During the Napoleonic wars, around 1800, Horatio Nelson arrested a Greek ship for breaking the British blockade of the Spanish port of Cadiz.
The man hauled before the great admiral to answer for the infraction was Andreas Miaoulis. When Nelson asked why he was violating the blockade, the Greek master is said to have simply answered: “For my gain.”
If the story sounds familiar, it is because testing the limits of embargoes imposed by great powers has been part of tool kits of Greek shipowners for centuries.
