This allowed the Russians free movement of ships in the Mediterranean. A powerful commercial fleet was recreated by using the Russian flag to establish trade routes with neighbouring countries. Merchant seafaring was the only source of livelihood for men of many of the rocky, non-arable Greek islands, and the brisk Mediterranean and Black Sea trade of the 18th and 19th centuries allowed them to prosper. They did especially and spectacularly so during the trade embargoes that were imposed during the Napoleonic Wars; Greek merchantmen and crews willing and able 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. 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 raised the flag of Revolution 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 (D 98), and the historic Greek battleship "Spetsai". 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.