Venice

by Clara Erskine Clement Waters

The Venetians, among modern nations, first built ships on a truly great scale. Their galleys were enormous in power; their transport ships could carry a thousand men with their stores; their galeasses permitted sixteen hundred men to fight on board, while they carried fifty pieces of heavy artillery, and had their prows made cannon proof. Naturally the nations with whom they disputed the sea endeavored to build ships equal to those of Venice; but she always had one advantage, in that even the small vessels bore at least fifteen guns, and the Venetian gunners were good marksmen.

Even to the end of the thirteenth century, however, the Arsenal was not firmly established, and vessels were built in temporary dockyards, wherever room was found. But with the beginning of the fourteenth century the Senate determined on making the Arsenal so fine and so strong that it could not be taken by an enemy. It was constantly guarded, and many attempts were made to destroy it. At the end of the fifteenth century it was under the care of a special magistracy, and sixteen thousand ship-builders and thirty-six thousand seamen were employed in Venice.

The three magistrates or keepers of the Arsenal were appointed for a term of thirty-two months, and were obliged to inhabit three official houses, called Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno. Each keeper was on duty fifteen days at a time, during which he slept within the fortification, kept the key in his room, and was answerable with his head for the safety of the place. But one passage led out of the Arsenal,—that to the iron gate which opens on the small campo. With the exception of the great lions now at the entrance,—brought from Greece in the seventeenth century,—the exterior has changed but little in three centuries and a half.

Small arms and artillery were made here, as well as ships; and in each department the superiority of the manufactures resulted from the skill of the workmen and the quality of the materials used. The ship timber, after being carefully selected and brought from various countries, was floated near the Lido for ten years to season it. The different parts of the vessels were cut and fitted in the workshops with such exactness that they could be put together with marvellous rapidity. It is said that when Henry III. of France visited Venice, a galley was put together and launched in two hours, while he was at a banquet; and during the famous League, before the battle of Lepanto, for one hundred days a new galley left the Arsenal each morning.

In truth, the Arsenal was a town by itself,—a town of foundries, forges, magazines of arms, and munitions of war, timber-yards, rope-walks, model-rooms, and warehouses; a town full of smoke, toil, and uproar. Dante had been here; and when he wished to describe a lake of pitch in which corrupt statesmen are immersed, in his Inferno, he thus begins:—

"In the Venetians' arsenal as boils
Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear
Their unsound vessels; for the inclement time
Sea-faring men restrains, and in that while
His bark one builds anew, another stops
The ribs of his that hath made many a voyage,
One hammers at the prow, one at the poop,
This shapeth oars, that other cables twirls,
The mizzen one repairs, and mainsail rent."

The Arsenalotti, as the workmen were called, had their own organization and certain privileges. They well merited the confidence of the Republic, which they called their "good mother;" and she wisely gave them pledges of her trust. The treasures of San Marco, the Mint, and the Bank were guarded by them. Whenever the Great Council assembled, the Guard of Honor before the Ducal Palace was elected from their number. Each new Doge was attended by Arsenalotti, when, after his election, he went through the city to receive the congratulations of the people; and, above all, the Bucentaur was in their care when the Marriage with the Adriatic was celebrated.

We can readily understand that the destruction of the Arsenal was the first aim of the enemies of Venice. It was only by "eternal vigilance" that it was preserved, and the severest punishments were thought too mild for those who attempted its ruin. In 1428 a man suspected of being a tool of the Duke of Milan and of intending to burn the Arsenal was dragged at a horse's tail and then quartered in the Piazzetta. Certainly a man who would burn the Arsenal was not needed in Venice, and we are not surprised that the Council of Ten were of this opinion; but they might have used a more humane method in his taking off.

For example, in the Museum of this very Arsenal there are many instruments of torture that one would not care to have used, even for the worst criminal imaginable; but there is one curious little death-dealer that claims to give its victim no pain whatever. It is a sort of key with a spring, by means of which a poisoned needle is shot into the victim, who dies without discomfort or the loss of a particle of blood.

Going home from the Arsenal, we take a gondola; and as we glide along, we recall the curious tableaux vivants which we have seen in this long ramble. All about the quarter of San Zaccaria we saw and heard the bead-stringers, as busy with their tongues as with their fingers. They are very skilful, and in their bright-colored handkerchiefs, with here and there a flower or gay comb or pin in their dark hair,—they know exactly how and where to put them in order to make the best effect,—they are picturesque, and some of them very handsome. They hold a tray of beads on the lap, and with a long needle, which carries the string, they dive among the beads at one end of the tray, push it quickly through the whole mass, and bring it up and out at the other end, well laden with the fascinating, many-tinted little globes. They do it as if they enjoyed it, and meanwhile they talk with each other, have a few words with the passers-by, and amuse and scold the children who play around them.