The Turks in Poros ...

... on March 29th 1453, Constantinople and just about all of Greece as well were occupied by the Turks until 1460, except for some areas that were taken over by the Venetians.

Sferia became populated around 1460. Its first inhabitants were Arvanites who came from the Peloponnese chased by the army of Sultan Mohammed II the Conqueror and the Great Vizier Mahmoud, and thus created the island's first settlement, Kastelli, around the well-known Clock today. They preferred this location because it could serve as a fortress which would protect the residents from the Algerian pirates. Many names of places that have been maintained in Sferia and especially in Kalavria are of Arvanite origin.

The beach, from Punta until the pregymnasium, was inhabited for the first time after 1800.

Since 1688 and throughout the fifteen year duration of the Venetian-Turkish war, Poros was the base for the Venetian admiral Morozini, who used the island as a naval station for his fleet. This was where he heard the news about him being declared Doge of Venice (July 1688).

Around 1700, many Greeks went to Hydra and Poros due to pressure from the Turks. This caused the spreading of the Greek language to these islands, which until then had only spoken the Arvanite dialect.

The second colonization of the island which is made in 1715 by Arvanites again, who faced the wrath of the Turks because they had collaborated with the Venetians. Over the years Arvanites and Greeks created a new society free from hatred and conflicts, with a common national awareness and orthodox religion.

The island came under Turkish occupation in 1718 with the Treaty of Passarowitz, finally banishing the Venetians for good. Since then, Poros was under the leadership of Kapoudan Pasha, always accompanied by a governor.

During the Rebellion of 1770 (Orlov) Alexis Orloff had set up his admiralty on the island.

In 1806, Russia and Turkey come to war again. At that time, the Russians make the naval station at Poros whose ruins still exist in an area a bit after Neorio.

In the years before the declaration of the Revolution, in 1813, Poros, Hydra as well as the other islands, confronted the big problem of inaction (naval crisis) due to the problems encountered in trade and shipping at the time. The Napoleonic wars had ended. The Mediterranean maritime trade fell in the hands of the French and British once again, while ships remained on the island’s ports.

Poros had acquired the presence of a governor on the island and simultaneously had repeatedly tried to create a Greek school. These testimonies come from our Epiphanios Dimitriadis, who was invited to teach at Poros (1788-89), and Nikiforos Pamboukis who taught on the island in 1812-13.

During 1819 and 1820 commercial trade recorded its steepest plunge mainly for Hydra and Spetses, where the residents had large ships traveling across the Mediterranean, even in the Black Sea, while the ones that belonged to the residents of Poros were smaller and traveled shorter distances, thus the impact of the crisis on them was much less.