“Little Malta”: Psara and the Peculiarities of naval warfare in the Greek Revolution

1 The rise of Ottoman Greek merchant shipping

Traditionally, Psara is mentioned in association with the islands of Hydra and Spetses in the Argolic Golf (close to the Peloponnesian coast), a triplet of maritime communities which dominated shipping and maritime commerce before the Greek Revolution and which formed the “fleet of the three islands” (τρινήσιος στόλος), the naval force that conducted the war at sea against the Ottoman armada after 1821. The impressive rise of these insular communities in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was due to favorable international circumstances. Successive wars, from the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence to the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, allowed Greek shipowners to challenge Western predominance in eastern Mediterranean maritime commerce. The exclusion of western Europeans (especially French merchants) from the east–west sea routes left a vacuum filled by Greek captains, who profited from the increasing demand in European markets for cereals due to successive blockades.^[3] They extended their naval operations in geographical terms to Italian, French, and Spanish ports, as well as into the Atlantic and to Central and South American ports, while facilitating the growth of their fleets’ size and tonnage.^[4] The small and infertile islands of Hydra, Spetses, and Psara functioned as transit nodes and storage hubs for cereals bound for the western Mediterranean (and beyond) and transported by local captains as well as by captains from further islands such as Mykonos, Santorini, and Kasos.^[5] These cereals (grains as well as wheat and barley) came largely from newly founded Russian ports such as Odessa on the Black Sea coast, but also Taganrog on the Azov Sea coast, where many Psarian refugees had settled after the Russian–Ottoman War of 1768–1774.^[6] Despite general export prohibitions, a portion of these cereals also came from Ottoman lands, especially Thessaly, western Asia Minor, and, increasingly, the Peloponnese.^[7]

Considerable profits were, as a rule, reinvested in maritime enterprises, including an invigorated shipbuilding industry and the manufacturers connected with the furnishing of vessels.^[8] This development went along with a transition from lateen-rigged ships (suitable for coastal and transit trade) to large square-rigged vessels (suitable for “deep sea” or “blue-water” activities). In the merchant marine of Psara in particular, one may observe at the turn of the nineteenth century a transition from the standard “saccoleva” (a small, one- to three-masted vessel with a trapezoid sail and a tonnage of 25–50 tons) to the “polacca” (a larger, three-masted, square-rigged vessel that could reach 200 tons) and, after 1815, to the “brig” (a two-masted, square-rigged vessel up to 350 tons) which became the standard ship type of the Greek Revolution’s navy.^[9]

Although the importance of piracy for capital accumulation in the Aegean has been probably exaggerated, it seems that Psara became notorious as a hub of piracy from at least the 1770s.^[10] As corsairs in the Russian navy and as regular pirates, the Psarian seamen with their light “misticos” (a small sail, but also row, craft of about 30–70 tons) gained a particular reputation, to which the island owed its Ottoman nickname, “Little Malta” (Kűçűk Malta).^[11] During the apogee of piracy in the final years of the Greek Revolution, a Greek seaman complaining about conditions on the island of Mykonos is said to have exclaimed: “Mykonos has evolved into a second Psara, not to say Algiers.”^[12] The fact that Psara, alongside other equally infertile places in the Mediterranean, whether insular or coastal, proved particularly prone to piracy, might inspire braudelian speculations about societal typologies. However, given the variety of socioeconomical patterns in the small world of the Greek archipelago, an overstretched environmental determinism seems to be precarious.^[13]

A constant reality in maritime business, piracy provided important combat experience. Remarkably, Greek shipowners, unlike other zimmis (non-Muslims), were allowed to arm their vessels with canons (6–12 for smaller vessels, 12–18 for brigs) as well as with guns and light arms, to protect themselves from Maltese or Barbary corsairs and pirates. Far from being a handicap, Ottoman suzerainty provided Greek shipowners with advantages such as a neutral flag (the greco-ottomana), tax exemptions, and state efforts to counter piracy.^[14] Ottoman policies were equally instrumental for forming the preconditions that led these three islands to build the core of a revolutionary navy.

Not all Aegean islands were directly subject to the rule of the Ottoman admiral (the Kapudan pasha). And of those who were, not all carried the obligation to offer a number of seamen yearly for manning the imperial fleet and the arsenal in Istanbul. Most insular communities paid a compensatory tax called melahika (from melah [μελάχης] = sailor turk) based on each island’s population, while only Hydra, Spetses, Psara, and Poros had to dispatch melahs based on the number of vessels. Psara in particular had to send 75 men annually, a number that was significantly raised during wartime. The experience of these seamen, serving in rotation, gathered in naval combat during the Russian–Ottoman War of 1806–1812, was decisively more important than the experience gained against pirates.^[15]

Data about the size of each island’s fleet vary, owing partly to the counting of mid-sized craft. According to the French consul in Patras, François Pouqueville, in 1816 Hydra possessed 100 ships, Spetses 60 and Psara 40; by 1821 these numbers rose substantially.^[16] The Psarians owned, on average, fewer large vessels than the shipowners of Hydra and Spetses. Estimations about the island’s fleet in 1821 fluctuate between 35 and 78 ships.

Psara stands apart from the other two maritime centers in further respects. The population of Hydra and Spetses (significantly larger than that of Psara) was mostly of Albanian origin, and bilingualism was common (at least among men) on the eve of 1821.^[17] Although an Albanian settlement in Psara in the late sixteenth century is attested, it seems that it had left few traces.^[18] The Psarian dialect was related to that of Chios, an indication of a Chiot or Anatolian origin.^[19] Other evidence points to a Thessalian origins of the Psarians.^[20] The British traveler George Waddington, who visited the island in December 1823, in fact contrasts the Psarians with the Hydriots as the “best models of either character,” Greek and Albanian.^[21] Such appraisals of the collective “character” of the Psarians, by all their conventionality, are worthy of reference. In 1770, the Russian admiral Grigorii A. Spiridov called them “particularly stubborn” (osobenno svoevol’ny) while decades later the Scottish major general Thomas Gordon stated rather the opposite: “The Psarians, Asiatic Greeks, although eminent among their countrymen for spirit and enterprise, are of a more humane, sprightly and pliable temper” compared to the “Hydriotes and Spezziotes … of genuine Albanian race, rude, boisterous and, with a few exceptions, uncivilized.”^[22] Finally, Waddington (whose report Gordon perhaps followed) had only words of admiration for the Psarians: “ingenious, loquacious, lively to excess, active, enterprising, vaporing and disputatious … I may add, that I have never seen a population more abundant in beauty and intelligence of countenance than that of Psara.”^[23] Moreover, the British traveler left us a vivid portrayal of the notables, to whom he “paid his respects” in December 1823:

I found them assembled, seven or eight in number, in a small, dark, dirty chamber, to which I ascended by a mere ladder. These zealous republicans were seated round the room on carpets in the Turkish fashion, cross-legged, smoking and turbaned, and in their first advances to conversation, there was some affection of Turkish dignity; but it was not long before they betrayed the most entire confidence in their own resources with an outer contempt for their enemy.^[24]

2 Commercial regression and the outbreak of the Greek Revolution

It is more or less established knowledge that the Greek Revolution of 1821 did not occur as the culmination of an extended period of economic and cultural flourishing among Ottoman Greeks as well as Greek merchant communities abroad. Instead, a deep and severe crisis, both socioeconomic and cultural, had interrupted those well-attested developments and immediately preceded the outbreak of the uprising. Unsurprisingly, the prosperity of the Ottoman Greek merchant marine proved fragile, since it depended on factors beyond the Greek shipowners’ control. The end of the Napoleonic Wars and the continental blockades caused a Europe-wide depression. However, the era also ushered in the return of Western ships (now led by the British) into Mediterranean commerce. Western merchants constituted a competitor the Greek captains could hardly match. The general economic depression caused a dramatic decline in commercial activity, which resulted in a collapse of profits and massive unemployment among sailors. Moreover, the Greek merchant marine did not simply follow manufacture sectors (like the red yarns of Ampelakia in Thessaly), which had already succumbed to British competition during the war. The economic collapse carried off broader social groups which had invested in the sea trade and entered the monetary economy and now were not able to return to their traditional occupations. This is, in short, the outline of the economic crisis as described by Vassilis Kremmydas.^[25]

Inspired by Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation about the connection between rising expectations and revolutions (and its elaboration in the sociological debates of the 1960s and 1970s about phenomena of mass frustration born out of the sharp reversal of a prolonged period of economic and social flourishing), the German historian Gunnar Hering first undertook a comparative and theoretically informed consideration of the evidence about an economic crisis and its possible causal connection to the outbreak of the revolution in 1821.^[26] Contemporary observers, such as the American philhellene Samuel Gridley Howe, already explicitly linked economic hardships (unemployment among sailors of the sea-faring islands, the huge debts of Peloponnesian notables) to the beginning of the uprising.^[27]

The limits of such a causal explanation have already been alluded to in those studies, which maintained that the crisis probably only accelerated the revolutionary process.^[28] Furthermore, proclaiming certain developments as inevitable runs the danger of mistaking temporal succession for causal dependence and leads to tautological statements: post hoc ergo propter hoc.^[29] In this sense one could pose the question, whether the phenomena described are better labeled as a “crisis” – namely one and a single crisis – precisely because a proper revolution should be preceded by a crisis.

If one surveys the events of 1821, there are indications pointing to the crisis and its consequences, the most significant being the revolt of the unemployed sailors of Hydra under the leadership of Antonis Oikonomou.^[30] Given the scarcity of the sources, one may cautiously assume comparable conditions existed in Psara.^[31] The unanimity in the communal affairs of the island is said to have lasted until 1815, that is, the regression, when the community was divided into two rival fractions. Although the Psarian captain Nikodimos’ report seems to ascribe this simply to clan antagonisms (the Kotzias family felt neglected), there are grounds to presume more substantial dissent. The opposition protested against a special tax that the notables had imposed on the ships and called them tyrants, comparing them to the late fifth century BC Thirty Tyrants of Athens.^[32] Moreover, the leader of the protesting faction was the “demagogue” Andreas Yannitsis, a captain who later on (after the destruction of Psara) represented the poor Psarians who settled in Aegina and supported President Ioannis Kapodistrias against the notables based in Syros, who backed the opposition to the government.^[33]

Regardless, the process that inspired the Psarians to join the Revolution did not resemble that of Hydra. That is, the leaders of the community, however hesitant, did not need to be impelled by a rebellion of the sailors or the minor captains. The agents of the Philiki Etaireia, the clandestine revolutionary organization behind the movement, had already initiated some of the most influential seamen of the island, among them Nikolis Apostolis, a merchant captain with experience in Mediterranean and Atlantic trade as well as in naval warfare. A member of the privateer flotilla of captain Lambros Katsonis during the Russian–Ottoman War of 1787–1792, Apostolis became the “admiral” of the Psarian squadron throughout the Revolution.^[34]

Thus, when Psara (urged by the arrival of Spetsiot representatives) joined the liberation movement on 11 April 1821, the notables took command of the revolutionary administration in their capacity as “ephors” of the Philiki Etaireia. However, an inescapable clash, similar to what had happened in the Peloponnese and elsewhere, occurred when foreign (i.e., non-Psarian agents of the Philiki Etaireia) demanded obedience on site, in the name of the Supreme Head (i.e., Alexander Ypsilantis). The notables replied that since they carried the duties and costs of war on their island, the Etairists should fall silent and not intervene in their affairs.^[35]

The notables of Psara recast the governing body of the community as the “Council of Psara” (Bουλή των Ψαρών) in the style of classical Athens. In its first declaration, where it was still called a “chancellery” (καγκελλαρία),^[36] one may observe the credo of revolutionary liberal nationalism blended with Christian symbols: the rise of the Hellenic nation against a barbarous yoke in the sacred name of liberty, a gift of God the Almighty; the slogan of freedom or death; the invocation of all civilized nations to support the “just cause” of the Greeks; the image of the descendants of the ancient Hellenes who once enlightened the world, now fighting for freedom against the descendants of Osman, the demolishers of arts and sciences and the enemies of Jesus Christ. An atmosphere replete with enthusiasm and anxiety (e.g., when the Psarians confess some fear [κάποιον φόβον] and admit that all the islands are indeed lost if the Ottoman armada moves against them) as well as fake news about Alexandros Ypsilantis entering Plovdiv and Edirne and approaching Constantinople, characterizes these first weeks.^[37] Already one may recognize Psara’s special mission due to its geographic location (η φύσις της τοπικής αυτών θέσεως) to keep watch on the movements of the Ottoman armada and notify the fellow combatants of Hydra and Spetses.^[38]

3 Aspects of naval warfare

The fight between the Ottomans and Greeks at sea during the Revolution was uneven. In terms of sheer numbers, size, and tonnage, as well as manpower and artillery, the Greek revolutionary fleet was no match for the Ottoman imperial navy. Historians estimate that the Greek fleet comprised about 180–200 vessels, available on call, while its actual force participating annually in naval operations oscillated between 40 and 80 vessels (i.e., merchant ships, usually two-masted brigs, employed as warships).^[39] On average, these ships were of 200–250 tons. Very few exceeded 400 tons, with crews of 120 sailors and 20 canons of up to 12 pounds.^[40] As for Psara (according to the pertinent register in the communal archive), the maximum of the island’s fleet employed in a single “expedition” was reached at the first major naval engagement at Lesbos in May 1821. Out of 57 Greek vessels, the Psarians contributed 27 ships, plus 2 fireships, and 15 misticos.^[41]

On the other hand, the Ottoman navy comprised 30 ships of the line, among them 4 three-deckers, 3 two-deckers, and 22 frigates: genuine battle ships that exceeded 1,500 tons and carried up to 84 canons of 32 pounds and crews of up to 600 or 800 sailors.^[42] Given this disparity, the Greeks avoided, as best as they could, open, full-fledged naval battles and opted for hit-and-run tactics that proved highly successful. In fact, the expedition of Lesbos mentioned above proved in more than one-way seminal. A council of Greek captains and the local notables in Psara on the eve of the expedition agreed on such a tactics. Indeed, the subsequent confrontation of the Greek seamen on May 23, 1821 with a division of the Ottoman navy including two ships of the line, convinced them further of the inadequacy of their light canons. On the day after, May 24, the Psarians celebrated their first triumph, when captain Dimitrios Papanikolis blew up one of the two Ottoman two-deckers at Eressos. This experience provided the model for subsequent naval encounters.^[43]

It is important to differentiate between the strategic aims of each side. The Ottoman imperial navy, since its reconstruction after the defeat of Chesme in 1770, and especially during the reign of Selim III (1789–1807), was designed primarily for defense, and as an auxiliary to the land army, as a transporter of troops, ammunition, and supply.^[44] Such was its charge during the Greek Revolution, when it strove to reinforce besieged Ottoman fortresses and garrisons, to support the land army in recovering lost territory, and to attack the insurgents’ insular bases. Decidedly, the Ottoman navy did not intend to offensively chase and destroy the rebels’ fleet.^[45] However, since the beginning of the war, the Ottomans were well aware of the Greeks’ ability to threaten their strategy, as a dispatch of the Sultan to Mehmed Ali, pasha of Egypt, on 13 May 1821 clearly shows: “The infidels of Hydra and Spetses have the ability to attack the ships carrying provisions to Istanbul as well as those transporting troops to Rumelia, for they have ships that are similar to English converts.”^[46]

Indeed, since the Greeks were not in a position to prevent the Ottoman navy from passing the Straits and entering the Aegean, their primary aim was to disturb and eventually cut off these Ottoman supply lines and to protect islands that were targeted by the Ottomans for landing expeditions. The strategic objective was to prolong the war, rather than win a decisive victory. Besides, by acting as privateers and merchants, part of the Greek fleet (especially smaller craft) contributed significantly to financing the war as well as securing essential communication services.^[47]

The Psarians in particular were assigned the crucial task of intelligence gathering. Psarians patrolled the Aegean, observed the movements of the Ottoman navy, and collected information (e.g., on enemy troop movements in Anatolia) for the revolutionary government.^[48] In this they competed with Ottoman counter-intelligence that relied on similar sources (Ottoman patrols as well as neutral ships or informants, e.g., British diplomats) in its attempt to anticipate attacks by Greek ships.^[49] Entries in the register of “naval expeditions” (θαλάσσιαι εκστρατείαι) composed probably in 1824 by the Psarian community’s secretary Nikolaos Ioannidis illustrate the nature of the operations the Psarian ships undertook:

• “Expedition with the aim to hinder the enemies assembled in Izmir to embark for the Peloponnese”;

• “Expedition to the coast of Izmir and Ayvalık, because we were informed that there had been gathered many Turks on order to embark for Rumeli”;

• “We sent vanguards to the Straits”;

• “After we combined forces with our maritime brothers, we started to pursue the enemy fleet. At Skiathos we were engaged in a battle, where we set two fireships in fire, to no avail.”^[50]

Above all, Psara is associated with the Greeks’ most legendary and lethal weapon, the fireship or brulot (fr. brûlot, it. brulotto). To be sure, fireships did not constitute a tactic or technological novelty. In the early nineteenth century, they had long passed their peak as a standard tool in naval warfare. It was in late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries that they performed their most renowned successes.^[51] Nevertheless, as the Greek national historian Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos sarcastically remarked, one shouldn’t expect from the Greek seamen of 1821 to have delved into naval history.^[52] Their actual memories reached back to the spectacular success of fireships (in fact Psarian or other Greek vessels converted to fireships) employed by the Russians at Chesme in 1770. The glow from the burning Ottoman fleet is said to have been visible from the hills of Psara.^[53]

The question of who introduced the fireship technique to the Greek seamen is intermingled with the persistent historiographical dispute during the first decades of the modern Greek Kingdom about the merits of each of the naval islands.^[54] Psarian tradition has it that a certain Patatoukos, a native of Parga in Epirus, who had acquired the skill from a Maltese master while in Toulon, taught the Psarians how to convert their vessels into fireships by painstakingly filling them with gunpowder and other inflammable material.^[55] Other sources ascribe the honor to a Russian, named Afanasev, who worked with the Hydriots and Spetsiots.^[56]

Be that as it may, the advantages of fireships were very soon appreciated and the Psarians were most explicit in declaring their confidence: “We can hardly confront the enemy fleet, due to its incomparable superiority. Therefore, we need to possess numerous brulots, in order to harm the enemy with stratagems.”^[57] The Psarian admiral Apostolis was even more explicit: “Brothers! We are in need of brulots, nothing but brulots” and again “We are in dire need of brulots, since we have difficulties with canons.”^[58] However, the costs for expropriating a vessel in order to convert it to a fireship were not negligible. According to pertinent sources, depending on the vessel’s size and condition, an average of 30–40,000 kuruş was usual.^[59] Since they were deemed expendable, it seems that the obvious availability of vessels, long out of service due to the preceding mercantile regression, facilitated this “recycling.”^[60] Nevertheless, the larger and faster (and thus more costly) a vessel was, the better its suitability for being converted into a fireship.^[61]

Only a small fraction of the fireships employed achieved their goal: it is estimated that 1 out of 8 or 10 succeeded and that the Greeks consumed throughout the war 120 fireships and destroyed 15 enemy ships.^[62] Nevertheless, the psychological impact on the enemy was perhaps even higher. In fact, the risk of fireship attacks alone, “the great bugbear of the Ottoman navy,” often led to the disintegration and retreat of Ottoman squadrons.^[63] After 1825, the use of fireships declined rapidly as the Ottoman and Egyptian navies learned to repulse them and as the rebel captains switched to lighter and more flexible ships. Regardless, they retained their formidable aura.^[64] The crews of fireships were considered a special force due to the risks they undertook and the special skills required. The Greek innovation consisted in the crew and the captain of a fireship remaining onboard until the last moment, before escaping on a small accompanying rowboat (σκαμπαβία). Not only did they attack enemy squadrons anchored in ports and inlets, but also at full sail on the high waves. As the government [Eκτελεστικόν = Executive] of the Greek revolutionaries put it in a congratulatory letter to the seamen of the three islands: “The Aegean Sea, as a credible witness of your feats, will announce on every side with its blistering streams that it first-ever experienced ships at full sail to go up in flames.”^[65]

In what regard did the skills of the Greek brûloteers and the maneuverability of their vessels come into play? The crucial task for launching a fireship attack was to occupy the windward side, or the “sovrano” (the Italian word common throughout the Mediterranean).^[66] In fact the pertinent phrase, “του παίρνω τον αέρα” (literally: “taking one’s wind,” meaning “to impose oneself to someone”), has become a colloquialism in Modern Greek. For achieving this task, perfect coordination between the sailors was required. This accurate teamwork of fireships’ crews sharply contradicts the notorious lack of discipline that characterizes the lore about the Greek fleet during the Revolution.^[67] The famous aphorism of Theodoros Kokokotronis regarding the discipline of Greek warriors strikingly parallels the remarks of Waddington concerning the sailors:

In a Greek fleet there appears to exist neither any gradation of rank, nor any sort of discipline whatsoever. An admiral does indeed exercise the nominal command, but with very slight means of enforcing his orders, even on board his own vessel. All the rest is pure democracy. Every sailor is acquainted with the object of every expedition, and generally forms, and sometimes offers his own particular opinion, as to the best means of accomplishing it. And, were it not that every individual is animated with the most violent hatred against the common enemy, and is strongly sensible of the advantages of unanimity, I can perceive no tie by which a fleet so constituted could be held together for an hour.^[68]

In contrast to conventional navies, the Greek revolutionary fleet constituted an ad hoc assemblage of privately (and jointly) owned vessels. Moreover, these squadrons, chartered for single expeditions, did not form a unified force, but consisted of three distinct units, each with its own admiral-commander. And, last but not least, each ship formed a quasi-autonomous unit with its own processes of negotiation, decision-making and command on board, founded on a voluntary basis. Thus, mental factors, including patriotism and the common cause at stake, inherited values such as personal ties and kinship, as well as honor and shame, acquired an often-decisive significance for the striking power of a fleet “whose seamanship and enthusiasm did much to make up for its lack of organization and discipline.”^[69] All said, those structural and operational handicaps of the Greek fleet could prove fatal. Examples of these weaknesses include sailors disobeying for lack of advance pay, the failure of the fleet to form when summoned, the fleet’s dissolution at critical moments, and the lack of unanimity among commanders.

How, then, can the undeniable success of the Greeks at sea be explained? The customary answer concerns the Greeks’ mastery of the Aegean, the inexperience and ineptitude of the Ottoman seamen, and the “Turks” instinctive aversion for the sea. The Ottoman navy, deprived after 1821 of its Greek sailors, was thus a giant with feet of clay.^[70] Here resides a cultural stereotype and Orientalist presumption with a long tradition.^[71] Nevertheless, this interpretation does not constitute a modern historiographical construction. Abundant contemporary evidence (from the Greek seamen and western European witnesses) endorses it. For example, after the blasting of the Ottoman flagship by Kanaris on 7 June 1822, the Psarians boasted that “with yesterday’s fleet we have taken their pulse and we have realized their weakness and indolence.”^[72] According to Waddington, the Hydriots displayed “increasing contempt for the stupidity of an enemy whom they suppose immutable.”^[73] No less an adversary than Mehmed Ali complained about the Ottoman captains’ incompetence in a letter to his son, Ibrahim, on 4 May 1827:

The Greeks, as skillful boatmen, attack together on several points at the same time, a single [Ottoman] ship chosen from among the vessels of the fleet. In spite of their number, the other ships for want of skill of their captains, do not know how to come to the aid of the attacked ship. They remain motionless spectators of the fight, wondering what the outcome will be.^[74]

4 Logistics

Naval warfare has always been much more costly than ground warfare.^[75] A declaration of the three naval islands addressed to the whole Greek nation (το Πανελλήνιον) in December 1823 was unambiguous: “How many sacrifices, how much money the vessels require, how much greater the risk at sea than ashore, especially with that kind of mercantile ships as ours, fighting against [war]ships as those of the enemy, everyone in Greece, we believe, realizes it.”^[76]

It has been estimated that the monthly costs for maintaining, fitting, and paying the wages for the crew of an average ship amounted to about 10,000 kuruş.^[77] The insular communities themselves calculated the monthly cost for a (large) ship carrying 16 canons and 100 men (with monthly wages for the crews reaching about 50–60 kuruş per sailor) at about double that sum.^[78] On this basis, it has been estimated that the expenses for keeping a Greek fleet of about 60 ships at sail exceeded 1 million kuruş per month or 8 million for the 8 months of war action annually.^[79] Even with much more moderate calculations these were immense sums and the problem of covering them in a consistent and reliable manner was never solved. During the first year of the war, and to a large degree in 1822 and 1823, the wealthy shipowners of the three islands undertook these expenses. In March 1822, the Ministry of the Navy was formed, headed in a characteristically collective manner by three representatives, one for each of the naval islands. This ministry granted Hydra, Spetses, and Psara the right to collect revenues from the Aegean islands and Crete, in order to fund the naval war: “In order to hinder the enemy’s undertakings, our fleet must be constantly in motion; to keep it constantly in motion, money is needed; in order to collect the money, payment and gathering of the public revenues of the nation are needed.”^[80] In April 1823, the Second National Assembly recognized the expenses of the three islands as national debt.^[81]

Yet even these incomes hardly sufficed. Issues regarding the distribution of the revenues between the three islands and their squadrons proved a constant source of tension and dissent. Available data suggest that to Psara was allotted an average of 20–25% of the total, i.e., less than a third, since shares were reckoned according to each island’s number of ships.^[82] Out of the loan of 1824 from British bankers, the sum which was allotted to the naval islands, amounted to 94,000 Spanish dollars. Hydra received 47,000, Spetses 32,000 and Psara 15,000.^[83] The Psarians maintained that “we have been and still are poorer than the Hydriots and the Spetsiots” and kept complaining that they are treated as “a useless and therefore neglected part of Greece.”^[84] Their grievances concerned especially what they perceived as Hydriot arrogance. Indeed, they occasionally aligned with the Spetsiots in order to contest Hydriot predominance.^[85]

In this context of economic shortage, the significance of privateering soon increased. Starting in May 1824, the Greek authorities began issuing scores of raiding licenses (ρύσια γράμματα/εφοδιαστικά εις κούρσεμα) allowing Greek seamen to seize not only Ottoman ships but also neutral ones (European, especially Austrian, but even Ionian Greek ones), which were suspected or accused of supplying Ottoman forces and fortresses.^[86] Booties were initially distributed in equal parts between the ship, the crew, and the community, but after raiding licenses were issued, a share of 15%, later 25% was accountable, at least theoretically, to the Greek government.^[87] These earnings offered the sailors and the insular societies a welcome relief, yet the “temptation of piracy” not seldom drove Greek squadrons apart and contributed to the gradual decline of their power.^[88]

The “cashbook” (κάσσα μετρητών) of the Psarian community, covering the period from February 1820 to October 1823, provides ample material to compare and test those general observations.^[89] While its first part constitutes still a more or less typical account book of an Ottoman community, including, among other entries, income from customs duties (γιμπρούκια) and receipts of Ottoman taxes (χαράτζια) from the island’s households, the second one records the Psarian authorities’ eager efforts to coordinate and finance the naval war. The fact that no war costs were registered until the spring of 1822, indirectly corroborates the impression, that the shipowners had initially undertaken the war costs.^[90]

The first pertinent record (13 March 1822) in the cashbook concerns a donation by Ioannis Varvakis, a Psarian former seaman and pirate, who after his participation in the Russian–Ottoman War of 1768–1774, moved to Russia, where he was honored and amassed a fortune, especially in the caviar trade.^[91] The donation, in the form of cash (27702.20 kuruş), grain (valued at 130706.28 kuruş), and munition (valued at 19250.10 kuruş), constitutes the largest income of the community.^[92] It was followed by the first transfer of cash from the Provisional Greek Government in April 1822 (156757.14 kuruş).^[93] Revenues collected from the Aegean islands between June and December 1822 amounted to 63238.34 kuruş, while fundraising among the Psarian men on several occasions brought amounts of 11–14,000 kuruş.^[94] Custom duties paid by customs officers (δογανιέρηδες) between February and October 1822 came to 27761.17 kuruş. Starting in November 1823, the cashbook acquires the form of balance sheets recording both earnings and expenses (for wages of the guard corps, of the secretary etc., for munitions, fireships, grain, and other provisions).^[95] The final account in February 1824 indicates 74133.30 in income and 146066.24 in expenditure.

5 “Rather Dead than Slave to the Greeks”

Apart from fireships, Psarians particularly excelled in the field of amphibious raiding operations against the Muslim population of the Anatolian cost. This activity, which stemmed from the Psarians’ long expertise in piracy, coincides with various aspects so far discussed in this essay. Since it was the Greek seamen who acted as assailants, who attacked Muslim settlements, burnt, plundered, murdered, and abducted slaves, study of their activity provides insight into switching roles and their perceptions by inverting the habitual parts of assailants and victims in the narrative of the Greek Revolution. On the Ottoman side, grievances about the persistent Christian threat, appeals to the sultan for help, and calls for the elimination of the “den of robbers” on Psara recurred until the destruction of the island.^[96] Moreover, on 30 November 1823 the European consuls in Izmir officially issued a collective petition addressed to the notables of Psara, demanding that they put an end to raiding operations, be it against merchant ships or Muslim settlements, in order to prevent Ottoman retaliations against all Christians. The consuls threatened that the European powers would take measures against the Greeks for lack of compliance.^[97] In their reply, the Psarian notables referred to “martial law” (τα δικαιώματα του πολέμου) and maintained that since they were fighting a “national war” (εθνικός πόλεμος) they could not stop “pursuing the enemy across the coasts of his territory.” However, in a sarcastic manner they suggested that the Ottomans could opt to pay a protection tribute to free themselves from future Psarian assaults.^[98]

The main benefit obtained by such plundering operations concerned the slave and ransom trade. The assailants would capture a number of Muslim captives (men and women), and exchange them for Christian captives or for cash in slave markets, especially on Syros.^[99] Prices for Ottoman captives amounted to about 2–5,000 kuruş, but prominent men, such as a captain from Çesme, were occasionally sold for 7,000 kuruş or more.^[100] Prices could include also payment in kind, such as cattle or cheese. Sometimes slaves were exchanged before being sold. The pasha of Izmir apparently bought 22 Psarian captives of an Austrian ship for 28,000 Spanish dollars in order to exchange them with Ottoman captives.^[101]

Probably the most violent of the Psarians’ coastal attacks and in any case the best documented has been the operation against Çandarli, in the district of Izmir, roughly at the latitude of the southern coasts of Lesbos/Mytilene, in June 1823. Ottoman anticipation of such an assault is recorded already in December 1822, but the decision to launch it 6 months later was met, as Psarian documents attest, as a remedy against the sailors’ unemployment.^[102] The logbook of the ship “Philoktitis,” belonging to Georgios Skandalis, the “vice admiral” of Psara, constitutes a unique source for those events as well as for several of the questions discussed in this essay. As opposed to memoirs, written after the Revolution (in the context of the Greek Kingdom), logbooks offer less filtered perceptions, since they are composed “in the heat of the moment” and do not address the general national public.^[103] Although they were actually drafted by the literate scribe of the ship (σκριβάνος), they often retain a plan, elliptic style that is particularly appealing. The logbook of Philoktitis, a two-masted brig, as attested by a rough sketch on the logbooks’ cover, participated in most of the major naval engagements.^[104] The logbook covers the period from 13 April 1821 to 28 June 1824. Across its pages one finds references to:

• seizures of Ottoman ships: “we seized a further enemy ship with ninety Turks, many women and forty emirs travelling to Mecca. We killed them and sent the women to Magnisia [in Thessaly].”^[105]

• internal quarrels about the distribution of booties;^[106]

• accounts of fireship attacks, including failures: “they failed due to the novelty of the method”;^[107]

• Kanaris’ as well as Papanikolis’ successes;^[108]

• Ottoman retaliations against Ayvalık, Chios, and elsewhere, including Psarian efforts to evacuate Christian survivors;^[109]

• Varvakis and his donations;^[110]

• fake news such as Russia declaring war to the Ottomans or the Greeks taking Patras in June 1823;^[111]

• the gathering of revenues from the Aegean islands.^[112]

Finally, the logbook includes an account of captain Skandalis’ expenses for the naval war (except “plundering expeditions”) from 1821 to 1824, amounting to 162,800 kuruş or 20,750 Spanish dollars.^[113]

Particularly telling is the use of collective identifications in the logbook. Throughout, Psara is referred to as “our homeland” (την πατρίδα μας Ψαρά), but occasionally the “homeland” is Greece.^[114] The Psarian fighters are termed Greeks/Hellenes (Έλληνες), while the Orthodox population of the Anatolian coast are Γραικοί, Xριστιανοί, and ομόθρησκοι. Their opponents are “the Turks” (οι Tούρκοι) or simply “the enemy” (ο εχθρός): “We sailed from our homeland Psara against the wretched Turk, our enemy.”^[115] In this regard, Psarian sources do not constitute an exception. The transition from the pre-national worldview to the espousal of a national self-understanding, a process already under way in the preceding decades but one immensely accelerated during the revolutionary war, was a shared experience for both land and insular Greek Orthodox communities. Overlapping identities, as evident in the identification of one’s homeland, have been the rule for a long time after the foundation of the Greek state, without seriously hampering the process of national integration.

The operation against Çandarli followed a decision of the Psarian authorities. In the logbook, it is explicitly called a “plundering expedition” (έκπλους λαφυραγωγικός).^[116] Twenty-eight Psarian brigs and schooners accompanied by about 100 misticos and other auxiliary vessels took part in it. On the eve of the assault the captains of the Psarian ships held a “war council” on board of Philoktitis. They agreed not to harm any Christians and thus ruin the reputation of Psara, but instead to storm and plunder the Anatolian coasts, wage war on the Turks, and, starting from Çandarli, spread the terror associated with the name of Psara across all of Anatolia.^[117]

The logbook recounts the events without any attempt at mitigation. The Psarians and the Albanian mercenary corps accompanying them disembarked after cannonading against Çandarli fortress. Although the “Turks” capitulated, the Greeks violated the pact and killed several of them, “because in this circumstance of disorder [the Greeks had started plundering], so it had to be done and therefore the order was to get rid of the barbarians.”^[118] They set the town on fire and plundered as much as they could, but owing to “Greek disorder and greediness” (τα άπατα πηγάδια της ελληνικής αταξίας και λαιμαργίας) a large share of the booty was lost in the fire.^[119] The Psarians had about 80 casualties, those of the enemy were not counted, “since we saw plenty of corpses on the streets and bastions and mosques and towers.”^[120] Among the captives were the women of the commander’s (agha) of Çandarli harem. He immediately sent some men to the withdrawing Psarian ships to negotiate their ransom. Fifty women were then brought on two misticos to the coast for the purpose of starting the bargain. One of the Turkish women – “who knows what she suspected” – attempted in vain to throw herself into the sea. Another, holding her baby, did jump and was drowned after crying “Better death than slavery to the Greeks.”^[121] It is not alone the reversal of the Greek revolutionaries’ slogan “Liberty or Death” that should attract attention. Identifications in the logbook are particularly significant and add credibility to the scribe’s reference to Turkish women who called the Greeks “Romans” (Pωμαίοι, probably turk. Rumlar); anything else would be hard to imagine.^[122]

6 Conclusions

As has been aptly remarked, “the war at sea … displayed many of the virtues and vices of the whole Greek war effort in embryo.”^[123] Both ashore and aboard ship, enthusiasm, self-confidence, unselfishness, ingenuity, and endurance went along with confusion, internal strife, lack of discipline and coordination, mindless violence against civilians, and above all a chronic shortage of funds. From the viewpoint of naval warfare, the activity of Greek squadrons of the Revolution may support revisionist arguments against an all too linear understanding of a “naval revolution.” As they had done before the war as merchants, shipowners, and sailors, participating in the profits and losses of each voyage (profit-sailing), a seemingly “outdated” commercial practice, Greek seamen fought their war with the methods and tactics at their disposal.^[124] Both in their revival of fireships and in forming a war fleet out of converted merchant vessels, a practice that had been common for naval warfare until the middle of the seventeenth century,^[125] they made effective use of practices that formed part of an age-old Mediterranean tradition. The impressive success of the Greek naval forces, despite the numerous objective handicaps, might seem peculiar. However, as on the field of war ashore, in the long run the Greek squadrons were not in a position to win. Their task was to endure until the international diplomatic conjuncture had gradually switched in their favor. In this regard, the case of Psara proves particularly indicative, since the destruction and desolation of their island in 1824 did not prevent Psarian seamen to continue serving the Greek cause (as an uprooted force resembling the nucleus of something similar to an actual national navy) until the official recognition of Greece’s independence in 1830.