ABSTRACT
The fate of the Achille Lauro has been widely and melodramatically reported in the media. The author talks about the fate of the Grigorios, a similar disaster he survived in October 1980, was reported almost not at all, and then erroneously. Reasons for the disparity were long in coming to light, and opaque light at that, tinged as it was by both the comic and the sinister. He then went aboard the Grigorios in Brooklyn, New York, planning to leave the ship at Piraeus thirteen days later and to proceed to Italy and England for research on a biography of George Santayana. The Grigorios was a large ship, with a crew of thirty. After Piraeus, she was to touch at Cyprus, Beirut, Thessalonika, and Constantine, then return to Brooklyn. On board were other passengers who had joined the ship at Baltimore, elderly retired people taking an economical cruise.
