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Journal II
ARGO NAVIS
Foreword

In the museum at Athens are all the artefacts recovered from the Antikythera Shipwreck of 86 B.C., including the original Mechanism.
I can’t really describe how it felt to finally see it.
In all its corroded beauty it hangs behind glass in a clear plastic framework and, for reasons I find impossible to explain, still holds me in thrall, even after so many years.
(I don’t have blonde hair, although I do have grey-blue eyes, but without the split iris or green segment. I do, however, have the birth mark…(so read on…))
Getting to Antikythera was a story in itself. The ship from Piraeus to Kissamos on Crete has a scheduled stop at Kythera before sailing on to call at Antikythera.
When I enquired at Piraeus about a ticket to Antikythera, I was told categorically by a Greek with a foul-smelling cigarette hanging from his mouth that under no circumstances would that ship stop at Antikythera. So we booked passage to Kythera, in the hope of getting a small boat the next day to Antikythera.
When we arrived at Kythera it was midnight. That was when we found that the ferry port had recently been moved to a place half-way down the east coast of the island, miles from the town.
Disembarking there with cases, we were reassured to find there were taxis waiting all over the car park.
Gradually, one by one, they all left.
Alone and deserted on a vast new car park, we made our way across to the ticket office/cafe that was just closing and explained our circumstances to a lovely lady behind the counter.
Within fifteen minutes we had a hire car, a splendid apartment in Kythera town, and a man who arrived to hand it all over to us.
The Greeks can be efficient when they try.
We asked our saviour/benefactor why we were told the boat didn’t stop at Antikythera. He shrugged and replied that it had always stopped there. What was the problem?
We left Kythera on the midnight ferry the next night. An hour or so later the ship began to slow.
Nerves completely on edge, we watched the hills of Antikythera slide eerily alongside us in the dark. The ship then turned abruptly into Potamos Bay and prepared to make fast in the tiny harbour. The planks clanked down and, as vehicles were being driven on and off, I asked the purser who was stood on the edge of the dock apron if I could at the very least step out onto Antikythera just so I could say I had been there.
I explained why as best I could but language got in the way. I was told strictly that if I set foot off the ship I would not be allowed back on again because my ticket did not include that stop.
The thing that stays with me the most from that night, after the frustration subsided, was the sight of the buildings behind the harbour, exactly as I have described them here in the book. They seemed positively biblical in the dark under sparse, hanging lights.
I took the picture on the rear inside cover.
I didn’t set foot on Antikythera until a year or two later.
Our friends at the Hotel Kissamos on Crete made the bookings for us to take the early ship out towards Piraeus and to catch the next one coming back in. They also arranged for a friend of theirs to show us around the island in his car.
His name is Vasilis, which he assures me translates in English as William. So we had an immediate connection.
Vasilis was wonderful. He took us to all the places I had envisaged, even taking me up to the top of the island to his parent’s abandoned house where we ended up firing his shotgun at old Feta tins perched on rocks. Another first for me.
Most revealing was the fact that every place I had imagined for this book was instantly recognisable. On my return I made no corrections to it.
Vasilis took us down to Glyphadia Point and showed me where the wreck had been found, just a short distance offshore.
He handed me a few small shards of ancient unglazed pottery which he suggested could be at least two thousand years old.
There were hundreds of them scattered about the small rocky inlet.
Two of them now live on my bookshelf.
As, now, does this book.
I hope it now lives happily on your bookshelf, too.
There is one more thing I might mention. My partner and I began to wonder if both the island and its history were trying to protect itself from us.
Whilst there I experienced an almost ethereal warmth of embrace, despite the harsh reality of the ochre, dusty soil and rocks and abandoned beacon towers, and I remain unconvinced by the argument that what I experienced was just the growth of the novel in my sub-conscious mind.
If it makes any sense at all, it was too ‘surreal’ to be ‘surreal’.
What finally convinced me was that the copious amount of photographs I took while on the ferry and all across the island disappeared without trace in a camera memory card ‘accident’ after I arrived home.
I need to go back.
I hope you enjoy the story and the places and times it takes you to.



Bill Allerton

Read the 1st. Chapter HERE
MEKANISMO

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