Fifty-eight shipwrecks

When an international team began surveying the seabed here in 2015, they found twenty-two wrecks in eleven days of diving. A normal survey season finds four or five.

By the end of the programme the number had reached fifty-eight. The archaeologists describe it as the largest concentration of ancient shipwrecks ever found in the Aegean, and possibly in the whole Mediterranean.

They span from the Archaic period to the twentieth century, with most of them Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine. Their cargoes came from across the ancient world, and much of what has been recorded is amphorae still lying where the ships went down.

The reason is the position. Fourni sat on the sea route between the Aegean and the coast of Asia Minor, its coves offered shelter in bad weather, and a captain from elsewhere who did not know the local conditions could easily lose control of his ship among the channels.

The wrecks are protected and are not open to recreational diving.

Pirates

Around 1650 the bishop of Samos described Fourni as abandoned islands used as bases by pirates from Malta, Sardinia and Livorno, who attacked ships passing through.

The last pirate recorded in the island's history was a man from Thymaina who worked alone, attacking caiques and fishing boats, and covered his costs through smuggling and by sheltering fugitives.

Permanent settlement only resumed after the middle of the eighteenth century.

The quarry

At Petrokopio on the south coast, an ancient marble quarry cut into the rock above the beach. Half-finished architectural blocks are still lying on the shore where they were abandoned, and the marble from here went into temples on the Ionian coast opposite.

Fourni town, the port and main settlement, is a working fishing harbour — boats along the quay, a waterfront shaded by mulberry trees, and the tavernas among them. Behind it the lanes climb the slope.

Chrysomilia, in the north, is a smaller fishing village at the end of a winding road.

Thymaina, the second inhabited island, has two settlements and is reached by boat. It is quieter again, and its beaches are reached on foot or by sea.

The rest of the archipelago is uninhabited.

The islands are dry, low and treeless, and the interest is entirely in the coastline.

Old goat paths and mule tracks cross them, running out from the villages to the coves, the terraces and the chapels. Several beaches can only be reached this way or by boat, and walking to them is how most visitors spend a day here.

Boats run in summer from Fourni town to Thymaina and to the uninhabited islets — Agios Minas, Kissiria, Alatonisi. There is nothing on them: no road, no building, no shade. You go for the water and the quiet, and you take everything with you.

Most beaches on Fourni are small, unorganised, and reached by path or by boat. The water is exceptionally clear because there is almost no development on the coast.

Kampi, close to the town, is the easy one: fine sand, tamarisk trees for shade, tavernas and rooms behind it.

Psili Ammos is the busiest — fine sand, shallow water, a beach bar and a few umbrellas.

Kamari has deep clear water and is reached either by a path from Kampi or only by boat.

Petrokopio, in the south, is a long beach of pebble and sand below white rock faces, with the ancient quarry above it. It is reached by path or by sea.

Bali, Elidaki, Vlychada and Vitsilia are the others, all sand and pebble, all quiet.

Fourni lives from fish, and it has done for a long time. In the 1950s and 60s the islands had proportionally the largest fishing fleet in the Aegean, and at one point around eighty per cent of the working population was employed in fishing or at sea.

That is what you eat. Lobster with pasta is the dish people come for, and kakavia, the fishermen's soup made from whatever was not worth selling, is the other. Octopus dries on lines along the harbour, and the fish on the plate was landed that morning a few metres away.

Beyond the sea, the islands produce a little cheese, thyme honey and a small amount of wine.