CIUDADANO 🏛 ANDONI

Venice pioneered serial production of war galleys in Late Middle Ages, building them to standard dimensions in the Arsenal and finishing them from stored parts. This was the closest thing to mass production of warships before the industrial age! This image shows different stages of ship production in Venetian Arsenal. It's from 1797 but the layout was inherited from the medieval Arsenal, which had built galleys this way since the 14th century. From the Arsenale Nuovo of 1320, hulls were built frame-first in repeated covered sheds, kept at different stages of completion, and then moved past magazines of standard masts, oars, rope, sails, anchors, and weapons. The Arsenal kept standardized hulls, masts, oars, and rigging in store so a hull could be launched and fitted for sea in days rather than months. Venetians used frame-first instead of shell-first method of building. Frame-first construction used less timber, needed less skilled fitting of every plank, and let workers specialize. Specialized squads did the framing planking, caulking, and fitting-out, so a galley could be armed from stored parts rather than built as a one-off. At the peak of its efficiency in the early 16th century, the Arsenal employed some 16,000 people who apparently were able to produce nearly one ship each day, and could fit out, arm, and provision a newly built galley with standardized parts on a production-line basis not seen again until the Industrial Revolution! This efficient system of galley production of Venetian Arsenal enabled Venice to equip a large fleet for the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 in time. There is even an interesting anecdote about the speed at which galleys could be produced in Venice when needed. It is said that when in 1574, King Henry III of France sat down to a banquet in Venice, and a new war galley was fitted out and launched by the time got up from the table.