...And Dreams Are Dreams

“Having ensured the approval of the four lenders (Ellis, Hobhouse, Burdett, and the Ricardo brothers), Cochrane went ahead and did the ordering. Having just returned from Latin America and his great victories, the killer knew what huge profits one can make from orders. His own salary was nothing compared to what he could make off the hipbuilders. So he ordered a total of five ships: two large and three small. The first of the large ones, the Enterprise (there is an aircraft carrier of the same name in the Sixth Fleet), barely reached the mouth of the Thames. It almost sank there and was rescued by chance by an English battleship that towed it to the port of Plymouth, where it underwent the proper repairs. It arrived in Greece, in very bad shape, in the autumn of 1828. It could not be used. It came to us simply to leave us its carcass, to die in our hands, since we had ordered it and we had to accept it.

“The second large steamship, the Invincible, was burned during testing. It didn’t even go to the trouble of coming all the way to Greece to die like the Enterprise had, which, at that, had come to us like a swan and died in our arms. The Invincible didn’t even show up. It died over there. Without a fight. Just like those French submarines with impressive names — the Unsinkable, the Fearless, the Thunderbolt—which would disappear from time to time, I remember, without a trace. They would disappear into the deep ocean waters, along with their entire crews, without even a signal.”

“And what about the other three, Grandfather?”

“Two of the three rotted on the Thames, my boy.

As for the third one, after they replaced its engine, it managed to reach Greece only to announce the death of the other two and then to die itself in our waters.”

“So what happened to the money, Grandfather?”

“It was pocketed by those more cunning than us.

Where else would they find such a pack of rubes, fighting among ourselves like we were? They pocketed the money, they had a great time spending it, and they sent us the cinders.”

“And then, what do you think the nephew said to justify his uncle, the lord admiral? He was a Cochrane too, so he wanted to leave a pretty portrait of his uncle to the historians. He said, “At that time (1825, 1826, 1827), I held four titles: lieutenant, private secretary, aide-de-camp, and treasurer of the fleet, and I had the keys to the safe.” (The dirty crook! The uncle gave the keys to the nephew and now here he comes,

supposedly to tell us the truth, and he is naive enough to want us to believe him, because he truly regards us as rubes, as underdeveloped peasants, as thick-skulled dolts who don’t know their asses from their elbows.)

“Therefore I am able to disclose the total sum that Lord Cochrane made available to the fleet,” the nephew said. “This amount comes to only £8,000. It was this amount that my uncle brought with him from England.” (And what about the commission from the orders, teabag? What about your uncle’s payment?

Show us the invoices if you want us to believe you.)

“Besides, part of this amount was intended for the army,” continued the nephew, in order to whitewash his uncle, the pirate lord. “Whereas, if £40,000 had been made available, they could have hired English and American sailors, with whose able assistance the admiral would surely have accomplished feats comparable in glory and magnitude to those achieved in South America.”

“Talk about being left holding the bag! They had taken our money, they hadn’t given us any ships, and it was all our fault! Therefore how could we not go bankrupt, as we did at that time, without ever having seen a penny? Only one corvette arrived, Endurance, after a delay of a year and a half. Having suffered considerable damage during the voyage, its efficacy did not live up to our expectations. Ellis had kept a

£10,000 commission on that corvette, which was to be built by Galloway, whose son was serving under Mehmet Ali, the enemy. Well, you can hardly expect the father to build a ship well enough to kill his son.

For fifteen whole months, the captains awaited, from day to day, the arrival of Endurance. “An anvil to receive the hammer’s blows and to forge the red-hot ore, he, without a groan, endured in silence, like a tuna fish5”.

“Such were the first loans of the struggle, my boy; then everything was forgotten: we forgot who these rapacious foreigners were who had taken advantage of our nation’s struggle for independence to make a profit. The only thing left was the debt. But since Greece had not received anything, what was she expected to pay?

“Our situation was like that of a poor housemaid whose masters are determined to marry her off, and 5 Aeschylus, Fragments. Trans.