The graveyard of ships death west coast of Greece, we are back from the island of Ithaca in the late afternoon light there flows the coast to our left with monotonous regularity, when the bottom of a wide bay, I see something unusual that breaks the continuity of the coast, and the distance does not allow me to distinguish details and stimulated by curiosity I think it might be worth delaying the return to investigate more carefully. We report to Claudio, there follows a short distance, and both begin to pull over on the ground to reduce the distance. At the end of the detour we enter the bay and see long lines of old ships moored edge to edge waiting, eaten by rust, an unlikely departure. The show that presents itself to our eyes is very unusual slow movement and reduce the distance coming in, little by little, become part of the unreal landscape.
The noise of the board becomes a soft hum that highlights the background noise: the cracking of the mooring lines that are stretched and creaking metallic structures that expand according to temperature changes. The property is just water rippled by the slow progress of the boats and even the sun seems to warm up less than before: we've entered the graveyard of ships death.
I give the bar to take some pictures, for future memory of a meeting only to say the least. With the eye in the viewfinder is greater isolation from the others, my vision is reduced to a single field of view, as I observe the scene and start thinking about what I see.
I always thought that man is intimately tied to the ship more than any other artifact that he himself created. It is the only ship that identifies itself home, means of transportation, place of work and socialization. The ship is the only link with the mainland during those endless journeys. The ship is the only antidote to fear the fury of the storm where the incoming wave stops, each time, the heart for a long endless moment. It is the ship that can catalyze the ability of everyone in the certainty that its failure may be death for all. There was also the ship that, first, allowed man to discover the vastness of the world and soon to shorten the distances.
For these extraordinary natural ability I have always considered that the Its ultimate destination would be towards the bottom of the sea.
It is perhaps for this reason that the sight of those ships piled up, waiting to be cut into sheets and taken to the foundry in tribute to a relentless logic of profit, I unconsciously aroused a deep sense of unease.
Suddenly I realized where I was clear I was not entered in the graveyard of ships death, I was in a place far worse: I entered the graveyard of ships forgotten.