given, only fourteen Genoese ships under two of the admirals, Pietro Avvocato and Lanfranco Spinola, advanced, while the rest stood back and then suddenly fled. The Venetian chronicler Martino da Canal, however, records that the Venetian ships attacked first, while the Genoese were deployed in four ranks of ten ships each. According to Canal, the Venetians boarded two of the Genoese flagships and, once they captured them and cut down their flags, the other two admirals turned and fled. The battle ended in a clear Venetian victory: the Genoese fleet lost many men, including Avvocato, and the Venetians captured four Genoese ships, including the flagships of the two admirals. Canal put Genoese casualties—"exaggeratedly perhaps", according to the historian Deno Geanakoplos—at 1,000 men (600 killed or wounded and 400 captured), as compared to 20 killed and 400 wounded on the Venetian side. According to the Annales Ianuenses, the hesitation of the Genoese fleet to engage may have been due to the fact that the Venetians claimed immunity as crusaders. On the other hand, the Genoese navy generally failed to effectively confront its Venetian counterpart throughout the war; often, according to naval historian John Dotson, "because of divided or ineffective command", which was also in evidence at Settepozzi. The historians Frederic Lane and Deno Geanakoplos explain the Genoese commanders' reluctance to risk their ships by pointing out that these were owned by private contractors, usually the rich noble merchants who ran the city, and thus constituted valuable assets for which the admirals were answerable. Questions of chronology and details The 14th-century Venetian historian Andrea Dandolo placed the battle at the end of the tenth year of Doge Reniero Zeno's reign, i.e., either in late 1262 or January 1263, whereas the Annales Ianuenses simply record it under the year 1263. Modern historians generally place the battle in the spring of 1263: the medievalist Georg Caro placed it in March at the latest, whereas the naval historian Camillo Manfroni suggested May as the most likely time. Geanakoplos, largely following Manfroni, placed the battle in the period May–July 1263. The Annales Ianuenses mention the battle directly after the sailing, on 28 May 1263, of a fleet of 25 galleys and six other ships to reinforce their fleet operating in the Aegean, under the admirals Pietrino Grimaldi and Pesceto Mallone, implying that they were involved in the battle. However, the Byzantinist Albert Failler considers that this