Emmanuel : Stories : The Emmanuels and Their Kaikia
The Emmanuels and Their Kaikia
The information about the Emmanuel family's sailing vessels and trade are from Dimitri G. Emmanuel. The information on kaikia is from the Nautical Museum of Hios.
By Gregory C. Emmanuel
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The Emmanuels
Between
1804 and 1853, the
Emmanuels
The Emmanuels were also involved in the lucrative trade of contraband tobacco, which they picked up at prearranged deserted beaches in the vicinity of Kavala and Porto Lagos. The cargo was offloaded at equally deserted beaches in Asia Minor, thus evading the customs duties which the bankrupt Ottoman state was forced to cede to their European creditors. They stopped smuggling in 1850 and built a large cargo vessel, possibly a perama.
The Emmanuels moved to Tenedos in 1853 and continued being seamen, transporting Tenedos wine from their own and others' vineyards and other cargo to the northern Aegean islands, the coast of Asia Minor, Constantinople (Istanbul), and the coastal towns of the Black Sea. Later they built an even larger cargo vessel, a 200-ton bratsera named Agia Trias (Holy Trinity), and traveled as far away as Marseilles, France, to trade their cargoes of wine.
...and the kaikia
The word kaiki is a general term that describes any type of traditional Greek wooden sailing vessel. There are many different types of kaiki, distinguished by their hull or sail or plan, and function. As far as we know the Emmanuels were primarily involved with three types of kaiki, which are described below:
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Trata They are a now extinct, but were used as a net boat for near-shore fishing until World War II. The net was called trata (trawl). The hull form is also called trata, and means trawler. The distinctive beak, called a ga-ga or spirouni, has no relation to the waterline ram of ancient warships. It was derived from the sperone, the projecting beak that took the place of the bowsprit on tartanes, chebecs and other now-vanished Western Mediterranean sailing vessels. The Greek trata commonly had 3 to 6 pairs of oars and was rarely sailed. Its auxiliary rig consisted of one lateen sail and one jib. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, tratas were also ideal craft for smuggling as they were very maneuverable and swift.
Perama Perama are a type of kaiki (or caique), a traditional Greek wooden cargo sailing vessel. They are 40 to 700 tons, double-ended, with a distinctive pointed bow and high stern, a broad beam, and a long tiller, and they were fitted with various sail plans. Perama were common among the Greek islands until the late 1950s, by which time most of them had been converted to diesel powered motor-sailers.
When I worked in the Cycladic Islands I often saw a large, red, working perama named Agios Nikolaos loading general freight at Parikia on the island of Paros. The last time I saw it was in 1998. It was sailing north to the island of Mykonos in the face of a strong meltemi wind, with reefed jib.
Bratsera (or vratsera) The name bratsera usually refers to the sail plan mounted on a variety of hull types. Bratsera were common in the early 20th century, and the Greek bratsera rig (with long bowsprit but no jib boom, two boomed lugsails plus one or more jibs) was commonly carried by large trehandiria and karavoskaro hulls.
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