The sandolo is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat designed for the generally shallow waters of the Venetian Lagoon. The Italian plural is sandoli.
The sandolo is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat designed for the generally shallow waters of the Venetian Lagoon. The Italian plural is sandoli.
A sandolo is less ornate and of a simpler build than a gondola, but both have a pointed, decorated metal nose. It is also lighter and smaller than a gondola, [1] and can be recognized at a glance, as it always lacks the benches and high steel prow (called ferro) which is seen on a gondola. [2] [3] The sandolo, like the larger craft, is rowed while standing up. [4] It can be fitted with a sail, [5] and also with an in-board or outboard motor.
In the past, the police used an extant variant of the sandolo called vipera, which differed in having no stem, being sharply pointed at both ends and constructed so that it can be rowed from either end. [6]
Space in the sandolo is limited, with enough room for one oarsman, aft, two passengers on the main seat, and two more passengers sitting on small stools towards the bow, although for greater comfort some writers advise one passenger, or two small passengers. [7] The traditional use of the sandolo is for recreation and racing, and it is considered one of the four principal types of boat used in and around Venice. [8] Rather less stable than a gondola, it has a rocking motion all of its own. [9]
Although not often used for fishing, as such, the craft is used for collecting crabs and mussels, [10] while an early 20th-century writer noted that he had heard the sandolo called "the donkey cart of Venice". [11] The boat has also been called "without doubt one of if not the most graceful of all Venetian craft". Less manoevrable but lighter than a gondola, it was in the past used especially by boys, artists, and women. [12]
In Gondola Days (1897), Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838–1915) stated that the sandolo was "the only boat of really modern design, and this is rarely used as a fishing-boat". He went on to describe it as "a shallow skiff drawing but a few inches of water, and with bow and stern sharp and very low", and considered that it was originally intended for greater speed in boat racing. [13]
Horatio Brown said in his Life on the Lagoons (1884), "The Venetians are not good boat-builders. The only boats they make successfully are gondolas and sandoli. [14] In a later book he wrote, "The pleasantest way to go to Malamocco is to take a sandolo, if you can. [15]
Alexander Robertson said of Venice in 1898, "Their streets are canals, their carriages are gondolas and sandolos..." [16]
Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 126 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are linked by 472 bridges. The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers. In 2020, around 258,685 people resided in greater Venice or the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 51,000 live in the historical island city of Venice and the rest on the mainland (terraferma). Together with the cities of Padua and Treviso, Venice is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million.
The Venetian Lagoon is an enclosed bay of the Adriatic Sea, in northern Italy, in which the city of Venice is situated. Its name in the Italian and Venetian languages, Laguna Veneta—cognate of Latin lacus, "lake"—has provided the English name for an enclosed, shallow embayment of salt water, a lagoon.
The gondola is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian lagoon. It is typically propelled by a gondolier, who uses a rowing oar, which is not fastened to the hull, in a sculling manner, and also acts as the rudder. The uniqueness of the gondola includes its being asymmetrical along the length, making the single-oar propulsion more efficient.
Boat building is the design and construction of boats and their systems. This includes at a minimum a hull, with propulsion, mechanical, navigation, safety and other systems as a craft requires.
Landing craft are small and medium seagoing watercraft, such as boats and barges, used to convey a landing force from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. The term excludes landing ships, which are larger. Production of landing craft peaked during World War II, with a significant number of different designs produced in large quantities by the United Kingdom and United States.
The Grand Canal is a channel in Venice, Italy. It forms one of the major water-traffic corridors in the city.
A riverboat is a watercraft designed for inland navigation on lakes, rivers, and artificial waterways. They are generally equipped and outfitted as work boats in one of the carrying trades, for freight or people transport, including luxury units constructed for entertainment enterprises, such as lake or harbour tour boats. As larger water craft, virtually all riverboats are especially designed and constructed, or alternatively, constructed with special-purpose features that optimize them as riverine or lake service craft, for instance, dredgers, survey boats, fisheries management craft, fireboats and law enforcement patrol craft.
The Venetian Arsenal is a complex of former shipyards and armories clustered together in the city of Venice in northern Italy. Owned by the state, the Arsenal was responsible for the bulk of the Venetian Republic's naval power from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period. It was "one of the earliest large-scale industrial enterprises in history".
Proas are various types of multi-hull outrigger sailboats of the Austronesian peoples. The terms were used for native Austronesian ships in European records during the Colonial era indiscriminately, and thus can confusingly refer to the double-ended single-outrigger boats of Oceania, the double-outrigger boats of Island Southeast Asia, and sometimes ships with no outriggers or sails at all.
The bucentaur was the ceremonial barge of the doges of Venice. It was used every year on Ascension Day up to 1798 to take the doge out to the Adriatic Sea to perform the "Marriage of the Sea" – a ceremony that symbolically wedded Venice to the sea.
Rowing is the act of propelling a human-powered watercraft using the sweeping motions of oars to displace water and generate reactional propulsion. Rowing is functionally similar to paddling, but rowing requires oars to be mechanically attached to the boat, and the rower drives the oar like a lever, exerting force in the same direction as the boat's travel; while paddles are completely hand-held and have no attachment to the boat, and are driven like a cantilever, exerting force opposite to the intended direction of the boat.
A Dutch barge is a traditional flat-bottomed shoal-draught barge, originally used to carry cargo in the shallow Zuiderzee and the waterways of Netherlands. There are many types of Dutch barge, with characteristics determined by regional conditions and traditions.
The steam yacht Gondola is a rebuilt Victorian, screw-propelled, steam-powered passenger vessel on Coniston Water, England. Originally launched in 1859, she was built for the steamer service carrying passengers from the Furness Railway and from the Coniston Railway. She was in commercial service until 1936 when she was retired, being converted to a houseboat in 1946. In 1979, by now derelict, she was given a new hull, engine, boiler and most of the superstructure. She is back in service as a passenger boat, still powered by steam and now operated by the National Trust.
A remèr is a craftsman specialised in the making of traditional rowlocks – called fórcolas – and oars for Venetian boats.
The Fisherman Presenting the Ring to Doge Gradenigo is a 1534 oil-on-canvas painting by the Venetian Renaissance painter Paris Bordone (1495–1570). It was painted in Venice for the confraternity of San Marco in 1540. The painting treats the legend behind the tempest that struck Venice on 15 February 1340. It depicts a gondolier returning the ring of Saint Mark to the Doge Bartolomeo Gradenigo.
Horatio Robert Forbes Brown was a Scottish historian who specialized in the history of Venice and Italy.
Life on the Lagoons, which deals with the history and topography of the watery area around the city of Venice, is the first book by the Scottish historian Horatio Brown.
Human-powered watercraft are watercraft propelled only by human power, instead of being propelled by wind power or an engine.
The gandelow is a traditional wooden fishing boat used on the River Shannon on the west coast of Ireland. The boat has been in use by fishing communities since at least the 17th century, mostly for catching salmon and cutting reeds. The gandelow is a flat-bottomed boat about 7 metres long constructed by local craftsmen following traditional designs. It has recently experienced a revival and is now in use for sport, exercise and recreational fishing.
Kaep is a traditional type of double-ended Proa sailboat native to Palau. Some of the essential design elements have also been adopted as a modern smaller multihull prototype variant.