If you believe that shipowners with zero seagoing experience are a recent phenomenon, think again. Lazaros Kountouriotis never left Hydra, but controlled one of the biggest private fleets in the early 19th century.

An enigmatic and taciturn man with a black patch covering his right eye, Kountouriotis is said to have spent three quarters of his fortune to bankroll Greece’s liberation.

He is less well known today than captains and commanders, such as Andreas Miaoulis and Constantine Kanaris, who actually engaged the fleet of the Ottoman Empire.

However, it is difficult to conceive Greece’s maritime struggle in the 1821 to 1828 liberation war without Kountouriotis. Only a man of his stature and wealth had the authority to unite and lead the individualistic, rugged seafarers against the Turks.

Patriotism was not the only reason why Greece’s maritime islands such as Hydra, Chios and Psarra took up arms. It took a shipping market crisis as well to prod them into action.

When the Napoleonic wars ended in 1815, freight rates collapsed as peacedeprived Greeks of the lucrative business of busting Britain’s naval blockade on France. Hundreds of sail ships lay idle and frustrated seafarers crowded the islands fomenting unrest.

When their shore-based brethren declared a revolution in March 1821, unemployed masters and sailors found a channel to release their pent-up energy.

Led by Antonis Economou — a captain who had lost his sole ship in a storm and could not afford to replace it — they staged a coup on Hydra and forced it to join the independence fight.

Despite being thrown into the war against their will, the wealthy Hydriots around Kountouriotis embraced the struggle.

Greece's seafaring island of Hydra was the cradle of the country's revolution of 1821. Photo: Gillian Whittaker

Pyrrhic victory

Their reasons for doing so reflect many of the attitudes held by shipowners to this day. Key was a desire to live under a friendly, predictable jurisdiction.

While the Turkish sultans largely left the shipowners and traders of Hydra, and the other Greek islands, to handle their own affairs, their thirst for taxes and bribes became unbearable.

The prospect of an independent Greece was attractive. Furthermore, Hydriots thought they would control it. George Kountouriotis, Lazaros’ brother, became a key political figure.

Greece’s seafaring class did not just contribute cash and commanders to the cause — it provided the state’s first generation of power women.

Sailors' wives signed the first feminist manifesto in Greek history — an open letter addressed to European women, written by Evanthia Kairi, a teacher from the island of Andros.

Mykonos was stirred up to join the fight by Manto Mavrogenous. A noblewoman from the Aegean island, Mavrogenous raised eyebrows in the national assembly that passed Greece’s first constitution in 1827 — not only for being the only female delegate but for dressing in European clothes.

Laskarina Bouboulina, a dynamic widow of two wealthy ship captains, spent her entire fortune to equip a small fighting force.

Greece became independent in 1830. However, for many islanders, it was a pyrrhic victory.

Psarra and Chios had been destroyed. Hydra became a shadow of its former self, with one-third of its population dead or resettled to mainland Greece.

A large part of the Greek fleet was destroyed — some of it sunk by the islanders when the new government tried to nationalise shipping. Whatever floated was useless because it was in too bad a shape to be insured.

Economou, the man who brought Hydra into the fight, was assassinated in 1821, hunted down by the wealthy Hydriots, who never forgave him for wrestling power from them.

Bouboulina was gunned down in 1825 in a trivial family vendetta. In 2018, the Greek government posthumously named her a rear admiral.

This article is part of a series of stories looking back at the history of Greek shipping, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the country's independence