Achille Lauro

Since we travel without a predetermined schedule, we visited the harbor in Athens, went office to office, intending to take pot-luck, asking about a cruise to Istanbul and into the Black Sea. Arrangements were made to sail on the SS Odysseus to the Island of Míkonos, then through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, to Istanbul on the Bosporus, then on the Black Sea to Bulgaria, on to Odessa and Yalta, then back to Athens. When the SS Odysseus was disabled for a few hours in Míkonos, the stop in Bulgaria had to be canceled.

The day of the sailing we arrived at the dock in Pireás (the port of Athens) and found there were no custom’s agents, and no security check, but at the dock next to ours, the passenger ship Achille Lauro, reminded us of potential problems with terrorism. In 1985 the Achille Lauro had been hi-jacked in Egyptian waters, and one of its passengers, Leon Klinghoffer, was killed.

In 1994, while en route from Italy to South Africa, the Achille Lauro had just rounded the Horn of Africa when a fire broke out in the engine room. Two passengers died, but the remaining passengers and crew were rescued by the tanker Hawaiian King. The Achille Lauro sank on December 2, about 150 miles off the coast of Somalia.

On one of our trips, we don’t remember just when or even exactly where, we had seen the Achille Lauro tied up at a port, most likely Genoa, Italy, we think.