The world’s first lighthouse

I was sitting in the cockpit typing this yesterday whilst anchored just off St Pietro village (on Isola di Panarea) and looking north-eastwards at the oldest lighthouse in the world, sitting about 10NM away. It is the shape of a child’s version of a volcano and there is a wisp of dark smoke emanating from the top, which is being carried by the gentle breeze in a thin grey band to the south-east. The lighthouse is of course, Stromboli.

This flaming beacon guided ancient mariners who were sailing south searching for the northern entrance to the Strait of Messina. Heikell’s ‘Italian Waters Pilot’ informs me that the volcano’s night light guided Odysseus towards the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis guarding the strait. (We will tackle that on Sunday).

Today, tourists sail at night around to the north-west of the cone to get the best view of the fireworks, but we decided to give that a miss; we will make do with the odd puff of grey smoke from here. And it pretty much puffs away continuously, which is why it doesn’t erupt violently from time to time, like Etna.

Having muttered in my last blog that all we ever see is limestone, I thought we could spend a few days bobbing amongst some igneous (fiery) geology. The Isole Eolie lie just off the north-east corner of Sicily and comprise seven volcanic islands. They include two active volcanoes, the other one being the Gran Cratere on Vulcano island. Heikell says that the islands are named after Aeolus, the god of the winds, who gave Odysseus the contrary winds tied up in a bag. Sometimes I wish we could have that bag. To my shame as a sailor, I still haven’t read the Odyssey, telling of the exploits of Odysseus who took ten long years to find his way home after the Trojan war. I feel that I should.

We had motored out of Capo D’Orlando on Tuesday, as there was no wind and the sea was glassy. And we passed to starboard the caldera of Gran Cratere which was puffing out white smoke as if a new Pope had been elected. We left the twin peaks of Isola Salina (which I nicknamed ‘Isola Sophia Loren’) to port and headed for Panarea, which mostly screened Stromboli from view.

The steep slopes of the islands are intertwining ridges and valleys where the lava has oozed down like a melting ice cream cornet and then frozen in place. Some slopes look ribbed, perhaps where the rainwaters have washed away rivers of pumice. The brown or grey rock is painted green by the low, shrubby vegetation that clings onto it for dear life. Some of the lower slopes have been terraced for cultivation.

We clambered into Ursa Minor yesterday (Wednesday) and tied her up the village jetty. If I showed you a picture of St Pietro and asked you where in the world you were, you might possibly say Greece. The houses are rendered and painted white, all the doors seem to be painted blue, the streets are random, winding and narrow. Only tuk-tuks, electric golf-buggies and mopeds impede your progress on foot. There were no donkeys though. There are neither street sign nor signposts, and very often your zig-zag way leads to in a dead end, and you then have to retrace your steps like in some Cretan labyrinth. Bougainvillea, sweet-smelling jasmine, olive and citrus trees spill over the walls. You stumble across the occasional bakery or simple church.

It is kept very tidy; there is no litter (unlike the rest of Sicily!). And there is a reason. This is the secret island getaway for the super-rich. We did actually walk past a private helipad. I could have walked past Lady Gaga for example, but I don’t know what she looks like. There are innumerable lovely, chic but discrete villas, with dry lava-stone walls and immaculately tended gardens full of flowering shrubs and perennials. All behind gates with signs saying ‘private property’. The rich and famous wouldn’t stand for dirty streets.

Anyway, my mission yesterday was to drag Alix southwards along a coastal footpath to Capo Milazzo. On top of this small yet dramatic headland, connected by a narrow isthmus, is a Bronze Age village dating from the 15th to 13th century BC.

Our walk there was lovely. It was a warm, sunny October day. We passed ancient, walled terraces that the locals would have cultivated. We dropped down to a sandy beach and I took off my shoes to paddle along the shoreline. And then we climbed – me barefoot - up the other side of the bay to look down upon our objective. The sea below was a shimmering turquoise and gin-clear. We could see swimmers from the day boats looking like pink clockwork frogs far below. The sky was deep blue and the hills above us were clad with countless prickly pears.

Ancient cultivated terraces.

These people originated from Sicily near Syracuse, and built a village of 22 circular stone huts. One is rectangular and may have been a public building. But the interesting thing for me is that the archaeological finds include a lot of Mycenaean pottery, which is why archaeologists have been able to date the site.

Capo Milazzo where 22 stone round houses have been excavated. Lipari (right) and Vulcano (left) are in the distance.

I was puzzled by the Capo Milazzo findings because I always thought that Mycenaean influence was eastwards, into and across the Aegean (Agamemnon, Troy, Minoan Crete and all that).

Plus, it’s a long journey west to get here from Mycenae. To get to Capo Milazzo from Mycenae, we would have to walk north for a day or so to Corinth, board Missy Bear and then sail westwards 80NM up the Gulf of Corinth. We’d then have a 280NM westwards crossing of the Ionian Sea followed by further 40NM sail north via the Strait of Messina. I wondered if these Bronze Age villagers had ever met their Peloponnese contemporaries? I would try to find out.

The artefacts are kept in the museum on the neighbouring island of Lipari, so today we set off early and motored across to Lipari for to search for the pots. Lipari is the most populated of the islands and has a holiday feel. The bay is dominated by a high citadel with defensive walls and the Cathedral of St Bartholomew atop. The church has the remains of a Norman cloister from Roger II’s time when he encouraged the Benedictine monks to form abbey here. But we were not here to find the Normams this time.

We parked up Missy Bear in a marina at the north end of the crescent-shaped bay, and walked around to the town, which occupies the bay’s central point. We climbed the winding streets up to the citadel, and reaching the top near the cathedral, came across an expansive archaeological site showing similar circular stone houses that we had seen on Panarea.

Extensive excavations on the high rock at Lipari also showing stone round houses of neolithic and Bronze Age eras, similar to those we had seen on Panarea.

I found the ticket office for the museum and paid 20 Euros for two. Well, what great value that turned out to be!

We went into the first museum building and were immediately immersed in a world of ancient container shipping. I was expecting to see Maersk spelled out in Cyrillic letters. It turns out that a lot of shipping passed the Aeolian islands enroute between mainland Italy and Sicily and to the Aegean and Africa beyond, maybe even Egypt. Maybe they used the light of Stromboli to guide them, but not always successfully. Even though most of the shipping simply intended to pass the islands, many ended up stopping there for good, after meeting an outlying rock. Some of the rocks off Panarea - that we had passed hours earlier - were popular culprits.

Some of the rocks off Panarea that have caused the fate of ancient cargo ships.

The invention of scuba diving in 50’s and 60’s had meant that there was a boom in underwater exploration and archaeology and many wrecks had been found. They were all cargo ships, except one 16th century Spanish warship. In the Bronze Age it turns out that it was Mycenaean naval technology that was common: sharp bow, curved stern, central mast with a square sail. And maybe one bank of oars for calm days? This design lasted through to Roman times.

Exhibit showing how amphorae were stacked in the holds of Mycenean cargo ships 3,000 years ago.

The ships carried hundreds of amphorae, and archaeologists can tell the date and location they were made by the shape and material of these containers. Many held wines and oils, but amphorae of porous clays would carry dry goods. They were stacked side by side in rows and on top of one another in maybe five tiers. They had pointed bases ad the lowest tier or jars was pushed into sand in the bilges to keep them stable and in place. Any gaps were filled with straw and twigs to cushion the amphorae against the boats’ motion. Very efficient!

So, in answer to my question, it turns out that the villagers of Panarea could well have met sailors of Mycenaean vessels; the Aeolian islands were on one northern trade route from the Peloponnese up towards Naples. A map I looked at shows the ships rounding the bottom of the Peloponnese, e.g., setting off from Nafplion (the port of Argos) and heading across the Ionian to Messina. The Corinth route would have been quicker, but then the Gulf of Corinth was a dead end in that time, well before even the first attempt to build it in the 7th century BC.

Graphic showing Mycenea's influence, through trade, was westwards as well as eastwards.

But we still hadn’t found the pots. It turns out that we were not in the correct building, so we entered another one and were immersed in amazing discoveries from the citadel of Lipari: decorated Greek vases; Greek masks for plays; Roman burial urns with pot lids (a whole body – not just the ashes - was placed in one in the foetal position); jewellery, makeup; Arab-made crockery from the Norman cloisters crockery and so on. But still no Bronze Age findings from Capo Milazzo.

So, I asked another curator and we were indeed still not in the right building! We were directed outside and across the courtyard to the ‘Minor Islands Prehistory’ building. Of course! Soon we were gazing upon our prize: a cup on a high stem from which food would be served for communal eating. Some of the stems could be a metre tall.

We at last found the high-stemmed pots unearthred at Capo Milazzo.

I was pleased we had found what we were looking and that we had visited a village that some 3,000 years ago had traded the contents of an amphora with a merchant who was of Mycenae, where I had first visited in 1987 on the trireme sea trials trip. I like connections.

We were amazed at how good and extensive the museum is. There is even another building dedicated to the history or the study of vulcanology. But we were 'cultured-out' at this point. Everywhere you look in the islands, you are reminded that you are on a volcano that started being active about 260,000 years ago, as the African continental shelf pushed and subducted under the Eurasian plate. And man has exploited the fact for centuries. Obsidian – a black volcanic glass – has been mined and shaped and exported for millennia. A shard makes a very sharp cutting tool if nothing else. Even some of the cobbles in the ancient streets of Lipari are made of obsidian.

The Stephenson family of Glasgow owned a pumice mine on Lipari. Some objects were dug up that turned out to be Egyptian from around 570 BC. An aryballos (a small flask) bore the name of the Pharoah Apries. Historians believe that this means that some of the early Greek settlers of Lipari included some Greeks from the Nile Delta or some Egyptians.

I had been tempted the think that Lipari, being a small island, had been bypassed by the civilisations that we had become used to reading about on our trip. But no, they had all been here in Lipari and left their mark.

And the voyage of Missy Bear is getting a stronger eastern flavour...