Hey all, my voice is still very strained, very gravelly – unable to hold together while projecting for more than four words in a row. Were we talking ‘husky’ I’d just hit record, but we’re not… On the upside, I had NO VOICE at all a week ago, so I’m on the mend. 

I’ll get to Mr Belzoni and his tomb-raiding ways as soon as is possible. Ditto Mr Otzi and his pre-historic cat and mouse game – for the Patreon feed. 

In the meantime – I can write at least. Let’s blog something today. Yeah, I’m avoiding William Brydon and all those other obvious topics from the ‘graveyard of empires’ – best folk like me shush a little and let the folk who served in Afghanistan tell their stories, free of my noise I think…. 

The legend of Atlantis comes down to us from the Greek philosopher Plato in the 4th Century BC. Somewhere out beyond the pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar), 9,000 years before the philosopher’s time, an island of favoured people lived. They lived morally, and extremely well till they discovered vice and all that other good stuff in life. These vice-loving Atlanteans developed an imperialistic attitude and made war with the people of the Mediterranean, conquering down to Egypt on one side – Italy on the other. Athens, of course fought back and expelled them – then Zeus – enraged with these interlopers – drowned Atlantis in a flurry of earthquakes and floods. 

Plato’s student Aristotle was convinced Atlantis was a device dreamt up by Plato, so he could talk further on what made a good or bad society. Over time many others commandeered the Atlantis myth, dreaming up increasingly complex tales. Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis gives a passing description of a modern recording studio – hundreds of years before we’d even record sound. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia described a land, thought to reflect some realities of living in a monastery – but to my eyes seems more aligned with democratic-socialism. The explorer Alexander von Humboldt was convinced Plato was writing about the Americas. Writer, politician and fringe theorist Ignatius Donnelly was the first to write Atlantis was a super-advanced prehistoric empire in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s people lived in a golden age, taught all the other peoples everything they know, and were so much better than the rest of us. He was, of course popular and influential with people like Helena Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner.

A master race from a mystical land, with a mythical history one could leverage to rally discontented masses around – nothing bad could come of that, right?

Whatever the Graham Hancocks of the world have to say on the matter, however much some rocks off Bimini look like a formerly giant harbour wall, or how many pre-historic Britons did actually live on Doggerland – Atlantis was just a tall tale from a guy whose hobby horse was a fictional republic (a republic, by the way which looks terribly like a fascist state. If you haven’t read ‘Republic’ you may be in for a surprise). 

But every once in a while, something happens in our real-life history which evokes Atlantis. Rather than bringing up Plato’s moral however, it often brings about the worst, pseudo-Atlantean behaviour in us.

Our Tale proper begins July 1831, in the waters southwest of the Sicilian coast. Fishermen, used to trawling these waters for their living are shocked to find the sea strewn with dead fish. Stranger still, their usual catch are not just dead, but appear to have been boiled alive. This didn’t bode well. Yes, something had saved them the bother of casting nets and lines – and technically these fish were edible – but they carried a stench of sulphur so heavy it could take you off your feet. 

On July 10th the reason for the dead fish asserted itself, as a volcano thrust out of the sea. For several weeks lava flowed out of the mouth of the volcano. It sprawled outwards till it collided with the sea – where the sea hissed, and bubbled, and gave to it. It quickly settled into a substantial clod of solid land – just shy of a kilometre across, and 20 metres tall at it’s apex. Sicily, whose history we’ll zip through in a month’s time, were then under the rule of the French House of Bourbon. On a normal year they would’ve laid claim to this island immediately – but the island were dealing with a deadly cholera epidemic that was far more urgent than some new land. All the same, they did send Michele Fiorini, a customs official out to land on the live volcano on July 17, 1831. That way they could stake a claim to it. 

Others were very interested in the new land. The world of 1831 was not terribly far removed from the world I wrote about in The Batavia some time back. Refrigeration in the home was still a long way off- so spices from the east, to mask decaying meat was a necessity. European sailors made dangerous, eight month voyages out to the East for spices, and a range of other goods. The Suez Canal, which did away with the need to nearly circumnavigate Africa, was still four decades away. At this point in our history, The sea ports of the Ottoman Empire were still a major player – where one could buy Eastern goods to one’s heart’s content. The sea lanes which took you to Modern day Turkey zipped past this new island. But there was one, age old problem – Pirates. 

Piracy was a problem in the Mediterranean for longer than we’ve had written history. The latest batch of pirates, privateers from ‘the Barbary coast’ in the North of Africa. Barbary pirates, from places like Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli made a healthy living picking off European merchant ships – often with the backing of one or other European nation to pick off their rivals (doesn’t this still sound familiar in this day and age). In 1830, France invaded Algiers – citing the time their ruler, Hussein Dey struck the French Consul in the head with a fly whisk, as a fair provocation – slowing piracy considerably. The European powers had been through this all before. Spain, or the USA or someone would come in and clear out the pirates – but they would always return. If only there were a free clump of land to establish a naval base… Someone could rule the Mediterranean from there.

Enter Captain Sir Humphrey Fleming Senhouse, of the British navy. On word of a new island, he jumped onboard the cutter The Hind, and sailed out to the clod of earth. On August 3rd 1831, Senhouse disembarked with a British flag – naming it Graham Island, after the first lord of the Admiralty, Sir James Graham. This act of imperialistic brown nosing would later earn Senhouse his knighthood. Not long after, the island spewed more lava and grew to four square kilometres. It grew to 60 metres in height, and now had two lakes. Bravo Humphrey! One imagines King William IV saying. Sicily, plague or no plague, decided an island of this size is worth the fight, and sent out a couple of war ships. ‘Fair’s fair, we were here and named it after King Ferdinand while you lot were still out playing bowls’ I imagine them saying.  

In the meantime, the French had shown up. Constant Prevost, a French geology professor just so happened to be in the area, with an artist to sketch the new island. Where Sicily named it Ferdinandea a week after it’s appearance, and the British Graham Island – Prevost named the clod Ile Julia, in an essay to the Société géologique de France. This was in honour of it’s July appearance. Now in the news, the public began to speculate. “What if this is the first of many islands to pop up, and next thing there is a mountain range from Sicily to Africa?” “What if this is Atlantis, rising from the waves?”. Unsurprisingly, the French also staked a claim. 

Finally, enter Spain, cause what’s a colonisation without Conquistadors?

For five months the four European nations parked up warships offshore. Politicians made arguments to their successive governments, and to the general public through newspaper articles – all claiming themselves as the rightful claimant. Diplomats glared at one another and all involved wondered when the Cold War would go hot?

In the meantime, tourists arrived at this God-forsaken lump of basalt. They marvelled at it’s geography – ‘It has not one, but two lakes don’t you know?’ The house of Bourbon had plans drawn up for a holiday resort on the lakeside. 

The world held their breath in anticipation of yet another ugly European war.

Then Ferdinandea/Graham Island/Ile Julia/whatever name the Spaniards had for the island sank back into the ocean as quickly as it had risen. 

I’m fairly sure many a modern commentator had something to say on the ethics, practices and hubris of the time. How could one not allude to Zeus and his thunderbolts? As a species we’re so often the worst man! I’m completely unconvinced, were it to rise again – and it could – there wouldn’t be another race to claim the island. In 2000, Prince Carlo di Bourbon – one of two claimants to the vacated throne of The Two Kingdoms of Sicily – paid divers to make the six metre journey to the top of the island to plant a flag, and secure a plaque in the name of his bloodline. 

OK, that’s all for today. I’ll get that podcast/blog post up as soon as my voice returns.