Venice in 1720

Venice today is very waterlogged. The waters of Venice’s many famed canals come right up to every house’s doorstep. You get around my walking and driving cars (a little in that case. Not efficient transportation). But you also get around by boat. Boats are like the cars of Venice. At least, they’re used in a similar way. Everything (in transportation terms) was a little different, but not super duper extremely different in 1720. There were no cars, but there were boats.

Boats in those times weren’t the super streamlined speeding piece of metal with all sorts of gadgets and technology you see in speedboats today. They also weren’t the enormous, colossal Titanic ocean steamer ships that are so gigantic that you could fit resort and a hotel on one you see today either. They were manually powered. This means they didn’t have petrol, combustion engines, or any of that fancy pants power stuff that we have today. The boats were rowed along by terrible singers and boatmen (they are only terrible singers, not terrible boatmen) called gondoliers, if the boat was too big for one or two people to power it. They were sort of like chauffeurs for boats.

Venice in those days was slightly less waterlogged, and here’s why: Venice started off as a few communities built on an island. They were built together for protection in numbers, like herds of zebra you see in Kenya today. They keep together as protection against lions, leopards, hyenas, cheetahs, African wild hunting dogs, and other ghastly savannah predators. The island communities did this to protect themselves against peoples such as the Huns and Lombards as the Byzantine Empire that the emperor Justinian the Just had greatly expanded fell, as its power dwindled in northern Italy. Other steppe people began to rise in a race for dominance as to who would next be king of he hill with an empire mightier than any others near. So each set about expanding their territory. The island communities did not want to fall victim to any conquerors, so the island communities united, and had their first Doge of Venice, Ursus. The city was thus formed, albeit not a very big city. But Venice soon faced a sticky situation; their island was beginning to sink into the depths of the sea!!! Venice became more and more waterlogged and several buildings were flooded and did not survive to the present day. But Venice is still good and alive now in the present…for now, that is.

Venice had faced some trouble a few years earlier, when the Turks made war on them in December 1714. And this would cost them dearly later on, as that big war had been a big factor in their decline.

Venice’s canal waters then, unfortunately, stank a whole lot. The tide reached up some canals and swept them clean, but other canals were smelly due to the tide’s neglect of them, and have at least some of Venice’s horribly rancid sewage. Dirty water was simply dumped out the window by some people, so you can imagine several sticky situations that arose from that irresponsible practice, such as: a big expensive boat with it’s powerful owner on board, is being rowed along. Dirty water is dumped out of a window on top, and the gondoliers are suddenly soaked in liquid filth from above. They lose their concentration and crash the boat, or capsize it. The owner gets all angry with

the dirty water thrower, and everything gets unpleasant. Nobody benefits and everybody suffers. Or the owner could get soaked, and their expensive clothes are ruined. The owner gets angry and everybody suffers.

Oh well, that’s what you get for developing dirty habits like that. But then again, how would anybody dispose of his or her dirty water?

Not my problem.