Venetian Ships

Venice was one of history's greatest maritime powers, for whom the Renaissance was as much a time of innovative ship design and industrial ingenuity as of great art and music. However, the turbulent later history of the once Serene Republic led to the looting and dispersal of records, not just across Italy but throughout the world. This book contains all the known surviving plans of sailing ships and coastal craft built or owned in Venice. It includes some of the very earliest examples of technical drawings applied to naval architecture. Furthermore, it includes galleys, both mercantile and naval sailing ships, and the characteristic local types of the Venetian lagoon. It even includes dockyard craft like 'camels', and a number of mechanical dredging machines. A high proportion of these plans are illustrated, including a section of the more decorative reproduced in full colour, with caption giving details of the drawings, their locations, and the annotations on the draughts themselves. While principally a visual catalogue, the book also contains a brief introduction on the development of the ships' plans, and notes on other manuscript sources that include ship drawings.