carians fought with Troy against the Greeks in the Trojan War.

Strategically placed on the sailing trade routes, Caria was a wealthy land. Then as now, it sported verdant plains with rich soil supporting a large population, and also plentiful mines and quarries of marble running through the scattered mountain ridges.

Back in the fourth century BC, Caria was a satrapy of the Persian Empire under a king named Mausolus. Like most kings of the time, he enjoyed a little pillaging of his neighbours, which at one time took him into Lycia to the east. He was so impressed by the burial tombs of the Lycian rulers–the Xanthos Tombs–that when he built his new glittering capital at Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum), he planned an even more spectacular tomb for himself, in advance of his passing.

The style would blend Egyptian, Greek and Carian features and considerably outdo all other tombs then known. A Greek architect from nearby Paros, and a Carian who had modelled Priene were engaged to design the incredible structure, and the most famous sculpturers of the ancient world made enormous friezes and larger-than-life sculptures to adorn the stepped sides of the tomb. This Wonder was as renowned for its decoration as its structure.

The base was 38 x 32 metres and twenty metres high. Atop that podium stood 36 Ionic columns twelve metres tall. Above that towered a pyramid of 24 steps reaching up to the heavens. And riding on the pyramid’s peak was Mausolus etched in stone racing a four-horse chariot, six metres high. The entire structure was faced with white marble and blue limestone, with a core of green volcanic slabs. The tomb itself was built into the base of the podium, protected from grave-robbers by enormous marble doors.

According to ancient accounts, it was a spectacular monument, a statement of power and wealth, fit for more than just a king. Mausolus was interred in his pre-built tomb just 19 years before Alexander rampaged into the city.

Alexander was no doubt impressed, perhaps even envious, of the magnificent monument after successfully completing his very first siege and entering Halicarnassus in victory through the Myndos Gate.

And there the mausoleum stood for centuries through Persian, Greek and Roman rule, by then still an impressive testament to a never-forgotten ruler who gave his name to all impressive funerary edifices, mausoleums. It was noted as still extant in the twelfth century, but when the Knights of St John arrived to build a castle at Bodrum from nearby Rhodes in 1402, it was in ruins, probably from an earthquake.

WHAT REMAINS?

Just 200 metres from Bodrum harbour and one kilometre from the castle of the Knights on the promontory, the scattered remains of Mausolus’ mighty tomb lie among the boxy white villas of the modern city.

Though little remains, it is more atmospheric than Artemis’ Temple, and you can sit on one of the great column fragments from the colonnade, ignoring the modern city hemming you in, and dream up visions of a soaring, glittering marble tribute to an ancient ruler who, with this tomb, did achieve immortality.

A small but fascinating museum on the site provides some additional details of the scale of the structure, modern excavations, and myths and legends surrounding the wonder.

In 1522, when the Knights at Bodrum had already stood in their castle for over a century, the threat of Ottoman attack bade them strengthen their walls. Southern Turkey was a pirate-infested coastline, and they rarely ventured outside the castle ramparts, always resupplied by way of the sea.

Desperate for slabs of stone and lime for raising new bastions, they sent work parties to scour the town for materials and came across what remained of the great tomb–at this stage only the structure’s base plinths of faded marble.

A French knight takes up the story:

We found certain steps of white marble, raised in the form of a terrace in the middle of a field near the port…and therefore pulled down and took away these marble steps, and finding the stone good, proceeded, having destroyed the little masonry remaining above the ground, to dig lower down in the hope of finding more.

After four or five days, having laid bare a great space, one afternoon they saw an opening as to a cellar. They let themselves down through this opening and found it led to a fine large apartment, ornamented all round with columns of marble, with their bases, capitals, architrave, frieze and cornices, engraved and sculptured in half-relief.

The space between the columns was lined with slabs and bands of marbles of different colours, ornamented with mouldings and sculptures, in harmony with the rest of the work, and inserted in the white ground of the wall, where battle scenes were sculptured in relief.

Having at first admired these works, and entertained their fancy with the singularity of the sculptures, they pulled it to pieces, and broke up the whole of it, applying it to the same purpose as the rest (ie Building materials).

Besides this apartment they found afterwards a very low door which led into another apartment, like an antechamber, where was a sepulchre with its sarcophagus and tympanum-shaped lid of white marble, very beautiful and of marvellous lustre. This sepulchre, for want of time, they did not open, the retreat (nightly recall to the castle) having been sounded.

They day after, when they returned, they found the tomb opened, and the earth all round strewn with fragments of cloth of gold, and spangles of the same metal, which made them suppose that the pirates, having some inkling of what had been discovered, had visited the place during the night, and removed the lid of the sepulchre. It is supposed that they discovered much treasure.

So Turkish grave-robber pirates beat French grave-robber knights to the riches of Mausolus’ tomb five hundred years ago. At least the French pillagers wrote shamelessly about their plundering though either party was clearly happy to destroy that enduring 16-century old vault that had survived earthquakes and plunderers down through time despite losing the upper magnificence of the original mausoleum.

Of course, later imperial pillaging has placed many impressive remnants, including statues of Mausolus and his wife-sister Artemesia in–yes, you guessed it, the British Museum. And some of the marble and limestone blocks are clearly evident in the crusader castle on the point. A sad end for a Wonder. Perhaps Erdogan will rebuild it as his own tomb?

COLOSSUS OF RHODES

From Bodrum harbour, it is a day’s sail south to the Greek island of Rhodes, site of our last wonder. Of which, there are, sadly no remains. And while we know pretty well what Artemis’ Temple and Mausolus’ Mausoleum would have looked like, unfortunately, of the appearance of the Colossus of Rhodes we know little, except its stunning scale.

Rhodes was a crucial maritime trading port well sited between Greece, Asia Minor, the Levant and Egypt. Supposedly created by union of sun-god Apollo and his wife, the nymph Rodos, at one stage it formed part of the Doric League with Halicarnassus. Later, it was Persian, and for a time ruled by Mausolus.

Again, there is a link to Alexander. Rhodes became part of his empire when he defeated the Persians, ending the Achaemenid Dynasty in 333 BC. When he died a decade later in Babylon, his generals divided the empire between them and soon began clashing with each other in the Diadochi Wars. Antigonas-the-one-eyed ruled Anatolia and took on Ptolemy who ruled Egypt.

Rhodes was caught in the middle, and was invaded by Antigonas’ son Demetrius, who besieged the main city–also Rhodes–unsuccessfully for a full year. He left behind some sophisticated siege equipment which the Rhodians sold and used the funds to commission a bronze statue of Helios 33 metres tall. The god’s fingers were reputed to be larger than most contemporary statues!

In medieval times, one Italian wag suggested the great effigy straddled the harbour entrance, feet a structurally impossible 130 metres apart. Many modern depictions of the Colossus continue to show this erroneous stance, but the enormous bronze wrapped, iron-framed structure could not have stood any way but feet together and arms straight up or by the side. Additionally, the scaffolding required to support the construction would have closed the harbour entrance for over a decade.

It is likely that the location was either on the highest point of the city, near the ruins of the acropolis, or at an elevated point along the Avenue of the Knights. Astonishingly, rather than being joined together piece by offsite-manufactured piece, the statue was built by being cast in situ, with an earthen mound encasing–and shrouding–the figure, and acting as a mould for the bronze casting process. All this took twelve years to complete (in 282 BC), with the designer, a local talent named Chares, not seeing the results of his work until the final bronze section was poured and the mound stripped away.

By all ancient accounts it truly was a Wonder, sunlight from the sun-God reflecting off the burnished bronze during the day, and the torch shining as a beacon to mariners during the night. If it was sited on Monte Smith, high point above the town, the torch would have been visible for over 65 kilometres.

Alas, it stood for just fifty or so years before being toppled by an earthquake. Even then the fallen wreckage was still venerated for another 800 odd years before it was melted down and sold for scrap by Arab raiders in the seventh century. Plans to rebuild the great Wonder have so far come to nothing.

But if you are ever in Rhodes, no doubt you will check out the entrance to Mandraki harbour, where the deer statues stand, one on each side–incorrectly assumed to have been the site of Helios’ feet. You will also no doubt walk up the Avenue of the Knights, so don’t miss the madrasa at the top, opposite the Palace of the Grand Master, also a possible location of the statues base, and the palace itself is too a conceivable location.

Lastly, wander upwards through the narrow busy streets past the old city and the ancient stadium, and stand atop the ruins of the acropolis, and look down at the glinting harbours far below. Think of a great bronze monument standing as high as a ten-storey building looming above you, shading you from the summer heat of the sun God, Helios. What a sight it would have been. A Wonder.

Preserved armoured ships sill afloat

Simon Pratt — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:34:29 +0000

Adding steel plate to major warships to stop shells penetrating began in 1860 and carried on until the Second World War ended. Such vessels–frigates, cruisers and battleships–were known in the trade as armoured ships.

The need for armour on warships emerged as timber hulls transitioned to iron during the first half of the nineteenth century. The first ocean-going iron ship was the liner SS Great Britain built in 1843. And she can be seen today, restored in all her style, at Bristol, where she was built. The first iron warship was built in the same year; the US frigate Princeton.

Thick oak or teak hulls had been surprisingly effective at stopping cannonballs except at very close range, but the advent of rifled explosive shells mid-century made timber ships extremely vulnerable. Iron plating over timber was the short-term answer.

The first real armoured ship was the French Gloire built in 1860. Her timber hull sported a 12 cm thick vertical belt of iron armour set on 43 cm of teak. The best modern cannons fired at 20 metres could not penetrate it, making the ship impervious to all other warships of its day.

Today, six fascinating armoured ships from the early era of such vessels survive for inspection around the world. Between them they witnessed epic sea battles, clashes of empires, civil wars and revolutions. They lived through intriguing engagements and the fast march of technology. Armour, weaponry and propulsion systems evolved with incredible speed during their careers. And all of them came horribly close to being discarded, before lady luck allowed them to live on with the grace they deserve.

Royal Navy armoured frigate HMS WARRIOR

The threat of the Gloire greatly alarmed Britain, as its entire fleet was outclassed. Quickly, the Royal Navy designed and built the Warrior in reply. At 9000 tons, the iron-hulled Warrior was twice as large as the French ship and a much more powerful vessel; faster, carrying a heavier armament and with better armour. She sported fourteen great guns firing 110 pound shot or shell–when the standard weapon at the time was a 32 pounder–as well as two dozen more 68 pounders.

No contemporary warship could withstand fire from such a battery of guns, and her iron wrapped teak armoured sides could resist any modern cannon fire. She was as close to omnipotent as any warship ever built.

A two-cylinder steam engine produced nearly six thousand horsepower, giving the armoured frigate a top speed of 14 knots. She had a single shaft hooked up to a seven-metre diameter propeller but still carried a full sailing rig–which was what was generally used when at sea. A thousand tons of Welsh steaming coal gave her a range, under power, of two thousand nautical miles.

Though she was the world’s most powerful warship when commissioned in 1861, the pace of technological change meant she was quickly obsolete. Newer battleships carried their guns in rotating turrets and masts with sailing rigs were no longer fitted, allowing the guns much greater fields of fire.

Warrior was relegated to a guardship in 1881 and struck off the Navy list in 1900. Ignominious decades as a school ship, storage hulk and eventually as a refuelling jetty at Pembroke in Wales followed. When the refuelling base closed in 1978, the sad old iron hull, long since stripped of all accessories, came very close to a tragic scrapping.

But luck intervened and a Trust was established to restore the famous ship to her 1862 state. Costing £ 9m, compared to the £ 377,000 for her original construction, Warrior emerged after a decade of renovation as a very impressive museum ship, moored at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard (near to the refloated Mary Rose and Nelson’s Victory).

Her jet-black 128-metre hull with its long row of gunports, her thrusting bowsprit and the weird co-existence of two stubby funnels and a full sailing rig make her a most intriguing looking vessel.

While some realism had to be sacrificed–her machinery are replicas of the originals; many of her guns are fibreglass dummies; and her retracting timber masts are now steel–Warrior today highlights a forgotten era of naval technology when the Royal Navy ruled the waves. She is the oldest armoured ship still afloat. And she does float!

Armada de Chile ironclad HUASCAR

After the Warrior, Huascar is the second oldest armoured ship still in existence. And, contrary to Warrior which never saw action, Huascar had a very interesting active career.

Ordered by Peru for the independence war against Spain, she was built by Lairds at Birkenhead, England in 1866 as a 67-metre long, 2000-ton ironclad turreted ship. Unlike Warrior’s broadside of guns, Huascar carried just two big ten-inch rifled breech-loaders in a traversable turret capable of firing broadly on each beam.

The concept was similar to that of the Union navy’s Monitor of 1861, but the better-designed Peruvian vessel was much larger, carried a sailing rig and was capable of transoceanic voyages. Which was unlike the Monitor that almost foundered making her delivery voyage and later did sink in weather conditions any sailing warship would have easily survived.

Huascar was taken over by rebels during the Peruvian Civil War, and harried trade along the coast, forcing the local Royal Navy squadron to intercept the ironclad in the fascinating Battle of Pacocha in 1877. The British iron-hulled steam frigate Shah peppered the Huascar with shellfire for two hours, all of which was observed to bounce off the rebel ship’s armoured sides. Luckily for the British, the rebels were terrible gunners, managing to get off only five poorly aimed rounds–any one of which would have sunk the Shah with their 300-pound shells.

Shah then fired a torpedo at Huascar; the very first use of this weapon at sea. The ironclad, with 1600 horsepower, managed to pull away from the torpedo at 12 knots, and retired to port, surrendering to government forces that night.

During a later war with Chile, Huascar sank a steam corvette by gunfire and ramming in one engagement but was caught in 1879 by two modern Chilean ironclads and battered to a wreck, taking more than 70 hits. Captured by the Chileans, Huascar fought against her former owners on several occasions, before being retired as a depot ship.

Because of her age and active service under three flags, she was reclassified as a museum ship in 1931 and restored to her 1897 state during the 1970s. She remains the oldest Chilean Navy vessel in existence, the only remaining ironclad turret ship afloat out of hundreds built, and on her decks two national heroes lost their lives leading boarding parties to seize the vessel (Peruvian Admiral Grau and Chilean Captain Prat).

Huascar today swings at her mooring, the great turret not immediately apparent, leading one to think she is perhaps some old tramp steamer, risen from the mists of the past. She can be inspected at Talcahuano Naval Base in Chile, the last of her breed.

Imperial Japanese Navy pre-dreadnought battleship MIKASA

The very last of the world’s fifty-odd pre-dreadnought battleships and the only non-American battleship remaining afloat, the Mikasa holds a revered place in Japanese history.

British-built by Armstrong in 1900 for nearly £900,000, she displaced 15,000 tons, sported four big 12-inch guns in turrets and 14 six-inch weapons, and her 25 Belleville boilers produced 15,000 horsepower to drive her great bulk along at a maximum of 18 knots. She was protected by a 10-20 cm vertical belt of Krupp cemented armour and also a horizontal deck 8 cm thick, and stretched to 132 metres in length. She looks like a heavyweight: menacing, powerful and low, with two massive turrets, lofty masts and a blunt bow.

Flagship of the redoubtable Admiral Togo throughout the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War, Mikasa led the Japanese fleet through the battles of Port Arthur, Yellow Sea and finally Tsushima, taking heavy damage in each. She suffered two hits by heavy guns in the first engagement, twenty in the second, followed by several months of repairs to ready her for the final winner-takes-all slugfest at Tsushima.

In this epic engagement, all the modern Russian battleships were sunk, while all the Japanese survived. It was the most decisive naval victory since Trafalgar in 1805. Mikasa, as always in the vanguard, took over forty hits, but it was her last battle.

Her remaining active career was not without incident. She sank in harbour after a magazine explosion just after the war finished, but was soon raised and refloated. Seven years later, she nearly succumbed to one of her sailors trying to blow her magazine, but she survived, though he did not. She ran aground off Vladivostok but again endured. By the 1920s, technology had far overtaken her, and she was retired. Heavily damaged by US bombing during WWII, she suffered the humiliation of being converted to an aquarium and a US sailors bar before sense prevailed and she was put in hand for restoration.

This was completed in 1961, and she stands (not floats) today in a concrete pond at Yokosuka Naval Base, available for inspection.

United States Navy protected cruiser OLYMPIA

The oldest American armoured ship still afloat, USS Olympia got her ticket to immortality as Commodore Dewey’s flagship when he destroyed a Spanish cruiser squadron at Manilla Bay in the Philippines in 1898.

This was the opening act of the Spanish-American War which began after the most powerful US ship, the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbour. The Spanish empire at this time was a decrepit mess, and the warships available to defend Cuba and Manilla against American reprisals were a sad mix of obsolete, incomplete and undermanned cruisers and gunboats that stood no chance against more modern US ships.

Completed in 1895, Olympia was just the third sea-going armoured ship built for the USN (after the battleships Texas and Maine). At 6000-odd tons, she was 105 metres long and developed 17,000 horsepower giving her a top speed of over 20 knots. Her crew numbered just over 400 men, she crammed 1000 tons of coal aboard for a range of 7000 nautical miles, and her big guns were four eight inchers in two twin turrets. Secondary armament included thirty smaller guns, and she was also fitted with four Gatling guns and six torpedo tubes. Twelve centimetres of plate armour protected her innards.

After her adventures at Manilla, Olympia had a busy but unspectacular career before being retired in 1922. She lay alongside, classified as a ‘relic’ until 1957, when a fund was established to manage her restoration to her 1898 glory days. The catalogue of this restoration and subsequent works, the challenges of upholding authenticity and the difficulties of securing funding illustrate the problems of preserving and maintaining old warships, long past their prime.

Managed first by the Cruiser Olympia Association, and since 1996 by the Independence Seaport Museum on the Delaware River at Philadelphia, she incurred costs of over $10m just to 2010, and then was estimated to require another $20m to drydock her and perform overdue maintenance. She came within an ace of being turned into a reef before national fundraising appeals sought more cash. Floating iron ships over a century old need constant maintenance, funding, volunteers and admission-paying visitors to stay above the waves.

She looks good, old Olympia, with her white hull and buff upperworks studded with turrets and casemates, and her sharp ram bow. Well worth a look.

Imperial Russian Navy protected cruiser AURORA

Owing her ongoing survival to firing the opening shots of the 1917 October Revolution which deposed the Romanov Tsars, the Aurora was another cruiser that witnessed momentous events.

Launched in 1900, she commissioned just in time to accompany the Russian Baltic Fleet on their round-the-world-ordeal to the Far East to avenge the fate of the Russian Pacific Fleet, bested by Mikasa and Togo, and later sunk at anchor in Port Arthur by Japanese artillery.

Leaving St Petersburg in October 1904, Aurora suffered ‘friendly fire’ in the English Channel, sailed around Africa and all the way to Korea–over 15,000 nautical miles–before witnessing the destruction of the fleet at the hands of the Japanese in May 1905. She survived the battle with little damage, but lost her captain and was interned at Manilla.

Released, she returned to the Baltic and carried out patrolling duties until 1917. While lying at St Petersburg, her crew mutinied, shot the captain and officers, flew the red flag of revolution and opened fire on Tsarist forces defending the Winter Palace. The consequences remain with us today.

At 127 metres in length and 7000 tons, Aurora is a little larger than Olympia but was slower and not as well armed. Slab-sided and with a little tumblehome amidships, she looks a little awkward, without the sleeker, appealing balance of the American cruiser.

Bombed and sunk in WWII, she was raised postwar and refitted as a monument to the birthplace of the Revolution. By the 1980s her hull had decayed to the point that it needed to be completely replaced–an enormous task. Again, in 2004, major reconstruction was required; an indication of the enormous amount of upkeep old warhorses require.

Now Aurora sits on the Neva as a museum ship, not far from the Winter Palace (today the Hermitage), encased by ice all winter, well into her second century. She flew the Tsar’s flag, the Soviet flag, and now sports the flag of Russia.

Royal Hellenic Navy armoured cruiser GEORGIOS AVEROF

Of the dozens of armoured cruisers that served in the British, German, French, US, Japanese, Russian, Italian and Greek navies, only one remains; the Greek Averof. This class of ships was envisaged as a long-range commerce raider, powerful enough to destroy any cruiser that could catch it, but fast enough to escape any battleship that could outgun it.

Studded with three or four funnels and pin-cushioned with casemated guns, armoured cruisers were ponderous, ungainly ships, always belching clouds of coal smoke. When the faster, more heavily-armed battlecruisers arrived on the naval scene in 1906, all armoured cruisers were obsolete, and no more were laid down. Battlecruisers were much more sleek and powerful looking ships, but of the thirty-odd completed, sadly not one was saved from the scrappers yard.

The Greek navy was seeking new heavy ships prior to WWI and snapped up a cancelled Italian design from the Pisa-class. It had German armour, French boilers, British guns and Italian machinery, and the 30% down payment (from a price of £1m) was made by a Greek patriot who the ship was named after. Construction took time, and launched in 1911, she was the very last of the armoured cruisers, and already obsolete.

Averof hammered several older Turkish battleships during the Balkan Wars and singlehandedly forced the withdrawal of Turkish naval forces from the Aegean. During WWI Greece was neutral, and she was later rebuilt in France in the 1920s, before fleeing the German invasion of Greece in 1941. For the remainder of WWII, she escorted convoys in the Indian Ocean, limited by her ancient engines and appalling low speed (at times 9 knots).

She was relegated in 1952 and moored for another 30 years before it was decided to restore her to former glory, showcasing Greece’s long maritime history. She was refurbished again in 2017, remains a commissioned naval vessel flying an admiral’s flag and is saluted by every passing Greek warship.

Today she can be found at Faliro near Athens, forming part of a vibrant maritime themed district. A replica trireme and an old destroyer lie nearby. With her attractive colour scheme, prominent turrets, tripod masts, raked bow and triple funnels, she is a proud and imposing throwback to another era, and a delightful trip back through history.

How refreshing it is to still have the opportunity to climb aboard and inspect Averoff and these other last handful of armoured ships who ruled the waves for a century with their imposing might. A look at their swivelling turrets, steam engine rooms, command bridges, captain’s cabins, sailor’s quarters and slabs of armour is a journey back to a world that was with us for a very long time through tremendous technological change, and now remains only in this small group of impressive warships. Climb aboard, if you can!

Honourable and dishonourable mentions

Not really armoured ships, but interesting nevertheless, the former WWI Austro-Hungarian river monitors Sava and Leitha can be seen proudly restored in Belgrade and Budapest respectively.

HMS Caroline, a C-class light cruiser built in 1914 is the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, most famous of all the great stoushes of armoured ships. She can be inspected in Belfast.

And speaking of Jutland, the Danish steam frigate Jylland which served from 1862 to 1908 can be seen at Ebeltoft, Denmark. Another crazy steam-powered vessel with funnels and a full sailing rig!

And speaking of Belfast, how could we forget the beautiful Town-class light cruiser from WWII of that name that sits proudly in the Thames at London, an epoch away from Jylland in design.

A pair of American cruisers, USS Salem, last of the heavy cruisers, and USS Little Rock, a Clevland-class light cruiser, are also museum ships. Surviving battleships in the US include the Alabama, Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey and North Carolina.

In terms of dishonourable mentions, this is a list of armoured ships that in recent decades lost the battle with the scrapyard when preservation should have been the goal. The German battlecruiser Goeben, originally from the Imperial German Navy, then served with the Turkish Navy until 1950 but was tragically scrapped in 1976. She was the last of the battlecruisers.

The Royal Victorian Navy monitor Cerberus, of the same vintage as the Huascar served from 1870 until 1924, was scuttled in 1926 off Melbourne. She has laid semi-submerged for a century but until recently was recoverable and still mounted her original guns. Tragic.

Other late model cruisers that did not survive recent decades were the Indian Navy Delhi, which started life as HMS Achilles and fought at the Battle of the River Plate in 1939 but succumbed to the breakers in 1977; the French Colbert, scrapped in 2016; the Argentine Belgrano which as the USS Pheonix survived the attack on Pearl Harbour, but was sunk off the Falklands in 1982; the British-built Spanish Canarias launched in 1931 and scrapped in 1977; and the Russian Slava-class Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva, humiliatingly sunk by a country with no navy in 2022.

Inspiration for this post comes from Ian Marshall’s excellent book, Armoured Ships.

The Great Chola Raid of 1025

Simon Pratt — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 12:44:41 +0000

A thousand years ago two maritime empires went toe to toe in the sultry waters of Southeast Asia. Few have probably ever heard of either of them.

First was mighty Srivijaya, the prime maritime trading empire of the great Indonesian archipelago, strategically placed midway between powerhouses India and China. Srivijaya sent its first embassy to Tang China in 645 AD, and its last nearly six hundred years later. Its maharajah sat on his throne in Palembang, southern Sumatra, and controlled the crucial Malacca, Singapore and Sunda Straits that provided all sea access between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Srivijaya seems to have risen as the earlier Champa Empire in modern Vietnam declined in the fifth and sixth centuries. Champa had been the ‘gatekeeper’ for trade to China, but when direct sailing across the South China Sea from Singapore Strait and Java developed, as opposed to coasting along the Thai and Indochina coasts, Champa lost much of the trade income from ships visiting its ports. Which, along with a little dynastic infighting, led to its decline.

Up to this point, the Malacca Strait was a virtual no-go zone for shipping due to its reputation as a 400-nautical-mile-long pirate haunt, and most traders preferred to unload along the Thai and Malay isthmus coasts for land haulage across to harbours on the Gulf of Thailand.

Astutely, the rising Srivijayans came up with the solution to the pirate problem: they paid the pirates silver to protect the sea-lanes, and soon this security brought a huge amount of maritime trade right to their doorstep. And income. As trade and empire expanded, Srivijaya added vassals across Java, Sumatra, the eastern islands, Borneo, the Malay peninsula and north to Indochina.

And it was not just trade that gave impetus to Srivijaya, but cultural links too. Buddhism had spread from northern India along the Silk Road to China in the first and second centuries and had become the dominant faith in northern China. Pilgrimages to the sacred texts and holy schools in India went via Malacca Strait, and one seventh century monk noted over a thousand Chinese novices in Palembang, halfway through their voyage to India.

The Cholas, a Tamil-speaking Hindu power based in southern India were also a maritime-focused trading empire with links through Tamil communities across the Indian Ocean. They dominated the Bay of Bengal, eastern India and Ceylon from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, and established trading communities along the sea route to China.

For the emperor in Tang China, the Cholas were one of the big four trading nations, along with the Persians, the Javans and Srivijaya. Concurrent flourishing of the Tang empire (618-907) with the spectacular wealth of the Bagdad-based Umayyads (661-750) gave a great push to Asian trade. In the ninth century, there were over 200,000 Arabs, Persians, Indian, Nusantarians and other traders living in Canton alone.

But old habits die hard, and it seems the ex-pirate ‘protectors’ of Srivijaya, could not resist old temptations, and were reputed to heard passing shipping into empire ports along the route to China, where they could be taxed.

This eventually became too much to bear for the proud Cholas, and their emperor, Rajendra I (shown being crowned by Shiva in the lead illustration), decided to teach the Srivijayans a lesson. He was no newcomer to expeditionary warfare, having recently carried out amphibious campaigns against nearby Indian kingdoms, the Maldives and Ceylon. His answer was a single, powerful long-distance maritime raid that shocked his adversary, shattered some of his vassals, and led to ultimate doom for the great Srivijayan empire.

This impressive raid was remarkable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was staged over a very long distance. Srivijaya itself mounted occasional seaborne raids into Indochina from Sumatra, of around 2000 km or so. The Chola raid in 1025 travelled 4000 km from southern India to Palembang, then 2000 km from there up Malacca Strait, and another 2000 km back to India to complete the circuit.

Secondly, to achieve surprise, the Chola fleet attacked from the ocean side west of Sumatra and through Sunda Strait, rather than down the sheltered Malacca Strait where the Srivijayan patrol squadrons were based; the first time such a manoeuvre is recorded.

Thirdly, they initially attacked Palembang with sufficient force to overwhelm the enemy capital–and it was located very defensively 70 km up the Musi River–proceeded to neutralise the opposing Srivijayan squadrons and then went on to devastate the empire’s tribute-paying states along Malacca Strait.

Finally, there was obviously some serious intelligence gathering and planning involved. It took time to assemble such a substantial fleet. The route had to be determined, supplies organised, manpower gathered, defences assessed, the location of Srivijayan patrol bases identified and all this took many months and needed to be kept secret.

Unfortunately, we know nothing of the size of Rajendra’s armada, and only a little of the type of ships used. The Cholas had no standing navy, so the vessels were requisitioned trading ships, and suspected to be of two main types: large ocean-going but undecked colandia vessels of around 20 metres length; and smaller twin-hulled kutta-marans (from which we get the word catamaran) which likely transported troops to shore from the larger craft.

To overrun garrisons of several hundred soldiers–and we know the Srivijayan force at Kedah was around 200 men, so Palembang no doubt had more–would require at least a thousand warriors, plus sailors and other specialists. A twenty-metre ship would likely carry not more than a dozen to twenty in addition to the crew over long distances, so just to transport the troops needed around one hundred colandias, with supplies requiring many more. Which suggests a fleet of several hundred vessels.

The timing was no doubt based on the monsoons but would also have had to consider the southeast trade winds blowing from the Australian coast and the chance of tropical cyclones. Chola mariners would have been aware that cyclone activity peaks in May and November, and that the winter monsoon–blowing from the northeast through to about March–would provide their ride home. Most probably they set out early in the year, taking a few weeks to cross to Sumatra with the wind abeam, and then edged down the coast. They were familiar with the trade ports of Barus and Tiku and probably stopped there to rest and resupply.

Perhaps they hit Palembang late in February or in March, overrunning the defences, pillaging the capital, capturing the maharajah (named Sangramavijayottunggavarman!), and loading up the legendary ‘Torana’ jewelled war gate to the city, among other trophies. They sailed north carrying out similar raids on Jambi (Sumatra), Singapore, Pannai (Sumatra), Kedah (Malaya), Lamri (Sumatra) and Takua Pa (Thailand) before turning west for home, stopping also at the Nicobars for a final stint of looting and plundering.

They did not bother to occupy any of their targets; they had no territorial ambitions. It was just a very spectacular raid and a punishment for perceived past Srivijayan injustices. No doubt the Srivijayan vassals wondered why the paid tribute to the maharajah in Palembang if not to prevent exactly this happening.

In fact, Srivijaya never really recovered from the Chola raid. In the aftermath, the capital moved to Jambi, and new leadership emerged, but kingdoms on Java–notably Majapahit–were growing in power, and soon overshadowed their Sumatran neighbour who had dominated them for the past six centuries.

The Chola empire itself faced increasing competition in trade and military power from subcontinent adversaries and lasted a couple more centuries. Emperor Rajendra I ruled until 1044; the empire reaching its greatest extent under his reign. He also built the impressive Brihadisvara Temple in his capital, now Thanjavur, and it is from a Tamil inscription on this temple that we are told the story of the great raid. These curly engraved characters carved in stone celebrating a major victory are the only record we have of one of the most impressive maritime campaigns of the era.

Greek Fire: How it worked.

Simon Pratt — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 08:59:33 +0000

GREEK FIRE: The mystery revealed?

Cloaked in an aura of myths and invincibility, Greek fire excites the imagination because it is a lost technology; an expertise mankind once possessed, now vanished into the sands of history. Surrounded by the breakneck pace of modern technology development, it is intriguing to realise that there is knowledge we once possessed but today have lost.

The legends surrounding Greek fire have developed over the centuries into some fantastical myths, but even with these stripped away, the truth is very entertaining. Scholars and enthusiasts have long heatedly argued over the concept of Greek fire, the weapons and tactics employed, the secret recipe of the concoction, the apparatus to pressurise and ignite it and the impact of its use on early medieval combat.

In short, Greek Fire was an early marine-based flamethrower, capable of setting fire to opposing ships at short ranges. Back then, of course, all ships were built of wood. At times it was also used as a land-based weapon, employed from fixed fortifications. Its employment was almost exclusively attributed to the Byzantine (ie, Eastern Roman) empire. Arabs and Bulgars reportedly captured supplies and apparatus at various times but were unable to operate the combination effectively.

What was it?

Much energy and ink have been spent trying to define what it was. What it wasn’t was any kind of explosive, or incendiary device fired by catapults. These certainly, were contemporary weapons, in use from Greek and Roman times, but Greek fire was different.

Actually, it was a system rather than a single item. Byzantine sources referred to the overall system as a siphon, and it consisted of a flammable substance pumped from a storage container, then heated over a fire or hearth, and ejected under pressure from a swivel that provided ignition as the fuel left the nozzle. Clearly, an early flamethrower.

Because it was petroleum-based, the liquid floated on water, burnt on water and could not be extinguished with water. Reports that it ignited on contact with water have been disproved.

Speculation about the supposedly long-secret recipe known only to emperors also skirts the facts that, broadly speaking, the substance was clearly a mixture of light crude petroleum with resins added to assist ignition, burning intensity and viscosity, as has been proved by recent tests.

Byzantine use of Greek fire

The first recorded use was in the defence of Constantinople against Arab warships in 674-8 AD, where massed fleets of attackers were defeated by a smaller squadron of liquid fire-equipped Byzantine ships.

A further Arab attack in 717-8, where a large fleet landed a huge army to besiege the great walls, was similarly smashed by fire-breathing imperial vessels, leading to a spectacular Arab defeat.

In 727 and again in 823, rebel fleets were destroyed or repelled by Greek fire sprayed from imperial dromons and biremes just off the walls of Constantinople.

The Byzantines certainly attracted attackers, and in 941 a Rus fleet supposedly totalling 1000 ships from Kiev came down the Bosporus when the imperial fleet was pre-occupied with Arab battles in the south. Just fifteen old galleys at Constantinople were quickly fitted with the Greek fire apparatus and proceeded to torch the astonished Rus flotilla. Reports indicate that each Byzantine ship was equipped with two or three syphons each, at bow, stern and sides.

In 970, a flotilla on the Danube–also armed with Greek fire weapons–blockaded the river, strangling the Bulgars into submission.

In the 1180’s and 1190’s again use of Greek fire is recorded against Venetian and Pisan ships by Byzantine forces in the wider Mediterranean.

But Greek Fire could only be used in certain conditions and with significant limitations. The weather had to be perfect, the sea calm with no wind. Today, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus are notably windy locations, so such issues would have seriously impinged on its usefulness. The other critical aspect was that the range of the ‘flamethrowers’ was very low, probably a dozen or so metres only. And of course, the Byzantine ships were also of wood, so accidental self-immolation or burning enemy vessels crashing into your own were real dangers.

How did it work?

Many researchers and enthusiasts have sought to reinvent the system, or set themselves alight trying, over recent centuries. Perhaps most convincing was a series of experiments by scholar John Haldon and his team, culminating in an enlightening demonstration in 2002.

Basing their equipment on the most reliable of Byzantine-era written observations and using only traditionally available materials, Haldon & co. produced a forged bronze two-man double cylinder force-pump, which provided the required pressure; an oil reservoir and heating system; solid pipework and a swivel nozzle for igniting and directing the blazing substance.

One vital element was the cylinder pump’s piston system, which was based on archaeological water pumps from the era, with the piston heads sealed with leather and tallow. The nozzle was bronze, and seals allowed it to swivel up and down and left and right, as observers noted was possible.

For the liquid fire, a light crude from Azeri fields was used. Six kilograms of various pine resins was added to a 50-litre drum of oil to increase combustion duration, and the mixed product was heated to 60 degrees Celsius to make it viscous, so it would not block all the valves and flanges with residue. The danger of blowback from the nozzle into the reservoir was dealt with by physically separating the heating process and the firing nozzle and fitting a non-return valve.

Flax fibres were used to provide an intense, fast heat source for the brazier, and these roared when the brazier was worked. A similar roaring was evident when the hot fuel was ejected from the nozzle, under pressure from the pumping system; a characteristic noted by observers that terrified their targets. Ignition of the fuel as it left the nozzle was provided by a small tub of oil-soaked hemp just in front of it.

The system when operated in a mock battle roared loudly, belched thick black smoke, generated intense heat, and destroyed a mock timber boat with several multi-second jets at a range of 10-15 metres. The mystery solved?

The end of Greek fire

Some claim it to have be an all-conquering technological wonder weapon that ensured survival of the Byzantines, enabling them to defeat all foes and confirming their mastery of sea warfare, and maybe there was truth in that. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, Byzantine decline coincided with their loss of access to the Caucasus oilfields during the eleventh century.

Petroleum oil provided the basis for Greek fire, and in Byzantine times, this was sourced from the North Caucasus: today the location of major Russian and Azerbaijani oilfields. These deposits are known for light crude, paraffin-rich, low in impurities and highly inflammable, and, importantly, where seepage from the surface is and was common.

These areas were near the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire at its peak, but by the twelfth century the rising Ottomans had subsumed much of Anatolia, cutting Constantinople off from its petrol source.

When the Fourth Crusade diverted from recapturing Jerusalem to pillage Constantinople in 1204, just when the Byzantines again needed their wonder weapon, there was clearly no stock of Caucasus oil to fry the French. Constantinople fell for the first time in a thousand years, and though the capital was recaptured and struggled on until Turkish cannons blasted down its walls in 1453, for its last two centuries, it was just a shadow of its former strength.

And with the death of Constantinople and the empire, the secrets of Greek Fire died also.

Sources: The main source is a technical journal article by John Haldon with contributions by Andrew Lacey and Colin Hewes, titled ‘Greek fire’ revisited: recent and current research from Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Fort Victoria, Ambon

Simon Pratt — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 08:52:21 +0000

A statue of local freedom-fighter Maria Tiahahu looking over the great bay of Ambon.

Fort Victoria, commanding Ambon’s superb natural harbour, started out life as Forte Nossa Senhora da Anunciada, a small two-bastion stone fort built by the Portuguese in 1576. This makes it the second oldest of the Spice Islands Forts (after Kastella on Ternate, dating from 1522), and only the fourth colonial fortification in Southeast Asia (after Malacca, 1509 and Pasai, Sumatra, 1521).

The Portuguese recognised the strategic dominance that Ambon offered its spice targets in the clove islands (Moluccas) 500 km to the north; and the nutmeg islands (Bandas) 200 km to the southeast, and had earlier built a fortified trading lodge to establish control. This lodge was located across the bay from Fort Victoria, near the site of the modern Pattimura Airport, but was later destroyed in continuous conflict with Islamic tribes who dominated the larger, northern section of Ambon Island known as Hitu.

To the Portuguese, and later the Dutch, Ambon was a great asset, not just because of its enormous harbour, but because the island consisted of a significant land area–unlike the tiny volcanoes of the Moluccas and Bandas–which allowed agriculture and cropping to provide foodstuffs for the region. Later, spices were also grown on Ambon.

The island additionally supported a large population which was split between Muslim and animist religions. This later group, based on the southern Lattimore peninsula were open to conversion to Christianity, and would go on to form the basis of a loyal Portuguese militia, and later the core of the Royal Dutch Indies Army (KNIL).

Ambon also benefited from its location between the winds; the tradewinds blew from the south in the middle of the year, allowing access to the Moluccas and Java, while the year-end northerlies brought clove-laden ships down from Ternate, and traders east from Java.

The very limited initial Portuguese fort was improved and expanded as threats developed. Both Ternatean and Javanese forces unsuccessfully attacked it, and it held off one assault by the Dutch, before surrendering to their forces in 1605. At that time, it was a well-armed and powerful fort, and there are suggestions that the fort’s governor was bribed to hold his fire.

The VOC’s Admiral van der Hagen upon capturing the fort renamed it Fort Victoria, to celebrate his bloodless victory. Over the years, the Dutch expanded the original fortifications to keep in line with modern concepts, and it formed the centre of a web of forts and blockhouses that extended through Ambon and the adjacent islands. Rebuilding was required after earthquakes in 1643, 1644, 1672, 1673 and 1730. The later was extremely destructive and required a complete reconstruction, whereby it was named Fort New Victoria.

All these modern defences, garrison troops and artillery were wasted however when the fortress surrendered to a British force without resistance in 1796. Back in Dutch hands, it was again taken by the British when it was bombarded by the captured guns of one of its nearby batteries in 1810.

Thereafter, for over a century, Fort Victoria remained the central base of the Dutch in the east of their Indies. With earthquakes and regular rebellions, it was rarely a quiet post. Indonesian national hero, Pattimura, after storming Fort Dursteede on nearby Saparua was captured by the Dutch and hanged in Fort Victoria in 1817, and remains an anti-colonial folk hero throughout modern Indonesia.

External threats were absent until the Japanese captured the entire Dutch colony in a lightning campaign in 1942. A hastily assembled Dutch-Australian force tasked with defending Ambon was overwhelmed, and the fortress occupied as the major Japanese regional base for the duration of the conflict. This led to Ambon being heavily bombed by allied aircraft, and the fortress was badly damaged during these raids.

Immediately following the war, Australian troops took the surrender of Japanese forces, but when the Dutch returned to resume colonial control, widespread rebellion greeted them. Eventually, after pressure from the US and the United Nations, independence was granted to the new nation of Indonesia.

Ambon, being a bastion of Christianity in a largely Muslim nation and a long-time provider of soldiers for Dutch forces, was decidedly unpopular in the new nation, and sought its own independence. This was quickly rejected by Jakarta, but the Ambonese unilaterally declared the Republic of South Molucca (RMS) in April 1950 at Ambon.

In already fragmented Indonesia, regional succession could not be tolerated, lest other provinces like Sumatra and Sulawesi followed. An operation to recapture Ambon was launched against RMS forces in July 1950, but the hilly terrain and guerilla warfare from RMS units hindered progress, as various Indonesian Army units slowly converged on Ambon city.

Eventually, after months of combat and severe casualties, the Indonesian Army closed in on Fort Victoria–the headquarters of the RMS. Rebels hiding in tunnels under the fort ambushed the approaching Indonesian troops causing more casualties. Leader of one of the attacking units, Lt Colonel Slamet Riyadi, was killed riding a tank in the final assault.

Ambon was virtually destroyed during the fighting; an Australian observer noted only four buildings left standing in the entire city. The old fortress suffered heavily from artillery, air and naval bombardment to add to its other, older scars. The RMS went into exile, and remain so today, based in the Netherlands, and still dreaming of an independent republic. In response to the costly military campaign to subdue the rebellion, the Indonesian Army formed a special forces unit, today evolved into Kopassus.

Following their victory, the Indonesian Army took control of the battered fortress, and maintain their hold on it today, 75 years later. It serves as the headquarters for Kodam XV/Pattimura Command, the formation responsible for defence of the modern Spice Islands. Significant parts of the perimeter walls, bastions and internal structures have been modified or demolished over the years, but surprisingly, much remains of some elements of the old structure.

Most fascinating, the bastions Geldrin and Hollandia are still apparent. These were modifications by the Dutch of the original Portuguese seaside ramparts, so within these old, scarred walls are no doubt some stones laid by intrepid Portuguese conquerors, very far from home, late in the sixteenth century!

The Cantino Planisphere

Simon Pratt — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 11:44:21 +0000

The spy with the gold ducats, and the duke.

Alberto Cantino walked swiftly through the dark streets of Lisbon, both elated and very nervous. Over a year of bribes and surreptitious questioning in Lisbon had finally paid off, and with what he finally had in his hands, he could expect a fine bonus from his boss.

Supposedly in Lisbon to buy horses, he was actually a spy sent by his master, an Italian duke, to procure a map. Not just any map, but the most advanced map in the whole world. Because the best maps in the world in 1502 were to be found in Portugal.

He had just secured that map–three large pages of parchment, adding up to a sheet about one by two metres–from his contact, who had been working on it for months, and that accounted for his elation. Now it was time to exit Portugal without getting caught, and that explained his anxiety. If he was apprehended by the Portuguese authorities with the map, he would be imprisoned and tortured.

And for the mapmaker he had just paid 12 ducats to, it would be much worse. Selling state secrets–maps–was a capital offence in Portugal at the start of the sixteenth century.

Portugal’s secret maps were collated following a debriefing for each returning terrestrial or maritime discovery voyage into the Padrao Real, or Royal Register, in the Warehouses of Guinea and India. It was an official from this ‘map room’ that pocketed the gold ducats in return for a hand-drawn copy of the latest update.

Cantino was lucky, soon got his map back to Italy, and presented what became known as his planisphere to the Duke of Ferrara, who was no doubt impressed. The duke ran a prosperous statelet in the powerhouse of northern Italy, but needed to continually demonstrate considerable military and diplomatic skills to keep the much larger Papal States, and the superpowers Venice and Genoa at bay.

When the duke examined the map, he was astonished. As was every other Italian who viewed it subsequently. North and South America, the Caribbean, Greenland, Newfoundland, all of Africa, India and the Far East had never been portrayed like this before. Ever.

Italy, birthplace of the Renaissance and home of the Papacy, considered itself the repository of modern geographical knowledge in all Europe. Now a backward little peasant kingdom on the remote edge of the continent had shaken the whole world order like an earthquake. The Portuguese had found a passage into the Indian Ocean, and across the seas to India!

All the priceless spices of the East, all the silks and porcelain, all the treasures that could not be found in Europe came across that ocean by ship, and then across the Levant by caravan and was then loaded on Venetian or Genoese ships for Italy. From there, the merchants of northern Europe had to pay huge markups, because they had no other choice. It was the primary business model of the north Italian city-states and had enriched them for centuries. And this map seemed to indicate that the business model’s use-by date was fast approaching.

Little Portugal kicks off the Age of Discovery

Portugal’s mid-way location between the Mediterranean and northern Europe gave it an advantage when maritime trading revived along this route during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Her outlook across the wild Atlantic produced hardy, practical and adventurous sailors.

A new dynasty of kings, the House of Avis, ruled Portugal from 1383 starting with John I. During his reign, Portuguese sailors began reaching out to the west and south, along the African coast. The Azores and the Canaries were discovered (or re-discovered), and Portugal, having freed itself from Moorish rule in the thirteenth century–long before the neighbouring Spanish–began her own expansion by taking Ceuta in modern Morocco, in 1415.

A later successor, John II, continued the theme of maritime expansion. Ocean-going ship design, celestial navigation and mapping techniques were in focus. He is said to have been fascinated by Fra Mauro’s world map of 1459; because it showed a potential sea route around the south of Africa. This would give access to the Indian Ocean, India itself, and ultimately, Marco Polo’s glittering China.

At the time, there was still considerable support in Europe for the concept of Ptolemy’s landlocked Indian Ocean. Ptolemy, living in Alexandria in the second century, had produced Geography, a treatise on how the Romans saw the world, and this text was rediscovered about the time the Avis kings were reaching out from their shores. Ptolemy envisaged a closed Indian Ocean, with no access around Africa. And, of course, the Americas were then unknown.

But the Portuguese were more inclined to view this concept as incorrect, based on the Fra Mauro map, and other maps by Macrobius, Cosmas Indicopleutes, as well as the knowledge of the Arabs, who were aware at the time the Indian Ocean was not landlocked.

With frustrating slowness, the mariners of Portugal groped gradually down the African coast, with Bartholemew Diaz finally being the first to round the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Four years later, Columbus, who was Portuguese-trained, made it to the Caribbean, asserting he had found the ‘Indies.’ But, of course, what he had found were the unknown Americas. The Indies were still a very long way away.

Around the same time, the Portuguese also found the Americas: Brazil. This was reached by taking a ride on the trade-winds from the doorstep of Portugal southwest across the Atlantic, which avoided the contrary winds off west Africa, and provided a much faster run to the Cape of Good Hope.

These were heady days for the Portuguese. As the century ticked over to the sixteenth, she was developing settlements in Brazil, had established a maritime route to India, and was already wealthy from the trade of gold and slaves of West Africa, where she had established a base at Elmina, in modern Ghana.

Spain and Portugal divide the world between them

Spain’s rulers, having completed the Reconquest of their country in 1492, were encouraged by Columbus’ discoveries and began their own Americas expansion. First were settlements on Hispaniola, then Cuba, followed by the mainland of South America, and then Mexico and Florida. Slaves and sugar provided the initial income, but soon silver began to flow in enormous quantities, funding the whole empire.

Early on, it became clear to both Iberian kingdoms that they would need to define the frontier between Portuguese Brazil and the Spanish settlements in the Americas. Portugal, having found a route into the Indian Ocean, was also extremely concerned that Spain would follow and impinge on its Asian targets. So, they decided to divide the undiscovered world between them!

Negotiations followed for some years, culminating in the Treaty of Tordesillas being signed by the two monarchs; John of Portugal and Ferdinand of Spain, in 1493. The location of the dividing meridian between the two empires became very, very important. But it was unfortunately not clearly defined.

It was supposedly a distance of ‘370 leagues’ west of the Cape Verde Islands. The length of a league differed between the two countries, and was not clearly specified. Which of the Cape Verde Islands was not also nominated, and they extend for 300 km from east to west. It was, in any case, very difficult to accurately measure the longitude of a ship before accurate marine chronometers were available centuries later. It was all deliberately vague, and was supposed to be verified by a combined voyage–which never occurred. Both countries proffered scientific opinions about the location of the meridian, which naturally differed greatly when translated to territory on the ground in South America.

The Cantino Planisphere reflected Portugal’s first ‘official’ opinion on the location of this line.

Portuguese Cartography and Navigation

When we look at the Cantino Planisphere, we see a combination of a stunning work of art, an amazing exhibit of cartographic science, and, as we have seen, a political statement.

The artwork itself is extremely appealing, and representative of contemporary standards of Portuguese mapmaking. The colourful coastlines, mountain ranges (including Table Mountain and the Atlas Mountains), forests, depictions of inhabitants and birdlife, multi-coloured island groups and the great cities of Jerusalem and Venice all add to the artistic allure.

Beyond the appearance though are some groundbreaking mapping concepts. Whereas maritime maps of Europe were common at this time, portraying the entire known world added new challenges. The Catalan-Majorcan portolan school used rhumb lines, compass roses and named towns, harbours and other landmarks perpendicular to the coast, and these elements are prevalent across Cantino’s map.

What is new cartographically is the addition of elements of celestial navigation. While Europe is shown basically as a portolan chart, the use of the tropics and the equator to link wider regions of similar latitude on a world chart is revolutionary. It shows the Portuguese had mastered celestial navigation at sea by this time.

Also notable are several scale bars to assist with long distance navigation, including an oblique one to somewhat address the issue of there being no projection used to display the earth, an oblate spheroid, on a flat piece of parchment.

And of course, there are other mariners tools aplenty. As mentioned, the rhumb lines and compass roses were needed to plot courses. Natural features are emphasised as landmarks for piloting. Seas are coloured to flag potential shallows and littoral dangers. Island groups are shown extensively, though clearly not with great accuracy; but as a warning to navigators that hazards are in the vicinity. And the lay of the coastlines all the way from Portugal to Sumatra are shown with reasonable accuracy to assist a coasting sailor.

As to political statements, the Portuguese royal crest–a blue shield incorporating five more shields, all on a red flag can be seen planted from Morocco to India, and in Brazil, shouting ‘these lands are ours.’ Crosses on the south African coast represent padroes; stone pillars marking Portuguese discoveries. Elmina Castle–site of Portugal’s gold and slave base in west Africa is shown prominently, again, to warn off interlopers.

By far the most spectacular political declaration though is the Tordesillas Meridian; a north-south blue line cutting through Newfoundland all the way down to Brazil at about 42 degrees west. ‘Do not mess with our domains’, it roars to Spain.

Where was the Anti-meridian?

While Brazil is shown correctly as extending south of Africa, a ‘southland’ depicted hazily south of India was perhaps meant to signify to the Spanish that there was no way around the Americas to the west. In 1502, the Portuguese had not yet made it this far south to confirm this, but they knew by then that Columbus’ Americas were not, as he maintained, the ‘Indies’ and were worried about their Iberian brethren beating them to China and the Spice Islands via a possible southern route.

This raised the issue of where the anti-meridian of the Tordesillas Meridian lay. Or, to put it another way, whose hemisphere held the priceless Spice Islands? Portuguese adventurer Ferdinand Magellan–who sailed to Malacca seven years after this map was drawn, would later sell a plan to Spain that the Spice Islands could be reached by exactly this method; sailing around South America. And of course, he estimated that they lay in the domains of Spain. He got the first point right, but the second wrong (they lay in Portugal’s sphere), and he was killed soon after, in Portuguese ‘territory.’

It was so difficult to determine the anti-meridian that after a decade of hostilities in the Indies, the Spanish relinquished their claim to the Spiceries for over a ton of gold from Portugal, in 1529.

A butchers curtain

The Cantino Planisphere remains one of the most important, if not the most important, maps of the Age of Discovery. It was the first world map to show all the main continents located according to actual exploration, and with relative accuracy. But it was very quickly obsolete. When it was drawn, Portuguese explorers had made it to India, but had only heard there of Malacca, China and Japan from others.

Not even a decade later, they conquered Malacca and by 1515 had sent an embassy to China. The only non-Iberians to follow in their footsteps that century were the French Parmentier brothers (who both died in Sumatra in 1529) and much later, Francis Drake on his circumnavigation in 1580.

Venice, under pressure in the Mediterranean from the rising Ottomans, and missing the bountiful trade revenues taken by Portugal, gradually lost ground and power, until its ultimate defeat by Napoleon. They even funded Muslim expeditions in the Indian Ocean to destroy the Portuguese. Portugal itself was swallowed by her larger neighbour in 1580, and her empire never recovered. The Duchy of Ferrara was likewise absorbed by the Papal States in 1597.

And the map? What happened to that? After taking over Ferrara, the Papal States housed Cantino’s Planisphere in a palace in Modena. During a little rioting in 1859, the palace was stormed by rebels and gutted, and for a time the map was lost.

It was very nearly another tragic permanently lost map. But in a piece of astonishing luck, the curator of the Biblioteca Estense saw the map hanging up as a curtain in a butchers shop in Modena and saved it.

It is now held in the Biblioteca in Modena, where under certain conditions, its magnificence can still be viewed.

The Last Grain Race 1949

Simon Pratt — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 12:17:25 +0000

In May 1949, two great barques lay off the South Australian town of Port Victoria. They were magnificent ships, but among the last of a breed. Twenty centuries of transoceanic wind-powered cargo operations would come to an end with their next voyage.

The sleek four-masters with their rakish bowsprits and soaring rigs lay at anchor where the Eyre Peninsula sheltered them from the westerlies of the Roaring Forties; year-round gale force winds that howl around the world, below 40 degrees south.

Once loaded with grain, the two barques would poke their bows out into the wild Southern Ocean, turn east for the rising sun, and plunge through the great swells to the legendary Cape Horn, 6000 sea-miles away. From the Cape it was another 8000-odd sea-miles to England. A good run for both legs was 100 days.

The two ships were starters in the very last of the Grain Races, bringing barley from Spencer Gulf to Falmouth, UK, for ‘orders.’ Pamir and Passat were both steel hulled nearly 120 metres (400 feet) long, 14 metres broad, and with four masts reaching up to 55 metres high.

On the three forward masts, when underway, they wore six square sails stacked one upon the other, reaching up from the main to the topsail, topgallant, royal and up to the aptly named skysail. The rear, or mizzen mast, carried fore-and-aft sails with a gaff rig–thus; the essential visual difference between a ‘fully-rigged ship’ and a barque being that the ‘ship’ has square sails above the mizzen sail, or spanker, where a barque has a fore-and-aft gaff topsail instead of square sails.

On top of their 18 square sails and two gaffs, they flew four jibs off the raking bowsprit, and up to three staysails between each of the forward masts, giving a total of at least 30 sails.

Such ships were run by a crew of two to three dozen men, which is not a lot for nearly 4000 square metres of sail, 66,000 bags of grain and three watches around the clock through the great swells and howling winds of the Roaring Forties.

Steam takes over

Regular transatlantic steamship services began with Brunel’s side-paddle SS Great Western in 1838. The first steam ship to round the Cape of Good Hope and sail to Asia, a British gunboat named Nemesis, arrived in Singapore in 1840. And in 1869 the Suez Canal opened, shortening the distance between the English Channel and Singapore from 12,000 to 8000 nautical miles. These were all portents of a new era in maritime trade. The days of long-distance sailing cargo ships were numbered.

It was not so much the economies of smaller crews that beat the tall ships–steamers needed a large contingent of coolies to shovel coal into the furnaces–but more that they could proceed in calms, and even against the wind. Seasons no longer mattered; the Doldrums be damned. And there was, of course, a great attraction in being able to reliably forecast a voyage’s duration.

Still, it took decades for sooty, coal-burning steamers to kill off the clippers and the barques completely. The glorious era of the clippers ranged from the mid to late nineteenth century, and following their demise, the great barques still crossed the oceans until World War II. And a little bit after.

Spencer Gulf

There were a number of ports around Spencer Gulf that loaded the grain ships; Port Lincoln, Wallaroo, Port Broughton, Port Germein and Port Victoria. Nick Brink, at the time an ordinary seaman, recalls the latter port in 1933, as he was picking up a cargo aboard Winterhude, from Robert Carter’s Windjammers: The Final Story…

In Port Victoria we worked every day except Sunday, although we would have to wash down the decks and tidy up before we could go ashore. It took several hundred buckets of water to wash down the decks, and this had to be sea water, hauled up by hand, even though we had pumps. We would row ashore to the Wauraltee Pub on the waterfront at the end of the main street, known by grain fleet sailors the world over.

Our weekly wage of two shillings and sixpence brought us a packet of Players cigarettes for sixpence and a bottle of wine for two shillings. We would go down to the beach and consume the result of our week’s work in several hours.

The Finland Connection

It is astonishing that two places on the globe so distant and different came together to be associated with the last of the long-distance windjammers, as Spencer Gulf and Mariehamn in Finland’s Aland Islands have done.

Nearly 15,000 nautical miles of some of the world’s toughest oceans lies between them, a passage ranging from 36 degrees south to 60 degrees north with notorious navigational dangers like Bass Strait, Cape Horn, the English Channel and the Danish Straits to clear. It was an arduous link under the best of conditions.

But Gustaf Erikson hailed from Mariehamn, and he ran the very last fleet of square-riggers to grace the world’s oceans. At sea since the age of nine, master of his own barque just a decade later, he had an eye for prime windjammers, and was most definitely not interested in steamships. During the 1920s, he began snapping up fine square riggers that had gone out of fashion with most shippers and were being offered at throw-away prices.

By 1930 his fleet of barques and schooners was the largest in the world, and he owned half the two-dozen-odd tall ships involved in the annual grain races to South Australia. This included legendary speedsters like Moshulu, which made Chile from Newcastle, NSW in 31 days, and carried author Eric Newby in one of the grain races; Lawhill which could top 17 knots and shipped the famous author Alan Villiers for a time; and Herzogin Cecilie, which was one of the fastest tall ships ever, topping 21 knots in a North Sea gale.

The Aland Islands had a long history of building and operating wooden sailing ships in challenging sub-Arctic conditions, manned by tough, hard men schooled in the rigours of the bleak Baltic and the storms of the North Atlantic. It was home to Erikson and a lot of old sailors and young lads who still, in the 1920s and 1930s chased the thrill and adventure of long-distance, blue-water sailing.

Spencer Gulf held the sheltered waters that bordered the baking, endless wheatfields of South Australia, and these fields produced a crop uniquely available six months after harvest in Europe, when prices were high. It also lay on the race track of the circumnavigator who sought the strongest constant winds on the planet to carry their cargoes. And it was not a route for steamships. The Grain Races would be the last hurrah for these magnificent sailing ships.

The Races

To be honest, the Grain Races were not pursued with the same insane determination as the earlier clipper era Tea Races. Extreme clippers of the late nineteenth century were once defined as having three differences to other fully rigged sailing ships: they had to be ‘sharp’–designed for speed not cargo space; they must be heavily sparred (masts, booms and yards) to allow carriage of the maximum possible canvas; and they needed to have a speed-crazed daredevil in command.

The grain races were more subdued, but still contested. They were not a race where all the ships lined up and started together, but they were races in the sense of elapsed time: how many days to make Europe. Firstly, in 1921 the Finnish-flagged Marlborough Hill took the honours in 91 days from Port Lincoln to Cobh, Ireland. A day was shaved off that the next year, and three days the year after. In 1933 the barque Parma, of Mariehamn, made Falmouth from Port Victoria in 83 days; a record that still stands. And its fair to say, will never be broken with a load of grain under sail.

Erikson’s barques always put in a good showing, and his Pommern, Pamir and Herzogin Cecilie all took the podium in various years. With war on the horizon, 13 barques set out from Spencer Gulf in 1939, ten of which were Erikson ships. Loaded after the harvest, they left Spencer Gulf starting in February, and except one, they made it to British or Irish ports before the conflict kicked off. Erikson’s Moshulu took the honours that year, and many called it the end of the races.

Post War

When World War II began, there were still 27 sail-powered cargo-haulers gracing the world’s oceans, a mix of three and four masted barques. Due to shipping shortages, they had a brief reprieve, but the war claimed a number of them. Erikson’s Penang was sunk by a U-Boat in 1940 with all hands, his Killoran scuttled by a raider and Olivebank went down after hitting a mine.

Pommern, Viking and Passat were laid up at Mariehamn for the war’s duration. Padua, owned by a German firm, worked in the Baltic, as did Moshulu. Other ships were interned or seized for postwar reparations. Winterhude and Archibald Russel were laid up and never took to the oceans again. Lawhill, Erikson’s first ship, which sailed the whole war between Cape Town and Australia was awarded to the South Africans, sailed for a few years but was then run aground and left to rot. Pamir was seized by New Zealand.

Old Gustaf Erikson passed away in 1947, but his son, Edgar decided to have one last Grain Race with the last of his square-riggers. Only two could be made ready to pass the safety surveys; Pamir and Passat. They arrived in Spencer Gulf from Wellington and London respectively, and loaded grain for the last time. On 29 May 1949, Pamir sailed for Cape Horn, and Passat departed two days later.

Passat overhauled her sister, and passed Cape Horn in daylight in the depths of the southern winter; the last engine-less commercial sailing ship to sight the famous landmark. Aussie deckhand Bob Russell aboard Passat describes it, and helps you understand why it was such a memourable experience (again thanks to Robert Carter’s book) …

At 2 bells in the afternoon watch, when we went up to change the main upper t’gallant, Bill sighted the Horn on the horizon. By 7 bells we were abreast of it and what a sight! I suppose it would be about a thousand feet at its four peaks and about a mile square. We could see great breakers crashing into its rocky sides and snow-covered peaks rising up. In the background were the great Andes Mountains standing out like great white pyramids rising up to the heavens. It is a sight I won’t forget for the rest of my life.

Pamir rounded the ‘Horn during the night of 11 July, too far to the south to sight it, leaving Passat to claim the final sailing ship view of the legendary Cape. Passat made Queenstown, Ireland on 19 September 1949 after 110 days out of Port Victoria. Pamir made Falmouth the next day. But there were no losers in that last race; every man aboard held a memory immortal.

Survivors

A sad ending of the era followed. After their last epic passage, both elegant barques were laid up in Wales as storage ships, then, when it became clear there was no further economic use for them, they were sold to shipbreakers. Maintenance, increasing regulation, crewing and insurance were ongoing problems.

A German syndicate came to the rescue just in time. They were converted to cargo/ training ships, and fitted–for the first time–with auxiliary engines. Transatlantic crossings to South America during the fifties continued for the two ships.

But in September 1957, disaster struck. Pamir went down in an Atlantic hurricane 600 nautical miles south-west of the Azores. Eighty of the 86 aboard were lost with the ship. Germany and the sailing world were in shock. Investigations revealed the cargo was poorly packed and shifted during the storm, the hull leaked and the radio was not properly monitored. Much criticism was levelled at the master, who was relieving the normal captain, but who did not survive the disaster.

In any case, it was the last nail in the windjammers coffin. Passat was removed from service. Luck once more intervened, and just before succumbing again to the breakers, she was bought by the Hansa port Lübeck and moored at nearby Travemünde, where she can still be seen today.

Poor Moshulu suffered a greater indignity, being converted into a restaurant at Philadelphia, where she remains, garishly modified. Parma had been scrapped in 1938, and Herzogin Cecilie had been wrecked in 1936 at Devon.

But thankfully, some of the elegant barques survived. The big Peking, purchased as a wreck for $100 in 2015 has been extensively refurbished to serve as a centrepiece of Hamburg’s Maritime Museum. The Viking, built in 1907 and winner of the 1948 Grain Race, also an Erikson ship, was saved by the Swedes and lies today preserved for inspection at Gothenburg. Last but not least, and perhaps most fittingly, the beautiful Pommern, winner of the 1930 and 1937 Grain Races lives on at Mariehamn, in the Aland Islands of Finland, where old Gustaf Erikson lies.

It is fitting that four of the last elegant barques remain in (or near) the Baltic Sea. It is a great pity that none still lie in Spencer Gulf, though there is the Polly Woodside in Melbourne and the James Craig in Sydney to remind us of past glories, when the oceans were wide, wild frontiers to be challenged by tough men in magnificent windjammers.

Many thanks to Robert Carter (Order of Australia Medal), a brilliant marine artist and tall ship sailor, whose great account of the final days of sail, Windjammers: The Final Story provided the inspiration for this post. All illustrations provided with permission.

How to get to Australia without Flying

Simon Pratt — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 14:10:38 +0000

On a recent trans-Atlantic sailing passage, I met Nono. She was returning from a concert in the US, and does not fly, so she had to sail back to Europe. Commendable.

I had mentioned my father-in-law also could not fly due to heart issues, and a few years back I had worked out two ways for him to get to Australia from Europe by land or sea–one of them without going near an airport.

The options I came up with though, were so long and arduous–and he was in his 70s–that he respectfully declined the ordeals, and waited for us to come to him.

Well anyway, now Nono wants to perform in Oz, and get there without flying, so let me show her, and you, how that could work. An age ago, I’ve done this overland jaunt from London to Hong Kong. And it is a long, long road.

The thing is though, back when I mapped this plan out for my father-in-law (before the Ukraine War and the pandemic), such a journey was possible via two main routes. I will look at those shortly. Unfortunately, Russia and covid mostly shut down those options, making a new path even harder to find. But let me run through the possibilities.

As everyone knows, the Land Downunder is far, far away from everywhere. It stands like a lonely sunbaked bastion, battered by three oceans, and over 150 degrees from Greenwich, nearly half a world away from Europe, and even further from the Americas. From Europe it is two massive eleven-hour flights, stopping once on the way (my preference being Singapore rather than the Persian Gulf) before you get into Melbourne or Sydney. And without flying, it is a very, very long journey.

The Overland Route

When I was a kid, my family did an airforce posting to Singapore. Back then, in the 1970s, some of our British RAF friends drove home to the UK after their posting. In Landrovers, of course, what else? At that time, they could pass through Burma, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, then into Turkey.

When, with my mate George, we drove through in the other direction in the 1990s in our old Ford Transit campervan, determined to get as far as possible to Oz without flying, Afghanistan was definitely off limits. We transited through Iran and Pakistan, and then over the mountains and into China near delightful Kashgar.

Driving in China for foreigners then was absolutely verboten, but when we arrived at the border post, Pira-Li in Xinjiang, it was so small and they had no experience with what to do about two mad Australians driving a battered Dutch vehicle heading for Hong Kong, and no-one spoke English. They put a cop in our van and sent us to the next town.

George and I already knew it was the end of the road for our valiant campervan (which had cost us a thousand pounds in London and had already been around the block a few times), and so we donated it to the People’s Republic and got on a bus for Beijing, 3000 km away. Much to the shock of the border guards. So, accordingly, I know the Overland Route.

In 2025, the Overland options are different again. Transiting through Iran and Pakistan are unwise today, and Russia not overly keen on free-wheeling motorists, so the self-driving Overland Route may be dead. Not fully Dodo-dead, as you can apparently drive your car in Russia if you like the idea of that. So, lets get stuck into the options.

Central Asia

Australia is generally southeast from Europe. About 12,000 km over land and sea. In a straight line. And keep in mind that is just to northern tropical Australia; one of the world’s last wild frontiers and very remote from the main cities far to the south, another 3000 km away. Darwin to Sydney is the same as Latvia to Lisbon.

Let’s say you start from Istanbul, astride the Bosporus that separates Asia from Europe and feel like driving yourself or taking local buses. The problem is after proceeding for 1500 km to the other side of Turkey–and passing through some amazing scenery, like Mt Nemrut and Mt Ararat, and restive Kurdistan–you arrive at the Iranian border. Not advisable to proceed these days.

Back in the nineties when George and I did it, we had to take a policeman in the van with us all the way from the Turkish border to Pakistan, whether for our safety or Iran’s, we were never really sure. We only had a visa for five days. And it was over 2500 km on terrible roads with terrible traffic and terrible drivers. Hard work.

If Iran is not your cup of tea, you could go north into the Caucasus. Again, stunning scenery, but you would pass through a recent war zone where Azerbaijan and Armenia went head-to-head for the latest episode in centuries of confrontation, or up into Georgia, which was invaded by Russia a few years back, and is sadly not at present a beacon of political stability.

Assuming these countries let you in and you then got through them, surviving their vertiginous mountain roads and unstructured drivers, you have the choice of going on north or east. North would be Russia, the problems of which we will cover presently, but suffice to say, there are lots of oil rigs and refineries in this stretch of the country, and a lot of high explosive Ukrainian drones zipping around. Better wear a hard hat if you go north.

Perhaps east is better. All you have to do is ferry across the Caspian Sea from Baku. You can pick to arrive in Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan if they will let you in. Turkmenistan, though ruggedly beautiful is reputed to make North Korea look very liberal. If you are still determined to go this route, its 2000 odd km of barren desert until you arrive at the Pamirs–some of the most impressive mountains on the planet, but often afflicted by Islamic insurgencies. And from there cross into either Kirgizstan or Tajikistan if you don’t feel like a wander through the minefields and sharia of Afghanistan.

If you drove and your vehicle is still operational by this stage–and your car’s Carnet de Passage still current (as Australians, George and I had never heard of this document and it was a real nightmare not to have one), after some more mountain roads and lots of overtaking around blind alpine corners, you arrive at the border with China.

More specifically, the unsettled province of Xinjiang, where the Han Chinese gradually grind down the spirited local Uyghurs. Not sure if getting into China over these borders is even possible; will depend on your passport. Be sure to check it out with some of your own diplomats (who will probably look rather pale when you ask).

But for me nowadays it is off limits. China is one of those countries, like Russia and Iran, that is not shy about detaining nationals of a country they have some other issues with and using them as negotiating leverage. So better be careful. I lived in Hong Kong for four years and travelled often on the mainland, but I would never enter the country again, because the risk is just too high of becoming a very unfortunate pawn in a bigger game. But each to their own.

Middle East

If the above traverse is not to your taste, you can always turn right in eastern Turkey, and roll very carefully down through Iraq–waving politely to resurgent ISIS supporters–or through the lawlessness of post-coup Syria. Either of which will probably void your travel insurance. (Let’s just assume that you would not be silly enough to head down through Lebanon and the Gaza Strip to Egypt, but if you do, be sure to wear a Free Palestine t-shirt.)

The problem would then arise–assuming you were avoiding Iran–that you would need to somehow traverse Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (ditching your rum before the border) and make your way across another 2000 km of horribly hot desert to either Dubai or Oman. Best to steer clear of Yemen. From the seaside at Oman’s capital, Muscat, you are now not quite half way to Australia. About 8000 km to go.

Perhaps then a sea voyage is possible for that last stretch? Let’s look at that in a minute.

Africa

Of course, if you were put off by Russia and the Middle East, you could always try the Nile. It will be impossible to get to Egypt without flying, as the ferries that used to run from Italy have been cancelled. Anything else in North Africa is really not in the direction you want to be going. To get to Oz from Europe, you need a lot of south and a very lot of east. And Libya and Algeria are all pretty well off- limits anyway, especially considering what is south of them.

It is about a thousand km up the legendary Nile (camel-ing around a couple of waterfalls) to Khartoum where it branches in to two rivers, giving you two fun options. The civil war in South Sudan, or the impending Egypt-Sudan versus Ethiopia conflict over the new Nile dam. And be careful in Khartoum itself as there is a civil war raging with millions displaced.

Australia is actually on the Indian Ocean–in fact the great lump of red earth that I call my homeland divides the Indian Ocean from the Pacific–so forgetting about boats for a moment, if you make it to the east coast of Africa, then you can almost see the west coast of Australia. Again, 8000 km away. Probably avoid the Somali coast, but Kenya should be nice, or Tanzania, the latter about 5000 km in a straight line from the mouth of the Nile. Don’t forget your mozzie net. And Aeroguard. Oh, and there is also the Mpox outbreak in this part of Africa, so no eating bush meat. To be honest, I would avoid Africa.

Russia

Now we all know the problems with Russia at present. Travel there–depending on your passport, but for example for Europeans it’s very naughty–is unadvisable for a number of obvious reasons, among them global sanctions, likelihood of arbitrary arrest for suspected espionage, coups, underpaid police, warlords, Ukrainian missiles etc, etc.

But, in Russia is the Trans-Siberian Railway, and as I tried to sell it to my father-in-law, it really gets you a long way east. About 6000 km east. Okay, you arrive at Vladivostok still 6000 km north of Darwin, but you can connect with trains there that should eventually get you to Singapore.

It is a very long trip, just the Russia leg takes you 16 days–which is a bloody long time to be on a train–with various classes available but not many trees to see. And it seems to be rolling again in 2025.

Now, some people would say you shouldn’t patronise anything Russian these days, but if like Nono, flying and emitting gallons of carbon is perhaps even more obtuse than paying a lot of roubles to Vladimir’s railways, it is just maybe one option. Even getting to Moscow these days is tricky, though there are direct flights from Belgrade and Istanbul. But, of course, Nono does not fly, so will need to take buses along the Turkey–Georgia–Moscow route to get to the station.

China

As outlined above, there is the faint possibility (depending on your passport and predilection to danger) of either driving your own car or taking local buses all the way from Turkey, through the Caucasus, a ferry across the Caspian and onwards until you make China. But onward from there to Australia raises some other issues that we can look into now.

Let us assume you made it to Beijing, by car, bus and/or train (commendations). Your goal now is Timor, not even a thousand km from Darwin, and excluding New Guinea (which we will discuss shortly) Australia’s closest neighbour. Beijing to Timor is do-able; five thousand km as the crow flies, or about eight thousand overland and island hopping.

India

Ok, just to regress for a moment to cover India. There is a very tiny window of opportunity to cross India instead of China, but when overlanding from Europe, you have to pick one or the other. Let me explain why India won’t really work.

Because we said Iran and Afghanistan were off limits, just getting into India from the west without flying is very problematic. Getting out into Burma is also tricky.

We all know Pakistan and India are not the best of friends, but there are border crossings between the two, sometimes open, and again depending on your passport, it may be feasible. But to get to India without going into China, first you have to get to Pakistan.

Because of the Wakhan Corridor of Great Game fame, there is no feasible route between Tajikistan and Pakistan without crossing China or a spur of Afghanistan, which we all agreed would be foolish. But there is a section of mountainous terrain all over 3000 metres high south of Tajikistan where ownership is disputed three ways between India, China and Pakistan. By this route, if you could somehow walk through the snow and minefields, you may be able to cross into northern Pakistan without entering China. Good luck with that, and winter would probably be best when the snow is several dozen metres deep because it keeps the warring soldiers apart.

George and I came over the nearby 4900 metre Khunjerab Pass–the world’s highest highway–to cross from northern Pakistan into China. But that doesn’t help if you wanted to avoid China.

So, say you made it trudging over the mountains without getting arrested (or shot) where the borders of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, India, China and Pakistan all meet, then headed south, from Pakistan crossing into India, took a train across India–around 2000 km–you would arrive in Assam (after skirting Bangladesh to the north) where there is a long-running insurgency against Indian rule. Not a place to dawdle, even if they let you in.

But just say they did, your next problem is Burma, or Myanmar as they call it now. Another strife ridden war zone of rebels, militias, unpaid soldiers, Chinese smugglers, opium traffickers with lots of jungle to cross as well as some of the widest rivers on the planet. Burmese are unlikely to be issuing tourist visas, and surely not to cross from Assam.

If you did make it through all that, should be an easy swim across the border into Thailand, and from there its comparatively very civilised travelling all the way down to Timor. But really Nono, India is a no-no.

Southeast Asia

I think we have shown that getting into then out of India is a fairly high-risk venture with only minimal chances of success. Probably paddleboarding from Muscat to Perth would be safer. So, let’s go back to Beijing, if you were gutsy enough to get there from either Russia or Central Asia.

From the Chinese capital, a string of rail journeys are possible all the way to Singapore, by way of Hanoi, Laos, Bangkok and Malaysia. Much more comfortable than the buses from the Caucasus. And all the countries along the way are well worth a visit and have great food.

In Singapore, jump on a ferry to Batam island, Indonesia, less than an hour from the island state. Once in Indonesia you can take advantage of the country’s inter-island shipping service, Pelni. While ticketing and route mapping can be challenging to work out, Pelni go everywhere in Indonesia, and there are various levels of accommodation to check out.

It will be likely to take at least a couple of weeks to make your way down to Kupang on Timor or Dili, in East Timor. As an example, from the capital, Jakarta to Kupang takes five days without changing ships and economy class (which is pretty basic, as in sleeping on the deck) costs just € 35 one way.

Now you find yourself in Timor, on the doorstop of Australia. But sadly, it’s a dead end. There is really no way to make it to Darwin without flying. Unless you swim. Flights leave from Dili in East Timor a few times per week, and its not even two hours away. Costs a couple of hundred bucks one way.

New Guinea

There is a closer neighbour to Oz than Timor; Papua New Guinea. If you were still feeling adventurous after your long jaunt from Istanbul, you could take Pelni ships to Jayapura or Merauke in Irian Jaya (the Indonesian part of the island of New Guinea) and from there cross somehow in to Papua New Guinea, hike across some jungles, mountains and rivers, and eventually arrive just 150 km north of Cape York, Australia’s northern-most point.

Lots of islanders travel by boat to visit relatives in Torres Strait, and its certainly not beyond the realms of fantasy to think that you could pay someone to take you across to Thursday Island, which is sort of the capital of Cape York.

Unfortunately Border Force in Australia have a long list of rules about this, and Torres Strait locals would not be interested in doing all that paperwork. This is a people-smuggling route and so its heavily policed. Trying to jump off your boat without first clearing customs and immigration would also be fairly risky, and if you got caught on the beach in Oz, you would be straight in the slammer, and probably deported immediately. Back to Port Moresby. That’s if the crocodiles or sharks didn’t get you before the cops.

In any case, you would not have an entry stamp in your passport, which would make it very challenging to get out of the country again.

Though it’s only a short hop away across the beautiful but deadly Torres Strait, it is probably only for adrenaline junkies that like crocs or prison food. In any case, New Guinea is a very big island to traverse, adventurers were eaten there by cannibals as late as 1961, and the tribal violence in the highlands and lawlessness in the capital, Port Moresby, is infamous. Timor is much better.

The Sea Routes

As a great big island, you are going to get your feet wet at least on the end of your non-flying odyssey Downunder.

The options are all with their challenges, and sea-sickness is the least of them. You can (i) jump on a cargo ship (ii) hitch a ride on someone else’s yacht (iii) buy your own boat and sail it there from wherever you like (iv) book a cabin on a cruise liner (v) take passage on some rare tall ship or sail racer that happens to be circumnavigating.

Let’s take them apart. First, cargo ships. This was the second route for my father-in-law, and from memory he could have jumped on a container ship in Rotterdam sailed through Suez Canal (no longer possible, thanks to Houtis in the Red Sea) and arrived in Perth after about 40 days. A four day Indian Pacific train ride then would get him to Sydney.

Until covid this was quite easy. Lots of companies offered spare cabins on freighters to adventurous travellers who didn’t mind missing the luxuries of cruise liners. It wasn’t cheap–around €200/ day per person–but if you had time to wait for the scheduled voyage, you could go pretty well anywhere. Trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific, Cape Town, Tahiti, the Caribbean, the Med…

But the pandemic brought it all to a screaming halt. Insurance, medical issues, visas, bio-security, immigration, liability and the problems of dealing with passengers on ships not designed or manned for this pulled down the curtains on what was an incredibly promising way to get around. Very sad.

There are only a couple of routes still offered, and they do not include a stop at Australia. AFAIK. These things may change, but I have been chasing shipping companies for a couple of years now since covid, and if you even get a response, it is No No No.

Yachts

Probably the coolest way to cross the moat to Australia is to get a ride (or here) on a yacht. This is a lot easier said than done, but it is possible. Phuket and Bali are probably the best Southeast Asian locations to pick up a ride on a cruising yacht heading Downunder, but you can also cast a wider eye and cut out a lot of overland bus and train travel. Muscat, Mombasa, Cape Town, Dubai and Portsmouth are also possibles.

And, of course, if you are not overlanding across the oikumene, you can approach Oz from the east. You can come over via the Americas. Trans-Atlantic sail, trans-American train, or road trip, and trans-Pacific sail. Simple.

In fact, the very best long-distance sailing route on the planet is to take the easterly Levanter on a yacht from Greece or Turkey, traverse the Med, catch the northeast trade winds across the Atlantic, transit Panama Canal, cross the doldrums and then grab the trades again which will take you all the way across the mighty Pacific to Brisbane.

Nearly 30,000 km, with the wind blowing from behind. That is Champagne Sailing. At eight knots it will take three months, non-stop from Rhodes or Istanbul.

If you had to pick one way to get from Europe to Oz, that is the one to take. But you need to like boats and lonely ocean crossings, and you need to find a boat willing to take you. It may require a long time to arrange a ride, or you might get lucky. Best if you have some sailing skills, and offering to pay for your berth will jump you a lot up any queue. Of course, there is a lot of paperwork. But most sane people will of course fly, so you should not have too much competition.

Failing hitching a ride, buy a yacht, and sail it yourself, or pay a skipper to sail it for you. One warning is do not, under any circumstances, sail west from Cape Horn towards Sydney or you will have the Roaring Forties on the nose for a horribly long time. A bus through Afghanistan wearing a miniskirt would be more fun.

And keep in mind as the old drovers say in northern Australia; Where you eat your Christmas lunch is where you stay for the next three months. This alludes to the cyclone season and gallons of rainfall which coincides with the summer downunder. Absolutely not sailing weather, and a fairly tricky time to hitch a ride on a yacht.

Cruise Liners

I’m no expert on cruise liners; the idea makes me feel a bit ill, but they do criss-cross the seas between Oz and Asia, and I would think one-way trips are plausible. Immigration and visas will of course always be a problem entering Australia, so you need to have your paperwork in order. You generally also need an onward ticket out of the place when you arrive.

Try the normal cruise companies, and maybe have a look at repositioning cruises that may have cheaper rates when the cruise ships make seasonal one way voyages. You can also come with Cunard direct from the UK (get a bank loan) which brings you to Sydney after 70 days around the Cape of Good Hope.

But I think cruise liners would pump out more emissions than an aircraft, surely?

Jump on a circumnavigator

It is quite rare to find, but occasionally one of the tall ships embarks on a circumnavigation of the globe, and you can jump aboard for certain legs. Remember, if you don’t want to fly into Australia, you probably do not want to fly out either, so keep an eye out for a return voyage.

Here are some sites to watch, here is one you just missed, and here are some Australian tall ships to check out. Failing that you could always join one of the mad round the world extreme sailing races as crew, jump overboard in the Southern Ocean as you pass Oz and swim to Tasmania. Probably safer than coming by way of New Guinea anyway.

Summary

In summary to our musician, Nono, first think if you like Russia and the Trans-Siberian. If so, and you are happy with buses and feel adventurous, start in Istanbul and proceed through Georgia up to Moscow, and climb aboard. Change trains quite often to get down to Singapore a month later, ferry to Batam, Pelni across Indonesia, and then decide if you can accept just a short flight from Timor to Darwin. Two hours. If not, hitch a ride on a yacht from Bali.

If you can’t stomach Russia, then it’s your own car, or buses across Turkey, Georgia–Azerbaijan–the Caspian Sea (ferry)–Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, or Kazakhstan–Tajikistan–China (donating your car to the People’s Republic)–Vietnam–Laos–Thailand–Malaysia–Singapore etc.

Remember Darwin is probably a long way from where your shows will be on in the big cities of the southeast in Oz. But you can take the bus there. If you are not sick of them by then. Only 4000 km and 70 hours to Sydney. Across the desert. Or the Ghan train followed by the Indian Pacific, much more civilised.

If none of that is to your liking, it’s a cruise ship or a yacht, probably from Asia. Just not around Christmas.

Let us know how you go. Your intolerance of flying is commendable. What an example you set to the rest of us! Best of Aussie luck to you!

Go Nono!

The Fortress of Rhodes

Simon Pratt — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 06:57:51 +0000

A UNESCO World Heritage site, the walled city of Rhodes is regarded as the largest authentic fortified medieval city in Europe. Frozen in time from when the Ottomans received its surrender after a bitter siege in 1523, its defences stand today much as they were 500 years ago.

Rhodes has a history stretching back through the mists of time, back to the Age of Gods. Local legend has it that when the lands were divided between the Gods, Apollo (the sun-God and son of Zeus) was away, and returned a bit miffed that he had missed out. But then he saw a bountiful island emerge from the sea, and convinced Jupiter that it should be his. And Rhodes was and remains, the isle of the Sun-God.

At 77 km in length by maximum 35 km in width, it is the ninth largest island in the Med; larger than Corfu, but smaller than Crete. Generally, the landscape is mountainous though criss-crossed by fertile valleys, but there are also areas of coastal plains. Pine and cypress forests cover around half the island. It has a coastline of over 250 km, with many small coves and bays to shelter small vessels. On the island’s northern tip, lay the city and harbours of Rhodes city.

Strategically situated at the cross-roads of the Eastern Mediterranean, Rhodes has an ancient maritime heritage. Closest of the Greeks to the riches of Egypt, on the edge of Asia Minor and at the crux of the Meltemi, the Levanter and the Sirocco winds, it’s craggy coastline hosted ports and harbours from Antiquity.

The Iliad mentions the proud Rhodians sending nine ships to besiege Troy. Later, Minoans and Myceneans had bases there. It was unsuccessfully besieged by the Persians in 490 BC, and again by Demetrius in 305 BC during the wars of Alexander the Great’s successors. But even in ancient times, Rhodes had formidable fortifications, and he too could not manage to breach the city walls, leaving all his expensive siege equipment behind.

The Rhodians sold all this equipment, and built the Colossus with the proceeds. And so, one of the Seven Wonders, their tribute to Helios, graced Rhodes’ main harbour for over 50 years. Until toppled by an earthquake.

Then came the Romans, who subdued the independent spirit of the islanders, and absorbed them into their Empire. Later, followed the Byzantines, Persians, Saracens, Seljuk Turks, and the Genoese. Rhodes location meant it was very contested. And hence fortified.

In 1306 the Knights Hospitallers, evicted from the Holy Land, decided to establish their base there, and they fought the Byzantines for four years to wrest control of the island. Once in, they would be very hard to evict, holding the coveted island until 1523. The Turks tried invading already in 1320, and threats from Genoa, the Byzantines, the Egyptians and the Arabs quickly convinced the Knights to invest heavily in their fortifications.

Not only were various attackers a threat to the walls, but earthquakes hit regularly (one had toppled the Colossus), and soon a new problem developed. Cannons started to come into widespread use, and they were very good at fast-tracking sieges. The thousand-year-old Byzantine Empire fell when Ottoman cannons blasted through its very sophisticated triple walls in 1453. It was a wake-up call for the Knights on Rhodes.

Gone were the high, thin walls and square towers of medieval times that were easy to smash with gunfire. The new science of fortifications required the trace italienne system of lower, wider stone bastions to both mount cannons, and to resist their fire. The solid rock that sits under the fortress, quarrying more blocks of limestone and defences for the harbours themselves all presented the engineers with considerable difficulties.

To keep the Knights focused on their upgrading works, the Egyptians laid siege in 1444; some bastions perished in a flood in 1476; the Ottomans attacked in 1480, coming very close to overwhelming the defences; and earthquakes struck in 1481 and 1513.

Long expected, the Ottomans were back in the summer of 1522, landing 100,000 men from 400 ships, and setting up their great guns to blast through the land walls. The outnumbered defenders had to repel almost daily infantry attacks, ships kept pressure on the sea walls and harbour forts, miners dug tunnels and set off mines, dropping sections of wall, and ammunition ran short. Three-quarters of the defenders had perished and no reinforcements could make it through the blockade.

But the Ottomans were also near exhaustion. Some reports have 64,000 Ottomans dying in battle over the six months of siege, with many more perishing of disease. In the end, Suleiman the Magnificent offered the Knights terms, which allowed them to depart with their weapons in return for handing over the fortress. The few that remained alive accepted and departed flying their colours, heading for their next headache for the Turks, Malta.

The Ottomans took possession of a battered fortress, but considering that either the Knights or the Spanish or some other Christian force was likely to be back, they set about repairing the damage. The fortress design was state-of-the-art and rebuilding rather than redesigning was required. After all, those defences had kept them out for six long months.

With time, as Ottoman domains expanded past Rhodes, the fortress became a backwater, and further upgrading over the centuries was not required. The defences of Rhodes were frozen in 1523, and unlike almost all other European fortified cities, the sixteenth century defences were not demolished for new designs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What remains is a time warp from the Middle Ages; one of the absolute best examples of early Renaissance fortress architecture anywhere.

Rhodes is well worth a look. But, like all places on the Med, peak summer is not the time to visit. A couple of cruise liners are normally present, disgorging many more people than reside in the old town. Mid-spring or mid-autumn are less busy.