twelve gunboats, three brigs of sixteen to eighteen guns, one fore-and-aft schooner, seven galleons and as many ‘zambecchi,’ five feluccas, many boats armed with grenade mortars, ten floats with two guns, and one floating-battery of seven guns.
If these vessels were not all badly built, they were certainly badly fitted out and badly sailed when they went to sea. The Provveditori and Inquisitors Extraordinary, sent from time to time by the Senate to inspect the fleet, complained that they found neither good carpenters nor good sailors. One frigate, which had a nominal crew of one hundred and fifty-seven men, the Concordia, was found to have barely thirty, and not able seamen at that. As for the convicts who pulled the oars on the war-galleys, they were kept half-clothed and shelterless when ashore; but being only carelessly guarded they often ran away, and not unfrequently succeeded in finding employment, under assumed names, in the smaller ports of the Republic. Some are known to have become house-servants. Nevertheless the overseer of each gang regularly pocketed the money allowed for their food and clothing.
In 1784 it was proved that for a long time from sixty to seventy thousand fagots of wood and an immense number of barrel staves had disappeared yearly, no one knew how. The workmen of the Arsenal did not think it necessary to buy firewood when it could be had for nothing.
In 1730, the Provveditor Erizzo was ordered to one of the Eastern colonies on an important mission, with several large vessels. Almost at the moment of starting, the officers of one of these galleys came and begged him to give them a captain not belonging to the
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navy, as they should not otherwise feel safe to go to sea.
Yet at this very time Goldoni wrote that every one sang in Venice: ‘They sing in the squares, in the streets, on the canals; the shopkeepers
Goldoni, i. chap. xxxv.
sing as they sell their wares; the workmen sing as they leave their work; the gondolier sings while he waits for his master. The characteristic of the nation is its gaiety.’