Βλασσόπουλος, Οδυσσέας (1992)
[Bibliography]

J.S. Vlassopulos, “Odysseas” a sailing boat from Ithaca 1837-1841 (Melissa Publishing House, Athens 1992). This is an exemplary publication of the logbook of Captain Antonis Petalas-Maratos, skipper of an Ithacan / Ithakan sailing ship which voyaged between the Ionian Islands and the Black Sea, under the flag of the Ionian Islands (the manuscript is in the archive of the Maritime Museum of Ithaka). To combat pirate attacks, the two-masted brig, with a 204-ton capacity, was armed with 2 cannon, 16 guns, 6 bayonets, 2 swords, 4 pistols and 4 blunderbusses. The crew fluctuated between 11 and 16 men.

Vlassopulos's profound knowledge of all things maritime and his systematic working of the text (which he has deciphered and transcribed, with explanatory notes for every entry in the log, tables of the distances covered, a wind rose, glossary, informative chart of place names, index, old and new maps, photographs, plans and models) reveal the inestimable value of this primary source and the extent of its importance, which surpasses the merely historical. He has made innumerable similar voyages in the Propontis (Sea of Marmara) and Black Sea, in the same weather conditions (it took 17 days and nights to sail from the entrance of the Dardanelles to Constantinople due to the fierce and adverse winds; February to March 1839), and also under more or less the same conditions as those encountered by sailors from the time of the Argonauts until the demise of the great sailing ships (such as: the construction of special partitions to transport horses on deck, Kerch, April 1839; the passage through the Cimmerian Bosporos (Kerch) to the Sea of Azov, September 1849; the unruliness of the sailors; the purchase of wheat and many other similar factors).