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Michael Cassar, The Gozo-Malta Connection. 2014, 311 pp.

Last year marked the 130th anniversary of the first regular mail service between Malta and Gozo, as well as the 35th anniversary of the birth of the Gozo Channel Line.

Michael Cassar’s meticulously researched book is a fitting celebration of these two anniversaries. It will also long remain as the definitive study of the subject.

Today, the sea connection between the islands has been enormously improved, so much so that many can even just pop over for a quick visit.

Of course, the matter is different for those who have to cross daily out of necessity, very often starting at unearthly hours.

But then again, I wonder whether an enormously expensive bridge or tunnel joining two minute specks in the Mediterranean will provide a viable solution. It will certainly destroy the poetry.

The traditional workhorses that plied between the islands in all kinds of seas were the speronaras that were to develop into the legendary elegant Gozo boats.

They carried vegetables and livestock from Gozo and returned with whatever the smaller island needed. They were also the only means to carry passengers across.

Cassar gives a detailed history of their origin and evolution and the many fatal incidents that occurred when rough seas had to be faced.

Several foreigners’ accounts detail the perils that were sometimes encountered. The Valletta-Mġarr crossing often took the better part of four hours.

Matters were to change drastically with the introduction of regular steamship services following the initiative of the bishop of Gozo Pietro Pace and a group of other distinguished Gozitans.

The operator who stepped in was the Gollcher company which brought over the Gleneagles, originally built in Aberdeen for trawl fishing, cargo handling, towing, and salvage work.

It was bound to carry out two trips daily in summer and one in winter from Grand Harbour to Mġarr. The inaugural trip took place on June 13, 1885. The Gleneagles met its end on active service during World War I.

Incidentally, Mgr Pace was instrumental in endowing Mġarr harbour with its most distinctive landmark: the graceful neo-Gothic church designed by architect Emanuele Galizia, which still dominates it. Pace was the driving force behind it, following his visit to the Marian shrine.

Cassar gives an excellent, full account of each ferry that was used on the Gozo crossing, adding extensive details and listing various adventures and misadventures they met on their way.

The definitive study of the subject

There’s the Golly running aground at Comino, the Royal Lady that earned the popular moniker ‘Rolling Lady’ and which was repeatedly machine-gunned on its trips, before being actually sunk at Mġarr; and the Bancinu battered at iz-Żewwieqa point on January 23, 1957, where the watchman on board lost his life.

The ferry that was to gain lasting international note, however, was the BYMS, bought by Gasan in 1949 and renamed Calypso G.

Later sold to the celebrated oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, it was to accompany him across the seven seas and be re-corded in countless fascinating television programmes.

It still sails the seas today under the direction of Cousteau’s son, valiantly giving its valid contribution to man’s knowledge of the seas, especially the underwater marvels.

Although the crossing from Marfa was shorter, it entailed a long inconvenient trip by road, while even berthing at Mġarr was at first most problematic for the bigger vessels.

The first breakwater and proper quays were built in 1929, rendering Mġarr considerably safer, but still too small to be an all-weather harbour.

In the meantime, the Gozo boats continued to grace the sea with their crossings. By the 1920s engines started being added making them more secure and reliable.

This meant that sails would normally remain furled, sacrificing for ever the beautiful sight that a boat in full sail used to make.

They continued in competition with the regular ferry service but their end was simply a matter of years.

By the mid-1970s they had passed into history and, today, the lone Sacra Familja bears silent witness on the Mġarr shoreline to a romantic past we have sacrificed for progress.

This vessel was recently well restored and saved from destruction by the efforts of the NGO Wirt Għawdex.

The other anniversary the book commemorates is the setting up of the Gozo Channel company, when the service was nationalised, as part of the government plan to control the strategic industries and enterprises.

When the ferry contract expired in 1978, Eucharist Zammit, who was then running the service with the Melita Land and the Calypso Land, did not place a tender as he must have realised that the contract would stipulate the introduction of new vessels.

The new service was launched the following January with the 17-year-old Għawdex, then the largest vessel ever on the route. It offered a service from Sa Maison (since Ċirkewwa could not accommodate it) to Mġarr.

The Melita Land was also later transferred to the company which since has weathered more than its fair share of storms and controversies but it has continued to offer more than a good service.

Cassar describes each vessel that was used by the company, giving its history before she joined the company and, in the appropriate cases, accounts for her subsequent vicissitudes, either being sold for scrap or scuttled for divers to explore.

A highlight in the history of the company was the 1996 decision to commission three boats, the Għawdex, the Gaudos and the Ta’ Pinu, at Malta Shipbuilding.

This was the first time ever that boats were built for the crossing and were not simply adapted for the channel crossing.

Although the total cost may have been excessive, compared to prices had they been ordered abroad, the end result was three very seaworthy craft that have continued to serve the company well to the present, as they approach the end of their useful life.

Cassar’s book describes the many incidents that these various craft boats that plied the channel found themselves involved in, not least during the war when they were heartlessly strafed by enemy planes.

Cassar is an extremely prolific author with 25 other books to his name, a score of which co-authored with the late Joe Bonnici.

The author draws from his extremely vast knowledge born from his love and fascination with the sea, which must make a good percentage of the blood in his veins.

My only comment is that the book deserved a better production, especially considering the giant leaps that local book production has made on the last 30 years.

Cassar’s book is important not for its highly authoritative text, but because it presents an incredible collection of pictures and postcards, most of them from the author’s own collection and many of them rarely seen before.

This makes it a truly excellent pictorial record which no lover of the sea can afford to miss.

It is much more than a mere account of the services that ferried people and goods between the islands, but a social maritime history of all matters that touched the subject.

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