Preservation of American Hellenic History
Preservation of American Hellenic History
by Jason C. Mavrovitis
From the town the young women were able to see sailing ships as they beat north through whitecaps toward Varna and Nesebar; to Constanta in Romania and Odessa in the Ukraine; even to the Crimea and the Sea of Azov to trade goods from Constantinople at Kerc (ancient Pantikapion). How romantic these places must have seemed in the dreams of these sisters in Sozopolis. For them a day trip to Burgas,(48) the city just to the north on the bay of the same name, was an adventure. They may even have seen the yacht, Aphrodite, with King George I and Queen Olga of Greece on board as they traveled between Athens and Odessa in the Ukraine.
King George, born Prince William of Denmark, became King of the Hellenes(49) in 1863. His children, by agreement when he accepted the crown, were to be raised in the Greek Orthodox faith. Where to find a Greek Orthodox princess? Russia. And, how could he better cement relations with the State that supported the Orthodox of the Balkans than to marry a Russian woman of nobility? And who better to help him find a bride than his sister, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, who had married the Tsarevitch Alexander and would one day become Empress of Russia?
In 1867 King George visited his sister in Russia. He met, fell in love with and married the Romanov Grand Duchess, Olga Konstantinova, daughter of the Tsar's brother. On their honeymoon and return to Greece the couple traveled south by rail to the Black Sea and then by yacht across the sea, through Propontis, and into the Aegean to Athens' seaport, Piraeus. This was the first of many Black Sea voyages that would be taken by members of the two royal families, Greek and Russian, for both personal visits and State business.
In 1878 Queen Olga sailed to Russia to visit her family and to seek support from the Tsar for Greece's interests at the Berlin Conference called by the Powers to settle the Treaty of San Stefano. Queen Olga sailed to Odessa and crossed Russia in comfort on the Tsar's personal train to attend the wedding of Grand Duke Alexander to her niece, Grand Duchess Xenia.
After he assumed the Bulgarian throne in 1887 Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg toured his new country visiting both inland and coastal cities. As his yacht passed Sozoupolis (as spelled by some in the late nineteenth century), he is alleged to have given it the coarse epithet, "Skatoupolis."(50)
While kings, queens, crown princes and princesses cruised resplendent past Sozopolis on their elegant yachts, the women of the city spent their days at housework ~ cleaning and cooking, working at looms, sewing, crocheting, knitting, and caring for their children. There was neither electricity nor natural gas. They kneaded coarse, whole grain flour into dough by hand, and baked it into round loaves of bread in outdoor, wood-fired ovens; they washed laundry, beating it on rocks by the sea or scrubbing it in tubs containing water heated at open fires. Women worked hard in their homes and frequently accompanied their husbands into the fields and vineyards to harvest grain and grapes.
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