Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/538

 width of beam, and no less than 39-1/2 feet in depth. The Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas were respectively 2 and 10 feet shorter, their width and depth being in somewhat similar proportions. The other twelve were smaller, having an extreme length each of 86 feet, with a keel of 58, a beam of 18, and an extreme depth of 29 feet. The two largest had each two decks, 5-1/2 feet in height. Their bows and sterns were somewhat alike, and contained several cabins, with two poops, one above the other, the upper constituting a castle or fighting-deck like the vessels of more ancient times. Their respective crews consisted of 110 seamen; and the contract price for the construction of the largest of these vessels appears to have been fourteen hundred marks, or 933l. 6s. 8d. The smaller craft cost 466l. 13s. 4d., and they carried 50 men for their working crew.

It is to be regretted that no details are given of the size or number of their masts, yards, sails, rigging, stores, or armament. The contract merely states that the larger vessels are to have two masts and two square sails, the foremast reaching over the bows, and answering the purpose of both mast and bowsprit; but what will strike the nautical reader most in these vessels is their extreme depth and their great width in comparison with their length.

Every account shows that the classes of vessels belonging to the Italian republics were even more numerous and varied than those of our own time.