Promotional leaflets usually end up in the bin but the Magro family has held on tight to a rather old one: a 1798 sonnet heralding Grandmaster Ferdinand von Hompesch’s arrival in Cospicua.
The aged sheet of paper serenades his “Highness” on his first visit to the city.
It was just months before the “Prince of Malta and Gozo” had to make way for a new ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte.
The sonnet, which was handed out to Cospicua residents, is the Magro family’s link to generations who were brought up there. It is particularly treasured since the family had sought refuge outside the city following World War II.
It is also the oldest item that was taken to the Maritime Museum during an open day last week, when Heritage Malta was collecting memories and oral history that for years had been locked up at people’s homes.
During the event, called Qatt ma Ninsa – Life at Sea, Heritage Malta was able to document more than 100 stories through pieces of memorabilia.
The information will now set the scene for a song, play or contemporary dance as part of Valletta 2018, when the city becomes the European culture capital.
“This sonnet shows that our families still have 18th century items at home. On the day we documented more than 100 objects, and others are still coming in.
“We saw a diary penned during the war, old Dockyard plans and an RAF compass – probably of a small launch that picked up fallen pilots – which was sold for £2 in 1958,” the museum’s curator Liam Gauci said.
Identity and memories are all about stories. Without stories they will just be a scrap of paper or picture
His team is planning to tour villages in Malta and Gozo to document more items, but no dates have yet been set.
Mr Gauci said value was added to these memorabilia through the stories recounted by their owners.
“Identity and memories are all about stories. Without stories they will just be a scrap of paper or picture.
“This photo of a regatta boat would be just like hundreds of others, if it were not for the story that we were told: Joseph Pisani, son of a boatmaker from Vittoriosa, enrolled with the US Navy during the Second World War.
“Wounded in action, he joined car maker Ford in Detroit as a designer...”
After a successful career, Pisani, a bachelor, who also played the violin and the banjo, retired to Malta where he started building boats just like his father had done decades before.
Among his most popular are the regatta boats, including one called Miss America, which was later given to the Maritime Museum by the Regatta Club.
One of the 17 pictures which depict the family’s pride in boatmaking also shows the traditional ritual of the blessing of the boats.
“The sea is not an easy place to work at, and the British say ‘worse things happen at sea’. During the building of a boat, a cross and an olive branch are usually inserted in the structure for protection.”
The sea link between the US and Malta dates back centuries. In the 1770s, during the American Revolutionary War, Maltese sailors were hired to fight the British.
At the time, Grandmaster Emmanuel de Rohan was so keen on building good contacts with the US that he even sent coin examples to the nation’s first mint, set up in Philadelphia.
And decades later, according to the Malta Maritime Museum’s archive, notable commodore Stephen Decatur led a group of Americans disguised as Maltese sailors to attack the Tripoli harbour during the First Barbary War.
It was Decatur’s last card in 1804 – his final attempt after futile attacks by the US Navy against Tripoli corsairs and a successful mission that Lord Nelson called “the most daring act of the age”.
Noting that Malta’s “biggest export was people working at sea”, Mr Gauci said another story told to the experts through newspaper cuttings of Times of Malta was that of Steward Vella, born in 1913, who served in the Royal Navy during World War II.
Having survived two sinkings, he perished at sea on HMS Juno when it sank off Crete in 1941.
His name is even listed at the Plymouth Naval Memorial.