Spetses was never off my horizon, at least during my youthful summers on Hydra, or in subsequent years, when I visited my cousin’s house, with its unmatched sea views. A low-lying island to the south, in between the granite fastness of Hydra and neighbouring Dokos, Spetses was easiest seen during the night as its lights flickered in the distance.

I was also aware, as a Greek American kid from a maritime family, that Spetses, like our own island of Hydra, played a fundamental role in the resurrection of the Greek state in the 1820s, and in the foundations of the Modern Greek merchant marine. However, aside from a couple of quick day trips as a child, the island might has well have been another country, out of mind, though not quite out of sight.

Over the past several years, as I have spent considerable time developing the merchant marine story as well as participating in Hydriot and Greek-American celebrations of the Greek Revolution’s Bicentennial, where naval superiority provided by tiny Hydra, Spetses, and the even more diminutive Psara played a pivotal role.

A journey of discovery – Spetses

Having focused so heavily on Hydra, it made sense for me to begin a journey of discovery about Spetses. Happily, after a decade’s absence from Greece, I returned to continue research in Hydra, both at the island’s incomparable Museum and Archives, but also at the Hydra Nautical Academy, the oldest in the world. From my cousin’s house, the lights of Spetses beckoned.

Dina Adamopoulou, the Director of the Hydra Museum and Archives (and a national treasure herself) took out her phone and arranged a meeting with the Director of the Spetses archives, Demi Tasouli. This is the beauty of Greece, personal backing, and goodwill open doors quickly, and in this case, to a trove of interesting material. To be honest, as in travel, getting to the research is often as fun as, and as important, as the destination or research itself.

Arriving at Spetses, the contrasts to Hydra predominate in my mind. Spetses is largely flat and more heavily wooded than Hydra, its topography readily resembling the Peloponnesian shore close by. A long pier (called by the Italian name “Molo” in Greek) receives the fast catamarans from Piraeus and neighboring islands. Unlike Hydra, there are motor vehicles in Spetses though the center allows only moped or three-wheel traffic.

I am taken by Demi in a three-wheeled motorbike, and we speed off along the seaside road to the archives, housed in an Aegean whitewashed building, the sidewalk to which had inlaid pebble mosaics, with nautical themes in use since antiquity. Below us stretched the great harbor of Spetses, for centuries (indeed, until recently) a hive of shipbuilding activity.

Archives are a relatively new experience for me, so it can be daunting, but suffice to say that in folders, files, and fiches, the raw materials of books and stories become part of wisdom. What is included or excluded is a matter of choice, sometimes unconsciously, other times consciously. You cannot help to feel both a weight and an incredible responsibility. Focusing on one prominent family with some key American connections, the Botassi family, the archive index read like a timeline both mundane and seminal events in Greek history, from correspondence on freight in Trieste, debt, and real estate transactions, to preliminary activities associated with the outbreak of the Greek revolution.

Talkin’ about revolution

It was Spetses which first raised the standard of rebellion among the three so called ‘nautical islands.’ The island also participated, to their absolute destruction, in the Russian-instigated Orlov Rebellion in 1770. Hydra stayed out of the latter and prevaricated a bit before joining full-throttle the revolt in 1821, inspired (perhaps guilted, too) by the patriotic stance of their Spetsiot neighbours. After tagging documents to be read in detail later, Demi drove me around the great harbour of Spetses, which only recently ceased its role as a center for any number of Karnagia (boatyards) building wooden ships the traditional Aegean way, but in the era of Spetsiot shipping dominance this bay was a full-on industrial site, with ships of various sizes (including tonnage banned by the Ottomans in a justifiable fear of their dual use) being built on site by skilled maderos often using local forests.

Like Hydra, pre-Revolutionary Spetses was an island functioning as an autonomous state within the Ottoman Empire, and its population was fully oriented towards the sea. Remnants of Karnagia still exist, along with repairs of the occasional wooden boat, but most now have become tourist restaurants and bars, as Spetses, like Hydra, realises the dividends (and distortions) of a mass tourism boom.

While both Spetses and Hydra managed to fight off Ottoman attacks on their islands, in contrast to the distant and hideously exposed Psara, which was put to fire and sword by the Turks in 1824, Spetses did not recover its pre-war primacy in merchant shipping. Key Spetses families became part of the new Greek elite settling in the Ottoman village flanking the greatest monuments of the Classical Era chosen by the new Greek Kingdom to be the nation’s capital, and while the glory days had passed, Spetses retained its popularity as a tourist site for wealthy Athenians prior to the tourist boom. Various mansions and villas, both old and elegant and modern and sleek, yet conforming to strict architectural codes and styles, provide a languid, old money elegance to the town.

My stay was too brief, I insisted on a lunch with Demi and her husband Alexandros, and we had the types of discussions typically of Greeks in conversation. With the craggy silhouette of Hydra in the distance, our chat veered to topics like those in Hydra (or elsewhere, such as in coastal South Carolina). How to deal with the rise in the cost of living, how to protect and embed culture, history, and identity in the context of financial pressures and globalisation?

Island history and contributions

Finally, how to tell the story of these islands in a way that highlights their incredible contribution to Greek, global, economic, and naval history, both to us, whether in Greece or the Diaspora, or, more importantly, to the rest of the world.

With the catamaran scheduled, I rose from an Aegean meal for one last quest. A Spetses flag. Like Hydra and Psara, Spetses possesses its own flag, though during the revolution these flags were not used in battle (this is for yet another discussion). Nonetheless, the flags are key reference points in each island’s identity, flown with pride by each island, and prominent in every islander’s household (including mine). With minutes to spare, I found an open store with a Spetses flag, to top off a rewarding and all too brief trip which demands an encore soon.

Alexander Billinis is a Greek-American historian with a special interest in Greek maritime history, a university lecturer, and lawyer.