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A dynasty of shipwrights that has been building boats in the Venetian Lagoon for eighteen generations. In 1996, *Barche a Motore* told the story of the Camuffo shipyards (which no longer exist)—from their Arab founder, El-Hàm-Mufti, a ship measurer for the Venetian Republic in Crete, to the modern yachts, true “Stradivari of the sea.”
Half a millennium of history is an era—a chapter in our civilization. Over such a vast span of time, momentous upheavals occur; entire peoples and nations have been transformed, experiencing both glory and misery. But history also holds less sensational—yet still extraordinary—events in store for us. Among these, we cannot fail to note the exceptional story of one family, the Camuffos, shipwrights for five hundred and fifty-eight years. That’s right. For eighteen generations, the Camuffos have been building boats, and through their work they have helped write significant chapters in the history of Venice—and thus of humanity. The story begins in 1438, when the Most Serene Republic of St. Mark was at the height of its political and economic power, thanks to its thriving maritime trade. The sea and ships were the means to achieve prosperity; organization and efficiency were the secret to maintaining it. Venice had established a vast network of agents and commercial correspondents along all the routes of the Mediterranean.
The island of Crete—or, as it was called at the time, Candia—which the Venetians had elevated to the status of a duchy, served as the hub for trade with the East and the Black Sea. In Candia, it often happened that a ship, after undergoing repairs or restoration, had to be remeasured. The capacity of the hold affected customs duties, and the Most Serene Republic was very strict about compliance with tax laws and demanded meticulous inspections. In 1438, the tonnage surveyor appointed as “magister stadii” by the Venetian Republic in Candia was an Arab—likely a local shipbuilder, given his experience—named El-Hâm-Mufti, whom the Venetians called Camufft. His son strengthened his business ties with Venice to such an extent that he converted to Christianity. A document from 1451 attests to the presence in Candia of this Petrus cristianus (quondam) Camuffi, that is, the son of the late Camuffi.
Two years later (1453), Constantinople fell to the Turks under Mehmed II, and many Venetian outposts were no longer safe. This was especially true in Candia, where Arab collaborators must have felt even less secure—let alone those, like the Camuffos, who had renounced their religion. Many of them took refuge in the Venetian Lagoon, especially in Chioggia, and among them was Nicolò Camuffo, who was well received because of his profession as a calafado, or caulker. The year was 1470. In 1530, we find an Antonio, son of Gerolamo, listed as a shipowner (navicularius cum navalio) and owner of a shipyard. During this period in Chioggia, there was even a neighborhood named after the Camuffo family (contrà Camufo), attesting to their popularity, but also to the esteem and importance they had attained in local life.
The family prospers and grows, managing to preserve its inherited wealth by passing it on—as in the Salic Law—only to the eldest male descendant, who, for his part, commits to continuing the trade of master carpenter. The younger sons can choose between remaining as workers on the shipyard or leaving to try their luck on their own. The family provides all of them with financial and moral support—nothing more. This was likely the secret behind the exceptional longevity of this extraordinary family’s fortune, which outlasted the very history of the Venetian Republic and the political upheavals that followed. New governments and new rulers succeeded one another: Napoleon, the emperors of Austria, and the kings of Italy.
The Camuffos have outlasted everyone and everything. How? By remaining loyal to a single master: their work. For the Camuffos, building boats is a calling, a mission. It always has been, and it still is on the cusp of the so-called Second Republic. You can sense this clearly when speaking with Marco, the last master shipwright of the Camuffo dynasty. The main branch in Chioggia died out about twenty years ago; today, only the Portogruaro branch remains. It began in the mid-19th century on the initiative of Luigi, Fortunato’s third son. Luigi, a young man brimming with talent and entrepreneurial spirit, wanted to break away from his older brother Giuseppe and follow the calling that drove him to start his own business.
With his family’s help, he first opened a shipyard in Caorle, then settled permanently in Portogruaro, where he began building workboats for fishing and local transportation, both at sea and on inland waters. Luigi had five children, three of whom were sons. Continuing a tradition that has helped preserve the family’s economic and professional heritage for nearly six centuries, Luigi’s legacy and business passed to his eldest son, Marco. From Marco to Luigi Jr., and from him to Marco Jr., the current owner of the Camuffo shipyard in Portogruaro. It is worth noting the curious detail that all the eldest sons are left-handed, while their younger brothers are right-handed. A genetic hallmark.
The bond with the family, its traditions, and its history is, after all, something indelible that shines through in every conversation with Marco and Giacomo, the representatives of the latest generation of the Camuffo family. Marco is the heir to the shipyard and to all the secrets of the shipwright’s trade, which the Camuffo family’s firstborn sons have always practiced themselves; Giacomo, the second-born son, handles the administration and business side of the shipyard; he is also the guardian of the family’s memories—a great historical and cultural legacy that he manages with love. You can find Marco at the shipyard at any time of day, dressed in his work clothes—that is, a craftsman’s outfit. “I’ve never taken a single day off,” he confesses candidly. And if you look at him with legitimate bewilderment, he continues: “Not because I can’t afford to.”
“But because I find it pointless. My joy is all here, in my work. There’s always something new to learn. Do you want me to waste even a single day, perhaps missing out on a new discovery? That’s a risk I’m not willing to take.” Marco works tirelessly. Over the past twenty years, his magical left hand and the seasoned eye born of years of experience have brought more than a hundred boats into being—each one different from the next, each one better than the last. It’s no coincidence that a German newspaper dubbed him the “Stradivari of the Sea.” The 100th gem was completed in 1991 and was registered with the Italian Naval Register (RINa) with a “Diporto Y” class certificate.
It was the Maluan, an 18-meter motor yacht with a gross tonnage of 41 metric tons, which during sea trials—in wind force 4 and sea state 3 conditions—exceeded a maximum speed of 45 knots, while at a cruising speed of 26 knots, with the engine running at 1,700 rpm (two MAN D2840 LXE diesel engines), fuel consumption was 138 IT/h, providing a range of approximately 23 hours of navigation. These excellent figures alone would be enough to classify the boat as outstanding. What makes it a masterpiece—a “Stradivarius of the sea,” so to speak—is Marco Camuffo’s unsurpassed mastery in shaping hulls. Each one is different, yet all are equally perfect in their functional optimization of the boat’s power-to-weight ratio. Hull-building is an art that the Camuffo family has passed down for over five hundred years, but how did they respond to the cultural revolution that followed the advent of the engine? “Being tied to a tradition doesn’t mean being conservative. We’ve always reinvented ourselves, adopting all the latest woodworking technologies, from the earliest marine plywood to armored laminated wood.”
We built the first hull made of this material in 1973; it even had a flying bridge. The only constant in our construction has been the use of wood. My father used to say, “There is no better material than wood and its derivatives; now that we can keep it stable by using plywood, there’s no reason to change what has always been the material par excellence for building a boat.” “Note that my father,” Marco adds, “was at the forefront of construction techniques in his time. He was one of the first in Italy to study the planing hull. At six years old, he was already roaming the shipyard, held by the hand by his grandfather Luigi, the founder of the Portogruaro branch of the family.” It was his grandfather who introduced him to the craft of shipwright, following the ancient tradition of the Camuffo family of Chioggia. And at age 18, when his grandfather died in 1910, the young Luigi was already capable of building any type of boat in use in the Lagoon.”
Two years later, he was called up for military service and was fortunate enough to gain experience that would prove crucial for the very future of the Camuffo shipyard. The Italian Navy had become convinced of the value of adopting motorboats that, being very fast and adequately armed, could best perform the duties of the coast guard. Luigi had the opportunity to work at the shipyards of “SVAN,” the Società Veneziana Automobili Navali, founded in 1909, and he didn’t let it slip away. In 1914, SVAN was awarded the contract for the first two Armed Torpedo Motorboats, the famous MAS—an acronym that later came to stand for “Anti-Submarine Motorboats.” It was at SVAN that the first steps were also taken in the study and testing of planing hulls. Luigi absorbed these new experiences, and then, when the war ended and he returned to Portogruaro, he continued his experiments at the shipyard, learning through trial and error.
And although Camuffo’s production continued to focus on traditional workboats, in 1927 my father built one of the first RINa-approved motor cabin cruisers in the Veneto region. Immediately after the Second World War, our shipyard’s production underwent a major conversion. Maritime transport was in decline, so we turned our attention to pleasure boats. I began working right around this time. My first boats were small outboards and gasoline-powered inboards, all double-planked and made of solid mahogany.
Motorboats – How did you learn the trade? Did you attend the Naval Academy?
Marco Camuffo – As for attending the course, I did take it—in Venice. But I can’t say I learned anything. Well, maybe the names of the different types of boats. But when it came to the practical stuff—like how to sand a hull, for example—that’s where I was the one who could give lessons. I remember the day of the oral exams for the license, how embarrassed the instructor was who was supposed to quiz me. He was flipping through my written thesis and kept repeating, “Good, son, good… .” I’m sure he would have liked to ask me to explain certain points that must have been new to him—or at least unclear. But he didn’t have the courage. Some of his colleagues, who knew my father, chuckled amusedly.
BaM – Was your father your true mentor?
M.C. – No. My father wasn’t very patient. And above all, he didn’t like being asked silly questions. When that happened, he’d give you a dirty look and say, “Is it possible that I always have to deal with idiots…?”
BaM – So how and when did he learn?
M.C. — How do you know when? You’re born a Camuffo! It’s an atavistic instinct, a genetic legacy. As for how, I learned by observing the sea, the movement of the water. Water has a language; it speaks clearly, like a book. If you understand it, you learn. A Camuffo understands it.
BaM – It won’t just be a matter of experience. Won’t it also require at least a basic level of technical knowledge?
M.C. – The key is to understand the problem. Once you understand it, solving it isn’t difficult. Leonardo da Vinci taught that the foundation of scientific progress is experimentation, not theory. And speaking of water, he wrote: “When dealing with water, first comes experience, then the reasoning behind things.” And I’ve always followed that approach—conducting many tests, one step at a time. When I was just starting out, I even built a few flawed boats. But that allowed me to improve, to make fewer and fewer mistakes. Now I can say that my boats perform quite well—well or very well. None are bad. When I see a boat—someone else’s boat, I mean—I immediately understand its flaws. And you can’t learn that in any school. At school, they teach you the secrets of a boat in a tank. But the water in the tank isn’t the water of the sea, which is so changeable, always different. Your tank must be the eye that observes, that evaluates. The goal with a boat is to displace as little water as possible; the less water it displaces, the better the boat. To displace as little water as possible, the hull must lift the boat until it skims the surface. The water should just brush against it, not cut through it. It all depends on the hull. The real challenge is knowing how to build it.
BaM – So you still maintain that you never had any teachers?
M.C. – In our field, there are no mentors. You simply can’t find—I mean, there are no people willing to share their secrets as builders with you. Our knowledge is our entire legacy. No one would pass it on to others. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a different story. I was born a Camuffo. And I say this without any arrogance. You have to understand that our family’s case is unique in the world. There is no other dynasty in the working world that can document seventeen consecutive generations—more than half a millennium of activity. It’s a biological law, I believe, that knowledge—experience repeated ad infinitum—becomes part of one’s genetic heritage and is passed down to descendants. You ask me when I learned it, and I reply, “Before I was born.” I’m not joking. It’s the truth. That doesn’t mean, however, that I know all the secrets of the art of construction. Fortunately, not a day goes by that I don’t learn something. It’s essential. I go to bed at peace only when I can say, “I learned something today, too.” Did I tell you this because I never close my construction site? Because I might miss out on some important experience. And it’s a matter of vocation. “Some have more of it, and some have less,” my father always used to say. It’s not enough to be a Camuffo and have inherited our substantial legacy—I’m not referring to money, of course, but to knowledge. Luigi Camuffo, the founder of the Portogruaro branch, was the third son, and if he had stayed in Chioggia, he wouldn’t have been able to showcase his talent, because he would have worked in the shadow of his eldest brother, with no chance to stand out. I realize that nowadays such a tradition of inheritance may seem harsh and unfair. But what would have happened if the Camuffos had always divided their wealth among all their children? It would have been scattered, and perhaps there wouldn’t be a Camuffo shipyard anymore.
BaM – Yet you continue to exist and build boats that are admired around the world.
M.C. – In fact, the latest generation of motor yachts I’ve built, from the C50 (Editor’s note: C stands for Camuffo and 50 is the length in feet, Editor’s note) to the C60—all featuring a solid mahogany frame and marine-grade armored superlaminate plating, which is practically indestructible—is part of a production line I would describe as “excellent.”
BaM – In recent years, you’ve been showered with honors.
Giacomo Camuffo – That’s true. UCINA awarded my brother the prestigious title of “Pioneer of the Boating Industry” for his contribution to the growth of the recreational boating sector, and we both received the “Venezia per il mare” award from the City of Venice at its inaugural ceremony in 1991: a small but welcome acknowledgment of what we’ve accomplished over five centuries of activity. Marco and Giacomo are the last descendants of the Camuffo family. There will be no others. Neither of them has any descendants. With them, after 558 years, the Camuffo dynasty will come to an end. The name, however, will not. It will remain forever in History—History with a capital H—the history of work, dedication, and civilization.
by Riccardo Magrini
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