The voyage of the San Domenico

A shipment of grain loaded in Campomarino and intended for Reggio Calabria and Tropea. The vessel cleared Venice in the first days of April 1719 with a light north wind that propelled it south toward the Adriatic shore of the Kingdom of Naples, where it reached Campomarino on 11 April. The crew loaded 2300 mine of grain for the merchant Giuseppe di Lieto while the patron Andrea Frugone, and three sailors invested small sums borrowed on bottomry for venture goods stowed beside the bulk cargo. A fresh east wind on 26 April let the vessel slip the mole and lay a course round the cape of Santa Maria di Leuca toward the Calabrian coast, but by 11 May the wind had backed to a hard south-east gale that blew straight into the Gulf of Taranto, creating stormy seas and forcing the crew to seek shelter under Torre Vecchia at Punta Alice. In the afternoon of 12 May. while still anchored at Punta Alice, the ship encountered a large vessel with false Neapolitan colours, which attacked the merchant vessel with gunfire and cannon shots. The crew, fearing capture and enslavement, leapt barefoot into their lifeboat and headed for the beach while under gunfire (miraculously no one was hit). The corsairs boarded the abandoned vessel, cut the anchor-cables, and sailed away, taking the entire grain cargo, and roughly 3100 Genoese lire of private merchandise. The crew then proceeded on land southward to Crotone, where, lacking a bill of health, they faced twenty-three days of quarantine, before testifying before the Genoese consul on 6 June 1719.