Liberty, Equality and Fraternity: Stefano Cottardo Cassinca
Ligurians were great seamen admired for their ruthlessness and skills that for centuries had carved these lords of the seas and settlers in foreign lands
They faced many a danger. Their harbors and ships were often sacked by the Saracens at the end of the first millennium, during the crusades while the inhabitants were captured as slaves. They sailed and fought alongside foreign kingdoms and empires since the Romans times siding with the Carthaginians. During the crusades, the Genoese contributed to the foundations of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, ready to engage as mercenary troops in the service of others. The Genoese had settled and traded for centuries around the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Crimea. Piracy was a great threat to the Genoese boats. When seized by the pirates, they could either be the source of money the pirates got out of merchandises or improvement to their fleet.
In the early 1830s, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Cottardo Cassinca, both of Genoese blood were seamen in the Royal Sardinian Merchant Navy trading throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Stefano Cottardo was the grandfather of my great-grandmother on my mother’s side. They called him Cottardo, he was born on February 3rd 1814 in Sori, in the province of Genoa. Genoa Nautical School being too far away, he probably joined the nautical school of Camogli instead when he was twelve years old. He learnt astronomy, mathematics and law, on top of the traditional nautical techniques during winter carrying out his apprenticeship sailing the rest of the year and making the ritual 100 days trip to the Island of Gorgona.
By 1830, 400 captains and 1500 seamen graduated from that nautical school. During the Napoleonic period, the school was also, a center that trained trainers. Cottardo sailed on the vessel L’Unione and Giuseppe was promoted Captain by 1832 after 10 years of sailing on several schooners and brigantines.
In the early 1830s, Garibaldi settled for some years in Constantinople. It was home to many European traders. It not only a crossroad of the Mediterranean trade but also of ideas. Galata, facing Constantinople, had been a starting point of all Genoese sea routes leading to the Black Sea. Around 1155 Byzantine emperor Manuel Komnenos had given it to Genoa as a trade post. Galata had been a trade colony of the Republic of Genoa between 1273 and 1453. The Italian community, specifically Genoese including Garibaldi, would get together in the neighborhood of Galata. When Garibaldi lived there he could still see remains in the architecture, of the Genoese past: the transformed palace of the Genoese podestà , the old Genoese medieval walls and the tower of the citadel that the Genoese had built to protect Galata and the mosque, then the San Domenico church.
They had all been built in the Genoese style. There, Genoese became partisans to a republican movement against the ruling Monarchs and the Pope.
My ancestor Cottardo was a dreamer but he was also valiant, travelling by sea to far and foreign lands. He took his strength from God. His mind soared to the greatest heights in contact with the mightiest aspects of nature. His ideals of justice, liberty, freedom and fellowship of man seemed within reach; ideas that would elevate people and society to a new level. He was not the only one in his generation to believe in them but he also championed them.
Meanwhile, in 1834, Garibaldi, who had participated in a mutiny against the Monarchy of Savoy, sentenced to death, fled Genoa. On July 25, 1834, Garibaldi, destitute captain of the Royal Sardinian Marine boarded L’Unione, under the false name of Joseph Pane.
My great great-grandfather, was seven years younger, a Genoese compatriot and mariner of the Royal Sardinian, serving on that vessel, sharing the same ideals. Like Garibaldi, he was a natural and extraordinary leader, there was little doubt he would go unnoticed by Garibaldi or one of his followers.
Cottardo married my great great-grandmother, Monica Capurro in 1838. They made a good alliance: he was a promising captain, his father in law, Michele was a ship-owner and Angelo Capurro his brother in law was a mariner as well. They knew how to read and write which was not standard for their time and hometown. I am not sure what it meant about my family except that they were of a happy few. Indeed the Kingdom of Sardinia would only grant the population free elementary school by decree in 1859. My ancestors had their first child, Emmanuelle Angelo, my great great-grandfather, and a year later in 1845, Francesco was born, and who would stand as a father to my great-grandmother.
The annexation of Genoa by the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont in 1815 disbanded the Genoese navy.
By the mid-1800s, the Ligurian vessels, while not abandoning the profitable routes of the Black Sea and the Middle East, frequently sailed to South America, establishing their bases specifically in Buenos Aires, at La Boca del Riachiuelo, where Ligurian captains had opened warehouses for the supply of ship’s stores. In Argentina, Ligurians interested in international trade were the first “Italian” immigrants in Buenos Aires. Between 1820, and1848 causes of migration were mainly ideological and political. Outcast and rebel, Garibaldi, fled to South America in 1836 searching for new ventures and new fights, as his ancestors had done in the Holy Land.
Garibaldi was an active freemason, eventually elected Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy. He joined freemasonry in 1844, during his exile in Montevideo, as lodges granted asylum to political refugees such as Garibaldi, banished by despotic regimes. Garibaldi like many of his fellow Italian emigrants regarded freemasonry as a network that united progressive men as brothers both within nations and as a global community. They wanted to change their societies and if they could not do so in their home countries, they would do so abroad.
Cottardo endlessly and enthusiastically shared his ideals with his wife and his eldest son. He would not however live to see the changes he was advocating and hoping for.
L’Unione was a fine brick schooner built in 1836 and insured for £8.000, she sailed with a captain and nine seamen. On the month of January 1848 the Captain on board Gianbatista Cavazza had her sailing in the Gulf of Venice towards Constantinople. The thirtieth in the morning the southern winds expectedly had turned northern and by noon they were blowing steadily.
Then everything began to go wrong. The winds by midafternoon began picking up; soon they became very strong increasing to a gale of a renewed vigor. The vessel was plowing into a furious tempest. It was cold, the air temperature had dropped to 4°C and the water was 7°C. Had he waited for February… The windiest days of the year blew in January and the Mediterranean then and now is known for being treacherous. It turned into a rolling sea. The seamen with fear on their faces secured the cargo and clung to the masts as they shortened the sails. The sea sculpted angry whitecaps; its surface growing into high waves. Fear turned into horror as Cottardo and other seamen had not managed to secure themselves yet, and a monstrous wave threw them off board into the sea. Captain Cavazza pointed the boat to the wind, leaving it to the swell and risked hauling into the furious sea a canoe with seamen to rescue them. In vain, as they returned unlucky, Cottardo was lost at sea leaving behind three sons and his wife Monica pregnant with a son, Andrea. They would never see him again.
He also left them a book, a fiction he had imagined, in which he passed on dreams, ideals and life lessons that would one day guide his sons and a letter. The Genoese seamen knew that of all dangers they faced at sea, the sea was the greatest.
In the very same year of 1848 Garibaldi, with sixty members of his Italian Legion, sailed back to Italy to fight for the Risorgimento and the rest turned history beginning the Unification of Italy.
What happened to Cottardo’s children, would they participate in Garibaldi’s journey for the Unification of Italy? Would they go towards new ventures, new routes, new fights, for fortune and the building of more vessels? Which of these futures had their father imagined were they going to chose?