Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/544

 from the busses, but the Italians mark the union of the two ships in their buzo-navi. A Venetian statute of 1255 makes mention of these, together with the busses and the nefs or nés, each class being distinctly specified. Like the nefs, and the common busses, the buzo-navi had two masts, and carried lateen sails.

Perhaps, however, the sketch on the opposite page (p. 493) furnishes a better idea of the ordinary and smaller class of vessels of the Italian republics between the tenth and sixteenth centuries than any other which has been preserved. It appeared for the first time in a little book, published by M. Lanetti, and was copied by him from an old painting by Vittore Carpacci, which, he says, he had often seen and admired in the chapel of St. Ursula by the side of the church of San Giovanni and Paolo at Venice.

Among the Italian republics, but more especially in Venice during the plenitude of her power, the construction, equipment, and armament of galleys for mercantile purposes constituted a very important branch of the business of the government. Vessels thus built were put up to auction for freightage only, and the privilege of employing them on the "long voyage" was sold by the government. No other merchants of Venice were permitted to send