Sicily
On September 29 – a full three weeks out from New York -- Ioaninna docked at Palermo to unload a portion of its grain cargo, for which the need had become more dire. Originally, the ship was to have docked at Thessaloniki, and thence proceeded to Belgrade, but Thessaloniki was now closed due to “plague” (NOT bubonic plague, but a serious epidemic of something else). After several days of government indecision about where the ship should be rerouted, impatient steerage passengers threatened the outnumbered crew with mutiny, forcing the Captain’s hand. In violation of orders, he scoured Palermo for, and was glad to find, a qualified harbor pilot, who guided the ship to Athens that night via the Corinth Canal.
Athens was an acceptable destination for all those on board. When they reached it in the morning, the steerage passengers could depart and focus on what to do next. The Red Cross people could check into a hotel, wash, sleep late, and then worry about getting the ship to Belgrade.
That evening, in a scene worthy of an old romantic novel, the rat-infested ship carefully puffed its way through the canal in the moonlight, and the passengers on deck oohed and aahed at the canyon-like walls of the canal cut that stretched up towards the stars. There would be abundant time in the coming days (and months, and years) to resume fretting about war and disease, but for the moment, there was only time to ponder the moonlight.
Vintage Postcard of the Corinth Canal
Appendices that list photo credits and sources will be provided in Part 2 of this article, which should appear next month.
Note that the portrait of Nurse Keller that appears above is a “digital restoration” which I made from an online group photograph in the Keller Family Collection, in the Hicksville Public Library portion of the New York State Heritage Collection.
Ciao for Now!
