If, in the two centuries to come, the Knights of St John achieved such remarkable successes against the Moslems the credit for them must go not only to their abilities but to the Rhodian seamen who manned the Order’s navy.

The island had been called Rhodes by the Greeks after the rockroses which abounded there, while its vines in the sheltered valleys on either side of the main mountain range produced one of the most famous wines of the ancient world. Forty-five miles long, with a greatest breadth of about twenty miles, it was rich not only in vines but in olives and carob trees, as well as being blessed with fertile plains growing every kind of cereal. A mountain range, running from north-east to southwest, formed the island’s backbone. It reached its highest point almost in the centre, where Mount Anavaro swelled up to a height of nearly 4,000 feet. This provided an admirable lookout point, and from here the coast of Asia Minor could be kept under close surveillance, as well as the archipelago studded with the Dodecanese islands to the north. Far away to the south-west the great bulk of Mount Ida in Crete was visible on a clear day. All over the lesser hills and ranges were dense pine forests, providing excellent wood for shipbuilding—and the Rhodians still built the finest ships in the Mediterranean. The climate was agreeable and healthy, the principal winds being westerly. Most of the summer was enlivened by the northerlies that prevail all over the Aegean; only July and August suffered from hot winds blowing off the mainland of Asia Minor. Numerous streams ran down on either side of the main dividing ridge towards the coast.

There were a number of peasant villages and hamlets in Rhodes, but only one city. This was sited at the eastern end of the island where the classical city had stood, and where that Wonder of the World, the Colossus of Rhodes, a bronze figure of the Sun-God Helios, had once loomed a hundred and five feet high over the city’s harbour. It was the harbour that had determined the site of the city. Since classical times Rhodes had been well served by two artificial harbours which the Byzantines had maintained and improved upon, and which the Knights were to make even more efficient and considerably better defended. The northern harbour was the galley port—Porto del Maridraccio—with a narrow entrance only about 600 feet wide. The southern harbour was the commercial port—Porto Mercantile. Both of these would in due course be protected by impressive fortifications to secure them against enemy attacks. Behind the ports the city of Rhodes rose in an amphitheatre admirably designed for overlooking the harbours and for defending them in time of war. It was here, on the foundation of the classical and Byzantine cities, that the Order of St John were to erect a complex of fortifications that would be strong enough to challenge the mightiest armies and fleets sent against it. As early as the first century B.C. the Greek geographer Strabo had described Rhodes in glowing terms: ‘The city of the Rhodians lies on the eastern promontory. In its harbours, roads, walls, and other buildings, it far surpasses any other cities. I know of none equal, far less superior to it.’

Grand Master Fulk de Villaret, who will have been well aware of the island’s attractions, might well have anticipated Shakespeare’s Stefano, ‘This will prove a brave kingdom to me.’ But first of all he had to secure it, and this was not to prove easy. The Rhodians, as they had shown themselves time and again over the centuries, were as courageous as they were resourceful. As Orthodox Greeks they knew well enough how the Latins had behaved when they had captured Constantinople. They knew also how they had mismanaged the territories that had subsequently come under their control in mainland Greece. For their part they were prosperous through their agriculture, through their current freedom from Byzantine taxation, and from the profits of the piracy which they practised on the Moslem shipping routes. They had absolutely no intention of allowing these Latin invaders to get control of their island, press new taxes upon them and, no doubt, take for themselves the pickings of piracy.

The first landings were made in the summer of 1307 from a flotilla of galleys belonging to the Hospitallers and their Genoese supporters. By the autumn of the year only Pheraclos at the head of a large bay on the east coast had fallen to them. In November, however, they had a stroke of fortune. They managed to capture an important strong point, the fortress on Mount Phileremos, through the treachery of one of the Greeks inside who opened a postern gate to them.