its 42 oars each in length; another 40 sailors were required to man it. Only the most handsome and sturdy youths of the Arsenale were selected for the ship's crew. The new bucentaur made its début on Ascension Day 1729 in the reign of Doge Alvise III Sebastiano Mocenigo. The event was officially recorded, and the splendour of the vessel praised with sonnets and publications such as that by Antonio Maria Lucchini entitled La Nuova regia su l'acque nel Bucintoro nuovamente eretto all'annua solenne funzione del giorno dell'Ascensione di Nostro Signore (The New Palace upon the Waters of the Newly Built Bucentaur at the Annual Solemn Function of the Day of the Ascension of Our Lord, 1751). The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in his work Italienischen Reise (Italian Journey, 1816–1817) which was an account of his travels in Italy between 1786 and 1787, described the bucentaur on 5 October 1786 in these terms: In 1798, Napoleon ordered this bucentaur to be destroyed, less for the sake of its golden decorations than as a political gesture to symbolize his victory in conquering the city. French soldiers broke up the carved wooden portions and the gold decorations of the ship into small pieces, carted them to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore and set fire to them to recover the gold. The ship burned for three days, and French soldiers used 400 mules to carry away its gold. The decorative elements of the vessel that survived the flames are preserved in the Museo Civico Correr in Venice, and there is a detailed scale model of the vessel in the Arsenale. The hull survived and, renamed the Prama Hydra and armed with four cannons, was stationed at the mouth of the Lido's port where it served as a coastal battery. Subsequently, the ship was returned to the Arsenale and used as a prison ship until it was entirely destroyed in 1824. Admiral Amilcare Paulucci had the engineer Giovanni Casoni make a 1:10 scale model of the 1727 Bucentaur before it was destroyed. The model is currently kept at the Naval History Museum in Venice. Marriage of the Sea ceremony The "Marriage of the Adriatic", or more correctly "Marriage of the Sea" (in Italian, Sposalizio del Mare), was a ceremony symbolizing the maritime dominion of Venice. The ceremony, established about 1000 to commemorate the Doge Pietro II Orseolo's conquest of Dalmatia, was