Napoleonic Wars; Greek merchantmen and crews were willing and able to work with, or against, both belligerent sides at tremendous profit. After the re-occupation of Spetses, the settlement began to expand beyond the Kastelli region. This growth stimulated a corresponding increase in the maritime economic activities of the island. An Arvanite community still inhabits the island. War of Independence From 1821, the island played an important role in the Greek War of Independence, and it was the home of celebrated war heroine Laskarina Bouboulina. Her life sized statue can be seen in the main dock. Spetses was the first of the Greek islands to raise the flag of Revolution on the morning of 3 April (O.S.) 1821. Its fleet, consisting of merchant ships, played a key role in the struggle, both by participating in raids against the Turkish coast and the siege of fortresses in the Peloponnese. Particularly important is the involvement of the Spetsiote fleet in sieges of the fortresses of Nafplion and Monemvasia and naval battles of Samos (1824) and Kafireas (1825). Along with their counterparts in nearby Hydra, Spetsiote captains were so wealthy they had been hoarding their gold in wells, a wealth that they tapped to fund the war of liberation. Several ships have been named after the island, including modern Hydra class frigate F 453 Spetsai, the World War 2-era Greek destroyer Spetsai (D83), and the historic Greek battleship Spetsai. Modern The Poseidonion Hotel was built by Sotirios Anargyros, descendant of a great 18th-century Spetsiot shipping family. His branch of the family had fallen on hard times, and he emigrated to the United States as a young man in 1868, when Spetses was declining as a maritime center. In 1899 he returned from the US, now a wealthy tobacco tycoon and started to transform the island of his youth. He built an impressive mansion and met with rich Athenians who visited Spetses from August to October, in order to hunt the turtledoves and quail migrating between Africa and Europe. Anagyros had pine seedlings planted in the hills. In the early 21st century, the island is one of the most wooded in the southern Aegean. He saw the need for a comfortable hotel and built the Poseidonion in the style of its French Mediterranean models, the Carlton in Cannes (1911) and the Negresco in Nice (1912). The hunters could bring along their wives and children to