Rescue at Sea
 A Venetian gondolier named Dante.   A true event:

Five years ago, two of my customers had just finished a dinner at La Piscina on the Zattere. Upon leaving the dining platform perched 2 feet above the Giudecca Canal, and wishing to record the view for posterity, Carol dropped her Canon into the Giudecca Canal. They went home the next day and I received an email asking, by any chance, if the camera was recoverable. The problem was not the camera but the almost 200 pics of their Italian holiday that were probably lost.

The Giudecca Canal is the very wide canal in which cruise ships of 3,000 to 5,000 passengers (each) ply every day, and, thus, the water is deepand rough. But I remembered a gondolier named Dante who was occasionally asked to retrieve lost items sub-aqua. Once, he successfully retrieved a lost diamond ring that fell into the S. Trovaso Canal near the Schiavi Bar, an expat watering hole. I phoned Dante and he agreed to do a dive, now three days after the camera fell. The next day, Dante arrived in his power boat at lunch time.. La Piscina restaurant is on left in the picture.

Apprised of the situation, he was pessimistic, given the serious tides and also the infestation of a newly arrived seaweed called Japanese something. Like a trooper, Dante donned his wet suit, adjusted his face mask and took the plunge...note Japanese seaweed in the picture at left..

Now Dante does his thing. The water near the edge is only about two to two and one-half metres deep so no need for weights or a snorkel, just breath control. By the way, Dante smokes between two and three packs a day.

Dante repeatedly surfaced and dived, each time asking me if I am sure that the location is right...yes, yes, I say, it's down there. By this time we have attracted a crowd, including the four waiters from the Piscina restaurant, the bus boys, and some of the diners and passers by. And all had opinions and were skeptics..

An unwelcome visitor was a police boat. Swimming in a canal is prohibited in Venice. Also, no private boats are allowed to dock or tie-up anywhere on the Giudecca Canal. The 2 cops gave Dante a verbal warning. But Dante, a grizzled Venetian, gave them some considerable Venetian lip, and the cops decided to float away. Dante made about 20 surface dives and, when all seemed lost, like King Arthur when he pulled Excalibur from the stone, Dante triumphantly shot out of the water with the camera in hand. Rounds of applause. Deep joy. Dante, our hero.

The camera was completely waterlogged. Those silver-type cases may look watertight, but they are not. I drained the camera and removed the memory card. I then buried the camera at sea...again. At home I was able to upload all 197 pictures after a wipe clean with a cotton bud. Holiday rescued, camera ruined. I emailed the images to the customer. 

So who plays Dante in the film? Lloyd Bridges? Mark Spitz.

P.S., if you visit Venice, take the traghetto at S. Toma and, if lucky, the rowers will be Dante and his gondolier daughter, Georgia.