Hydra Island
From Poros the hydrofoils speed on round Cape Skylli to Hydra, a baffling and sometimes infuriating island fashioned from uncompro¬mising grey rock. Though barely five miles wide it is nearly twenty in length, yet few of its throngs of summer visitors penetrate beyond the harbour on the north coast. There are good reasons for this, the chief one being the harbour’s overwhelming beauty, partly natural and partly man-made. The rocky amphitheatre which encloses it is perfectly proportioned, the horseshoe inlet is deep and still, and without any conscious planning the houses rise harmoniously like the crowded seats of a Greek theatre. What is more, many of the houses on the lower tiers are buildings of distinction - the archontika,
nineteenth-century homes of the Greek sea captains, or kapetanaioi, who made the island, its sailors and its shipbuilders famous. Some are still lived in by their descendants, while two of the finest are open to visitors. Out of this small island have come some of the greatest sailors the Mediterranean has bred. Admirals, shipbuilders and fight¬ers, their ships drove the Turks out of the Aegean, while they and their statesmen were largely responsible for the ultimate liberation of Greece.
There is no evidence that Venice ever controlled Hydra, though Venetian traders would have used the harbour, which has an Italianate air; there are said to be Venetian names among the Hydriot families, and Venetian terms are used in shipbuilding and sailing -though that is true of most harbours in the Aegean. An important event, however, was an influx of Albanian refugees during the six¬teenth and seventeenth centuries, a stream of vigorous highland blood which may have contributed to the island’s later triumphs.
The foundation of Hydra’s greatness was laid in the eighteenth century, when the reviving commerce of the Peloponnese, together with the grain trade with southern Russia, provided the islanders with an outlet for their energy and ability. ‘From here’, as one of them exclaimed, ‘we ruled the Aegean. From this harbour our sakturias swept between island and island. We carried all the trade that passed between Asia and Europe!’ There may be some Greek hyperbole here, but the sakturia, a fast and seaworthy sailing ship of about fifteen tons, was the Hydriots’ great contribution to maritime pro¬gress in these waters. With the expansion of trade they turned to building a larger type of merchant ship, the latinadika, a lateen-rigged vessel of about fifty tons. They began to trade as far afield as Constantinople in the north and Alexandria in the south. Venice and Trieste in the Adriatic were ports of call, and soon Marseilles and the southern coast of France came to know the seamen of the Aegean.
Hydra, Spetses and Psara (off the western coast of Chios) became known as the ‘three Naval Islands’, and they provided a large part of the Greek navy during the War of Independence. Hydra in particular had grown wealthy during the British blockade of Europe during the Napoleonic wars, when she was able to trade freely with both sides; when Psara was attacked and depopulated by the Turks in 1822 she and Syros inherited much of its trade. Hydra’s wealth which had depended latterly on the grain trade with southern Russia, declined during the nineteenth century, as the Russians took to building their own ships. It declined even further as the ports of Ermoupolis in
Syros and then Piraeus gradually monopolized the trade of the Aegean.
Hydra revolted from the Turkish rule in April 1821. Her fleets and admirals immediately flung themselves into the struggle, including the Greek naval Commander-in-Chief, Andreas Miaoulis, whose statue stands in the great Plateia Miaoulis on Syros. It is no exaggera¬tion to say, as a Greek historian has put it, that ‘the final deliverance of Greece was mainly due to the fleets of Hydra’. It was the Hydriot fleet which supplied and eventually relieved Mesolongi, where By¬ron died during its long ordeal under siege. The archontikon which today houses the Academy of Fine Arts belonged to Iakovos Tom-basis, the admiral who sank the first Turkish battleship. Another belonged to one of the Tsamados brothers who fought in nearly all the sea battles of the war, and is now the Merchant Seamen’s Train¬ing college. Of the two which are open to the public, one belonged to the wealthy Koundouriotis brothers, also prominent in the war at sea, the other to Demetrios Voulgaris, who was Prime Minister of Greece from 1855 to 18
Little of the dignity of those days survives, but one refuge from the crowds who drink and guzzle on the waterfront, or spill out from cruise liners to wander mostly mindlessly along the quays, peering into the depressingly trivial curio shops, is the monastery of the Koimisis tou Theotokou (the Dormition of the Virgin Mary), whose entrance from the harbour goes mercifully unnoticed for most of the time. The gateway leads into a peaceful courtyard with an orange tree; the katholikon is modern inside but has an impressive templo in grey marble with some elaborate carving. The rooms around the upper storey of the courtyard are no longer monks’ quarters, but offices of the Mitropolis, for this is an important religious centre where you may see a gathering of venerable priests on special occa¬sions. Then the bells on the campanile above the gateway ring out, and if some patriarch of the Church is arriving or departing then the cannon mounted on the platform at the entrance to the harbour will fire a resounding salute.Another reason why most visitors stay put in the harbour is that there are no motor roads and no motor vehicles apart from a few trucks engaged on essential services. To reach the isolated monaster¬ies high among the inland hills - one is just visible from the harbour - you must walk or hire a donkey. Nearest (about an hour’s climb) are those of Prophitis Ilias and Agia Evpraxia, the latter a convent where the nuns weave and embroider fabrics for sale. Beaches are