The Cruise

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 1

Our destroyer squadron was busily making preparations to get underway from our homeport, Newport, Rhode Island, to cross the Atlantic and join the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea. It was February, 1967, and it was still snowing at the destroyer piers in Newport. Standing watch on the open quarterdeck was a painful experience, as we were exposed to the most penetrating gusts of freezing wind that I had ever felt. It seemed as if the wind drove needles of ice into us, regardless of how much covering we heaped upon ourselves.

We were really anxious just to get out of freezing Newport and into the Atlantic. The ports of the Med were even more enticing than the plain old Atlantic Ocean, as we were slated to visit Istanbul, Athens, and Naples, before transiting the Suez Canal and spending several weeks in the Middle East with its exotic ports, along with a side trip to Kenya. After that excursion, we would return to the Med for more conventional ports, including Cannes, Barcelona, Valencia and some others we’ll discuss later. And you never knew what sort of events would transpire while you were over there that would change things all around.

There would be six destroyers proceeding together for the crossing, but I’ll introduce them gradually so it won’t feel so overwhelming to hear all the names at once. I was aboard USS CHARLES H. ROAN (DD-853), a destroyer that had been commissioned shortly after World War II had ended. The ship was named for a Marine from Claude, Texas, who had saved the lives of four comrades on Peleiu Island in the Pacific while fighting the Japanese in World War II. He had already been wounded by one grenade, and when a second one was thrown into the foxhole where he and his fellow Marines were deployed, he covered it with his body. He gave up his own life to save the others. He had just celebrated his 21st birthday a month before. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Destroyer hulls and propulsion machinery last about 30 years - at the point when I reported aboard the ROAN in 1965, she almost 20 years old so she was doing just fine with respect to staying in one piece and with moving through the water. But the steady march forward in the technology of weapons and electronics makes a ship obsolete before she hits her 15th birthday. ROAN had been modernized for guns, radars, sonar, and radios in 1961, four years before I came aboard.

Here are some photos of the ROAN: http://www.usscharleshroan.org/photos.htm

All of our sister ships were also in Newport, so the plan was that we would get underway independently and rendezvous out in the open ocean after we had cleared the harbor. I took my Sea and Anchor Detail station, which was on the bridge to serve as Navigator. Working with two Quartermasters who were taking visual bearings on various landmarks from our port and starboard bridge wings, I plotted our position on the chart in the pilothouse and recommended the course to steer to the Officer of the Deck so we could safely traverse the channel going out of port.

I really liked navigating, visually by lighthouses, church steeples, and radio towers, using radar by finding points of land, and celestially using a sextant with the sun, moon, and stars. It was so intriguing to think that you could be out in the middle of the ocean, where you couldn’t see a single land reference - nothing but water all the way to the horizon - and still figure out exactly where you were.

On a destroyer, navigating is just a part-time or collateral duty because there are so few officers aboard that you can’t spend all your time in just that one aspect of ship operations. My full-time billet was Combat Information Center Officer. CIC is where the positions of ships, submarines, and aircraft were maintained and watched. I spent a lot of time in CIC, and got to know the Radarmen and Sonarmen pretty well.

I did some radar navigation in CIC to go along with my visual navigation on the bridge, and taught myself flashing light up on the signal bridge as well. I liked everything we did, which included handling the ship in formation or independently, working maneuvering boards in CIC to determine a course to station when operating in formation with other ships, as well as going to station by ‘seaman’s eye’ when on the bridge.

And there are even more important aspects such as gunnery, as the ship carried two twin-mount five-inch guns. And a modern anti-submarine missile launcher as well, along with old-fashioned torpedoes. In my opinion, there’s nothing to compare this to in civilian life, so it’s difficult to explain.

Well, I’m getting sidetracked by going on and on about navigation and other shipboard duties, and you’re probably saying you wish I would get on with the voyage itself already. We cleared the harbor and proceeded to the rendezvous point so we could meet up with the rest of our squadron. The first ship we sighted was USS FORREST SHERMAN (DD-931), our squadron flagship. The flagship was ridden by the squadron commander, with rank of Commodore, which is one step below a Rear Admiral. This makes him a big shot, but with aspirations to be an even bigger shot. Sometimes that causes discomfort to those who are not big shots.

The FORREST SHERMAN was the newest ship in the squadron, as she had been built in 1955, while the other five of us were all World War II vintage. She was named for a naval aviator who eventually commanded aircraft carriers in World War II and was involved in preparing plans and the coordinating campaigns to bring about the capitulation of the Gilberts, Marshalls, Mariana, Western Carolines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and our final attacks on Japan.

We traded flashing light signals with the SHERMAN and took our pre-assigned station astern of her. We would be proceeding in a column formation, with the flagship leading the column. The ships would spaced at 500 yard intervals. SHERMAN was steering directly east, which was a good direction for starting our trans-Atlantic journey, going a leisurely 10 knots while we waited for the other four ships to join up.

When we were clear of the harbor, we secured the Special Sea and Anchor Detail, so I could go down to my stateroom to rest a little. The seas were getting choppy, but at least the winds were nothing like those needle-like blasts we felt while standing watches on our open quarterdeck back in Newport. We were rolling about twenty degrees to port and starboard (that’s to our left side and to our right, with the roll angle measured from vertical). The sun was bright and the air was clear but the rolling was starting to be a little disconcerting.

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 2

All of us junior officers lived aft (that’s the rear part of the ship), while the wardroom, where we ate and watched movies, was forward (that’s of course the front part of the ship). With the ship rolling crazily around, we would start our trip forward up to the wardroom using the main passageway aft. This leg of the journey wasn’t too bad, because the passageway was only about four feet wide, so no matter how bad the rolling might be, you couldn’t go more than two feet out of your way. As long as you were careful enough to avoid any sharp objects hanging from the bulkheads (those are the walls) or any of those openings in the deck (the deck is what you walk on) leading down to where the guys running the boilers and engines were, down in the lower regions of the ship, this part was easy. Similarly, the main passageway forward was the same width, and making it through that part was just as easy as the one back aft.

Unfortunately, the main passageway aft and the one up forward weren’t linked to each other directly. In between them was a major obstacle at times like this, something we fondly called ‘the mess decks.’ Now this use of the word ‘mess’ relates to food (like the mess hall you’ve probably heard of somewhere) and not to neatness.

During good weather, the mess decks served as a major focal point of shipboard life, where the enlisted men not only ate and watched movies and played games like Acey-Deucy and cribbage, but where they also manufactured some incredibly exaggerated and usually erroneous scuttlebutt, or rumors. But the subject of this particular story is making it safely through the mess decks when the ship is taking 20-degree rolls, and not the types of rumors or stories that began on those very same mess decks.

Moving forward through the main passageway aft, you would leave the safe confines of two bulkheads you could touch simultaneously, and find yourself at the mercy of the expansive mess decks with lots of room for bouncing around totally out of control. Fortunately there were several stanchions (or poles) strategically placed throughout the mess decks so you could grab one with both hands before winding up face first in a Gunner’s Mate’s tray of lasagna. I later learned that naval architects think these stanchions are there to keep the overhead (ceiling) from falling down and landing on the deck below, but those naval architects never had to walk through the mess decks under conditions we had to contend with. We knew why those particular stanchions were there.

When we finally reached the relative safety of the wardroom, we would find out just how bad the rolling was by whatever device the stewards had selected to make sure the meal would go well. If the rolling wasn’t all that bad, they would just wet down the tablecloth, and the added traction from the water prevented the platters and dishes from moving too far on the table.

But you could tell the rolling was REALLY severe if you got to the wardroom and saw that the stewards had ‘rigged the fiddleboard.’ For anybody who never saw a fiddleboard rigged in the wardroom, it was this big wooden structure which could be securely clamped to the surface of the table in such a way that it would stay firmly in place even if the ship totally capsized. It had cutouts all over it to provide nesting places for our dishes and serving platters.

Now if only they had something to hold our chairs firmly in place ...

After seeing that there was nothing exciting going on in the wardroom, I decided to go up to the signal bridge to watch the other ships joining us. Two more ships were quickly approaching from astern - that’s from behind us for any landlubbers out there. They were USS WILLIAM R. RUSH (DD-714) and USS LLOYD THOMAS (DD-764). The RUSH was commissioned in 1945 and was named for William Rees Rush, who served in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and was awarded the Medal of Honor for action in 1914 at the height of a crisis between Mexico and the United States. He was wounded but survived the incident, but it’s a long story and we won’t go into it here.

The THOMAS was commissioned in 1947 and was named for a naval aviator who was killed in the Battle of Midway in June 1942, while flying in Torpedo Squadron Six off USS ENTERPRISE, one of the American aircraft carriers whose air squadrons sent four Japanese carriers to the bottom during that battle. The Battle of Midway was the turning point in the Pacific Theater, when the tide turned our way. As an aside, one of my Naval Academy classmates had an uncle who was killed at the Battle of Midway.

The seas were starting to calm a little as the RUSH and THOMAS took their stations in the column formation. We now had four of our six destroyers in the column. Just as we were losing sight of land we spotted the last two ships steaming toward us at high speed with smoke billowing from their stacks. When they were still five miles away, we exchanged flashing light signals with them and confirmed that they were indeed our sister ships USS JOSEPH P. KENNEDY (DD-850) and USS MOALE (DD-693).

The KENNEDY was named for President John F. Kennedy’s older brother who was a naval aviator during World War II. In August of 1944, he volunteered for a top-secret bombing mission over Normandy in which he was to direct an explosives-laden, radio-controlled Liberator into a German V-2 rocket launching site. The mission went tragically awry - the charges detonated prematurely, and Kennedy was killed. The MOALE was the only ship in our squadron that had been commissioned while World War II was still raging - in February 1944. She was named for Lieutenant Edward Moale, Jr. who served in the Navy during the Spanish-American War around Cuba as well as in the Philippines.

KENNEDY and MOALE took their places in the column and we increased our speed to 15 knots. We did some division tactics using flaghoist signals to practice our shiphandling in formation. We changed from a column (a follow-the-leader type arrangement) to a line abreast, in which all ships were spread out at 500-yard intervals in a side-by-side arrangement, some formations in which we were aligned diagonally (somewhere between a column and a line abreast) and then finally returned to our column formation.

At that time, a formation of dolphins joined us. They would swim in a large group, and would adjust their speed to stay right with us. I forget how fast they could go, but they could usually keep up with us unless we were really in a big hurry to get somewhere. They would leap out of the water in an upward moving arc and would then dive back down after reaching their pinnacle in the air. Along the same lines, flying fish were interesting as well, but they just couldn’t match the dolphins.

I did some open ocean navigation - which I thought was the most gratifying of the various kinds of navigating you could do - using the stars and moon out in the middle of the ocean where you couldn’t see any landmarks at all. Using a sextant to measure the angular distance of each body from the horizon gives you information which, with an accurate time of the sighting and the help of our navigational publications which tells where every celestial body is at any given time, would allow us to pinpoint exactly where we were on the face of the earth. Nowadays, somebody just goes over and reads the ship’s position off of a Global Positioning System readout. Modern technology takes all the fun out of navigating.

We met up with a Fleet oiler the day before we sighted Gibraltar, to replenish our fuel supply. It’s just like going to a gas station - except that both you and the gas station are moving.

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 3

Our refueling underway has evolved over many years of accumulated experience. First we would sit back behind the oiler and whatever ships she had alongside, in lifeguard station 2,000 yards astern, steaming at 12 knots to match the oiler’s speed. Lifeguard station was important because every now and then someone on the working ships would fall over the side and have to be picked up. UNREP (underway replenishment) is a pretty dangerous evolution, even for those who manage to avoid falling overboard.

There was also a waiting station 1,000 yards astern of the oiler, who was the next ship to go alongside. When the ship in waiting station moved up alongside the oiler, the lifeguard moved up to waiting station and was relieved by another ship assigned to lifeguard duties.

There was a flaghoist routine that told us when the oiler was ready for the ship in waiting station to make her approach alongside - the flag was R for Replenishment, but our phonetic alphabet called the flag Romeo. It was something like this: Romeo at the dip (at about two-thirds the height of the hoist) on the UNREP ship meant ‘stand by to come alongside!’ and closed up (pulled all the way to the top of the hoist) meant ‘begin your approach!’ We acknowledged each of those signals by repeating them on our own hoists.

We would begin our approach by increasing speed to 18 knots and moving over just a little to starboard of the oiler’s wake. Destroyers always went alongside to starboard - larger ships went alongside to port of the oiler. With just a little experience, conning officers would learn a benchmark for telling them when to cut their speed to 12 knots. It depended on the approach speed and the rate at which our own ship would slow from the approach speed to the UNREP speed. The ROAN, a lighter vessel with a 600-psi steam propulsion plant, would change speed much faster than BUCHANAN (a later ship of mine), which was a heavier ship with a 1200-psi steam plant. For example, I knew on ROAN that when our forward gun mount came even with the oiler’s fantail (the deck you can walk around on at the aft end of the ship) and we were approaching at 18 knots, I would at that point give the man at the engine order telegraph the order to slow to 12 knots. We would then steady out at 12 knots right when our bridge came abeam of the oiler’s bridge.

Here’s a picture of a destroyer to starboard of an oiler and an aircraft carrier to port.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:D...hment_2005.jpg

If we overshot or fell short of where we should have been alongside the oiler, which was always a cause of major embarrassment, it was only because those *%#! snipes (the guys in the boiler rooms and engine rooms) screwed up again. Of course, my song changed considerably when I later became a snipe, at which time the blame for overshooting or falling short shifted to those *%#! jerks up there on the bridge, who had no idea what the hell they were doing and didn’t know how to handle the ship.

It was a shiphandling challenge to make the approach, because the closer you brought your destroyer to the oiler, the less distance there was for the crew on deck to pull those massive hoses. However, if you got too close (say less than 50 feet), there was this fluid dynamics phenomenon called ‘Bernoulli’s Effect’ that basically sucked the ships together. We won’t get into the details of Bernoulli here, but you had to keep it in mind and could definitely feel the effect if you got in too close.

I always liked to try to come in at about 60 to 80 feet from the oiler. We had distance flags to tell us the exact separation, but after a few times you could pretty well estimate the distance even without the markers. After the hoses were passed and the heavy lifting and pulling evolutions were finished for a while, we could then move out to the safer distance of 100 to 120 feet while the oiler pumped away.

From the very minute a destroyer came alongside, she had to keep station on the oiler. The oiler would order a course and speed to the helmsman and to the engineroom, and they would just hold that the whole time. If stationkeeping discrepancies arose, it was up to the destroyer to make the required adjustments. If we were getting too close, we would steer a couple of degrees to the right of the UNREP course (remember the oiler was on our port side), and if we drifted out too far, we would come left a little. How much depended on the helmsman and how good he was.

I remember on ROAN with Predovich at the helm, you could count on him to steer within one degree of the ordered course. But most helmsmen couldn’t steer that precisely, so telling the helm to come right one degree would be useless if somebody other than Predovich was at the helm. In those cases, a two-degree heading change was the only realistic choice. Predovich was the only helmsman I ever knew who could actually come right or left one degree.

To keep our fore-and-aft position, we had to increase or decrease speed ever so slightly, which we did by adding or subtracting revolutions per minute on the propeller shafts. There was a messenger with a hand-held slate and a grease pencil on the port wing who wrote down the ordered course and ordered number of turns for the shafts in case the OOD forgot what his latest orders were. With the current trends being what they are, the messenger, slate, and grease pencil have been replaced by a computer readout of the course and RPMs. Of course, the high-tech computer readout is probably broken half the time, in which case they have to bring the low-tech messenger with his slate and grease pencil back out onto the bridge wing.

Like with the helmsman and his course, it was generally futile to add or subtract one shaft turn at a time, so usually I moved up or down in two-turn increments and waited patiently to see if an adjustment was large enough to make the required correction. You had to remember that the correction wouldn’t take effect instantaneously, and you had to know how long to wait before increasing the correction because it wasn’t doing what you needed. If you didn’t understand the time lag, you could really over-correct in a big way - sort of like ‘correcting’ the temperature of your water in a shower you’ve never used before. You can either freeze or burn yourself if you don't allow for time lags and impatiently make huge changes.

When it was time to disconnect the hoses and send them back to the oiler, we would again move in closer to the oiler to expedite passing the hoses back. Then when all lines were clear, we would increase speed to 25 knots, steer a little to the right of the UNREP course, and move out smartly while engulfing the oiler’s bridge in heavy black smoke as sort of a thank-you and farewell gesture.

And tomorrow we expected to sight Gibraltar!!!

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 4

The next day after our underway refueling, we spotted our first land since leaving Newport when the starboard lookout bellowed out “Gibraltar dead ahead!!” Sure enough, there was the Rock of Gibraltar a few degrees off our starboard bow (just to the right of being directly ahead of us). Of course, we had already picked the point up on radar long before it came into sight, but it was always more exciting to see landmarks with our eyeballs than it was to detect them on our radar screens.

Gibraltar is at the southernmost tip of Spain, but it belongs to the United Kingdom. It controls the entrance from the Atlantic Ocean into the Mediterranean, so strategically it is very important. There is a very narrow strait through which all ships have to go when they are passing between the Atlantic and the Med.

The Rock is a familiar sight to most of us - especially those who have Prudential insurance. Here is what it looks like if you haven’t been there, or if you don’t use Prudential as your insurance carrier.

http://www.solarnavigator.net/geogra..._gibraltar.jpg

Running wild on the place is a very large colony of monkeys, called the Barbary Apes. It was always said that if the apes were ever to disappear, then that will signal the end of the British Empire. Well, the apes are still there, even though the Empire as such no longer exists. The apes are very well taken care of, and get the best of treatment.

Here’s a shot of one of the apes (who are really more like cute monkeys than apes), sitting above the scenic harbor.

http://i.pbase.com/u14/mr2c280/large/4337947.Apes06.jpg

Gibraltar is also one of the most strategic points in the world. It marks the entrance to the Mediterranean sea, and all traffic headed in or out must pass the rock’s stern gaze. The peninsula has changed hands between the Spanish and Arabs for thousands of years. Finally, in the 18th century it became a British possession in the War of Spanish Secession. It became a permanent part of the British Empire with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

Having a British colony on their doorstep has never sat well with the Spanish who have tried more than a dozen times to take the land back by force. Today Gibraltar remains a thorn in the side of international relations between those two countries, and a banking and espionage haven for others. Spain demands that the land be returned. Britain maintains that it will let Gibraltar go if that’s what its people want. However, the people have repeatedly voted overwhelmingly to remain part of Britain.

The ROAN was detached from the squadron and we were assigned the duty of watching for a Russian submarine which was expected to come from the Atlantic side through Gibraltar and into the Med, while the rest of our squadron proceeded to the island of Crete in the eastern Med. We had to steam north and south just inside Gibraltar watching for the submarine, while there were countless ships going east and west through the straits. We were almost always having to avoid these ships as we were continually on collision courses. When the submarine finally came through, we reported this fact to the Fleet Commander and followed her for a day until another ship was assigned to track her, at which time we set our course for Istanbul, Turkey, after a brief refueling stop in Crete.

Crete has a fascinating place for sightseeing - it’s the home of Knossos, where the Minotaur of mythology was said to have lived. The Minotaur was a creature that was half man and half bull. It dwelt in the Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze constructed by King Minos of Crete and designed by the architect Daedalus to hold the Minotaur. It was a fierce creature, and Minos, after getting advice from the Oracle at Delphi, had Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth to hold the Minotaur. It was located under Minos' palace in Knossos.

According to Greek mythology, the palace was designed with such complexity that nobody placed in it could ever find his way out. King Minos then kept the architect prisoner to ensure that he would not reveal the palace plan to anyone. But Daedalus was also a great inventor, and he built two sets of wings so he and his son Icarus could escape from the island. On their way out, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun because the wax that held the wings together would melt.

But during their escape Icarus, young and impulsive as he was, figured he knew better than his old-fashioned father (don’t all kids act this way at some time?) so he flew higher and higher until the sun rays melted the wax that held his wings together, and the young boy fell to his death in the Aegean sea. I used to tell my children that story whenever they thought they knew better than I did - sometimes it actually worked!!

Arthur Evans, the British archaeologist who excavated the site starting in 1900, restored large parts of the palace in a way that it is possible today to appreciate the grandeur and complexity of a structure that evolved over several millennia and grew to occupy about 20,000 square meters. Walking through its complex multi-storied buildings one can comprehend why the palace of Knossos was associated with the mythological labyrinth.

Here is a pretty good site for seeing Knossos how it looks today, and what it probably looked like when it was in its prime. The site also gives a brief tour and explanation of the complex.

http://www.historywiz.com/knossos.htm

After we refueled and did a little sightseeing, we were off for enchanting Istanbul!!

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 5

The approach to Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) from the sea is quite breathtaking. It’s called the Golden Horn. You can see the major mosques from quite a distance, and these provide fantastic sights that are very unique to most Westerners. I have some excellent slides of this approach that I took myself, but I can’t find anything nearly as good on the internet. The internet pictures all seem to be taken from ashore, which doesn’t do justice to what you see from the water. Unfortunately, my slides are still slides and not easily transmitted computer files.

We could go on and on for several episodes and several days about Istanbul, which is one of the best places in the world for sightseeing, in my opinion. But I’ll confine the discussion to four places, just to keep it simple - two mosques, a museum, and a palace.

Of the hundreds of mosques in the city, there are two that were my favorites.

Aya Sofia stands on the site of an earlier Christian Church erected by Constantius II in 360 AD, some 30 years after Byzantium had become the capital of the Roman Empire. The Christian Church was burned in 404 and rebuilt by Theodosius II in 415, only to be again destroyed by fire in 532. The present structure, which is entirely fireproof, was built in 532–37 by Emperor Justinian. Severe earthquakes caused the dome to collapse in 558, but it was rebuilt by 563.

Here are some views of the Aya Sofia Mosque - the first is at night all lit up, and the second is a daytime shot:

http://nmcfarl.org/travel_photos/upl...sofianight.jpg

http://p.vtourist.com/2012698-Aya_So...tanbul_Ili.jpg

With the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Aya Sofia was converted from a Church to a Mosque, and in subsequent years all the interior Christian mosaics were obscured under coatings of plaster and painted ornaments; all of the Christian symbols elsewhere were obliterated. The four slender minarets which rise at the outer corners of the structure were added one at a time over the years; the crescent replaced the cross on the summit of the dome, and the altar and the pulpit were replaced by Muslim furnishings. Aya Sofia is no longer a mosque, but is now a museum.

And a little more background http://www.wright-photo.com/istanbul10.htm

Another fantastic mosque is the Sultan Ahmet, also called The Blue Mosque because of its blue interior tiles, mostly on the upper level and difficult to see unless you're right up there with them. The mosque was built from 1603-17 by Sultan Ahmet I. The Sultan wanted his mosque to outshine the nearby Aya Sofia. The Sultan died just one year after his mosque was completed - he was only twenty-seven years old.

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque is the only mosque in Istanbul with six minarets and there are no less than 30 small domes in addition to the one main dome. It is one of Istanbul's premier sights, and is still a working mosque.

Here is a view of the beautiful Sultan Ahmet Mosque:

http://www.islamicity.com/Culture/Mo...pe/TMp145a.htm

The Topkapi Palace Museum was once a palace, and is now a museum. The complex is a hybrid — part museum, like the Louvre in France, and part historic building, like Versailles. Its treasures include swords and daggers, royal clothes, carpets, textiles, ceramics, manuscripts, jewels, armor, paintings and other objects of art. It is still a sterling sight — a walled array of domes and turrets and minaret-like chimneys commanding the city from on high. A compound encompassing 173 acres of gardens, courtyards, workshops, kitchens, armories, baths, fountains, offices, halls and residential areas, the palace embodied the imperial might of the Ottoman Empire and manifested power through the inaccessibility of the Sultan and his court.

I probably shouldn’t taint this discussion by mentioning a great American movie, but I’ll do just that. The movie was called Topkapi (what else?) and starred Melina Mercouri of Never on Sunday fame. The film was about the clever theft from the very well-alarmed Topkapi Palace Museum of an emerald-studded dagger. The movie was made in 1964, so some of you youngsters may not have heard of it yet. In my opionion, it was a lot better than whatever they call those pathetic things they crank out nowadays with stars like J-Lo and Ben Affleck. But I don’t want to start a generation war here - so enough on that.

The dagger that wound up in the movie was originally crafted before 1747 as a gift to the Persian King Nadir Shah, but the dagger never reached its intended recipient. The King was killed in an uprising before the Ottoman emissary crossed the border into Persia. The dagger features three unusually large emeralds in its handle, with an eight-sided emerald cover at its top concealing a small watch - a thing that tells time. Along both sides of the handle are rows of diamonds, and the back of the handle is covered in mother-of-pearl and enamel.

I thought about getting a collar for my cat Eleanor made out of the same kinds of things, but Pet Smart doesn’t carry them. They just have plain red and blue collars - and by that I mean they have red collars and they have blue collars. They don’t even mix the two colors up, much less have emeralds or mother-of-pearl.

Here is some background on Topkapi: http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/~history/topkapi.html

The museum also has the throne used by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent on his battle campaigns, as the Sultan didn’t want to lack any of his creature comforts during his warfare activities. It also has hundreds of other items that shed light on the significance of the Topkapi Palace and the Ottoman Empire.

The Dolmabahçe Palace was built in the reign of Sultan I Abdulmecit during the 19th century. It is quite ornate, and lies along the European coast of the Bosphorus. Dolmabahçe Palace was constructed between 1843 and 1856, mixing different European artistic influences and built by Abdulmecit’s architect, Karabet Balya.

It was built over three levels, and symmetrically planned, with 285 chambers and 43 halls. It has a 600 meter long pier along the river, with two huge monumental gates. The palace is surrounded by well-maintained and immaculate gardens, with an immense 56-columned greeting hall, with 750 lights illuminated from 4.5 tons of crystal chandeliers. The entrance was used for meeting and greeting Sultans, and opposite the ceremonial hall was the harem. They told me I wasn’t allowed in the harem room, so I can’t give a first-hand account of that. But the furniture, silk carpets and curtains in the greeting hall all remain in pristine condition.

The palace has a level of luxury not present in most other palaces, with walls and ceilings decorated with gold, and European art from the period. Top quality silk and wool carpets, southeast Asian hand-made artifacts, and crystal candlesticks adorn every room. The men’s public bath is adorned with alabaster marble, and the harem also contains the Sultan’s bedrooms and the women and servants’ divisions.

Here are some views of the palace exterior.

http://www.istanbulexcursions.com/pa...hce+palace.jpg

http://www.beehiveacademy.org/php/im...olmabahce3.jpg

Here is a pretty good virtual tour of Istanbul, if you would care to explore some on your own.

http://www.virtourist.com/europe/istanbul/index.html

After Istanbul, we got underway for some operations with an aircraft carrier.

[AuntShecky]

This thread gets a **** rating. It is chockful (sp?) of information especially for one who never got her sea legs.
I knew the Icarus myth, especially through one of my favorite Auden poems ("Musee de Beaux Arts") but I had totally forgotten about the Minotaur connection, which tells why the wax wings were constructed in the first place. Loved the Gilbratar section including the photos.

I guess I'm getting ("getting"!) old cause I remember the old song, "Istanbul Was once Constantinople." I recall Melina Mercouri,and Peter Ustinov as well, but I don't think I've ever seen the movie. I wish H'ywood would make a movie about the Byzantine empire, headed by the Emporer Justinian and his wife, Theodora, who started out as a (ahem) exotic dancer and ended up an empress. Not only did Justinian build the Hagia Sophia, he also built the big sports complex, the Hippodrome, perhaps as an answer to Rome's Colosseum, most assuredly as a monument to his own ego. He sent his empire into bankruptcy and I believe had to make a quick exit.
Going way off on tangents, here, Dick, but I'll close by saying I'm saving this information-rich link! Great work.

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 6

“SWEEPERS, SWEEPERS, MAN YOUR BROOMS!!” Yackabovicz, our Boatswain’s Mate of the Watch, was in his usual fine voice today – he could have easily filled in for the guy with the dramatic booming voice at the Indianapolis Speedway who orders the drivers to start their engines. You could almost hear the machinery roaring and see the gasoline exhaust gushing as our sweepers put their brooms into high gear.

Yackabovicz continued booming into the ship’s public address system “Give the ship a clean sweepdown fore and aft! Sweep down all topsides, lower decks, ladders and passageways! Dump all trash and garbage over the fantail!” We were on station five miles on the starboard beam of the aircraft carrier USS AMERICA (CVA-66) in the Med, in a circular screen with seven other destroyers around the carrier. I was Officer of the Deck.

Back then in 1967 it was still OK to dump our trash and garbage over the fantail in broad daylight, but I hear that now you can’t dump anymore – not even in the dead of night. But I digress.

Suddenly the primary tactical radio came alive. I started moving from the port wing toward the radio handset over by the Captain’s chair on the starboard side of the pilothouse as the radio transmission thundered in, “Eskimo, this is Greased Lightning, IMMEDIATE Execute, Station Zulu Six, I say again, Station Zulu Six, Standbyyyyyy, ….... EXECUTE!!!, Over.” [This is a fictitious signal that tells us to take station 2,000 yards astern of the carrier so we can operate as rescue destroyer to pick up any pilots if any of the carrier’s planes don’t make it safely onto the flight deck.] I immediately answered “This is Eskimo, Roger, Out” and shoved the handset back into its receptacle.

My JOOD (Junior Officer of the Deck) had just come aboard two weeks ago fresh out of school and I wasn’t about to trust him yet in this situation, not when ROAN’s reputation for smart shiphandling was on the line and this guy could very well have flunked his seamanship class. I had the conn.

As soon as the handset was back in its home on the starboard side of the pilothouse, I began my mad dash to the port wing of the bridge so I could safely give the order “LEFT Standard Rudder” to Predovich at the helm. This would get our bow over and start us moving toward our station astern of the carrier smartly, thereby maintaining ROAN’s reputation as a ship who knew what the hell she was doing out there and was on top of everything that really mattered. But since I was still on my way to the wing and not yet ready to give the rudder order, rather than waste time I went ahead and gave my order to the lee helm, “ALL ENGINES AHEAD FLANK, indicate turns for 25 knots.”

Keeping my eyes fixed on the carrier as I continued toward the port wing, I unfortunately failed to notice that Yackabovicz, having finished his duty of getting our sweepers off and running, was now getting ready to show Mariano at the engine order telegraph the brand new tattoo he had just gotten. As I was to learn later, his tattoo was truly magnificent, a shapely unclothed lady perched on the back of a blue dragon, with the inscription “Ride ‘em Cowgirl” and a few other incredible features I won’t go into because they’ll just bog down the story. He had just gotten the tattoo in Istanbul three days earlier, and now he was showing it off to anyone who couldn’t get away from him fast enough. The lee helmsman [engine order telegraph operator], who was securely tied to his post with sound-powered phone cords, was the ideal victim.

To give Mariano the best view possible of this marvelous work of art, Yackabovicz was in the process of extending his left arm fully while holding his coffee mug in the hand that was attached to that very same arm. I was moving at breakneck speed toward the port wing to make sure I didn’t hit anybody in the process of coming left on my way to station. Now when I say I didn’t want to hit anybody, I sort of had other ships in mind. But Yackabovicz’s coffee mug and the binoculars hanging around my neck arrived at the same point at the same time.

“LEFT Standard Rudder,” I yelled to Predovich from the wing, with coffee dripping from everything I owned. Predovich was our UNREP helmsman and he could drive a nail into a tiny wooden block with our bow. “LEFT Standard Rudder, AYE, Sir” he boomed back to me, and I let the turn continue as I leaned against the pelorous, carefully studying the carrier and our heading to decide what course to steady on. “My Rudder is LEFT Standard, Sir,” Predovich told me, and I gave him a “Very well; steady on course 040.” “Steady on course 040, AYE, Sir,” he echoed back.

A quick five-second puff of black smoke when our main engine throttles started opening and our boilers began answering the turbines’ call for more steam had been enough to show the carrier we were really serious about taking station – by now our stack gas had returned to its normal light haze. The forced draft blowers were turning faster and faster, and getting louder and louder, while their pitch was going higher and higher, approaching that musical but steady high-pitched whine that so majestically screams “25 KNOTS!” while the bow surges forward slicing through the water faster and faster.

The ship began to pitch gently in the slight waves as our speed continued to build, and spray started coming up over the bow. The spray increased in intensity with each successive downward plunge of the bow, but remained a fine mist the whole time. Salt spray in your face on the way to station always made an exhilarating experience even better.

We continued our onward rush to glory for several minutes, as I kept a close eye on the carrier’s bearing drift to make sure it continued only ever so slightly to the right. Too much right bearing drift meant that we would end up in a stern chase, having to keep “pouring on the coals” later just to catch up to the carrier because we were steering too far to the left during this earlier part of the maneuver. I always disliked having to use speed merely to compensate for my poor shiphandling, so I watched this carefully. Usually I would have to make a few course adjustments to hold the bearing drift rate where I wanted it, but this time for some reason the initial choice of 040 was proving to be perfect. And Predovich, our all-star helmsman, was holding up his end of the bargain, keeping our heading within one degree either side of the ordered course.

We were coming in beautifully, broad on the carrier’s starboard quarter at 2,400 yards with spray flying and forced draft blowers howling. The final adjustment easing us into station astern should be a piece of cake, and I started my trip across the pilothouse toward the starboard wing to make that final turn and to slow the engines back to 15 knots to match the carrier’s speed.

Wallin, our Quartermaster of the Watch, smoked Pall Malls and had just bought a brand-new Zippo lighter from the ship store before coming on watch, one emblazoned with the ship’s crest. He had been filling it while Yackabovicz was deploying the sweepers, and you could smell lighter fluid all over the place. Wallin was using the chart table to perform his fueling operation because he didn’t want to risk messing up his Quartermaster’s Notebook on his own table by dribbling lighter fluid all over it. Now I don’t know where the chart table on your ship was, but on ROAN it was right by the door that goes out to the starboard wing.

This meant that to reach the starboard wing for my final adjustment into station, I first had to navigate safely past Wallin and his shiny new Zippo, now flush to the gills with lighter fluid. Normally I didn’t worry about things like that, but after my collision with Yackabovicz and his coffee, I didn’t want anything else screwing up these last delicate steps of the maneuver. Wallin was getting ready to light up as I was coming back into the pilothouse from the port wing to make my transition over to the starboard wing, so I watched him just as carefully as I watched the carrier, and successfully made it past him and out to the wing.

Now I’m not going to reveal in a public forum any of my secret maneuvering thumbrules on just how I knew exactly when to put the rudder over and precisely when to slow to the carrier’s speed. But they worked perfectly and we slid smartly into our station without having to fishtail or back down, or any of those things other ships had to do when they started creeping up way too close to the carrier because they didn’t know when to cut their speed and wound up grossly overshooting their station.

At that point, with the ship right on station, I called my JOOD over and asked him if he would like to take the conn for a while, sent the messenger down to my stateroom to get me a clean shirt, and bummed one of Wallin’s Pall Malls.

And after a few days of chasing the aircraft carrier around the Mediterranean, we set a course for Piraeus, Greece, the seaport which serves Athens.

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 7

In Greece, we anchored out in Piraeus, the seaport serving Athens, where I was assigned shore patrol duty for our first three days in port. Since I had to stay in Piraeus for my shore patrol, I didn’t get to do any sightseeing until I was relieved of my duties. Three days in that little city of Piraeus, which was the site of the 1960 movie Never on Sunday, provided an interesting experience. The whole place was crawling with prostitutes, so we won’t go into much detail about that part of the visit. I don’t want to have to blush.

When I finally got to visit Athens on the fourth day, I made a beeline for the Acropolis, or the "Sacred Rock" of Athens, which is the most important area of the city. It was begun during the Golden Age of Pericles (460 - 429 BC). Pericles was a strong believer in democracy - everyone from all classes could serve. His philosophy was "Government in the hands of the many, not of the few." The Athenians had freedom of speech and thought. This was a true democracy where everyone voted for everything. All officials were elected to office, but I don't think they had primaries like we have in the U.S.

The first architectural masterpieces of the period were erected on the Acropolis. Here is a view of the entire Acropolis today, which sits atop a hill.

http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/a/image..._aerial.lg.jpg

You might already recognize the Parthenon at the right side, but from this distant view it’s hard to make out the other structures. We’ll discuss the major parts one by one.

But first, just to gain some perspective, here’s what the place looked like when it was new, in this photo by the ancient Greek photographer Olympus. His photographs are all in black and white. Note the names of the various buildings, as we will be discussing each of them individually.

http://dl.ccc.cccd.edu/classes/inter..._acropolis.jpg

After climbing the steps up the hill to the Acropolis, you come to the monumental gateway to the Acropolis, or the Propylaea, which was completed in 432 BC, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta, the two major city-states of Greece at that time.

Here is what the Propylaea, as well as the entire Acropolis complex, probably looked like in its heyday, with the people proceeding through the main gates of the Propylaea. The Parthenon is the large temple at the top right of the picture. You can see that this picture is in vivid color, so it was not taken by Olympus.

http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/cl...fe/panath1.gif

Note the small elevated structure in the foreground to the right, which is the Temple of Nike. The Temple of Athena Nike was constructed in about 420 BC by the architect Kallikrates. It is built in the Ionic order, and it has a row of four columns in front of each of its narrow sides. The relief frieze on the upper section of the walls depicts a conference of gods on the east side, and scenes from battles on the other three. A marble parapet decorated with the relief representation of Nike, or Victory, which happens to be what we have atop the dome of our own U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, DC. I would have to guess the Greeks had her first, though.

Here is what the Temple of Nike looks like now.

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/g...e6-stoa-cc.jpg

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/g...-cc-wallyg.jpg

Here is a postcard from Athens, sent late in the nineteenth century, which was found by someone in an Athens flea market in 2001.

http://www.propylaea.org/

This postcard shows the Propylaea main gate. Note that this postcard is NOT from my own postcard collection, which concentrates on cards from San Antonio, Texas spanning the period of the 1940s and ‘50s AD.

The main architect of the Propylaea was Mnesicles, a colleague of Phidias, with Phidias being the best known architect of the time. Phidias was responsible for most of the work on the Acropolis. I don’t know if Phidias ever figured out how to pronounce Mnesciles’s name, but if he could design buildings like those on the Acropolis, I would guess he could pronounce a name like that - but I sure can’t.

The Propylaea had a central building and two lateral wings. The colonnades along the west and east sides had a row of Doric columns while two rows of Ionic columns divided the central corridor into three parts.

Here’s what the main gateway looks like today.

http://www.travelinstyle.com/greece/...s/IMAGE006.JPG

There will be more discussion of the Acropolis in the next episode.

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 8

The Parthenon is the most well known part of the Acropolis. Here is what the Parthenon looked like back when it was younger, which is different from what it looks like now that it’s older. Some of us people used to look different when we were younger, too, before we got older.

http://www.sandrashaw.com/images/AH1L18Par4.jpg

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch...greece/mod.jpg

And for contrast, here is what the Parthenon looks like today - sort of like some of us - not quite what we were years ago.

http://www.rotaru.com/pics/parthenon.jpg

And here’s a black and white view taken a little further from the building so you can get a more distant perspective:

http://www.phil.uni-erlangen.de/~p1a...n/parth284.JPG

The Parthenon was designed and built by the architectural firm Iktinos, Kallikrates, and Phidias in the fifth century BC. The temple was divided into two cellas, or inner sanctuaries, namely the eastern and the western. I didn’t have my compass with me to verify that they were named correctly - I’m just taking their word for it.

Part of the temple was dedicated to Athena Parthenos, "the Virgin," which led to the whole building becoming known as the Parthenon. The imperial scale of the Parthenon, the beauty of its decorative sculpture, and the visual harmony among its architectural elements all account for its fame and notariety.

The Parthenon seems to have been damaged by fire but the exact date of the fire and subsequent repairs is debated, with suggestions ranging all the way from 150 BC to 267 AD - a span of well over 400 years. In any case, repairs included the exact reconstruction of the colonnade of the eastern cella, a new statue base, and repairs to the capitals on the columns of the western porch.

The Erecthium is a temple on the Acropolis in Athens constructed between 421 and 405 BC. It is the considered to be the finest early example of the Greek classical architecture in the Ionic order. Note that there are three orders, namely Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian. The main temple was divided into two sections, dedicated to the worship of the two principal gods of Attica, Athena and Poseidon. Erectheus, for whom this temple is named, was somehow an associate of Poseidon, but I haven’t really figured out why the building is named for him rather than for Poseidon. It might be because a relief frieze, bearing a representation of the birth of Erectheus, decorated the exterior of the building.

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g2.../erecthium.jpg

The Erechthium sits on the most sacred site of the Acropolis where Poseidon and Athena had their contest over who would be the Patron of the city. Poseidon drove his trident (that’s like a pitchfork) into a rock and a spring burst forth, while Athena touched the ground with a spear and an olive tree grew. Athena was declared the victor and the great city of Athens was named for her - while Poseidon was given a small village in Syros, wherever that is.

The building itself contains the Porch of the Maidens, or Caryatids, which are now copies. Four of the originals have been placed in the Acropolis museum. There is a fifth original marble structure from the Erechthium, which was taken from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin and put into the British Museum in London more than a century ago, along with several marbles from the Parthenon. The story of the Elgin Marbles is a fascinating and involved saga that will not be repeated here due to its length and its controversial nature, but if you have the time and want to explore the subject a little on your own on the internet or in a library, you might find it interesting. Or if watching Dancing with the Stars on television is more to your liking, then you should do that instead.

Below the Acropolis is the Theater of Herod Atticus built by the Romans in 161 AD and still used today for classical concerts, ballet, performances of high cultural value, and Yanni, whom some people consider of high cultural value also. Further on is the Theater of Dionysious, the first stone theater and home to Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes, who were sort of like our modern-day Neil Simon way back then. It was rebuilt around 342 BC by Lykourgos and then enlarged by the Romans to be used for gladiator fights. Here’s what the theater looks like today:

http://www.greeklandscapes.com/image.../athens-03.jpg

The Plaka is the oldest section of Athens. Most of the streets have been closed to automobile traffic, and there were numerous sidewalk cafes at the time I visited in the 1960s AD. At that time it had restaurants and nightclubs, but most of the nightclubs closed down when the government outlawed amplified music in the area in the 1970s in an effort to make the place more respectable. Though it is quite commercialized it is still a neighborhood, and arguably the nicest neighborhood in central Athens. Most of the restaurants are probably typical tourist places, but if you’re a tourist, what’s wrong with that?

Here’s what the Plaka looks like:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1055/...47df5af392.jpg

http://www.restaurant-akropol.gr/images/stories/p1.jpg

And here is a virtual tour of Athens if you want to do some independent exploring without having to buy any airline tickets or hotel rooms.

http://www.virtourist.com/europe/gre...ens/index.html

Next up: Naples!

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 9

There is an Italian saying “Vedi Napoli e poi muori” which translates into "See Naples and die." It was coined long ago, and it means that sometime before you die, you must experience the beauty and magnificence of Naples. It does NOT mean that just seeing the city will kill you, although there are probably some people who might think that way. It has some rough neighborhoods, at least it did back then when I was there in the 1960s, but I hear it’s come a long way as far as cleaning up the place is concerned.

Naples is in southern Italy in the region of Campania, and is the third most populous city in Italy, with over one million inhabitants. It is right behind Rome and Milan. Don’t you hate it when someone says humpty-dump is the third biggest thingamajig in the world, and they don’t bother to say what the first two biggest thingamajigs are? I had that problem in that some of the websites just labeled Naples as the third biggest city - obviously Rome is first, but it’s not all that clear without research (to me at least) that Milan would be second.

Naples sits on the northern edge of one of the most beautiful bays in Italy - the Bay of Naples. I haven’t figured out if the city is named for the bay, or if the bay is named for the city. But I’m still working on finding out, and if I uncover the answer, I’ll be sure to pass it on.

The famous volcano Mount Vesuvius and the romantic islands of Capri and Ischia lie in close proximity to the city. We’ll discuss Pompeii, which was destroyed by the volcano, and Capri in later episodes after we make it through Naples, which takes two episodes. I never went to Ischia myself, so I’ll pass on that one.

I enjoyed touring Naples, which had lots of beautiful spots to go along with some bad slum areas. There were countless beautiful churches, a palace, a museum, a great opera house, a castle, and a shopping mall much like the stacked malls that would appear all over the United States sometime after it had already celebrated its 100th birthday in Europe.

Naples is a very old city - having been established as a Greek trading center around 600 BC. The city was later conquered by the ancient Romans and became a residence of several Roman emperors and other Romans of that time. Maybe the city is not so delightful as Rome or Florence, but it deserves a place among the destinations a tourist should not miss in Italy.

One night, some of us on liberty were asked by a cab driver if we wanted to see the ‘Exibeesh’, which was apparently some sort of Italian exhibition. We didn’t know if this meant oil paintings, sculptures, opera, or what, so we accepted the invitation and the driver took us to a dingy house that we certainly wouldn’t have even thought about entering on our own. It turned out that the exibeesh had absolutely nothing to do with art. After that, I decided I better stick to classier activities - things I could tell my Mommy about.

We’re going to run through some descriptions of some of the sights, and then you can take an internet tour at a site that has a pretty good overview of the city.

Piazza Dante, or Dante’s Square, is the most important piazza in Naples. Dante was a famous poet who loved Beatrice and wrote some kind of a comedy a few hundred years ago, and lots of people seem to label his comedy as divine - sort of like Bette Midler, I guess. This Dante character lived in Florence, though, so I really don’t know why they have his piazza here in Naples. In this square there are some old book shops, but I don’t think they still carry any original Dante works. Dante wrote some kind of line about “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi . . .” to kick off his comedy, but that doesn’t sound all that hilarious to me. Maybe it lost something in translation, because I think it means something like "Midway through my life, I ...."

Anyway, regardless of whether Dante’s comedy is funny or not, here’s Piazza Dante a few years before I was there:

http://www.andriaroberto.com/Piazza%20Dante.jpg

Nearby there’s an interesting church, the "Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo" (in Piazza del Gesù). This is a Baroque convent, where you can admire some interesting works by Ribera, the marble altar and Sala Moscati, dedicated to someone named Moscati, who must have been important, but I don’t know why. The square, Piazza del Gesù, contains some remarkable structures. Here is a view of the piazza, concentrating on the central obelisk.

http://www.interviu.it/cards/maggio1/na117.jpg

The convent was built from 1310 to 1328 at the request of the wife of King Robert of Anjou. It still retains the citadel-like walls setting it apart from the outside world, walls that contained a vast religious community — and today contain a more modest one. The complex was expanded along Baroque lines in the 1700s. It was almost entirely destroyed by bombing in World War II and was restored to its original Gothic form, retaining only a few reminders of the Baroque.

The Umberto Gallery was built from 1876 to 1883. It is laid out the way lots of shopping malls in the US are laid out nowadays. However, the malls like this in the US didn’t start appearing until about 1985 or later, which means the Umberto came over 100 years before our copy-cat versions. I’m talking about the stacked malls with three or four floors of stores and restaurants in a round configuration such that the inside edge looks down into a central courtyard below. Here is an exterior view, followed by an interior picture.

http://library.ucsc.edu/slides/decou....474.0660r.jpg

http://www.ubs.com/4/artcollection/u...tion/PW321.jpg

It looks a whole lot nicer than the American malls I’ve been to, except for those wires you can see in the exterior shot - they must be needed to hold up the building. But of course I haven’t been to all the malls in America, either. I’ve already conveyed to you that I’m not a big fan of shopping. Still, I doubt that many American malls have an exterior to match this.

The discussion of Naples continues in the next episode.

[AuntShecky]

Is it okay, Dick, to post comments, as I don't want to spoil the continuity of your thread. Anyway, in case anyone doesn't know, "The Divine Comedy," is the epic poem by Dante. The "comedy" isn't our modern connotation of the word; in this case the term refers to the fact that ultimately it's not a tragedy. The work divided into three parts, each a long, book-length poem in itself: The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradisio. The first part -- describing the circles of Hell and more importantly, who is in each -- is the one with which people are most familiar. A couple of interesting facts: guess where Dante put his enemies, especially his political enemies? Dante made two enormous literary innovations: he was one of the first artists to write not in classical Latin or Greek but the "vulgate," conversational Italian as it was used in his time. Secondly, he invented a brand-new poetic line -- the terza rima. Also, you mention that Beatrice was the
love of his life, but only in the sense of the overly-romantic, late Medieval courtly love tradition. He only saw
Beatrice a couple of times in his life, and even then only for a few brief instances, the first time when she was just a little girl.

[DickZ]

Thanks, Auntie. It's fine to inject comments - I would like to see more of them, but you seem to be the only one who ever bothers.

And I'll figure that you were straightening out anyone whom I might have confused with that business about The Divine Comedy - my part was supposed to be funny - just like the other kind of comedy, but I guess someone who doesn't know that, wouldn't necessarily agree.

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 10

The "Palazzo Reale" (now that means Royal Palace, and not the Real Palace as opposed to the Phony One) was built at the beginning of the 17th century by Domenico Fontana, having been commissioned by the Bourbon King Charles III to imitate Versailles. Starting in 1734 it was the Spanish Bourbons’ residence, but I forgot why the Spanish Bourbons were living in Naples instead of Madrid or Valencia or something like that where they would have less of a language problem even though Spanish and Italian are somewhat similar. I think I used to know why the Spanish Bourbons were in Italy, but I can’t always remember everything I used to know. Here’s what the Palazzo looks like.

http://www.virtourist.com/europe/Naples/imatges/17.jpg

Piazza Plebiscito is described as a semicircular modern design square, but it sounds to me like there’s some kind of a contradiction between semicircular and square. In the middle of this square sits the San Francesco di Paola church, with the dome that you see.

http://www.virtourist.com/europe/Naples/imatges/15.jpg

Did you know that pizza was born in Naples? I certainly didn’t. The most famous pizza in Italy, Pizza Margherita, was invented in 1889 at Pizzeria Brandi, which is still operating in Naples (at Salita S.Anna di Palazzo 1). I don’t think they have any Domino’s or Pizza Huts there, but I didn’t look real hard for them.

Here is the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, or the National Archeological Museum, one of the best Roman Empire Museums in the world. Many of the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum are displayed here. You’ll find sculptures of Mythological gods and emperors’ busts. I was looking for empresses’ busts, but they didn’t have any, at least not on display. Well, that’s what they told me anyway.

http://www.innaplestoday.com/museums...nazionale4.jpg

"Castel Nuovo" is a little bit of a misnomer because it means New Castle. It was constructed in 1279-1282 CE for Charles I d’Anjou. So its name was accurate only for a brief time over 700 years ago, and has now been overtaken by events, which shows the problems that can arise from a lousy job of naming things. For example, did you know that the New Territories near Hong Kong got its name in the late 19th century? Well, they’re certainly not new any more, and the people just weren’t planning ahead when they gave it that name. However, I’m supposed to be talking about Castel Nuovo in Naples right now, so I’ll get back on track - and you should ignore this sidetrack into Hong Kong, which is far away from Naples. Here is what Castel Nuovo looks like, which certainly isn’t new.

http://p.vtourist.com/2252597-Castel_Nuovo-Naples.jpg

The facade is a 15th century work. This is a must-see monument in Naples, because between the entrance towers is the Alfonso I Triumph Arch, the most important Renaissance work in Naples. This Arch commemorates Alfonso I of Aragon and Naples arrival to the city back in 1443. Inside this castle you can visit the Museo Civico (with Neapolitan history paintings), the Palatine Chapel, and the Sala dei Baroni (Room of Barons).

The San Carlo Opera House is the oldest working theater in Europe. Like many of the great buildings of Naples, it was built by the Bourbon monarch Charles III of Spain, and was completed in 1737. I didn’t go to the opera in Naples, but I did go to the opera in Rome. Since this story is about Naples, I just won’t tell you about the opera in Rome. Here’s what the interior of the San Carlo looks like, which isn’t at all what the interior of the opera in Rome I went to looks like.

http://www.renabranstengallery.com/I...aSanCarlos.jpg

The opera I went to in Rome was at the Terme di Caracalla , which is outdoors. You can’t take an interior shot of that place because it doesn’t have an interior.

In the next episode, we’ll get into Capri and in the one after that, Pompeii.

In the meantime, if you’d like to do a little more in-depth examination of Naples on your own, try this site to get started:

http://www.virtourist.com/europe/Naples/index.html

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 11

The next day I took an excursion to Capri, a beautiful island off the coast of Naples. You have to take a ferryboat over to the island. Here’s Marina Grande, where some of the boats tie up.

http://cache.virtualtourist.com/7229...ande-Capri.jpg

While the boat landing is at sea level, of course, just about everything else of interest ashore is way up a mountain - so you have to take the funicula to get there. The funicula is sort of like a San Francisco cable car, where they also have lots of vertical movement, in that it has sub-surface cables and gears that pull the cars along the rails. Capri’s funicula started operating in 1905 virtually unnoticed, so much so that it was not officially inaugurated until two years later.

About that time the song “Funiculi Funicula” made the train world famous. The tourists and the people who lived there had become tired of scaling the heights on foot or the back of a donkey while wealthy holiday-makers enjoyed the ride in elegant carriages. So in 1892, an organizing committee was set up, and in a relatively short time for those days back then, 13 years, the cable railway was completed. Here’s what a car of the funicula looks like now.

http://www.icteachers.co.uk/photos/p...cula_capri.jpg

When you reach the top of the mountain and leave the confines of the funicula, you soon enter a large piazza which is the "heart" of Capri. Its official name is Piazza Umberto I - it’s a small, closed-off square resembling a courtyard. Everybody seems to call it by its nickname “La Piazzetta.” Around the square there is the ''Torre dell'Orologio'', or Clock Tower, municipal offices; a series of stores and cafes; and to the left, the San Stefano Church. It has been described as a scene of 1950s and 1960s Dolce Vita - and a setting for love affairs, betrayals, and scandals. It still maintains its role as the very heart of society life on the island today.

I know I had a memorable experience that started here, but it’s my secret - what’s left of it, at least.

Here are a couple of pictures which don’t really do the place justice.

http://www.bookcapri.com/piazzetta.jpg

http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-1545...8E7793F44D8%7D

Here’s one of the famous clock tower:

http://www.fotoeweb.it/sorrentina/Fo...di%20Capri.jpg

The center of La Piazzetta is awash in tables shaded by colorful umbrellas. At least they were colorful when I was there, but that was so long ago that maybe they have faded by now. Come to think of it, they’re probably even in shreds by now, as well.

The piazza was probably part of the primitive inhabited area of Capri, as shown by a number of sections of wall made from limestone blocks. The blocks can be seen at the ends of the funicular terrace, having been integrated in the construction of houses and the medieval walls on the northeast side of town. Around the piazza is the medieval quarter, interesting for its history and layout and its network of small, winding alleys. Near the clock tower are some pre-Romana walls, which makes them quite old (I don’t remember when that period was, but it was probably before Romulus and Remus played with the wolves which would date the walls as having been built before 750 BC). They are the remains of the oldest fortifications in Capri.

The Blue Grotto is a spectacular marine grotto of over 50 yards long and 30 yards wide, where the water takes on a beautiful deep blue color because of the unique reflections and plays of light created by the sunlight that filters through the mouth of the cave. Here is what it looks like as you approach the grotto, and then what it looks like when you’re inside.

http://www.johnnyjet.com/images/PicF...BlueGrotto.JPG

http://www.fruocco.com/grotta2001.jpg

Capri’s three famous Faraglioni rise up from the sea - majestic and solitary - to the southeast of the island (remember that the g in this case is silent like the one in lasagna, so you say fah-rahl-YO-nee). The largest rock, connected to the coast by a thin isthmus of land, is known as “Stella” (Star) and is 109 meters high, while the other two, “Faraglione di Mezzo” (Middle Stack) and “Scopolo” (Rock), are 81 and 104 meters high respectively. Here’s what they look like:

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/avec/capri...faraglioni.jpg

The only inhabitants of the Faraglioni are a colony of blue lizards and a few people who use Bic disposable ballpoints that are white and trimmed with blue (the pens that is - I can’t describe the people).

[DickZ]

The Cruise
Part 12

Vesuvius is a volcano not far from Naples, that is most famous for the catastrophic eruption in 79 AD that buried the nearby towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The incident has left an indelible picture of what life was like at that time. It took quite a while to find that indelible picture, though, as it remained buried and hidden for about 1,500 years.

On August 23 in the year 79 AD, Pompeii looked like any other busy and prosperous city in the Roman Empire. For those of us who haven’t yet gotten around to reading Edward Gibbon’s classic work, at that time the empire was still at the height of its majesty and power, and it would be a few more centuries before the decline and fall of the empire would take place. On August 23, 79, people were moving about, much like what we do today, working, shopping, gossiping, and watching sporting events or plays.

Some were engaged in other activities that Aunt Shecky will explain to all of the yentas out there who ask for gory details about what those other activities were. This is because she doesn’t blush as easily as I do. By August 29 of that fateful year, all of these sounds coming out of Pompeii ceased altogether, and the place itself vanished under a thick covering of volcanic ash. We are still continuing to learn more and more about the last days of Pompeii. What happened to Pompeii preserved a treasury of information about life in the ancient Roman Empire.

Although over 20,000 inhabitants of the city perished, the ash that buried the town served as a sort of mummification for the entire city. The catastrophe which buried the town in ash actually captured that moment in time. Artwork was preserved. Buildings were preserved. Several important clues were left behind. These clues give us a little glimpse into the past. These clues are the silver lining that can be seen when you visit the ruins at Pompeii.

The Roman forum was the center of public life. It wasn’t just an open space between major buildings, the forum was where they made Senate and Imperial proclamations, the place where the augurs were read to predict various outcomes such as who would win the next Senate seat or chariot race (after all, they didn’t have either CNN or ESPN back then), and it was a downtown area for public display of grief and gratitude. Unlike its predecessor and counterpart, the Greek agora, the Forum gradually became non-commercial.

By the time Augustus Caesar took over the reins in 63 BC, no carts were allowed in the Roman Forum, which made it necessary to establish specialty marketplaces (like the Forum Boarium, or cattle market) which was separated from the Main Forum for health reasons. They also wanted to get the yentas out of the Main Forum so they created Il Foro Gossippio, where the busybodies could exchange stories for hours on end without disrupting any of the major activities going on in the Main Forum.

The Forum at Pompeii was typical in its plan: at far end of a long open square was a temple set upon a high podium, the processional axis of which formed the formal axis and focal point of the forum. Colonnades along the other three perimeters of the space established a visually unified setting and provided covered walkways between the buildings on both sides.

Here are two views of the Forum as it stands today, having been uncovered shortly before the beginning of the seventeenth century.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient..._art_forum.jpg

http://p.vtourist.com/2809897-Mt_Ves...um-Pompeii.jpg

Here’s a very small picture of what’s left of the laundry where you told the lady at the counter that you wanted your togas done with medium starch on hangers, or without starch in a box, or whatever. I don’t know if the laundry lady would remind you “No tickee no washee” back then, because I wasn’t there while the laundry was still a going concern.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1210/...a758c0.jpg?v=0

Here are a couple of pretty good virtual tours if you want to explore Pompeii a little more on your own:

http://touritaly.org/pompeii/pompeii-main.htm

http://www.thecolefamily.com/italy/pompeii/

And there are lots of others - just use Google to find them.