Harper's Round Table, March 16, 1897

by Various

The story of Greece's struggle for independence both by land and by sea has formed the subject of many volumes of prose and verse. But among all the heroes of those stirring times there are two whose names will live on the roll of fame—Constantine Canaris, the fearless and enterprising sailor, and Marco Botzaris, the guerilla chieftain.

Let us begin with Canaris, whose achievements were the greater by reason of his surviving all the manifold dangers of this most cruel of wars; Botzaris, on the other hand, succumbed to a Turkish bullet long before Greece was liberated. Let the reader glance at a map of the Grecian Archipelago, and among its numerous islands he will find one named Ipsara, about midway between the mainland of Greece and the coast of Asia Minor. It was on this barren and desolate stretch of rock that Constantine Canaris was born at the close of the last century. Until the war of independence broke out in 1821 he pursued the humble calling of fisherman, but at the outbreak of the revolution he abandoned everything to espouse the cause of his country. His wife, an ardent patriot herself, and the mother of three children, whom she had proudly named Nicolas, Lycurgus, and Miltiades, in honor of the past glories of Greece, urged her husband on in his resolve.

And so Canaris went to the front. He was destined soon to be heard from. The fighting at the commencement of the war was confined to the Greek mainland, especially the Morea, or ancient Peloponnesus; but the bad condition of the roads throughout Rumelia obliged the Sultan to send his re-enforcements by water through the historic Dardanelles. The fishermen fighters of the archipelago felt that here was their opportunity. The inhabitants of the three islands of Samos, Ipsara, and Hydra equipped a flotilla, and started out to intercept the oppressor. Now inasmuch as the Turks possessed double-deckers and frigates carrying an untold weight of metal as against the light and poorly armed craft of the Greeks, it was not to be supposed that the latter would venture on a struggle at close quarters. The lessons of the past were there to teach them that their sole hope of salvation lay in the skilful use of the fire-ship, and they adopted this system of warfare with one accord. It required a high order of seamanship to carry it on with success and a thorough knowledge of the actions of the tide and wind, for a slight miscalculation not only involved a failure of the enterprise, but the almost certain destruction of the aggressor.

There were various modes of attack. As a usual thing, an ordinary fishing sloop or schooner, filled with combustible material—tar, pitch, oil, sulphur, etc.—and navigated by half a dozen fearless patriots, would be directed at dusk against the enemy's ships lying at anchor. When the messenger of destruction arrived within a few hundred yards of the intended victim, the temporary crew applied the torch to tapers placed at intervals among the combustibles in the hold, and then lowered themselves into a small boat to row off to a safe distance. Carried by the wind and current, the fire-ship stole on in the darkness, the fire having in the mean while taken hold in good earnest. On, on it went into the midst of the Mussulman's ships of war, the flames now darting from its sides in huge tongues, sparing naught upon its path. Panic-stricken and forgetful of all discipline, the Turk became a ready victim to the avenger. His first thought was to cut his cables, but this measure made matters worse, inasmuch as the big ships, once loose from their moorings, usually collided with one another, and rendered their own destruction only the more certain.

The scenes that followed the incursion of the flaming avenger beggared all description. It became a choice between a fiery and a watery death, for the unfortunates who had survived the explosions of the powder-magazines, and even those who hoped to reach shore by swimming, were doomed to destruction at the hands of the vindictive patriots hovering near in small boats. For it must be remembered that this was a war to the knife on both sides, in which quarter was neither asked nor given.

But to return to Canaris. His first naval success was obtained under the orders of a man whose name is venerated as one of the greatest heroes of the war of independence, Admiral Andrea Miaulis, after whom one of the Greek war-ships now on service in Cretan waters is named—the Navarchos Miaulis.

The Sultan was sending an army to besiege Missolonghi on the Gulf of Corinth, and his mighty fleet had covered about half the journey between Constantinople and that stronghold when it sighted a Greek squadron off the island of Lesbos. Miaulis had a comparatively strong force at his command and was tempted to try conclusions with the foe at close quarters, but Canaris, with greater long-sightedness, realized that his countrymen could ill afford to assume so great a risk, and although a mere subordinate, entreated the Admiral, on his bended knees, to be allowed to first attack the Turks with a few fire-ships. Miaulis had given the signal to clear the decks for action, and at first resented the interference.

"Your Excellency has but one fleet, and the Sultan has a dozen," persisted Canaris. "Our deaths will not atone to our country for the consequences of our defeat and destruction!"

The veteran fighter soon caught the drift of the younger man's argument.

"So let it be," he exclaimed. "Zito Hellas!" (Long live Greece!) And muttering an invocation to his patron saint, he ordered Canaris to proceed with his plan.