news of a shipwreck arrives:-o
Sanudo Diaries: March 3, 1517 (24:24-25); "Summary of a letter ... from Famagosta on Cyprus, written on December 30, 1516, by Nicoló Michiel, university laureate, to his cousin....
Today, messer Nicolò Bragadin arrived here. On his way to his post as consul in Alexandria, he escaped the shipwreck of the Alexandrian galley with about fifty other people. This is his story: On the 22nd of this month the galley, en route to Alexandria, about 250 miles out to sea, was so damaged by a storm that it shipped more water than it could cope with. And at dawn the next day, Monday the 23rd, the ship broke into three parts, one from the forward mast to the galley, and the poop broke in two parts. The high seas and the pressure from the weight or the crashing of the copper bars had this effect.
The abovementioned messer Nicolò Bragadin and about eighty-three others boarded the [landing] boat, into which many others were throwing themselves, but ten to twelve unsheathed swords blocked the others from boarding. In the end, about fifty of the eighty-three survived; the others died of hunger, thirst, and cold. Some may have gone to rlieve the hunger of the others; they had already decided to butcher the little scribe, who was young, fat, and rosy-complexioned, in order to drink his blood. He escaped with many others as they reached land here in Famagosta; so said the abovementioned messer Nicolò and others.
This messer Nicolò landed naked with only a small coverlet wrapped around him. They were in the boat from Monday through the following Sunday. It was dawn on Monday when they reached this island.... So great was their desire to land that they did not really try to land on a beach, and the place [they landed] was so treacherous that some drowned in getting off.... Among the survivors is ... [one] so ill that he holds his life in his teeth, and ... the shipmaster ... is very sick and will probably die.... A Barozi is missing.... [A] ... son of ser Zuan Andrea ... is said to have vowed to become a friar ... and certain survivors will present the boat as a holy offering to the True Cross. Some will go on barefoot on one pilgrimage, and others on another; all have made various vows. They claim to have seen several saints; and... at times they saw giant swells as big as the Basilica San Marco, and they made the sign of the Cross, praying in the name of God and Our Lady that the swells would part and not harm them. This it appeared that the waves parted, as a very great sign of God's mercy. In addition, saints appeared in the sky with lit candles, a remarkable event. They were at sea seven days and seven nights, always in a storm, with a sail made out of two sacks tied with strings and two rudders for the boats made out of two other oars and a spar for the mast made from a strip of flat wood. They drank urine and ate the shirts off their backs and even stranger things so as to have some food.
This is a very pitiful tale: sea voyaging entails many excessive dangers, and all for greed. I can't tell you what passage home I shall find. This morning again I had masses said to the Holy Ghost and Our Lady, so great has my fear grown of travelling with the old galleys, having seen the wreck of this Alexandria ship."
Editor's note: "The length of voyages was a variable of the commercial life. A voyage from Corfu to Venice might take eleven days ... or twenty-nine. From Cyprus ... it might take a ship thirty-five days or ninety-four.... Venetian traders, their families, their clients, and governmental authorities lived in an uncertain world. And many a voyage ended in disaster. Sometimes a survivor described a shipwreck from start to finish ... loss of life, hardships, near cannibalism, and moralizing conclusion." [pp 255-6]
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nedits: A precedent was first seen as onerous though expedient, done for practicality's sake.
Sanudo Diaries: March 6, 1511 (12:23-24); "After dinner the Council of Ten met with the zonta. A bill was passed concerning Vicenzo Prioli, who had manned a galley in order to serve as a galley commander and is betrothed to the daughter of Alvise Pisani dal Banco. He has offered to loan the Signoria 1,500 ducats immediately, with the following provisions: five hundred will apply to his taxes and those of other [members of his family], and he will be credited with 1,000 [in the Monte Novissimo]; then, just as the others [who have paid for the privilege] have entered the Senate; he will enter it and no longer have to serve as galley commander. the bill passed, and there was a great deal of grumbling about it in the city, and it was an unjust thing. Nonetheless, [the Ten] have done it to be able to use the money, which is in very short supply."
Editor's note: "That Vicenzo's offer was accepted was owing not only to the money he could make immediately available but also to his powerful connections. His father, Lorenzo Priuli, was the influential controller of finances, whose warnings about the lack of funds in state coffers had prompted the government's extraordinary measures (September 25, 1510; 11:416)." [p 272]
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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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