The son and grandson of naval officers and a naval officer himself, GORDON ELLYSON ABERCROMBIE has spent most of his life at sea and much of it sailing the eastern Mediterranean aboard both warships and his own 44-foot sailboat. A Royal Navy sea cadet early in life at Plymouth, England, he is also a graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, followed by nine years of naval service much of it with the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Long a resident of Turkey both before and after naval service, he is an amateur archaeologist who has delighted in tracing the footsteps of England's George Ewart Bean, turning over stone slabs along the coast of Anatolia in search of inscriptions shedding light on history. It was a similar curiosity which led him to Giacomo Bosio, a search for missing information concerning Hospitallers, their great walls 40' in width, and their medical service in the time of plague. An avid student of history, the author believes he has crawled through every Hospitaller structure west of Cyprus, not once but often, describing the purpose and history of each to friends and family. In doing so he has scoured the Mediterranean from Morocco to Lebanon and become familiar with the coasts and most historically significant islands of Croatia, Greece, and Italy.