http://www.humanoasis.com/Feature%20Stories/072401-veniceships.html
Venetian Vessels Come Home
Two ancient ships returned from the sea after more than 700 years
By Reagan Duplisea, Staff
The marshy Venetian Lagoon, the crescent of water separating the Italian mainland and the Adriatic Sea, has long been home to creatures from crabs to anchovies and the birds that feed on them. But two secret residents have also lived in its waters since the Renaissance era.
Two sunken ships, their hulls filled with mud, have been anchored to the submerged island of San Marco in Boccalama. The 14th-century Venetian galley and smaller transport ship were discovered in 1996. The flat-hulled transport ship is the only one of its kind that has ever been found.
This month, a team of archaeologists will launch a plan to learn more about these vessels. The island will be surrounded by a screen attached to wooden stakes, and the water will be pumped out, allowing San Marco and its naval companions to breathe fresh, dry air after nearly 700 years under water.
The two-acre island and ships will be re-submerged after two weeks; any longer exposure could damage the ships’ fragile wood. The team does not plan to salvage the ships at this time, but hope this project will pave the way to do so at a later date.
The 125-foot (38-meter) long galley and 79-foot (24-meter) long transport ship are enormously well preserved. A mud layer has conserved them and protected them from the mollusks that usually attack the wood of boats. Galley shipwrecks tend not to survive because their cargoes are usually light (such as spices), but the ballast on board these vessels helped preserve them. Roman amphora are in the hold of one ship.
Scholars believe that monks who inhabited the island’s monastery in the 1300s took advantage of the sunken ships to prop up their sinking island. Their monastery, founded in the second century, was slowly succombing to the lagoon’s rising waters. Their desperation to save their home is noted in a 1328 document from Prior Nicholas to the Senate requesting government protection.
Many of the monks perished in the plague of 1348, and the ones who survived were forced to leave the sinking island in the following years. The island, rediscovered in 1969, is now submerged in six feet (almost 2 meters) of water.