Two Men on a Fish

Venice is a marvelous city. Its canals are lined with exciting things to see and do. Like any city it has its "must see" attractions.  The Grand Canal, the Guggenheim Museum and Saint Mark's Cathedral are but a few. However, I find some of the lesser known places of interest very attractive. One such place is the Museo Storico Navale, the Italian Naval History Museum. It's easy to find, right off the lagoon beside the canal leading to the Venetian Arsenal  at Riva San Biagio 2148.  The building was a granary in the 15th century. The origin of the museum goes back to 1815 when the Austrians controlled the city.  They established the museum to house the tremendous collection of ship models produced by the Venetian Arsenal but officially established by the Italians in 1919. The collection was housed in its current location in 1958.  In its forty-two rooms the seafaring history of Venice comes alive.

Inside the building after paying our admission fee and receiving a brochure which had the layout of the museum we climbed the stairs and began our discovery of Italian naval history. Some of the first displays we saw were  that of a model ship collection which must have numbered well over one hundred. There were ships of all types, but predominantly those of the glory days of the Venetian navy when it ruled the waves.  The size of these models are from six inches to ten feet.  One of the most impressive needed 130 men to man the oars.  There are actual barges in excess of fifty feet long. The wealthy traveled by barge and those of lesser incomes traveled by watercraft as well.    Wheeled vehicles aren't allowed in Venice. These barges  used in the canals were extremely ornate. The decorative wood carvings were brightly painted or covered with gold-leaf. Gold leafing is the process of adhering extremely thin sheets of gold to a  surface such as wood.  These barges were floating works of art. One of the rooms in the museum is dedicated to the most famous of Venetian watercraft, the gondola.  With a gondola out of the water it is easy to notice the curved keel which allows the gondolier to propel the boat forward in a straight line with an oar on only one side. There were rooms with old cannon as well as modern machine guns. The bottom most floor had more modern naval displays. There were actual boats  used in the second world war for launching torpedoes and the control panel from a submarine.

As we wandered through these  modern machines of warfare, I suddenly grabbed Claudettes arm and shouted, "Hey, there's one!"

In one of the rooms was a large canister open on one end with a miniature submarine emerging from it. It can be debated whether it was a submarine or a manned torpedo. Italian scuba divers rode this underwater machine to an enemy ship and attached a warhead to the ship before escaping and detonating the warhead electrically. Although other Axis powers, mainly Japan, developed miniature submarines the Italians were the most successful in using them. Or at least according to the information posted at the display. Miniature submarines are almost a thing of fiction. But there right in front  of me was one. Claudette was not as excited as I was. After all it was a museum of naval history. I made a number of photographs of the little sub. Using my drawing application on my smartphone I drew two figures on the photo of the midget submarine. As we continued our discovery of the  Museo Storico Navale, we saw another miniature submarine.

As far as I'm concerned the Museo Storico Navale is a "must see" in Venice.

The operation of the miniature submarine.