During World War II, a young British sailor who served in the Mediterranean carried a copy of The Odyssey in his kit bag. He returned after the war to sail the Mediterranean on his own. He no longer saw the sea and the islands from the deck of a naval cruiser, but from a small, open boat like the one in which Odysseus journeyed.
Was it real, that Odyssey? Ernle Bradford believes that it was: not a trip to fantasyland but a description of the sea as the early Greeks came to know it. Adventure by adventure, he traces Odysseus’ voyage. He knows the positions of the stars in ancient times. He knows currents and wind directions and how fast you can travel with 12 men at the oars. More, he knows that Homer was chanting his poem to an audience who also knew these things.
Bradford has his feet on the ground with regard to men and affairs. In an early chapter he considers Odysseus’ family. Odysseus was a liar, with an eye for the main chance, and he came by these qualities honestly.
Laertes [father of Odysseus] had taken part in the greatest voyage of adventure and discovery then known, and could claim to be one of the pioneer sailors of the ancient world. It seems right that the should have had Ulysses for a son. It is for this reason that I ignore the slander of ancient commentators who have found Laertes’ wife Anticlea guilty of having palmed off on Laertes, as his own, her bastard son by Sisyphus. Ulysses traditionally had seafaring and royal blood on his father’s side, and a violent and somewhat crooked strain (even if reputedly of divine origin) on his mother’s.
But the real joy of the book is seeing the maritime world as Odysseus must have seen it. Can we make the harbor? Do we have water? Do we even know where we are going? Bradford takes us where Odysseus went; for example, when he left Calyso by raft and the raft was destroyed, he swam ashore:
Naturally he swam with the current, and after an unspecified length of time he found himself near the mouth of a small river. The river is one of the easiest things to find in the whole Odyssey. It is easy because small rivers or even streams are so rare in this part of the world…. The steam has ‘never-failing pools’, and it enters the sea at a point where there is an attractive beach…. …At the head of this bay the Ermones flows out into the Ionian Sea…. It is one of the most enchanting and idyllic places in the Mediterranean and it is the only place in Corfu which could correspond with the Homeric description…. Olive trees abound…. The basins into which the river Ermones plunger were used in comparatively recent times for wtermills, but they must always have been used by women for the family washing….
Odysseus has traveled almost 3,000 years to reach us, and he does reach us in Ulysses Found. Bradford shows us Odysseus’ sea, his islands, and creates for us a journey home that was a very real trip.
Like The Riddle of the Sands this book repays the effort required to read it. It is not the easiest of reads but as a cruising yachtsman I found it fascinating, Bradford bringing in the multitude of practical navigating considerations faced by the yachtsman, spiced with examples from his own lively Royal Naval and wooden boat sailing experience. He makes a very plausible case for Ulysses voyages being based on fact. I picked up a copy when on holiday in Malta, a happy coincidence being central to Ulysses track and where Ernle Bradford lived for some years in Kalkara. One assumes berthed his boat in Kalkara Creek, the main centre of traditional wooden boat building of the Maltese Islands. I have visited it several times whilst following the restoration of the Gozo boat Sacra Famiglia built there in 1933. Kalkara creek is a different world to the other side of the Birgu (Vittoriosa) peninsula, a scene of upmarket yacht marinas where the last word in motor yacht luxury berths. Relatively unchanged in recent times Kalkara is appropriately referred to as ‘Malta in miniature’, some real wooden boat repairing still goes on there and colourful traditional boats on their moorings fill the creek. It is easy to see why it appealed Bradford, the more so as it is only a short walk from the Malta Maritime Museum where many antiquities are displayed.
Thank you for your comments. What little small-boat experience I have had took place off the coast of Maine and in the rivers there. Having that made it possible for me to appreciate Bradford.
I just found this book at a charity thrift shop and am just at the Island of Polyphemus. I sail in Lake Erie, a large, shallow lake that has a whole lot of drowned sailors in her, and I think this book, while a good read for anyone interested in history, is best appreciated by anyone who has sailed rough waters in a small boat. Now I need to build a 12-oared galley…
Delightful to see this book appreciated and celebrated. It was a favourite of my father’s, a sailor and Greek scholar, as well as being one of mine. It deserves better recognition both as a book about sailing and travel as well as for its compelling insights into the historical and geographical veracity of Homer’s description of his world.