Dear friends
Our beloved
Olympia, now
Regal Empress, is
in her final days.... And from the newspaper and other articles I have been reading the last two years, nobody in Greece cares... Why?
First let me say that
there are many foreigners who care and do not want this great ship to go to Aliaga or Alang
Peter Knego, the well known ocean ship lover who runs the wonderful Web site
Maritime Matters http://maritimematters.com/, has tried again and again to feature and highlight this ship and to save her from her last fate..
If you have not read his last article, posted on February 2, 2009, and if you are a Greek or a Philhellene you should read it http://maritimematters.blogspot.com/...ter-knego.html
Peter knows about ships like nobody else. With permission, I will cite only two little segments of
Olympian love from his latest article
There are plenty of ships offering such things but only one with acres of gorgeously polished empire hardwoods, nickel light sconces, acid-etched glass, teak decks (installed long before teak was exploited into endangered status), gracious curves and decades of history that speak to the willing listener with every creak and rattle the REGAL EMPRESS emits.
And a few lines below...
Fifty six in ship years is a very, very long time. At the equivalent of her age (112, perhaps? -- the two-to-one, ship-to-human age ratio is as good an estimate as any), we should all be so lucky to be in such condition, fully functioning and still doing what we were designed to do.
I wanted to take this last trip at the end of January as Peter took, to pay my respects to the grand lady of Greek shipping, the vessel that carried the Greek name throughout the world with great pride for almost 60 years, but my University responsibilities and research did not allow me to do it.
I am so sad and sorry now that I did not!
In his latest article, Peter Knego presents some gorgeous pictures of the great Dame, pictures that he took just last week during her last cruise from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Nassau, Bahamas. And if you have never visited
Peter's history of the Olympia with all the details and gorgeous pictures from her past, located in
http://www.maritimematters.com/regalempress1.html I highly recommend you stop everything you are doing now and read it!
And after this presentation, if you call yourselves
supporters of the Greek Shipping patrimony and nautilia.gr , you should
start a campaign immediately, you should take your pen or your computer and
write to President Karolos Papoulias and to Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis with the message to save OLYMPIA, to bring her back to Greece
now and to transform her into a museum.... She may be placed permanently in Neon Faliron or Floisvos and become a Museum of Immigration, a Museum of the Greek Passenger Shipping, even a Museum of Greek Maritime History.
Please do not tell me we are in difficult financial times and there is no money... Come on! After
spending billions of euros in Olympic Games sites
that are now abandoned, idle, destroyed, pillaged everywhere, you cannot tell me that the Greek government cannot put together a $15M offer tomorrow morning to buy and
bring back the Great Dame to the place where she should be.... We did it for a Liberty (to celebrate the Greek shipowners?), why not do it with
Olympia to celebrate all Hellenes?
Think about it and
Help Save Olympia!
Meanwhile, go to Peter Knego's
http://www.maritimematters.com/regalempress1.html and
enjoy his wonderful eight-page tribute of this gorgeous ship....
Nikos Peppas
Austin, Texas