ABSTRACT
Long before the Hospitallers established themselves on Rhodes between 1306 and 1310, smoke, fire and mirrors had been employed as means of communication. 2 The Hospitallers used carrier pigeons in Syria before 1291 3 and probably at Rhodes. 4 A version of an account by Ludolf de Sudheim, who was in the East in about 1336/1341, reported that, on the Hospital’s island of Carmellis, evidently Kalymnos to the north of Kos, there was ‘a castle with a very high tower from which they signal with mirrors – speculantur – when they see the Turks or other pirates coming from afar; if it is daytime, they make great smoke, and if instead it is night, they light a flaming fire so that from Rhodes and Kos and the islands of the Christians they can all hasten with arms so that the enemy is unable to prevail’. 5 In 1475 warnings of approaching Turkish fleets were to be sent, presumably by fire signals from Mount St Stephen just outside Rhodes town, to Castellonovo, that is, to the new castle at Kastellos on the north coast of Rhodes, and to the other islands as far as Kos. 6
