San Nicoletto Shipwreck

In late spring of 2021 a new historic wreck was discovered just off the coast of Venice Lido. The remains of a new shipwreck, close to the site of the sunken brig Hellmuth, had never been documented. From 2022 to 2023, two campaigns of investigations and underwater archaeological excavations led by the University of Udine and carried out with the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Municipality of Venice. The San Nicoletto shipwreck lies in shallow water, only 4.5 and 6 m deep. Here, the sea bottom level sometimes changes, and storms and waves can dig out the site or cover it. However, thanks to an uninterrupted period of good weather, in 2022 it was possible to excavate for ten consecutive days and eventually uncover over 19 m of hull. It was also feasible to take direct measurements of some construction details and several pictures for 3D photogrammetric recording. This work was performed using Agisoft Photoscan Professional.

The new survey took place in September 2023 and lasted only five working days. The objective was to find the limits of the hull. Unfortunately, the trench made transversely to the axis of the ship at the height of the central floor beam gave a negative result, since the frame of the ship was not preserved beyond the stone elements that constituted the cargo of the vessel. The continuation of the trench along the axis of the keel allowed archaeologists to find the eastern limit of the hull. At about 2.6 m from the end of the 2022 trench, the keel is first interrupted; after another 2.5 m, a pair of planks from the starboard side that probably went to graft onto the sternpost are also visible.

The wreck is what remains of a freighter sailing ship of the end of the 19th century, based on artifacts recovered and Venetian-made glass products and ceramics; the main cargo, however, was made up of stone blocks.