Capitolo 2 Brief history of the ferry in Venice

2 - From the sixteenth century to nowday
pag.  1 2 

For freedom one meant the right , acquired or inherited, to occupy a place on the ferry and make so the job of boatman.	The freedom of ferry could be allowed only to whom was 30 years old and had worked, for at least 4 years, as boatman "de casada" (or at a private man). The new boatmen had to pay a duty of "ben entrada" to the respective fraglia and take an oath of obedience to the chamberlain. Starting from the year 1531 it was prohibited to give freedom to women. The state legislated as to engagements, selling and number of "freedom" allowed in every ferry. (Every ferry, in proportion to the number of its freedom, had to give a number of oar men for the " public galee", and so had to do other guilds.
	The boatmen could not bring during the service any kind of weapon, nor could they play cards and above all they could not exercise the job beyond the belonging ferry. The fee of the passage from a shore to another was originally negotiated freely between transporter and transported: then it was fixed by the statutes of the various fraglie. The Venetian government intervened officially in fixing the fees only in 1578; such interference shows us the importance of the function of the ferries in the city life, even in a period when the bridges were already numerous. After such a date, the city magistratures enacted frequently dispositions to make homogeneous both the fees and the services offered by the various ferries.It was fixed also the maximum number of passengers allowed for every boat and issued the obligation of the night service.
	Most of the city ferries were on the Great Canal, in other words on the canal that offered a greater distance between the opposed shores. The Great Canal was, in that epoch, also the commercial harbour of Venice and on the shores were dislocated the stores of the most important goods. Still nowadays some of its shores keep the names of "riva del vin", "riva del carbon" and "riva dell'ogio" ("ogio"=oil). At Rialto was situated even the landing place of the main ferries "de fora" ( those ferries that ensured the transport of the goods with the cities of the mainland, through the thick inside river net). It is evaluated about a thousands the number of boats used for the ferries (both those of the city and the extraurban ones). The ferries had in fact from a minimum of 20 freedom ( S. Lucia ferry) to a maximum of 40( S. Barnaba and S. Stae). They were used boats with a plane bottom of many kinds according to the trip and the kind of the materials to transport: the crafts destined to the city ferries did not have to differ much from "gondoloni da parada" used nowadays for the crossing of the Great Canal. With the progressive building of the bridges in stone they were created alternating pedestrian trips that made diminish the importance of the city ferries on the inside canals (they were 15) till they decree the disappearance of them.
The "Burchiello" was ship for the travel until Padue, along the Brenta river.	The political and economic crisis after the fall of the Republic of Venice brought to a reduction of the employed in the urban oar transport and further contractions took place after the nineteenth-century interments of many inside canals . The realization of the translagoon railway bridge and the adoption of the motor caused the end of the ferries "de fora". The building of the bridges of Scalzi and of that of Accademia and the moving of the city productive poles led to the closing of the ferries of S. Geremia, of Carit� and S. Vio. Today they survive, thanks to the "Institution for the protection of the gondola and the defence of the gondolier", 8 ferries that make a very useful link of the shores of the Great Canal. They deserve a mention: S. Lucia, S. Marcuola, S. Sofia, S. Silvestro, S. Tom�, S.Samuele, S. Maria del Giglio and Dogana.