George Anemogiannis was born on Paxos in 1798. When the Greek Revolution broke out in 1821 he was serving as a sailor on a ship belonging to Laskarina Bouboulina, under captain N. Orlof. He was engaged to be married; the wedding was set for that June.
On 10 June 1821, off Nafpaktos, he volunteered to steer a fire ship against the Ottoman fleet, one of the first such attacks of the war, attempted by men who had never built a fire ship before. Asked what reward he wanted, he answered that if he succeeded he would take ten thalers from each captain, to buy a present for his fiancée. The explosives had been made badly and the flames took the vessel early; he held the rudder until the deck burned, then went into the sea still working the tackle. He was taken alive, impaled and roasted, and his body hung from the fortress for days as a warning.
His fiancée, Konstantina Lekka, waited for him until her death in 1871.
Two monuments honour him: a marble plaque on the fortress of Nafpaktos, and this statue on his own island. It is bronze, two and a half metres high, the work of the sculptor Nikolas Pavlopoulos, cast at an army foundry and paid for by a public subscription among Paxiots at home and abroad that raised 89,655 drachmas. It was unveiled on Sunday 4 September 1966.
It stands on the rocks of Giannas at the entrance of the harbour, at the place called Zoumbou: in the 1880s the rock was known for the fisherman’s house that stood on it. The quay road from Gaios out to Giannas carries his name.
