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January 18th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
For Bound, the wreck at Giglio stood out as his best diving experience. “When
we went there in 1981, [Reggie] wasn’t sure if he could find it again.
Luckily, Reggie does something I have never done – he keeps detailed diaries
of his dives. He had mentioned a big old grouper that lived in a cave that
was above the wreck, so we thought we’d find the wreck if we found the cave.
We found the wreck, and I found an aryballos – a small pot used for scents
and unguents.” The pot, lost for all those centuries, had a familiarity to
it.
“Even underwater, I recognised the hand of the man who had painted it as an
artist working around 600BC whom we had nicknamed ‘little warrior painter’.
This man’s work reached across the millennia and touched me.”
I was captivated by Bound’s story, as many had been several years before. In
1984 the BBC made a documentary of the excavation that Bound had undertaken
with Oxford University’s Marine Archaeological Research unit, called The
Wreck in Campese Bay. We sought out a copy of the film on our return home
and spent an evening watching the divers, obscured by billowing sand,
hunting for treasure. It was not quite Jacques Cousteau-quality film-making,
but it underlined the difficulty of the task.
Bound has also dived close to the other islands of the Tuscan Archipelago,
including Gianutri and the mysterious, rocky Montecristo, which inspired
Alexandre Dumas to write The Count of Montecristo. Visitors are
banned from Montecristo, and Gianutri is uninhabited due to the lack of
freshwater (tourists go there for day trips). Other islands include Elba,
where Napoleon was exiled, Pianosa, Capraia and Gorgona. The last three were
once penitentiary islands; only Gorgona remains so – housing approximately
100 high-risk inmates, mainly convicted Mafiosi. Unsurprisingly, visitors to
Gorgona have to be vetted before being allowed on the island.
These restrictions combine with another purpose: the entire area is a marine
park, created in 1989 to protect an eco-system that supports very rare
plants and is also a vital corridor for birds migrating between Europe and
the tropics. The islands were once a refuge for Christian hermits, and over
centuries their inhabitants have had to stave off invasion by all manner of
aggressors, including Saracens and pirates.
For holiday-makers in the know, Isola Giglio is a secret Eden. Our five
consecutive years holidaying there introduced me to the best ice‑cream
parlour in the world, where gelati are made fresh each day with local
seasonal fruit; to a restaurant in a mountain cave serving prawns, caught
that morning, sweet and good enough to eat raw with lemon juice; to a clean
sandy beach where Italian mainlanders’ children make sandcastles the
old-fashioned way.
This little Eden is now under threat. For the people of the islands, who have
done much to help the beleaguered passengers, this latest invasion will be
very unwelcome. Once, we spent an afternoon sailing round the island.
Nothing obscured our view – but the ghosts under the sea felt ever present.
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