Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/536

 present day. One historian describes her as being large enough "to make twenty ships" (coasters?); another states that being at Constantinople himself, at that time, he found that she was able to shelter from fifteen hundred to two thousand fugitives, whom she conveyed to the Adriatic. Nor, indeed, is there any reason for doubting the existence of such a ship. Vessels employed in the Crusades carried, in various instances, eight hundred persons, and the ships of Marseilles frequently took on board a thousand passengers —(pilgrims ?); wherefore it is not unreasonable to suppose that the Venetians may have built a ship which actually made a somewhat distant voyage, with two thousand persons on board, and such provisions, clothing, and valuables as the fugitives could collect in the emergency. Although furnished with three masts, she does not appear to have carried any sails except the foresail, mainsail, and mizen; nor is there any mention of vessels of any nation, so early as the twelfth century, fitted with topsails; though they occasionally may have carried, in fair weather, triangular sails.

That the wealthy merchants of the Italian republics, and especially of Venice, owned various vessels of considerable dimensions, there can be even

Venet. Hist. pp. 63, 64.]
 * [Footnote: called from its magnitude "Il Mondo"—"The World."—Sketches of