When you think about Europe, certain famous expressions often come to mind: John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner.”); “All roads lead to Rome;” and my favorite: “See Naples and die.”
Traditionally, this phrase, “See Naples and die” (“Vedi Napoli e poi muori’), was first used by the celebrated German writer, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) during his “Grand Tour” of Europe to identify Naples as the most naturally and artistically beautiful city in the world; so beautiful that one needed not to look upon anything else after seeing it. Goethe, possibly the greatest writer in the history of the German language, certainly had the credentials to make such a statement. Most of you are probably familiar with his “magnum opus,” the tragic tale of “Faust” (1775) who sold his soul to the devil (Mephistopheles), and who had gained access to Faust’s home disguised as a poodle.
I guess I’m overdue, but I’ve seen Naples numerous times, and I haven’t died yet. But I certainly was impressed. We all were. Listen to these enthusiastic words from my ship’s Mediterranean cruise book of 1963; “Napoli. As consistently Italian as any city in Italy. A noisy place, filled with the constant hum of the milling of bustling crowds, the cry of vendors, the boats at the great harbor. A crafty city, caught beneath the shadow of once-fiery Mt. Vesuvius. A city of peddlers and children, equally wheedling, insistent, enticing, completely charming.”
I knew the young Ensign who wrote the above words, an Ivy-league type, and he did lean toward the melodramatic; but he was right. Naples, Italy, in the early 1960s, was a very interesting place to visit. It was poor, overcrowded, and only one generation removed from the destruction of World War II, when over 20,000 inhabitants were killed by Allied bombing, but it was on every sailor’s bucket list. Things were cheap; it was relatively safe; the girls were beautiful, and Rome was a short train ride away.
I say “relatively” safe – Naples was and is home of the “Camorra,” one of the four major branches of the Italian mafia. After all, it’s only an easy day’s steaming across the Tyrrhenian Sea to Palermo, Sicily, the home of the mafia’s “godfather,” the Cosa Nostra” (“Our Thing”). Palermo was the only port I’ve ever been in where you didn’t have to encourage the sailors to be back on the ship by dark. I guess nobody wanted to “sleep with the fishes.” Actually, the crime rate in Palermo was pretty low. I will say this about Naples: it was one of the few places where the Old Man would recommend going ashore with a buddy; and the “beautiful Bay of Naples” was where I saw my first dead body floating in the water.
Naples was certainly unique. It probably had more scooters (Vespas preferred) per square yard than anywhere else in the world. There was laundry hanging out most of the windows over the narrow, winding streets. Everything one could imagine was still for sale on the wartime “black market” economy. The infamous Bluebird Enlisted Men’s Club where you could get your head busted open for looking at someone crooked remained open. My favorite off duty site was a waterfront café with a blind guitarist who sold vinyl records of his performances which made no sound when you played them. I loved Naples at Christmas, when our smaller ships would “med moor,” or tie up stern first to the piers and string colorful lights from mast to mast which twinkled in the darkness. I’m afraid those days are all over. Even the U.S. NATO headquarters has now moved up the coast to the medieval Italian town of Gaeta, taking the Sixth Fleet flagship with it.
Naples also started my love affair with “mice”, as in Fiat’s post-World War II microcar, the “Topolino,” which is Italian for “little mouse.” Weighing 1100 pounds, boasting 18 horsepower, and not much larger than a big coffee table, I’ve seen them tooling down the streets of Naples and Rome carrying a mom and dad, two kids, a mother-in-law, and a dog. I was so impressed that I later bought one, which I still have. My grandchildren have named it “Pee Wee.”
Naples sits in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius, which erupted on 24 August, 79 A.D., killing over 2,000 of the local inhabitants who lived in the suburban village of Pompei. The excavated and reconstructed village is a major tourist attraction today, with millions of visitors each year. I once climbed to the top of the dormant Mr. Vesuvius and, looking down into the crater, decided that it looked surprisingly like the crater atop Diamond Head, overlooking Honolulu, Hawaii. Diamond Head was an artillery site/observation post during World War II, and to make the ascent, one had to bring their own flashlight to navigate the long, dark tunnel which led to the top. I suppose it’s lighted with LED lights by now.
The only eyewitness account of Vesuvius’ eruption was left by Pliny the Younger, a Roman writer, not to be confused with his uncle, Pliny the Elder, a celebrated naturalist who was also an admiral in the Roman navy who foolishly sailed two ships into the flaming eruption and died on the beach. The Younger recorded: “By this time the murky darkness had so increased that one might believe himself abroad in a black and moonless night. On every hand, was heard the complaints of women, the wailing of children, and the cries of men. One called his father, another his son, and another his wife, and only by their voices could they know each other. Many in their despair begged that death would come and end their distress.”
The term, “volcano,” was coined after the Roman god of fire, Vulcan. Most volcanos are located at the margins of the earth’s tectonic plates. In some parts of the world, Southern Europe, for example, two tectonic plates are converging, and one is thrust on the other, causing it to melt, and an eruption occurs. Volcanos generally erupt when molten rock (or magma) that has pooled in an underground chamber reaches the surface, releasing lava (as magma is called after it breaches) and gases. Probably as many citizens of Pompei died from the poisonous gas as did from the hot, streaming lava.
You’ve probably read of recent devastating volcanic eruptions in Turkey and Japan, but perhaps the deadliest of modern times was that of Mt. Pelee (French for “bare.”) on the Caribbean Island of Martinique on 8 May, 1902. All but one of the 27,000 inhabitants of Saint-Pierre, the island’s commercial hub, were killed by the clouds of superheated gases and falling rock fragments. Supposedly, that one survivor was a prisoner locked up in a stone cell the night before for a fight or possibly a murder. The record isn’t clear. In any event, his survival was considered so extraordinary that he was hired by Barnum and Bailey’s circus as an exhibit.
Consistent with my amazing ability to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, I was literally at ground zero when Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1990 on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. The volcanic ash fall-out resulted in the closure of Clark Air Force Base, one of our largest in Asia, and indirectly led to the Navy pulling out of Subic Bay Navy Base in 1991. At Subic, dozens of buildings collapsed from the weight of the falling ash on their roofs, but we were able to save the historic chapel adjacent to the harbor by shoveling away the ash as fast as it came down. I was also in the Bremerton, Washington, Naval Shipyard, across Puget Sound from Seattle, on 18 May, 1980, when Mount St. Helens erupted some 180 miles away. You could see some smoke in the clear, mountain air, but that was about it.
The Navy had a curious habit of naming its ammunition-carrying ships after volcanos and things combustible, which I thought was tempting fate. For example, we had the Nitro, Fire Drake, Pyro, Kilauea, Diamond Head, and even a Vesuvius. One Christmas Day during the Vietnam War, I was riding the USS Haleakala (AE-25) at a steady 12 knots through the choppy South China Sea, enroute Da Nang, loaded to the gunwales with ammunition, bombs, and napalm. I remember thinking: “If this thing blows, there will be a hole in the ocean’s floor deeper than the Marianas Trench off Guam” (over 36,000 feet deep; 1.2 miles farther from sea level than the peak of Mt. Everest.), until then the deepest spot in the oceans of the world.
I suppose it’s “progress,” but the “new” Navy has turned the ammo hauling responsibility over to the 14 ships of the Navy’s Military Sealift Command, which are primarily crewed by civilians. Personally, I really hate to see our once proud Navy “slipping away” like that. Just the other day, a priest friend of mine in Boston was telling me that the Navy now only has 45 Roman Catholic priests on active duty, including none on our 11 aircraft carriers, which all used to carry two.
I often visited the isle of Capri when I was in Naples. It’s only an hour ride by jet passenger boat out into the Bay of Naples, and was, in the 1960s and 1970s, where the “glitterati” from all over the world gathered. For example, I was once there when Jackie Onassis and her entourage tied up the funicular (chair lift) to the top of the highest mountain, resulting in about a two hour wait for everyone else. I had seen her husband’s yacht in Piraeus, the port of Athens, and it reminded me of Al Copeland’s yacht that I’d seen earlier in Newport, Rhode Island, except that it didn’t have a smokestack modeled like Popeye the Sailor Man as Copelands’s did. Some may remember Al Copeland’s restaurant here in Hattiesburg, a concept on Highway 98 that apparently failed. It’s now my favorite Chinese restaurant. I do like Popeyes’ Fried Chicken restaurants, which Copeland owns.
All my life, I’d heard about Capri’s famous “Grotta Azzurra,” or Blue Grotto, and I was disappointed. The water is blue, but it’s only a small cave that you enter by rowboat, and the ceiling is so low that there’s barely room to stand up. I was more impressed with the ruins of the villa complex that the Roman emperor, Tiberius, constructed back in the first century A.D. Apparently, he was so afraid of being assassinated in Rome that he spent most of his time on Capri. The parallel is not the same, but the next time you are on San Clemente Island, off the coast of Southern California, you might notice the “compound” that President Richard Nixon spent more and more time in as his probable impeachment approached. He referred to it as his “Western White House,” but some critics called it his “hideout” from criticism and accountability.
Naples was founded by Greek settlers in 470 B.C., like so many other cities on the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, including Alexandria (Egypt), Marseille (France), Istanbul (Turkey), and Odesa (Ukraine), etc. I’ve seen them all. I always thought of my visits to Naples and other such places around the littoral of the adjacent seas as a poor man’s version of the 18th and 19th century elite’s de rigueur “Grand Tour” of Europe before coming of age and settling down to his or her life’s work. I was lucky. I had it both ways – traveling was my life’s work. They, travelers like Goethe, went on the Grand Tour trying to “find” themselves. I suppose it arose from a somewhat weary and jaded worldview, but my philosophical question was and is, “What do you look for when you’ve seen it all?”
Light a candle for me
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Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
