Adieu to the Agean (for a while)
Vasco da Gama
Ian Strathcarron
Wed 31 Aug 2011 10:10
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The outstanding visit I made during our meander
between SW Turkey and the Dodecanese Islands was to the Castle of St. Peter in
Bodrum. I took a day trip on a high speed ferry from Kos, which took 35
minutes.
The castle is the most beautiful Crusader castle I
have visited so far, partly because of its location, but mostly because it's
inhabited and furnished, and it's easy to imagine life going on.
We visited several castles in Syria, including the extraordinary and huge
Crac des Chevaliers, but they were empty and stripped bare, so that only
bare stone walls and dusty stone floors and battlements were visible, but St.
Peter's has colour, light, plants, hens, a cockerel and cats, also
wells, furnishings, wall hangings and coats of arms, and still bustles with
life.
It's built on a peninsula between two harbours at
the entrance to Bodrum and the dazzling blue sea is visible on three sides,
behind battlements, arrow slits, mullioned windows, at the top of towers, or
from drawbridges to dungeons and prisons. The Crusaders arrived here soon
after being expelled by Saladin from the Holy Land at the fall of Acre in
1291. They first set up a base in Cyprus, where there are still many
castles to visit and in Famagusta, the ruins of the 365 cathedrals,
abbeys, monasteries and churches they built. After their defeat by
the Arab army, their new enemy became the Ottoman Turks and the Italian
cities of Genoa and Venice, who had established a network of colonies along
the Aegean trade routes, needed protection from the Turks and gave shelter
to the Knights Crusaders of St. John in Rhodes. The Knights made their
base in Rhodes for the next 200 years and the nearby castles of Bodrum and Kos,
both within easy reach of Rhodes, were built in the early 1300s and became
centres for attacks against Turkish merchant ships.
Today the castle is also home to the Museum of
Underwater Archeology. This new science was pioneered by Professor George
Bass from the Universities of Pensylvania and Texas. He and a team of
divers and archeologists, both Turkish and American, explored the undersea
area, where several wrecks had been reported by the sponge divers from Symi
and Kalymnos. The wrecks were salvaged, including their amazing
cargoes and all are displayed in various towers of the castle. One
shipwreck, discovered in 1960, known as the Uluburun Shipwreck, was
carrying its cargo of mostly copper ingots (many displayed, and all in the shape
of ox hides). The wreck and its cargo have been dated to 1500 BC - the
late Bronze Age, and indeed the copper ingots would be used to make bronze by
alloying the metal with tin, a quantity of which was also discovered. In
the hall where the wreck is displayed there is a video showing some of the
exciting discoveries from the wreck being brought to the surface. As well
as the ingots there were piles of cobalt blue glass in flat-round shapes,
together with a large amount of elephant ivory, hippopotamus teeth and
ostrich eggs - these would have been the raw materials for jewellery.
There was also a golden chalice and from the seals, weights and lamps
found, the ship has been identified as originating in the area of
Syria/Palestine, which sank after and having made a trading visit to
Cyprus to pick up the cargo, much of which must have arrived
from Ancient Egypt.
The well-defended inner castle
is approached via seven gates. Each gate has been planted with
evocative Mediterranean plants - plane trees, olives, myrtle, oleander, bay,
pomegranate and mulberry. In one of the walled gardens stand rows of
amphorae (from the Greek amphi - two sided and
phoros -portable). These were used for transporting wine, olive oil
and dried food from the earliest times until the 20th
Century.
Arriving back into 21st Century Kos was a bit of a
shock. It's such a centre of mass tourism and there's hardly an inch of
beach around Kos town that does not have bikini-clad bodies sunbathing on
it (everyone, of any shape and size wears a bikini, tho' topless sunbathing
is not practised, much to Ian's chagrin. From Kos we sailed north
into some more remote islands, which still have a lot of charm, with hillsides
grazed by goats, bee hives everywhere, and small fishing
harbours. The engine crisis in Leros has been identied as a gear
box failure - not too serious - but Vasco is out on the hard and I am
ensconced in a very comfortable hotel for the last few days of this
trip.
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