Shipping analyst, former lecturer in maritime studies, member of the Chios Marine Club, author, and co-founder of allaboutshipping.co.uk, John Faraclas, speaks on “Fair Winds and Following Seas” and Voice of Greece about the fifth-anniversary edition of the Chios Festival 2026.
“For 11 days, the fifth-anniversary Chios Festival 2026 did more than bring prominent figures from the worlds of culture, science, shipping, and the arts to Chios. It made the island itself part of its story, from the mansions of Kampos, the Castle of Chios, Vrontados, Anavatos, and Volissos to the Academy of Athens, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, Harvard, and Cambridge.
“For 11 days, science, shipping, the Church, music, medicine, theater, history, and entrepreneurship entered into dialogue with one another and, above all, with the island itself,” Faraclas says of the events.
He also discusses the importance of Chios and its contribution to Greek shipping, noting that “seafaring Chios, and Vrontados in particular, once had the largest and most honorable merchant fleet in the Mediterranean, as Xenophon Zolotas once said in a speech.”