Ship

Conception

On Friday, 18 April 1567, three Venetian nobles – Lazzaro Mocenigo, Benedetto da Lezze and Piero Basadonna – met for an appointment in the shadow of the campanile on St. Mark’s Square, at the place where Messer Francesco Renio maintained his notary table. The purpose of their meeting was the establishment of a company and the construction of a large merchant vessel, with as yet unspecified deadweight, for voyages on western trade routes toward the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Flanders and England.

After the notary drafted the instrument of establishment, the three nobles also sought the document regulating the procurement of oak lumber for the needs of ship construction. To this end, their meeting on St. Mark’s Square was joined by Gabriele Bonazza, who under the conditions of a contract had undertaken the commitment to deliver an enormous quantity of oak by the end of May and then August of that same year. The purchase of 650 oak logs necessary to build a ship (ca. 1,300 m³) was negotiated at a total price of just over 854 ducats.

Shipbuilding

Lazzaro Mocenigo, Benedetto da Lezze and Piero Basadonna decided to entrust the construction of their ship to Frane, the son of Antun of Korčula (Francesco figlio di Antonio da Curzola). Despite an active career as sea captain, during the intervals between voyages, Frane had opportunities to prove his acumen in building merchant vessels. He probably began work on the project in one of the shipyards of St. Anthony (Ital. cantieri di San Antonio) in the San Piero di Castello quarter (today the Riva Sette Martiri) in the autumn of 1568.

In march of the following year construction had already progressed considerably, and the co-owners (Ven. parcenevoli, partecipi) filed a request for financial support which the state conferred for the construction of vessels of above-average size.

In early July 1569, the construction of the Lezza, Moceniga e Basadonna neared its end, so the three owners assumed the second instalment of the state subsidy. In September of the same year, the ship was finally ready to launch.

Size of the ship

The ship with deadweight of 1,200 barrels that the nobles Benedetto da Lezze, Lazzaro Mocenigo and Piero Basadonna commissioned from shipwright Frane of Korčula was one of the largest vessels that the Venetians were capable of producing in the 1560s. With guidance from written sources, although for now only provisionally, it may be presumed – given the aforementioned deadweight – that the ship’s length was approximately 53 m, its height at the stern was approximately 20 m, and its width at mid-section was over 13 m. These measurements alone are insufficient to visualize its original scope, but they are comparable to the Doge’s Palace on St. Mark’s Square in Venice, a building quite well known to all. With this comparison in mind, it becomes clear that ships of this type were genuine palaces on the sea.

Voyage to Crete

On 6 April, the Venetian commanders on Cyprus gathered in the village of Asha between Nicosia and Famagusta in order to devise a strategy to defend against an anticipated Ottoman invasion. They decided to shelter as many residents as possible inside the fortress walls, while Marcantonio Bragadin ordered the captains of the sole three Venetian ships in the harbour at the time to unload all cargo so that it could be used for survival during the expected prolonged siege. Furthermore, on 17 April Bragadin ordered the captains to sail their vessels to the beach at the Larnaca salt-pans and load certain goods stored at this isolated location.

During the loading, the crews of the Dolfina (commanded by Alvise Finardi) and Lezza, Moceniga e Basadonna (commanded by Frane Antunov of Korčula), upset by news of an inevitable Ottoman attack, staged a mutiny and forced their captains to set course for Venice with all due haste. As soon as Marcantonio Bragadin learned of this insubordination by the two ships, he sent a letter to the Venetian authorities. The Council of Ten and the College gathered on 9 June, read Bragadin’s letter and ordered the immediate arrest of the two captains, wherever they were at the moment. However, when the ships approached Venice on 4 July, their captains were not on board. Word of the threat awaiting them had probably reached them during their voyage up the Dalmatian coast.

Voyage to Corfu

Out of the 500 soldiers who should have arrived from Verona, only half embarked on the ship Lezza, Moceniga and Basadonna. These troops were commanded by Col. Buonagiunta di Buonagiunti, a veteran with experience serving the pope, the French king and the Venetians. Out of the 400 soldiers who had been promised in May by Col. Giovan Tommaso Costanzo, the son of Commander Scipio Costanzo, only 280 of them arrived. When the ship finally set sail for Corfu, in early July, there were a minimum of 605 people on it, including the 75 crew members.

In Albanian waters, near the island of Sazan, the ship was attacked by the Ottoman galleys commanded by Uluç Alì (Ven. Occhialì), then the supreme commander of Algeria (Tur. beylerbey), originally from Calabria. During the battle, twenty-five galleys arrived as reinforcements for the enemy side.

As the day came to a close, after eleven long hours of fighting, the courageous surviving warriors, already certain of their defeat, decided to gather on the stern and die with weapons in their hands. Their commanders ordered the ensigns to throw the already torn flags into the sea, so that they would not fall into enemy hands, and then the final bloody assault began, in which the enemy finally captured the unfortunate vessel.

Sale of the ship

Thus far, there are unfortunately no available records on the Lezza, Moceniga e Basadonna during the ten years after it had fallen into Ottoman hands. The new owner, Uluç Ali, who was elevated to the prestigious post of kapudan paşa (or grand admiral of the Ottoman navy) after the Battle of Lepanto, probably docked it in the port of Valona in order to repair the extensive damages incurred during the battle. After changing its name, he may have even used it in the service of the Ottoman fleet during the War of Cyprus.

In Venetian documents, the ship is once more noted only ten years later, in early November 1581, i.e., at the time when Uluç Ali decided to sell it to the sultan’s subject, a well-known Istanbul merchant named Odoardo da Gagliano. Odoardo’s grandfather, Antonio, who was the first of his family to move to Istanbul, had two sons. Benedetto, close to the Ottoman court. At some point between 1520 and 1530, his brother Domenico left the family home and settled in Venice to create a solid foundation for the family business.

Sailing route

In the spring of 1582, the ship formerly known as the Lezza, Moceniga e Basadonna, rechristened the Gagliana Grossa, sailed toward Venice for the first time. The name Gagliana referred to its new owner, while the adjective grossa indicated that the ship had a high deadweight of 1,200 Venetian barrels, or roughly 720 t. Immediately after returning to Istanbul on 24 September 1582, the ship was ready for a return voyage. Judging by the list of voyages by large Venetian ships during 1557-1560, the duration of the voyage could have varied from four and a half months during the summer, and up to nine months during the winter.

At the end of 1583, the ship was anchored in the port of Silivri in the Sea of Marmara, several miles from Istanbul, ready for its third voyage. Together with other valuable goods, the bailo personally handed a box to Captain Alvise Finardi containing two brocade uniforms, which the sultana sent as a gift to the Venetian doge. By a bizarre coincidence, Finardi was now captain of the same ship that was built and then commanded by Frane Antunov of Korčula in 1570, sailing alongside the Dolfina under Finardi’s command.

Loading the last cargo

In mid-June 1583, the Gagliana Grossa arrived in Venice for the third time, and by mid-August so much cargo had been loaded that a voyage to Istanbul was being considered. According to the insurance policies issued from 24 through 28 August 1583, we know that goods had already been loaded by Zorzi Lopes Vas, a Jewish merchant of Portuguese origin, and then by Giovanni di Nicolò di Paressi, Nicolò Studognoti and Dimitri Calauro.

The ship’s notary Šimun Fazanić (Simon Fasaneo), originally from the island of Hvar, also loaded his goods, while Captain Alvise Finardi only loaded a portion of his goods on 2 September of the same year. In the meantime, the Senate decided to use the ship to send 5.000 window panes to Istanbul, ordered for sultan Murad III, by coded letter as the customary form in Venetian diplomatic correspondence.

Despite promises to set sail soon, the ship remained in port throughout September, with hopes for departure by month’s end. During this time, goods were loaded by Agostino Cigrigni, Giovanni da Pozzo, Giovanni and Stefano di Silvestri and the tanner (Ven. scorcer) Giovanni di Battista. But departure was again postponed, so that the merchants, but also owners, incurred considerable damages. The delays in departure were certainly not due to the weather, but rather insufficient cargo.

Shipwreck

There is no way of knowing whether the seasoned captain foresaw what awaited him in Dalmatian waters on the very eve of the winter season sailing moratorium. Similarly, there is no way of knowing what threatened the heavily laden ship on its overseas voyage, but it is certain that already on 9 November the heralds of the Venetian Republic declared from Rialto Square, in the immediate vicinity of the famed eponymous bridge, the horrible news of its sinking somewhere in Dalmatia.

As was often the case, the first reports on the site of the shipwreck were rather ambiguous and confused, generally based on gossip and speculation by seafarers. A rumour circulated that the Gagliana Grossa had sunk near the island of Murter, but also that it had sank to the seafloor several miles north in the direction of Zadar. Only later, when several survivors returned to Venice, did it become known for certain that the tragic event played out near Zaklopica Cove (Ital. Porto Chiave) on the southern end of the island of Pašman, situated less than one nautical mile from the actual site of the shipwreck near the islet of Gnalić.

Salvage operations

Already on the next day, merchants rushed to notaries public in order to expedite the issuing of cession contracts, essential for insurers to assume ownership of the insured goods and pay out the contracted insurance settlements to merchants. During these days, a meeting of all of those who were involved in the event in any way was convened. A certain Piero della Moneta was charged to organize a campaign to salvage anything that could be salvaged from the sunken ship.

In order to carry out his task, he contacted an old friend of his father Battista, named Manoli, with the nickname Fregata, whose deceased father Iani was from the island of Candia, i.e., Crete. Manoli had a reputation as a top expert in his profession, capable of gathering a team of twenty people and renting six vessels in a short time. The Greek diver, probably a sponge-harvester and coral-hunter, obviously undaunted by the cold and restless sea, because – as we know – he immediately accepted the task and began diving at the shipwreck site and bringing up sunken items from a depth of 18 passi (ca. 31 m) already in December of the same year.