If you take an aircraft over Venice, and fly low above her mottled attics, you will see her canals thick with an endless flow of craft, like little black corpuscles. Every kind of boat navigates the Venetian channels, for every kind of purpose, and many are unique to the place. There is the gondola, of course. There is the sandolo, a smaller but no less dapper boat, also rowed by one standing oarsman, facing forward. There is the vaporetto, which is the water-bus. There is the motoscafo, which is the motor launch. There is the topo, and the trabaccolo, and the cavallina, and the vipera, and the bissona, not to speak of semi-mythical rigs like the barcobestia, or ceremonial barges like the bucintoro, or skiffs from the two old Venetian rowing clubs (the Querini and the Bucintoro), or frisky outboards, or sleek speedboats, or dustbin barges, or parcel-post boats, or excursion launches, or car ferries, or canoes paddled by visiting German students, or inflatables with outboard engines, or yachts, or schooners from Yugoslavia, or naval picket boats, or the smelter's barge with a billowing furnace on it, or ambulance boats, or hearses, or milk-boats, or even the immaculate humming cruise-ships that sail into the wide canal of Giudecca from Athens, the Levant or the Black Sea. Jan Morris, Venice
Truck and crane
