Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/m3v76t608y
Vincent and John Milić from Perast – Commanders of Venetian War Ships in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century
Lovorka Čoralić
orcid.org/0000-0002-9333-7221
; Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Archival series of the Provveditori all'Armar relating to the Venetian Navy and kept in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia contains valuable materials on naval history of both neighbouring shores of Adriatic. Data from that series, in the first place lists of crew complements on Venetian warships, are direct testimony of the importance of the Croatian component in the history of Venetian Navy. In the centre of this research are two captains from the little town of Perast, Vincent and John Milić, captains of the fregates Ercole and Fama in the last decades of the eighteenth century. On the captains from the Milić family and course of their military career there is no detailed knowledge at our disposal, and therefore materials from the series Provveditori all'Armar is the most important source studied in the article. Crew complements of the aforementioned fregates in time when they were under the command of Vincent and John Milić are analysed in details. The crew was divided on several basic groups: 1) commissioned and non-commissioned officers and holders of specialised services on ships; 2) first class sailors; 3) second class sailors; 4) third class sailors and 5) seamen apprentices. Important role in all these groups had – with dominant proportion of Italians – seamen and auxiliary crewmen originating from the wider area of East Adriatic (particularly from Boka Kotorska) and therefore particular attention is awarded to this Croatian component within the Venetian Navy. At the end of the article, in appendices are given transcripts of crew complements, particularly those referring to the proportion of seamen originating from the East Adriatic area.
Keywords
Perast; the Republic of Venice; Vincent Milić; John Milić; Venetian Navy; military history; naval history; the eighteenth-century history
Hrčak ID:
220282
URI
Publication date:
27.12.2018.
Visits: 1.100 *