The history of Venice has been told in many ways and by many writers. Poets, novelists, and dramatists have in turn portrayed the romantic charm and tragic fate of the amphibious city. But by some inexplicable oversight her Navy — the expression par excellence of her peculiar character, the instrument by which she both built up her actual fabric and shaped her destiny — has been ignored, or has been treated only in conjunction with those of other Italian seaports. Its individuality and its import ance have thus been obscured. The object of the present work is to endeavour to make good, as far as may be, this deficiency; and to give its due prominence to a subject which should appeal, not only to specialists and experts in naval matters, but to all who feel the fascination of the sea, or who are attracted by the marvellous tale of the rise and fall of Venice. I do not, alas! Belong to the ranks of the experts and specialists: I have not even attempted to adopt their language when I describe the vessels most in use in the Venetian Navy and the exploits in which they gained renown. I have rather striven, as far as in me lies, to set before the general reader the important part that Navy played, for more than a thousand years, in developing the individuality of the Republic, and I have also striven to prove how fatally the wealth and luxury in Venice under mined the simplicity and vigour of her citizens, and how their indifference and apathy as to the maintenance of the Navy was the cause of the downfall of the city. That no work dealing exclusively with the subject has yet been written is a strange and curious fact — that it should be handled for the first time by a woman and a foreigner is stranger still.