In the middle of the sea is one of the most impressive lighthouses, which is considered the oldest to protect sailors from the sea, since the whole area is full of reefs and shallows that make navigation extremely dangerous.
The sea channel between south Pelion and Skiathos, as simple and harmless as it may seem as a passage of only 2.5 miles wide, is one of the most difficult passages in the entire Aegean and since ancient times it was classified as extremely dangerous.
There, in the middle of the sea, is one of the most impressive lighthouses, which is considered the oldest to protect sailors, from the vagaries of the sea since the whole area is full of reefs and shoals that make navigation extremely dangerous. The most dangerous one is the reef “Lefteris”, on which the lighthouse has been erected.
The unknown story of “Lefteris”
For many, the history of “Lefteris” is unknown, but for the few who know and for the experts, the lighthouse in the middle of the channel is the famous Aleurion of Xerxes, since it is the most ancient lighthouse of humanity and the oldest of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. There, the waters are truly shallow, with water depths of 1-2 meters, in a 2.5-mile-wide bouge between Skiathos and Magnesia, nothing predisposes to danger. In fact, on the Skiathos side, it is the shallow ‘Helena’ that makes passage impossible even for small boats whose depth reaches 2 metres.
As Herodotus mentions, the Persians lost many triremes on the ‘Myrmix’ reef when they were descending the Aegean and seeking to conquer Ancient Greece during the unsuccessful second Persian invasion.
The lighthouse
This is why Xerxes in 480 BC, built an aleurion (tall tower) which is considered the oldest known navigational safety building, 250 years before the lighthouse of Alexandria was built. In fact, dolomite from the mines of Sipiada, in southern Pelion, was used for its construction. Each piece of dolomite rock weighed up to half a ton, until the stone column was completed, in order to avoid new shipwrecks. Parts of the collapsed structure were recovered by navy divers in 1928 and are now in the courtyard of the Piraeus Naval Administration.
Reference point
In more recent years, the Skiathian Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911), wrote in “Poor Saint” that “Lefteris was occasionally at ease, relieving ships of the burden of cargo, and sailors of the precarious burden of life”.
Despite the existence of a lighthouse in the bay between Pelion and Skiathos, the reef “Lefteris” has caused two more shipwrecks during the last century, when in 1999 the 60-meter cargo ship BEERA ran aground in the shallows and its wreck is located there at depths of 17 to 28 meters, broken in two and still easily accessible to divers.
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The wreck
The other major wreck is that of the steamship Volos, which for years operated the Hamburg-Istanbul route. On 21 February 1931, at 8.14 p.m., in bad weather, rough seas and winds of 8 to 10 Beaufort, she was wrecked on the reef “Lefteris”. Despite the captain’s and first mate’s considerable experience in the Greek seas, the intensity of the storm and the strong currents resulted in the ship running aground.
