Pietro Querini’s fateful journey
In April 1431 the Venetian merchant Pietro Querini sailed from Crete with a large crew and a cargo of wine, spices, cypress wood and cloth, bound for Flanders in today’s Belgium. Fate unfortunately had other plans, and the journey ended with Querini and his crew becoming shipwrecked off northern Norway.
Who was Pietro Querini?
Pietro Querini lived in 15th-century Venice – a city governed by a nobility that also pursued international trade. As a member of the influential Querini family, he was both a nobleman and a merchant. He lived as a man of his position typically did: he was educated, travelled and did business. But what was intended as a voyage of trade turned into something completely different. This is how Pietro Querini himself described the way the disaster began to unfold:
”On 10 November the pintles and gudgeons were broken off the rudder (which of course are the bridle and reins of the ship). It felt as if I was standing by the gallows with the noose around ...death was that close. But I pulled myself together as best I could and began, in speech and gesture, to comfort the terrified sailors, as a captain should”.
On the high seas
They were now far from land, about 700 nautical miles off the coast of Ireland, with nothing but rough seas around them. Pietro began rationing food. All the crew members, including Pietro, received equal amounts. Some of the sailors, convinced they were soon going to die, began to get themselves drunk on the precious Malvasia wine that was the ship’s cargo.
Pietro and his ship’s officers realised that they would die of hunger and thirst if they remained on the vessel, which now lacked both rudder and mast. But they worried about how the sailors would react to the order to enter the lifeboats in the rough seas, drunk as they were. Tearfully they offered their prayers to the Virgin Mary. On 17 December the crew entered the lifeboats without protesting: twenty-one in the smaller lifeboat and forty-seven in the bigger one. Two boats without masts on the vast and merciless sea.
Each lifeboat had salvaged a cask of wine, ship’s biscuits, ham, pressed ginger and lemon juice. When the lifeboats almost capsized in the high seas, they threw overboard most of their cargo – wine, food, clothes and tools. Pietro described it with the following words:
”… in order to prolong our lives we must also rid ourselves of that which we would live off”.
On 29 December the wine ran out, and some crew members now drank seawater to quench their thirst. Others drank their own urine. As all those who had drunk seawater died the same night, a conviction took hold that drinking urine was the better option given a choice between that and seawater.
On 4 January Pietro’s boat ran aground on a barren island. Those strong enough dragged themselves ashore and licked the snow to quench their thirst. Contact had long since been lost with the smaller boat. They would never know what happened to their twenty-one fellow crew members.
Scorching thirst and gnawing hunger
A new existence now began on the bare and desolate island in northern Norway. Of forty-seven men, sixteen were still alive. When they checked their food supplies they realised they only had a sack of biscuit crumbs mixed with rat droppings, one ham, and a small piece of cheese. They built two tents out of the oars, a sail and two coats, and broke up the stranded lifeboat for firewood. After a few days only the small mussels that grew on the rocks remained for them to eat. The men suffered badly with cold and hunger, and from the lice that crawled across their thinning bodies.
A ray of hope?
One day Pietro’s servant found a hut on the other side of the island when he went to collect mussels. Those strong enough made their way there. Now they had a proper shelter against the elements.
A few days later something happened that Pietro described as a miracle. The son of a fisherman who lived eighty kilometres nearer the coast had a vision in which he saw Pietro and his men. He sailed to the island with his father, and they saw the smoke from the hut.
A wanderer in the world
Members of the fishing community who heard about the men on the island made their way there with lots of food, and brought the men back in their boats. The priest of the local church could speak Latin to Pietro, who told him what had happened.
Pietro’s men were cared for by the women of the fishing village for four months, until they had regained their strength. Then the long journey home began. First they made their way across the border to Sweden and Stegeborg Castle, where their countryman Zuan was lord. They moved on foot as they had no money to buy horses with. Pietro described the humility he felt over his unusual situation:
” To be a wanderer in the world is to become humble of body and soul”.
The compatriot Zuan at Stegeborg gave the Italians horses and travelled with them to Vadstena where they, alongside a large number of international guests, sought the absolution of their sins at St. Bridget’s Convent Church.
In Vadstena they heard that a ship in the port of Lödöse was set to sail to London a few weeks later. They therefore set off towards Lödöse with Zuan’s son, Maffio, as their guide. When they arrived in Lödöse they spent a few pleasant days in Zuan’s fine house. A few weeks later the men split up between two ships, one that was heading to London and the other to Rostock. Perhaps their decision to split up was partly out of fear – they very much wanted someone from their group to reach home in order to tell their countrymen what had happened.
Over the centuries, countless ships carrying countless seafarers have foundered. What makes Pietro special is that he and his men wrote down their story with great feeling.
And it undoubtedly feels special to know that Pietro Querini, a Venetian merchant and nobleman, once walked the streets of Lödöse happy in the knowledge that he would soon be able to return home.
Via Querinissima – from myth to history
Lödöse Museum has been granted the great distinction of becoming an Honorary Member of Via Querinissima. Read more about Via Querenissima here
Read here about Region Västra Götaland’s involvement with Via Querinissima and European Cultural Routes
