The Inrernarional Journal oj”auricrr1 Archaeology (1991) 20.1: 9-1 I

Underwater archaeology in 15th- and 16th-century Italy

L. Th. Lehmann Koestraat ISB. I012 B W Amsterdam. The Netherlands

Towards themiddleofthe 1 Sthcentury, Cardinal Prosper0 Colonna was lord of the land around Lake Nemi, owning the castles of Nemore and Cinthiano.

In 1446 he availed himself of the ingenuity of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), who was a writer, an architect and a surveyor, to search the lake bed where rumour had it that there was at least one Roman ship.

For the job Cardinal Colonna proposed he engaged some Genovese sailors, ‘that could swim like fish, and, diving to the bottom of the lake, could tell the size of the boats, and in how far they were intact or broken’ (Biondo, 1542: 110).

Indeed, what is now known as ship 1 was located. Alberti had a raft of barrels built. On it he placed windlasses with cables. He anchored the raft over the site and by means of the cables he let down hooks, which the divers were to attach to the Roman ship (Mancini, 1882: 314). Well may the modern archaeologist shudder!

Among the things raised to the surface before this undertaking, were lead pipes with an inscrip- tion that was interpreted as Tiberius Caesar, so the reputed ship was alluded to as ‘la nave di Tiberio’ (Mancini, 1882: 315), but Alberti re- interpreted the lettering as saying ‘Traianus Caesar’ (Alberti, 1512: I,V,l2).

By means of the hooks and cables Alberti managed to break off a piece of the ship near the prow, and that ‘in presenza di tutti gli uomini di piu nobile ingegno della curia Romana’ (in the presence of the men of the most noble intelli- gence of the Roman curia. Biondo, 1542: 11 1) wrote a book called Navis, that was printed, but has somehow been lost. Lilius Gregorius Gyraldus, who published a De re nautica in 1540, mentions it but quotes nothing that we cannot read elsewhere. We do not even know if it was only about the Nemi ship, which would have been a meagre subject, or about ships in general.

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In his architectural book, Alberti dedicates a chapter to shipping (book V, chap. 12). This chapter is chiefly devoted to generalities about ship design and armament. He tells us how well the larch and pinewood in his ship fragment had kept in the lake during 13 centuries since Trajan, and he describes the lead doubling; how the wood has been covered with linen drenched in pitch and how sheets of lead have been fastened over that with copper nails.

Although he had not discovered much, Alberti could not complain of lack of interest in his efforts. Just within his lifetime a book was printed (Rome, 147&1471), Roma restaurata et Italia illustrata, by the pleonastically named Flavio Biondo da Forli, in which operation Nemi was reported.

One of the clerics on the shore may have been Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini ( 1 405- 1464), who in 1458 became Pope Pius 11. In the 12th book ofhis memoirs, Commentarii Rerum Memorabilium, he retells the whole story of the ‘dig’ and includes the description of the lead doubling, but omits Alberti! His attention points in another direc- tion. He supposes the ship to have been a floating palace, naming examples of such vessels in his own time; that of Borsus (Borso d’Este) at Ferrara in the Po, that of Lodovico of Mantua in the Mincio and those of the German electors in the Rhine. Thus he was the begetter of remark- able fantasies that gave rise to the painting and drawing of grotesquely ornate ships, even in the 20th century, but as the Nemi-ships showed fittings of quite unnautical luxury, he was prob- ably not far off the mark. Indeed there are Hellenistic reports of big, seaworthy, but im- practical luxury ships.

Francesco de Marchi lived from 1504 to 1577. He was born a Bolognese, but became a Roman, and an engineer. He worked on fortifications in the Southern Netherlands and wrote a large

0 1991 The Nautical Archaeology Society

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 20.1

volume that was printed at Brescia in 1599. Though it is entitled Della Architectura Militare, the author does not adhere rigorously to his sub- ject, for in chapters 82-84 of book 2 (Marchi, 1599: folios 42“4’”), he gives a voluble account of something he undertook in the year 1535. He went to the lago di Nemo (sic), in the company of two servants, the architect Leonard0 da Udine and his son Thesiofonte who was a musician, and a Roman gentleman name Hippolito Mataleno, who played the lute. A motley crew, but they had a purpose, though it is not clear what their various contributions were. There was another person whose presence was very functional, Guglielmo da Lorena.

We begin the story at the beginning, but Marchi began at the conclusion, by saying that he thought it, ‘quite proper to talk about the ‘barca di Traiano’ Biondo da Forli (whom we quoted) and ‘il Faveno’ (probably Biondo’s translator) talked about it ‘without having seen it, but I, that have seen and touched it, will say a part of what I know’.

On July 15th, 1535 he went down into the lake, because the day was sunny, and he could there- fore see better underwater. He was in a small, portable diving bell, invented by Gulglielmo da Lorena, who had a long beard that hung down half a palm below his waist, so when at work he wrapped it round his head in plaits. He was a man of great ingenuity. The apparatus was evi- dently made like a tub, 5 roman palms high and 3 wide, and well caulked. It had a ‘christallo’ to look through, with a diameter of 1 palm. Under- neath were two iron bars between which your neck rested so that you would not bump your head against the ‘fondo in sopra’ (the bottom above you). There was a strap that went between your legs to keep you connected to the contrap- tion. The rim of the tub, weighted with lead, reached down to your elbows. With your arms you could perform simple tasks, like sawing, cutting, handling pincers or chisels, tying knots, etc. He does not tell everything because he is under oath to Master Guglielmo not to reveal some details, especially the means by which the water was kept out and the air breathed in was removed. It could not be used in turbulent water, although Guglielmo had once raised a cannon from a sunken galley in Civita Vecchia harbour.

Marchi, going down into what unwittingly he had called nobody’s lake, had his tussle with

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freshwater fish. He correctly remarks, that in the water you see everything bigger, but he says that there were thick shoals of small fish (laterini) that were not longer than a man’s little finger, but now looked 3 palmi long. Moreover, they were attracted by 3 ounces of black bread and 1 of cheese, which he carried with him ‘to eat’ (when and where? Was he afraid that his mates on the surface would eat his ration in his absence?). Also he was afraid that they would nibble him in that part of which a man can think. He tried to shoo them away with his hands, but they took no notice and behaved as if they were ‘in sua casa’ (which evidently they were!). Also, he was not wearing breeches. Why not? Because when duke Alessandro de Medicis was his patron he had seen, when the water was at a low level in the Arno, the body of a fisherman who had dived to catch fish with his hands and whose breeches had caught on a tree root under water.

He rambles on, through a headache and a violent nose-bleed. He sometimes seems to live on bad terms with grammar, but there was nothing wrong with his powers of observation. Below on the ship he finds a crimson tiled floor embedded in mortar, so his mind naturally drifts towards the ‘floating palace’ theory, interpreting dark openings as rooms he does not enter for fear of stumbling in the dark and overturning his tub, telling us that if you are an excellent swimmer and have the presence of mind to undo the straps, you can save yourself, as the master had done several times.

Of course he has an ‘argano a mulinello’ which sounds like a capstan, on the shore and attached ropes to the ship. So they managed to rip off enough wood to ‘make a load for two sturdy mules’. He has identified the wood as larch, pine and cypress and describes the lead sheathing in even more detail, weighing and measuring the nails and typifying them.

But what is most sensational in the light of four centuries of investigation is the following: except for nails he also saw in the wood, cavigli (treenails) made of oak, black but in a good state. He goes on to state: Quelli di legno erano tra certe tavole delli coperti delle camare, le tavole che facevano il fondo, e sponde, e ogni brazzo vi era una committitura di legno larga 4 dit, che entrava in I’uno, e l’altro, che teneva serrate le tavole insieme, dove erano di questi cavigli di rovere, che passavano quelli legni,che serravano

L. Th. LEHMANN: UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY IN 15th-CENTURY ITALY

le tavole insieme, ma non riuscivano fuori delle sponde. (Those made of wood were through certain planks of the coverings of the holds, the planks that made the bottom, and the sides, and at every brazzo there was a link of wood, 4 fingers broad, that entered into one plank and into that next to it, that kept the planks tightly together, where there were treenails of oak, that passed through those pieces of wood that kept the planks, but did not protrude at the sides.)

What we have here is nothing less than a de- scription of the mortise-and-tenon construction that we now know to have been very important in classical antiquity. This antedates its re- discovery in 17 17 near the river Golo in Corsica, but only in the 1880s published in Admiral Piris’ tome (Basch, 1973). A second in 1864 at Marseille was only published in 1896 by J. Vars (Breal, 1896), and that at Vechten near Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1893 (Muller, 1895).

To a certain extent it is understandable that this discovery has been neglected for centuries. There was little evidence to go on and when naval archaeology is chiefly speculation, there are more spectacular subjects to concentrate on, such as the enigma of the polyeres or multiremes.

As in many old technical publications, for example those by Witsen and van Yk, in Marchi’s book we find measurements drawn full size on blank pages and in margins. He gives: the palmo romano, of which 10 make a canna. When we measured this on the page we found it to be 225 mm. The mezzo bracchio antico, 12 making a pertica, 268mm and the piede antico dei Romani, 5 making a passo, 34 cm.

Francesco de Marchi also measured the ship. He had a rope dropped from a little boat over the

References Alberti. L. B. , 1512, De Re Aedijicaroria. Paris. Basch. L.. 1973. The Golo wreck. IJNA. 11: 329-344.

point he wanted to be measured. A diver on the bottom could pull it and thus give the people in the boat the opportunity to manoeuvre the rope into a vertical position. Moreover the length of rope paid out could tell them at what depth the several parts of the ship lay and thus, at what angle. It is not at all a bad system and Marchi found that the ship’s length was 70 canne, its beam 35 canne and depth 8 canne.

The actual dimensions of the ships excavated in 1929-32, are given by Ucelli (1950). Here we find the length and breadth of ship 1 to have been 67 and 30m. According to Marchi’s drawing and legend the canna was 2.25 m. Can he have meant whole brazzi? These again could be checked by the distances between tenons. (Ucelli, 1950: 152, fig. 153). There the treenails through the tenons are about 20cm apart, more like Marchi’s palmo. Did he estimate on sight under- water? Did the ‘christallo’ function as a lens? Did the excellent plan with the boats go wrong, or did the printer?. The lead pipes have since been ascribed to Caligula (Ucelli, 1950: 285). The lead sheeting is described on pp. 153-154 and visible in many photographs. The un-naval ornaments occupy pp. 109-204, and on pp. 3G32 we are even shown some fine fantasy-ships.

Ironically, if Alberti or someone else had been able to find out what we know about the Nemi ships, no ideas would have been changed. Their beam did not make them look like oared vessels, but how else could they be propelled, and they did not have to go far or fast. Ship 2 showed a rectangular frame sticking out on both sides, that looked like a galley rowing frame and could very well have been used as such. (Ucelli, 1950: 383-386, pls. VI & VII).

Biondo da Forli, F., 1542, Roma reslaurata el Iralia illustrara. Tradotto in buona lingua volgare per Lucio Fauno.

Bred[, M., 1896. Communication de M. J . Vars sur une nouvelleinterpretation d’unversd’ovide. In Comptesrendusdes

Bude. G . , 1528. De Asse etparrihus eius. Cologne. Concina, E., 1988. Humanism and the sea. In Mediterranean HisroricalReview 111, I: 159-166. Mancini, G.. 1882, Vila di Leon Barrisra Alberti. Florence. Marchi, F. de, 1599, Dellu Archirecrura Milirare Libri 111. Brescia. Muller, S . Fzn, 1895, Verslag over de opgravingen van Romeinsche oudheden te Vechten. In Verslag van her

verhondelde in de algemene vergadering van her Provinciaal Utrechrs genootschap. gehouden den 25en Juni 1895:

Venice.

siances de I’Acodemie des Inscriptions el Belles lertres (4 iime serie XXIV): 386-387.

122-169. Pius 11, 1614. Commenrarii Rerum Memorabilium. Frankfort. Ucelli, G., 1950, Le Navidi Nemi. Rome.