The White Sea

The 17th century is the Golden Age of Piracy. The White Sea, as it was called by the Ottomans who couldn’t control it, has become more dangerous than ever.

Day by day, more pirates and corsairs – of all religions and ethnicities – arrive in the archipelago. They ravage the coasts, seizing people and goods. In vain, islanders try to protect themselves from the menace – through walled towns, observatories, hidden houses and secret hideouts. It is a period of terror.

A leading figure is the French pirate Hugues de Creveliers, a nobleman from Provence, who abandoned his wealth and a quiet life to seek adventure and glory in the Aegean. He established a mighty Company of pirates, attracting all the notorious pirates and corsairs of his era. They taxed the islanders, enslaving or taking hostage those who resisted.

A member of this Company was the ferocious Greek pirate Michalis Maniatis. During an attack in Ikaria, he kidnapped a seven-year-old boy, who later on sealed the fate of an entire island, Ikaria. Ottoman pirates did the same, abducting a boy from a Naxos beach, who, having himself become a pirate, was appointed as a high-ranking Ottoman official. Creveliers himself seized Adam, who years later was the one who took his life.

In the White Sea, people’s fates got sealed with salt and blood.