If you drive along the busy road along the western shore of Lake Garda today, you can already sense the historical significance of the area. Imposing palazzi and mighty fortifications bear witness to an eventful past.
If you leaf through the history books, you will quickly find what you are looking for. For example, there is talk of the Venetian War, which partly took place as a naval battle on Lacus Benaco, as Lake Garda was still called at the time. In the autumn of 1439, the Venetians are said to have brought war barques, galleons and galleys across the River Adige to Lake Garda using powerful draught oxen. Of course, the crews of the warships and a gigantic troop of shipyard workers and shipbuilders for the necessary repairs and maintenance work were also on board.
Old writings from this period mention a "calafato" from the northern Italian town of Feltre. Calafato is the Italian name for a ship's scalper. A man who applies tar to the planks and the flooring on deck to make the ship "watertight". This calfater from Feltre is considered the progenitor of the Feltrinelli family, one of the oldest families in Italy.
The name derives from the Italian characteristic of linguistically diminishing or trivialising descendants and descendants. The children of Calafato from Feltre thus became the Feltrinelli. This family name is well known in Italy, and in the address books you can find paper magnates, timber merchants and large booksellers among them.
One branch of the family has remained faithful to the profession of the ancestor and is still involved in boatbuilding. The Cantiere Nautico Feltrinelli shipyard and boat service is located in Gargnano, on the western shore of Lake Garda. In Italy and far beyond the country's borders, Nautica Feltrinelli is considered one of the motorboat "hotspots" par excellence.
Here you will find everything a skipper, boat and motor could wish for. The founder of this traditional company is Bernardino Feltrinelli, known as "Grandpa Bindi". He lived in the second half of the 19th century and was a kind of itinerant worker who specialised in boat building and repairs. Together with his son Egidio, he travelled from fishing village to fishing village, repairing boats on a piecework basis.
Great-great-grandfather Feltrinelli is also said to have been a fan of good wine, and stories are still told about it today. A fisherman is said to have once asked how long it would take to repair the boat, because with Bindi's wine consumption, the nets and fishing equipment would soon have to be sold and then the boat would no longer be needed.
His son Egidio, on the other hand, was less thirsty. He was drawn to the USA before the First World War, where he worked at several shipyards in Florida. In 1919, he returned to Lake Garda as a "made man". In Gargnano, he finds an old "Limonaia", a lemon grove, which is converted into a shipyard. In his luggage, Egidio has the first designs for racing boats with a so-called stepped hull (Redan), which are characterised by their particularly sharp V-shape.
Equipped with this, some of the world's first three-point boats can be built in Gargnano, reaching speeds of over 120 kilometres per hour. With this development potential behind him, Egidio starts his first attempts in the racing boat sector. As it turns out, with success, because other "boat maniacs" now also come to Feltrinelli on Lake Garda.
Among them was the Italian poet and war hero Gabriele d' Annunzio. He has his legendary boat MAS 96, which was used for anti-submarine defence during the war, restored in Gargnano and commissions a number of other projects.
Thanks to its connections in the USA, Feltrinelli quickly became the most important importer of Johnson outboard motors in Europe and was also able to win a tender for a special Johnson motorboat, which was later produced in series. One of these Johnson boats is still in Gargnano today. Although the old walls of the former Limonaia have disappeared, if you take a closer look, you can still recognise many details from Egidio's time.
You can find the entire report on the Feltrinelli family in the current August issue of BOOTE, which is available from Wednesday 27 July.
