Thalis o Milissios

A trip back in time we decided to make on Thursday, November 3, 2016 in the grove of naval tradition in Faliriko bay. The main goal of our visit was to admire the Greek cable ship Thalis the Milissios. During our visit we saw Thalis moored next to the legendary Battleship Averoff, a cruise ship, an important part of the history of Modern Greece from the Balkan Wars to World War II. A century of Greek history has passed before our eyes. Despite our emotion, we decided to focus on Thales, who was the main target of our visit. We walked around the dock and photographed the ship, which survives to this day and from what we learned is also navigable. We were moved by the move of an elderly gentleman, who works there as a ship’s guard to allow us inside. After guiding us on the deck of the ship and showing us the mechanisms by which the submarine cables were immersed, he passed us inside the ship with the first stop the master’s apartment from which you see a photo taken from the diary. Mention the dates from August 24, 1952 to August 28, 1952 and the master records both the arrival of the ship, the anchorage and the cable work performed by the crew, specifically on August 26, 1952 he performed cable work on the submarine cable THIRAS – ANAFIS. He also took us on a tour of the room with the transmission systems of that time, from where we captured with the camera lens paintings that were hung on the walls of the room with the changes, additions, equipment replacements that took place on the ship every decade. We photographed the heirloom map of 1916 that shows the underwater telephone cables inside Greece. Finally, we took a recent photo, as the specific room is preserved today. Finally, after offering us juice, he thanked us for the visit we had, and he told us with complaint but also with special emotion, in tears: “our Averoff almost absorbs the visitors of the naval grove”. In closing, we would like to thank the Aegean Maritime Museum, to which the ship belongs, for its initiative to save a part of our History from scrap. It is also worth visiting the website https://averof.hellenicnavy.gr/en/battleship-g-averof/history to find out how important the battleship Averoff played in the history of modern Greece.