In the early months of 1509, when Venice was preparing for the fight against everyone it seemed, but the Turks, there were a pair of huge explosions at the Arsenal where the city built it's famous fleet.
Sanudo Diaries: March 14, 1509 (8:17-19); "There was a meeting of the Senate after dinner. And I saw letters from Cremona written on the 12th, full of news from Milan.... And while the Senate was meeting, at about twenty-one hours after sunset ... two huge blasts of cannon and powder exploded into the air, so that the houses and the Ducal Palace and the stars in the sky shook.... a fire had started - or been started - in the Arsenal, in the powder supply, and it burst into flame in this manner. At this, everyone ran to the Arsenal to see; I was among them, and I saw appalling things, terribly upsetting.... om my way there, I met the captains [of the guard], in boats and on the land, with four whom they had taken into custody and whose heads were covered. The captains said that these men had fired the powder and were from Trieste."
Editor's Footnote: "They might therefore have been loyal to the emperor elect, Maximillian." [p. 246]
Sanudo Diaries: "Others said that they were Frenchmen caught in the Arsenal, and others said they were taken in the church of San Martin, and they charged them [with this crime]. Then further along I encountered the many bodies pulled from the ruins, some burned, some mangled, some without a head, without an arm, some half-crazy, unable to speak, with faces like Saracens, blackened by the fire, who were being carried out on planks. Among these I saw ser Francesco Rosso, foreman, a very worthy man, and everyone grieved for his death because of the fine galleys he had built and his good design.... in the end it is thought that more than sixty have died, and many were badly wounded, among whom many boys and porters and other worthy men who worked in the Arsenal. And the stones of the wall fell like rain in the Arsenal and did great damage to the poor wretches who found themselves in such a storm.
The explosions caused the roofs of the artillery storehouses belonging to the Council of Ten and other offices to cave in and did dreadful damage.... As for the powder, only about twelve thousandweights burned because, by God's will, two days earlier 4,000 barrels of this powder had been loaded on barges, and had it not yet departed from the Arsenal for Cremona and elsewhere, and had those barrels remained there, and had the fire also gotten into the large powder storehouse, the entire Arsenal would have burned down. Many of the old houses in the district of Castello were ruined, and the monastery of San Daniel suffered great damage to its roofs and glass windows; but especially distressing was the death of so many valuable men. There was a high wind. Many measures were taken to see that the fire did not reach the galleys."
Next day,
Sanudo Diaries: "It was learned from one of the half-dead porters that in order to seal a casket in which there was powder, a nail was struck with a hammer, and a spark flew off, and this ignited the powder and caused the damage. And of had not been for a certain large round ship that was being worked on nearby and protected many who hid there, there would have been a great loss of the master craftsmen of this Arsenal; this large ship became warped by the fury [of the fire]. The storehouses and the hemp storage rooms at the Tana were destroyed, as were the walls of the Arsenal on that side. The master craftsmen set to work in the morning and rebuilt the wall. And it should be noted that one other time, in 1476, on December 9, a fire ignited the powder in the Arsenal because a horseshoe had struck a spark. From that time forward, the horses working there went unshod."
All quotes as Sanudo Diaries or Editor's notes or Editor's Footnotes from Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll, editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
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