Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

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Category: Eurasians

Eurasians

No Mixed Blood, No Mixed Bones

by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
Posted on June 8, 2018

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「Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams \ The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, \ Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams」⋯Easter weekend “heralds the beginning of Spring” according to Maltese authorities and I sincerely hope they’re right. These beaches are beautiful but would be so much better if the water was warm enough to (comfortably) swim in. O Wind, if Spring comes, can Summer be far behind?

she scans the ocean floor \ with ultrasonic blips \ nothing but rocks and sand \ and the broken wrecks of ships⋯On a morning like this, our AUV can't help looking photogenic as she prepares to slip beneath the silken, sun-dappled surface of the sea, and sound out the secrets below.

Malta’s coastline is studded with fortresses that rise, mirage-like, from the blue Mediterranean, seemingly hewn from the rockface itself. All but one were built by the Knights of St John who defended these islands against the Ottoman threat from the 16th to 18th centuries. This is the exception: Fort St Angelo. Before the Knights it was the Castrum Maris—the “Castle by the Sea”—the island’s only coastal fortification. After seven years’ adrift in the Mediterranean following the fall of their first island stronghold, Rhodes, the Order was a distinctly naval power and chose the medieval castle, with its protected creek reaching out from the Grand Harbour, as its headquarters. During the Great Siege of 1565 it served as the residence of the Grand Master and the defenders’ command centre. It was renamed, in conjunction with Fort St Michael on Senglea point, to invoke St Michael the Archangel, and held out against the invading Ottomans. Following their triumph and the construction of a purpose-built, fortified capital at Valletta, the political centre of gravity on Malta shifted northward to the opposite side of the harbour; but St Angelo continued to be strengthened and modernised and was never fully eclipsed. It still offered the best moorings and dockyards in the Harbour, and stayed on as the home of the Order’s galley fleet that sailed out to prey on Muslim shipping. Under British rule it became home to the Royal Navy, a period that saw the fort become a “stone frigate”, a shore establishment that was, on paper, a ship—a convenient workaround for the Naval Discipline Act, which required all personnel, active or not, be on the books of a listed warship. To keep up this pretence, the fort’s kitchens became galleys, the latrines became the heads, the barrack rooms termed messes, quarters and cabins, and the open spaces referred to as decks. Nonetheless, a floating boat still needed to be tethered to the fort at all times to fly the captain’s pennant in accordance with the Act. Rechristened HMS St Angelo, it was the last building to be vacated by the British in 1979, when Royal Navy ships disappeared over the horizon and a new era began for Malta.

Manoel Island in Marsaxmett Harbour has been home to a lazzaretto—a quarantine facility and hospital for maritime travellers—since Malta was threatened by an outbreak of the plague in the late 16th century. Passengers and crew on board ships arriving from infected regions were required to spend 40 days in the facility before they could step ashore and mingle in Malta proper, providing ample time for any latent symptoms to manifest. Over time, the facility earned a reputation for high standards and professionalism, and a clean bill of health from the lazaretto guaranteed passage into any European port. As such, many perfectly healthy ships also did their time at Manoel simply to ensure their onward journeys went smoothly. For the military order of the Knights Hospitaller who ruled these islands, it was a logical extension of their roots providing medical care for sick, poor or injured pilgrims to the Holy Land. The complex was later taken over by the Admiralty and converted into a Royal Navy submarine base (HMS Phoenicia) on the eve of WWII, when it was damaged by Luftwaffe bombers and left abandoned for decades. It is currently being restored by a local developer that has already turned nearby Fort Tigney and Cambridge Battery into a luxury estate and high-end shopping mall. Before Manoel meets a similar fate, you still sneak around these remarkable buildings and explore the living quarters, treatment rooms and the storehouses set up to disinfect and fumigate merchandise and incoming post from infected ports. On the limestone walls, graffiti carefully etched by sailors undergoing quarantine attest to the boredom and despair of their sentences in this strange limbo floating between the sea and the land, between health and sickness, and perhaps between life and death.

比浩浩的長風更遠，更遠的，是崖上的眼睛。

“Maltese balconies” are a national icon: enclosed wooden protrusions whose bright colours stand out amongst the plain limestone facade of nearly every building. But technically they’re not balconies at all: they’re “galleries” (gallarija) based on the stern galleries that housed the captain’s quarters aboard British and French ships of the line that began sailing to Malta in the 18th century. The corbels that support them were also inspired by these ships’ figureheads. In the summer they let in cool sea breezes but not the intense sunlight. In the winter they’re the closest thing you’ll find to insulation.

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