The Mercurio

The Italian brig Mercurio was escorting the French 80-gun vessel Rivoli from Venice on its very first expedition, in 1812, when it was sunk by an English ship during the Battle of Grado. Since the wreck was identified, the Mercurio has been the site of several underwater excavations, beginning in 2001 and continuing from 2004 to 2011 by a team from the Università Ca’ Foscari of Venice, together with the local Soprintendenza. Their work revealed a number of extraordinary finds and provided a unique insight into life - and death - on a brig during the period of the Napoleonic wars.

This volume offers a discussion and catalogue of the finds yielded by the Mercurio, including photogrammetry-plans of the bow and stern, together with an analysis of ship-building technique, detail of the equipment and arms used, and, uniquely, close detail of finds connected to the crew themselves. This is one of the few sites from the Mediterranean where human remains have been preserved, and through the work of anthropologists, it has even been possible to try and identify one of the men named on the crew list. Discovery of buttons, footwear, precious items, and even foodstuffs also serve to shed light on the daily life of the crew. This volume thus draws together a wealth of archaeological and historical information to tell the hitherto untold story of the Mercurio.