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noon, January 3, 2022 – 3:00 pm
Homage to the Cilento editor-writer on the crossing from Montevideo to Livorno
from Gabriele Bojano
Nn over the years, the pure and solitary publisher Giuseppe Galzerano of Casalvelino Scalo has literally spoiled us by publishing books which, for storytelling exclusivity, mostly historical-literary, are real gems. The last, however, turns out to be more precious than the others: a tome of 480 pages, written by Galzerano himself, entitled From America to Europe The crossing by Vincenzo Fondacaro, which elevates to the dignity of heroes three unrecognized determined and courageous emigrant sailors who in 1880-1881 made the enterprise: their names were Vincenzo Fondacaro, Orlando Grassoni and Pietro Troccoli and on a small walnut shell they challenged the dangers of the Atlantic Ocean in a very long and very risky journey from Montevideo to Livorno. They were three very long months in the bala of waves, storms, the unknown, and danger. Alone, without radio, without anything and more than a hundred years ago … No one would have bet a cent on the success of the crossing: they left the port of Montevideo on October 3, 1880, accompanied by the anxiety of those who had learned of their project, after various vicissitudes, the three (Fondacaro was from Calabria, Grassoni from the Marches and Troccoli from Cilento, from Marina di Camerota) touched the mainland, in the Las Palmas islands, on 9 January 1881, to subsequently arrive in the port of Livorno on 9 June 1881. Of what to this day an adventure never tried again, which has entered the book of records by right, there is only the logbook written in English by Fondacaro and which Galzerano enriches through the documentation of articles and illustrations in the Italian and foreign press. weather. The boat, on the other hand, the Lion of Caprera, kept at the Civic Naval Didactic Museum of Milan in conditions of semi-abandonment: it was named in honor of Giuseppe Garibaldi with whom the three solitary navigators, wearing the red shirt, were in harmony. In the end, what is that enterprise for? Fondacaro himself explains it: to experiment with his own resilience and to demonstrate that the waves of the ocean can be appeased with a stratagem, pouring liters and liters of oil into the stormy sea.
January 3, 2022 | 15:00
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