Paula Garrett — In the Nautical Museum

The images that caught my eye when entering the Nautical Museum were of sailors — one, a long, narrow painting of a seaman in his white uniform, hands on hips. Accompanying the painting were several black and white photo portraits of individual sailors, identified in captions by their names in Greek. Hats atilt, I was reminded of my father — his sailor’s cap and the few shared memories of his service in WWII on a supply ship in the Pacific. Then I realized today would have been his 108th birthday.

In general I knew of the strong Greek presence in naval history, but to learn that Kalymnos figured in the Iliad, and that the timber here was used to build boats for the Trojan War, added yet another dimension to the Kalymnian story.

Near the sailors’ images was a watercolor painting of the sea floor. From the bottom of the composition we see stone anchors winding along a rope up to the hands of a man at the helm of the caique. Three fish, a few sponges or possibly rocks, along with tufts of sea grass dot the sea bed, and there’s an urn on its side along the edge.

But where is the diver? Instead, a protective amulet, the Nazar, looks at us from boat’s side, warding off the evil eye.

One of our Clifties observed that distance on Kalymnos is vertical, and I think of the rock climbers and their ropes on one end and the divers and theirs on the other end — of the life line.