Greece

° Athens ° Piraeus  ° Aegean Islands: Lesbos, Samos 
° Argo-Saronic: Hydra  ° Crete: Agios Nikolaos, Heraklion, Samara 
° Cyclades: Folegandros, Mykonos, Paros, Santorini 
° Dodecanese Islands: Rhodes  ° Euboea Islands ° Iraklion ° Katakolon 
° Ionian Islands: Corfu, Zakynthos ° Piraeus °  Santorini  ° Sporades: Skiathos

Dodecanese

Greece and her islands have thousands of miles of coastline with inlets, natural harbors and deep bays and a sea-faring history stretching back more than 4,000 years. Inhabitants of Greece and her islands have been sea-faring people through their long history.

Alexander the Great, ruler of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, was born in 356 B.C.E. in the city of Pella, located in present-day Greece. His conquests included Asia; through his Admiral Nearchos, he established new ports from India to the Persian Gulf and organized sea trade from those countries. Although there is discussion over his nationality, he is readily acknowledged as one of the greatest military geniuses in history.

The ports that were created in India were provided with very large storage facilities so that the produce from the nearby regions could be brought there for trans-shipment by sea. Before Alexander, Indian goods were shipped only in small quantities, overland, and hence they were very expensive in the Mediterranean markets. Since Alexander, the merchant ships carried large quantities of Indian produce to the Persian Gulf, more cheaply. India was now also able to receive European products through the same routing.

Before the Cretans, the Aegean was dominated by the Karas, the Helegas and the Phoenicians, who engaged in maritime commerce and piracy.

The Greeks, because of these powerful fleets and because of attacks by the pirates, withdrew inland to more defensible positions in the mountains. Prior to 1450 B.C. approximately 100 Greek cities were maritime commerce ports; they became masters of the seas.

By the 1600s, the Greeks also became pirates. Piracy was not necessarily considered bad at that time; to be a pirate you had to be brave, daring and you had to possess seamanship. Pirates were considered as privileged people and they were greeted with hospitality.

Nations such as Great Britain and Spain supported pirate fleets.

Shipowners and merchants obtained money for their investments from rich citizens and bankers through written loan agreements. Repayment of the loan was made within twenty days from arrival in Piraeus provided that the cargo was not damaged. If part of it was damaged, lost, jettisoned, or stolen, the money lender received both capital and interest in proportion to the value of the sound cargo remaining. Rates were high because the bankers shared in most of the marine risks involved.

One major expeditions the siege of Troy is narrated in the first great European literary work, Homer's Iliad. Numerous Greek settlements were founded throughout the Mediterranean, Asia Minor and the coast of North Africa as a result of travels in search of new markets.

By the end of the 15th century, the Greeks were active in international trade extending from the Black Sea, the Adriatic and Italy to Marseilles, Antwerp and Moscow. Ancona had a phenomenal growth as a major, international trading centre during the first half of the 16th century, and it was one of the first commercial centres outside the Balkans which attracted a considerable number of Greeks.

Despite the importance of the land routes, Constantinople, between 1592 and 1783, depended primarily on such a merchant marine. Local traffic alone connecting Constantinople and Galata, required a considerable number of small craft. It is estimated that during the second half of the 17th century, approximately 15 to 16,000 peramas and caiques along with other types of vessels, were needed for local transportation. Thousands of these captains were Greeks who possessed enormous fortunes. Greeks merchants, mariners, shipowenrs and agents ranged from the Black Sea to Alexandria. Their centre of activity was Galata, and the Aegean and the Black Sea constituted their bases of operation. The grain trade, and especially the illicit grain traffic, was their most profitable activity.

December 18, 1886, Sacramento Daily Union, Sacramento, California, U.S.A.

SOMETHING ABOUT COLOSSI.
Dimensions ot the Great Statues of Ancient Times.

Colossi, of which the Bartholdi statue is now the most important in the world, were more common on the globe before the birth of Christ than to-day. The ancient and. famous maritime countries about the Mediterranean Sea literally teemed with them. The Colossus of Rhodes, erected by Charles of Lindus. in honor of the sun, is one of the best known to ancient writers, and was one of the seven wonders of the world. It was of brass, cast in separate pieces, and was twelve years in process of erection, being completed 280 B. C. It was a statue of Apollo, and is variously estimated to have been ninety feet, ninety cubits and even 105 cubits in hight. Its weight was 720,000 pounds. Standing as it did with a leg extending on each side of the harbor, vessels, under full sail could enter between them. A flight of winding stairs led to the top. The cost was three hundred talents or very nearly a half million of dollars. Sixty years later it was thrown down by an earthquake, where it lay until A.D. 653, when the Saracens, the' captors of Rhodes, sold it to a Jew, who transported it hto Alexandra, on the backs of 900 camels. Rhodes, which now has a population of only ten thousand, in the hight of its prosperity had over three thousand statues, of which one hundred were colossi.

The Bartholdi statue is 150 feet high and weighs 220 tons. The statue is composed of 214 pieces of bronze.

Bavaria, the great female statue at Munich, personificating that country, until the Bartholdi statue, was said to be next in size to the Colossus of Rhodes. It is 65 feet high, with a pedestal thirty feet, and is casta from the bronze of Turkish and Norwegian cannon. The figure is partly draped, holding a sword. At its side reposes the Bavarian lion, the guardian of the kingdom. The figure is hollow and fitted with stairs. There are twelve characters in bronze, and tbe monument was six years in preparation, being unveiled August 7, 1850. It was erected by King Louis I and modeled by Yon Schwanthcler, and until our Goddess of Liberty was erected, was considered the most remarkable statue of modern times.

The other remarkable statue of recent years is that of San Carlo Borrorneo at Arona, near the south end of Lake Maggiore, in Northern Italy. It was erected in 1697, and stands on a hill on a pedestal forty feet high. The head, feet and hands were cast in bronze; the remainder of the statue was formed by laying sheets of hammered copper on a pillar of masonry. Three persons may stand in the head.

Colossal statues were numerous in Egypt. Legions of them were raised, mostly of the hardest stone, many from fifty to sixty feet high. The most celebrated are the statues of Merunon. in the plain of Thebes, at Koum-el-Sultan. The two statues, one of which is the celebrated vocal Memnon, one of the wonders of the old world, was originally sixty feet high and made of coarse gritstone. Both are seated on thrones, and represent the monarch Amenaphis III, probably about 1,200 B.C.E. The peculiar characteristic of the vocal statue was its giving out at various times a sharp metallic ring. The reason tor this sound is variously ascribed to an artifice of the priests, who struck the sonorous stone of which the statue was made, to the passage of currents oft air through the cracks, or the sudden expansion of aqueous particles under the sun's rays. It became silent about fifteen hundred years ago.

In Greece, Phidias' colossal statue of Jupiter (440 B. C.) was "the wonder of the world" at that time. It was of gold and ivory and the masterpiece of the author. He had previously made a statue of Minerva, of the same material, 39feet high, and also a famous bronze of Pallas Athene, at Athens, the plume of whose helmet and the point of whose spear, like Liberty's torch, were landmarks for incoming sailors. Lisippus, in the time of Alexander the Great, over 300 years B.C.E. erected a statue 60 feet high, which Fabius, during the second Roman war, was anxious to take to Rome, but was prevented by its weight.

Ancient Rome had a bronze statue of Augustus in the Forum ; one of Nero in marble fully 120 feet high, from which the contiguous amphitheater is believed to have derived the name of "Colosseum," and a bronze statue of Apollo and one of Jupiter upon the Capitol, made from the armor of the Samnites. They were colossal in size.

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1899. World's Fleet. Boston Daily Globe

Lloyds Register of Shipping gives the entire fleet of the world as 28,180 steamers and sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 27,673,628, of which 39 perent are British.

Great Britain	10,990 vessels, total tonnage of 10,792,714
United States	3,010 vessels, total tonnage of 2,405,887
Norway	2,528 vessels, tonnage of 1,604,230
Germany	1,676 vessels, with a tonnage of 2,453,334, in which are included her particularly large ships.
Sweden	1,408 vessels with a tonnage of 643, 527
Italy	1,150 vessels
France	1,182 vessels

For Historical Comparison
Top 10 Maritime Nations Ranked by Value (2017)

	Country	# of Vessels	Gross Tonnage (m)	Total Value (USDbn)
1	Greece	4,453	206.47	$88.0
2	Japan	4,317	150.26	$79.8
3	China	4,938	159.71	$71.7
4	USA	2,399	55.92	$46.5
5	Singapore	2,662	64.03	$41.7
6	Norway	1,668	39.68	$41.1
7	Germany	2,923	81.17	$30.3
8	UK	883	28.78	$24.3
9	Denmark	1,040	36.17	$23.4
10	South Korea	1,484	49.88	$20.1
Total		26,767	87.21	$466.9