Penthesilea's Wish [Vol.1]

Chapter Twenty-four

(Island of Cephalonia, in the Ionian Sea, 1470 AD)

On the southwest tip of the island of Cephalonia in the Mediterranean Sea, there is a green, sun-ripe valley, famous for its wild olives. These had been cultivated on the gentle slopes amid pines, sporadic cedars and a rare fir tree found only on this island since time before time.

The Greeks had inhabited these insular lands for millennia in small villages and just to the north lay Ithaca, legendary island home of Odysseus, the most renowned seafarer in literature and myth. Carrying all their belongings on their backs and the stronger back of a donkey, which they richly bartered for when they arrived at the port of Argostoli, was thirty-five year old Emmanuil Phokas and his young wife, Harmonia, newly arrived from the Peloponnesus region of southern Greece. Emmanuil and his brother Andronikos had originally fled Constantinople during its sacking by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 while still in their teens. While Andronikos stayed in Greece's southern mainland, and became the progenitor of the large Phokas family, prosperous throughout the area, the younger brother Emmanuil left the region to start his own life and family. He had settled to the north, on the Ionian Islands midway between Greece and the rich seaways of Italy.

Cephalonia had safely been under the re-conquest rule of the Venetians since 1450, securing its dominion from the Ottoman Turks via bold fortifications and castles dotting the landscape on the island's highest promontories. Always beckoning beyond the surrounding waters of the Ionian Sea and the Mediterranean as a whole, was the greater sea routes which passed out to the west through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the great unknown Atlantic Ocean. Its uncharted land masses far across it, newly called the West Indies, had only begun to call out like Sirens. The distant songs appealed to young men like Emmanuil's grandson, Ioannis Phokas, who, as a brave mariner one day, would hear in those melodies opportunity and adventure in a New World.

Emmanuil was to settle into this 'valley of olives,' known as Elaion, near a village by the name of Valerianos. There on a hill overlooking the expanse of the Ionian Sea he built a stone house, farmed the rich land, redolent with the aroma of sage and bay leaves, and eventually had four sons with his wife before she died. Jacob was the son who took over the farm when Emmanuil could no longer work it. The other young men had long since moved to the Port of Argostoli to the northwest and worked in various businesses in the larger town. Jacob eventually married and had a single son they named Ioannis.

This strong, bright boy was not content to live and work on his father's and grandfather's farmland. Nor was he interested in the trades of his uncles and cousins away in the town. While still a teen, Ioannis began to learn the craft of Mediterranean ship navigation and soon became a pilot, always yearning to venture out as far as the sea could challenge him. This Ioannis Phokas became known to the shipping culture of Cephalonia during the sixteenth century as 'Valerianos,' to discern him as the Phokas boy from that village and not others of the Phokas clan from Argostoli.

Having developed the wanderlust of his ancient, mythical neighbor to the north-Odysseus, from the island of Ithaca, Ioannis began to bring attention to himself during the European Age of Exploration within the Mediterranean Sea as a superb navigator and pilot. He dreamed, however, of sailing one day out into more mysterious and alluring waters as his legendary hero had done to find adventure beyond the imagination of his peers.

Talk among sailors in most Mediterranean ports of the day centered around the notion that good fortune and adventure could be found in journeys to lands outside the confines of the land-locked sea. The Spanish conquest of the Canary Islands and the recent adventures by the Portuguese in their lateen-rigged sailing ships along the coast of Africa, were intriguing to the young navigator. Eventually mastering the Greek waters and the routes in all cardinal directions from Cephalonia, the young "Valerianos"-Ioannis Phokas, by his mid-twenties was listening to the continual tales of great land masses and distant islands due west from Straits of Gibraltar-across the ocean the Spanish had named the 'South Sea.'

Following the incomparable feat of Columbus who claimed to have reached the Indies by sailing west, the event confirmed in this young navigator's mind that he would be a part of this exciting new age of explorers to set out across that open ocean at the dawn of the sixteenth century. Within just a few more years Ioannis Phokas, Greek pilot extraordinaire, would find himself in the service of the King of Spain's royal navy.

Greek sailors and pilots were in great demand during this era of New World exploration. It was, after all, the world's best seafarers who could be trusted to navigate into unknown waters. Columbus' own able crew on his maiden voyage to Hispaniola in 1492 was comprised of local sailors from the Greek island of Hios. Many other explorers, however, never returned, as the epoch of discovery claimed a high toll on the expeditionary forces hailing from such kingdoms of Europe, principally, Portugal, Spain, England, and France.

Having the right credentials and blessed with a sound character, "Valerianos" was soon recognized as worthy of such risky service. He would eventually be enlisted by the Spanish to locate a water passageway by sea through the new continental land mass between the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans-the legendary and elusive 'Strait of Anian'. This imagined seaway-it was hoped by the European superpowers of the times, would open new sea lanes of trade with Asia. In the logs and ship manifests of those years, "Valerianos" had given his true name in Greek, Ioannis Phokas. It was, however, quickly and bureaucratically translated into Spanish, as part of his employment, and in the misty annals of history, that name morphed into 'Juan de Fuca.'

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