the enemy, and fitted out a powerful fleet which they placed under the
command of LAMBA DORIA, a younger brother of Uberto of that illustrious
house, under whom he had served fourteen years before in the great rout
of the Pisans at Meloria.
The rendezvous of the fleet was in the Gulf of Spezia, as we learn
from the same pithy Genoese poet who celebrated Ayas. This time the
Genoese were bent on bearding St. Mark’s Lion in his own den; and after
touching at Messina they steered straight for the Adriatic:—
“Now, as astern Otranto bears,
Pull with a will! and, please the Lord,
Let them who bragged, with fire and sword,
To waste our homesteads, look to theirs!”[13]
On their entering the gulf a great storm dispersed the fleet. The
admiral with twenty of his galleys got into port at Antivari on the
Albanian coast, and next day was rejoined by fifty-eight more, with
which he scoured the Dalmatian shore, plundering all Venetian property.
Some sixteen of his galleys were still missing when he reached the
island of Curzola, or Scurzola as the more popular name seems to have
been, the Black Corcyra of the Ancients—the chief town of which, a rich
and flourishing place, the Genoese took and burned.[14] Thus they were
engaged when word came that the Venetian fleet was in sight.
Venice, on first hearing of the Genoese armament, sent Andrea Dandolo
with a large force to join and supersede Maffeo Quirini, who was
already cruising with a squadron in the Ionian sea; and, on receiving
further information of the strength of the hostile expedition, the
Signory hastily equipped thirty-two more galleys in Chioggia and the
ports of Dalmatia, and despatched them to join Dandolo, making the
whole number under his command up to something like ninety-five.
Recent drafts had apparently told heavily upon the Venetian sources of
enlistment, and it is stated that many of the complements were made up
of rustics swept in haste from the Euganean hills. To this the Genoese
poet seems to allude, alleging that the Venetians, in spite of their
haughty language, had to go begging for men and money up and down
Lombardy. “Did _we_ do like that, think you?” he adds:—
“Beat up for aliens? _We_ indeed?
When lacked we homeborn Genoese?
Search all the seas, no salts like these,
For Courage, Seacraft, Wit at need.”[15]
Of one of the Venetian galleys, probably in the fleet which sailed
under Dandolo’s immediate command, went Marco Polo as _Sopracomito_ or
Gentleman-Commander.[16]
[Sidenote: The Fleets come in sight of each other at Curzola.]