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Authors: Jonathan Phillips

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Dandolo himself had been to Egypt in 1174 and he had seen its magnificent trading power, but also its declining defensive strength - something that even Saladin had failed to fully address. William of Tyre provides a vivid description of the city from around this period:
Alexandria is most conveniently situated for carrying on extensive commerce. It has two ports that are separated from one another by a very narrow stretch of land. At the end of that tongue rises a tower of marvellous height called the Pharos. By the Nile, Alexandria receives from upper Egypt an abundance of food supplies of every kind and, indeed, a wealth of almost every commodity. If there is anything that the country itself lacks, it is brought by ships from the lands across the sea in profuse abundance. As a result Alexandria has the reputation of receiving a larger supply of wares of every description than any other maritime city. Whatever this part of the world lacks in the matter of pearls, spices, Oriental treasures, and foreign wares is brought hither from the two Indies; Saba, Arabia, and both the Ethiopias, as well as from Persia and other lands nearby... People from East and West flock thither in great numbers, and Alexandria is a public market for both worlds.
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Ibn Jubayr, while on pilgrimage to Mecca in 1184-5, lavished praise on the buildings of Alexandria:
We have never seen a town with broader streets or higher structures, or more ancient and beautiful. Its markets are also magnificent. A remarkable thing about the construction of the city is that the buildings below the ground are like those above it and are even finer and stronger, because the waters of the Nile wind underground beneath the houses and alleyways ... We also observed many marble columns of height, amplitude and splendour such as cannot be imagined.
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The Venetians too, therefore, had good reason to encourage the attack to focus on Alexandria. In comparison, the ports of the Frankish East, although not insignificant (particularly Acre), were relatively second-rate. While the enormous scale of the Venetians’ commitment to the crusade cannot be doubted, the stakes they were playing for were equally vast. The basic terms of the contract with the crusaders must have been enough to cover their initial investment in shipping and men. What really helped to convince Dandolo to sell the idea to his senior councillors was the expectation of commercial dominance of the most important port in the Mediterranean. This was a unique opportunity for the Venetians, and one they had never had sight of before. For Dandolo, it would be a chance to crown his time as doge with a dual triumph: to help retake Christ’s patrimony for the faithful and to establish his home city as the greatest commercial force in the Mediterranean.
There was one further connection between Venice and Alexandria and, while this was a comparatively minor issue compared to the grander commercial and strategic matters, it is worth noting. The patron saint of Venice was Mark the Evangelist, a companion of St Peter and St Paul, who eventually resided in Alexandria and was martyred there around AD 74. In the ninth century two Venetians had brought Mark’s body from Alexandria—hidden in a consignment of pork to deter the Muslim port officials from examining their cargo too closely—and it was housed in the doge’s private chapel, the building that eventually developed into St Mark’s. This link between their patron saint and the immediate target of their crusade may have given a further edge to the Venetians’ involvement in the expedition.
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With the formal contract and the secret deal agreed, the Frenchmen borrowed some money to make a down payment on the sum owed. The first instalment was not due until August, but the envoys wanted the Venetians to start work on the fleet immediately and paid over 5,000 silver marks. Afterwards they left for home, riding across the north Italian plain to Piacenza where the party divided. Villehardouin headed northwards to France, and the others turned west and south to visit the other Italian mercantile cities of Pisa and Genoa to discover if they were prepared to provide any help for the crusade. Given the dominant position established by the Venetians, this seemed unlikely, but perhaps the envoys thought that some crusaders might, for reasons of convenience, prefer to travel from western Italy and they therefore wanted to see if any travel arrangements might be offered.
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Back in Venice, work on the great fleet began. The Venetians had 13 months to make ready their existing ships and to build the new vessels required. Dandolo and his advisers sent out the appropriate orders; the focus on the crusader fleet was to be total: all commercial activity was to be suspended. Thousands of sailors would be used to man this huge fleet; they had to be enlisted and trained. Vast supplies of foodstuffs needed to be assembled—representatives went out to the farmers of northern Italy and contracted to buy their crops in hitherto unimagined volume; they engaged regional centres such as Padua and Piacenza, as well as Ravenna and Rimini further south. Corn and pulses were gathered for men and horses, along with 16,775 amphorae of wine for the crusaders, plus at least the same amount again for the Venetian soldiers and sailors. After the autumn harvest of 1201 the roads towards the Venetian coast, and the ferry-boats and barges moving over the lagoon, teemed with labourers, ceaselessly hauling victuals into the storehouses as the city drew in foodstuffs with a seemingly unquenchable appetite.
Dandolo must have summoned the master shipbuilders of the city and laid before them the full requirements of the contract, although he had presumably sought some kind of advice from them before setting out the terms of the offer in the first instance. Such was the vast cost of this construction programme that a later Venetian writer reported that the doge had to mint extra silver grossi to give as wages to the masters because there were insufficient small pennies to pay them.
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The heart of the Venetian shipbuilding industry was known as the Arsenal. This was (and still is) located about 750 yards east of St Mark’s in the adjacent Castello district. It was established in 1104 as an official shipyard of the Venetian state and its task was to produce and maintain a fleet. Quite naturally, this created an institution of enormous technical expertise and was a major reason for the Venetians’ maritime strength. Specialised ships for warfare, for the carrying of horses and for troop transportation could be conceived and created, and the Arsenal also carried the spares and supplies to maintain such vessels. Dandolo was plainly confident that the Arsenal could design and produce the necessary shipping to fulfil his own needs and those of the crusaders.
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The number of ships required was immense. The 4,500 knights, the 9,000 squires and the 20,000 foot-soldiers were to travel on naves or large sailing ships, often converted cargo carriers. The names of some of the biggest of these ships were recorded in the sources and are known from the particular role they played in later events. The size of these vessels varied: the greatest, called World, and others, such as Paradise and Pilgrim, had masts tall enough to reach the towers of Constantinople in 1204. Most would have been rather smaller and it is estimated that around 60-70 of these vessels were needed to transport the crusaders (see plate section).
To us, these ships would appear ugly and ungainly; they were short, rounded tubs. Some surviving visual evidence, such as mosaics, ceramics and manuscript illustrations, along with details from mid-thirteenth-century shipping contracts, allow estimates to be made of their size and capacity. Three-decked versions of the round ship were approximately no feet long and 32 feet wide. In comparison, a modern aeroplane such as an Airbus A320 is 120 feet long and its fuselage is about 16 feet wide. It carries up to 150 passengers and eight crew on flights of (usually) no more than four-and-a-half hours’ duration. By the end of such a flight, most passengers are cramped and fidgety. As we look over a medieval ship, perhaps the equivalent of a jet as the main mode of transport, and consider that journeys lasted many weeks, such figures are sobering.
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At each end of the medieval ship were wooden structures known as castles that brought the overall height of the hull to more than 40 feet. On both sides at the back of the vessel were huge steering oars, slung in wooden ‘wings’ to keep them attached to the ship. These great paddles were then connected by a series of pivots and tackle to the tiller, which was manned by the helmsman on top of the rearward castle. Rudders were not found on Mediterranean ships until the fourteenth century. The knights’ cabins were in the rearmost tower and offered what passed for luxury accommodation, affording at least some privacy. On top of the solid superstructure was a more lightly built apartment that provided some protection from the elements and was again available to the most important passengers. The bulk of the men were housed in the central section of the ship and were cramped into the smallest possible space each—as little as two feet by five feet according to one mid-thirteenth-century statute. On one of these big vessels a crew of 80—100 men joined up to 600 passengers (most ships would have carried fewer). The noise of creaking wood and snapping sails, the smell of sea and sweat, and the sheer proximity of so many people must have produced an incredibly intense experience.
Medieval people were used to sharing sleeping quarters in the Great Hall of a castle, but here was added the unfamiliarity of sea travel and the fact that the sailors had to carry out their tasks amidst the crusaders. As they huddled below decks, rolling from side to side in the dark, dank underbelly of the ship, many a passenger must have regretted ever leaving dry land. The fear and chaos of a storm terrified the crusaders; the sudden squalls that can whip up in the Mediterranean induced trepidation, prayer and promises to repent for a lifetime’s sins. Above them, the masts towered more than 96 feet high, carrying immense sails, cracking and whipping in the wind under a yard-arm up to 150 feet long. Speeds were slow by today’s standards and the voyage from Venice to Acre—a distance of about 1,800 miles if all went well—was anticipated to take four to six weeks. On a typical journey, after sailing down the Adriatic, Crete was a vital port of call, then Rhodes, the bay of Antalya off the southern coast of Asia Minor, Limassol on Cyprus, the Levantine coast at Beirut, before moving down to Acre. Each ship pulled along two or three small rowing boats that were used to go ashore to collect fresh water. It must have appeared like a mother duck and her chicks as the big, round ships trailed their ‘offspring’ behind them.
The transport of horses by sea was a difficult and dangerous affair.
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Horses were essential to enable the western knights to deliver their feared charge and they were expensive status symbols of the military elite. The horse ships, known as
tarida,
probably carried up to 30 animals. Each beast had to be suspended in a sling to prevent sudden movements of the ship causing them to lose their footing and injure themselves. Large amounts of food and water had to be stored in these vessels and there was also the need to muck out each horse and throw the dung overboard. The animals were carried deep in the boat, with the main entrance falling below the waterline when fully loaded. When beached on shore and ready for battle, this door could then be opened and the horses, saddled up with their riders already mounted and fully armed, could cross a ramp and pour out of the ship, straight into the fray. With the numbers of knights the crusaders planned on recruiting, the deployment of their shock troops directly from the sea into a battle situation would have given the Christians’ invasion force a formidable edge and one that might have created an immediate and overwhelming tactical advantage. To carry the 4,500 crusader horses would have needed around 150 ships. More importantly, these vessels were powered primarily by oarsmen. More than 100 men plus perhaps 30 other crew would be required to propel the ship, bringing a further 19,500 Venetians into the campaign.
Finally, there was the Venetian fleet of 50 battle-galleys, led by the doge’s own vermilion-painted ship. Again, just over 100 oarsmen were needed, with a crew of warriors, officers and sailors. These galleys were roughly 125 feet long, but only about 12 feet wide (compare this 1:10 width/length ratio to the 1:3½ width/length ratio of the round ships). They were only about 14 feet high at the stem and 11 feet tall at the stern. Oarsmen usually worked two men per bench, each with a 22-foot oar. They could move the boat along at an average speed of around three knots an hour in daylight, but unlike sail-powered vessels they needed to rest at night. Another problem with the galleys was that they sat very low in the water in order to make the most effective use of the oars, yet this made them hopelessly susceptible to swamping in heavy seas and difficult to turn quickly. Furthermore, they also carried a large volume of water—well over a gallon per day per man—to keep the crew hydrated in the summer heat. In spite of these disadvantages, the galley was the main attacking vessel in the navies of the medieval Mediterranean and its oarsmen could reach speeds of up to 10 knots in short bursts. Their main weapon was a pointed, metal-tipped beak that projected beyond the prow, above the waterline, unlike the ram of a Roman galley that ran below the surface. This was intended to damage the oars of an enemy vessel and cripple it before the ship’s soldiers used grappling irons and ropes to snare their quarry, board it and seize it. Galleys would be essential to defeat any seaborne opposition that the Muslims chose to direct against the crusaders and on many occasions in the past, such as the sieges of Tyre (1124) and Acre (1191), victories at sea had done much to pave the way for a subsequent success on land. At the start of the thirteenth century the recovering Egyptian fleet contained a number of battle-galleys. It was, therefore, essential for the crusade to possess the ability to engage with and defeat these vessels.
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BOOK: The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
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