Arsenale: The Shipyard and Arsenal of Venice
The immense commercial trade, wealth, and sea power of the Republic of Venice was rooted in the ships built in the industrial site known as the Arsenale, or arsenal. It was first established in 1104 and continued building warships, merchant ships, armor, crossbows, catapults, weapons, and artillery for eight centuries.
The 24-hectare (60-acre) site spans water and land on the eastern end of the city and is surrounded by 15-meter (50 ft) tall defensive walls enclosing drydocks, wet docks, forges, and workshops. From its foundation, it was a government-controlled factory designed to produce ships and weapons to defend the Republic of Venice's trade and to exert its dominance throughout the Mediterranean. Venice's immense wealth came from trade as far as Egypt and Syria, and its connection to the Silk Road. Venetian ships carried trade to Egypt and transported pilgrims to the Holy Land.
The Arsenale's entry gate features two distinctive towers, which appear in historical images of Venice and look the same today. Visitors to its front gate are still confronted by a row of massive marble lions standing guard, which were brought back from Greece to Venice as prizes of war.
Behind its brick walls were workshops and docks where everything needed to maintain a maritime force was standardized and stored on-site. All materials were produced there: nails, pitch, caulk, rope, rigging, sails, oars, keels, decks, and masts, along with weapons including armor, swords, lances, gunpowder, pistols, mortars, and artillery.
Arsenalotti
Much like an assembly line, their ships were constructed in a system where the keels were laid, then the hulls were floated from one work shed to another, as the ship progressed towards completion. Artisans and masters continually improved the technology and were rewarded for their innovations.
Every workday morning a bell tolled in the eastern end of Venice, known as Castello, which summoned the workers, called Arsenalotti, to work. They had only a short walk to the gates from their apartments, and the most skilled were often given special housing. These workers included men, who worked as carpenters, riggers, blacksmiths, forgers, and rope makers, and women, who worked spinning thread, weaving sailcloth and silk banners on looms, sewing sails, and other tasks. Some women were allowed to apprentice to their fathers in traditionally male tasks.
Arsenalotti received good benefits: they were provided with good wages, could earn promotion to become foremen or masters, and wine was brought in each day to sustain them. Every Saturday was payday, and workers received their cash payments at the front gate. Although many Venetian sources portray the workers as satisfied, there were occasional protests, and in 1569, a cutback in hours led to a riot. Workers organized among themselves into guilds based on their specific trade (shipwrights, sawyers, caulkers, ironsmiths, gunsmiths, etc.) and established funds to support those who might be injured or even killed at work. But the most valued benefit was to sign on their children as apprentices and move them up to become their successors.
In time of war, the Arsenalotti could be drafted to serve on warships. Caulkers, who possessed critical skills, were regularly posted on ships to conduct emergency repairs. Workers expected to be assigned to ships at some point in their careers, sometimes for years, and might view rowing a galley as a means of surviving hard times. If a worker was convicted of a crime, they might be sentenced to row on the galleys or to work for a number of years in the shipyard at half pay.
Poet Dante Alighieri's Canto XXI recalled watching the workmen boiling pitch into black tar to be used in the waterproofing of ships. Dante described watching the boiling cauldrons as resembling a hellish atmosphere. The workers then set to pressing the pitch onto the hulls of the ships.
The proti or masters, who managed each step of the production process, held the highest respect, rank, and pay and might number as many as a thousand. If needed, the workforce might expand to several thousand and then rapidly shrink with less demand. Masters managed teams of skilled craftsmen and apprentices who learned the finer points of a specific trade. Many worked all their lives in a single area of expertise, and a veteran who continued to work into his sixties or seventies was not considered unusual.
These workers had long held a special place in Venetian society, which historian Robert C. Davis termed "a civic role," meaning they were honored participants in public events (Davis, 150). During times of religious rites or celebrations, the Doge and his entourage took to their elaborate ceremonial barge, known as the Bucintoro, out into the lagoon. The oared galley was painted bright red and elaborately decorated with gold leaf. It was rowed by teams of the Arsenale's workers, who brought the Doge to the center of the lagoon, where he threw a golden ring into the sea as thanks for another year of prosperity. When a new Doge was elected, the workers carried him through the city, and they rowed his barge during the ceremony known as the Sensa (Marriage to the Sea).
The workers also had regular responsibilities in the protection of the shipyard. They served as security guards patrolling the shipyard at night and as firefighters in an emergency. In 1508, a massive explosion in the gunpowder workshop killed many workers and destroyed part of the Arsenale.
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⇒ Arsenale: The Shipyard and Arsenal of Venice
