It is difficult to comprehend how the Genoese, without any tolerable dockyards, were able in so short a time to put to sea the memorable fleets which sailed for Palestine, and the two sent against Pisa in 1120 and 1126. The first Pisan expedition numbered eighty galleys, four large ships, thirty-five gatti, twenty-eight calabi and other small craft manned by twenty-two thousand combatants; and the second counted eighty triremes and forty-three boats. We have credible testimony that the Genoese equipped, in seven years, six hundred and twenty-seven triremes; and in 1295, in less than a month, they put to sea two hundred galleys and other ships of which one hundred and five were entirely new, and embarked on them thirty-five thousand warriors, eight thousand of whom were dressed in silk and purple. The founder of the arsenal of which we speak was a certain Oliverio a cistercense monk of the Badia of St. Andrea in Sestri. He constructed two roads on that strip of land, of which we have made mention, leading down to the gate of the Molo, where there was already a bridge of large stones on which rose a light-house for the convenience of mariners. In the same year, Marin Boccanegra raised a high wall around the Borgo di Molo which was then outside of the piazza of that name. This wall ran from the church of Our Lady of Grace along the shore to the tower of the light-house, then, turning, it passed behind San Marco and in front of Bordigotto famous in popular legends for its fountain of blood and here Boccanegra excavated the little port which was called Mandraccio. Here was moored the galley of Fieschi, and the shallowness of the water rendered it difficult to work her out into the harbour. We find in fact that though the excavations of Boccanegra are described as very deep, yet that there was not sufficient water in any part of the Mandraccio to float heavy galleys. Some years after the attempt of Fieschi, that is in 1575, that part of the port which lies between the Ponte Cattanei and the little mole of Mandraccio then called the _Goletta_ was dried under the direction of the Sicilian engineer Anastasio, and the rocks lying at the bottom of it were broken up and excavated for the distance of twenty palms.