The last adzes of La Spezia: two shipwrights keep a wooden trade alive

In Santo Stefano Magra, Andrea Moroni maintains the masts and woodwork of Italy's naval tall ships in a yard his family opened more than a century ago. Downriver in Ameglia, Cesare Cortale, 29, restores the small fishing boats of the Ligurian coast. Both are master shipwrights, and there are fewer of them every year.

The title comes from the ascia, the adze, a hand tool once used to shape a wooden hull's frames, keel and planking. The trade has been regulated in Italy since the Navigation Code of 1942. Every qualified shipwright is entered in a register kept by the local harbour office. Moroni's entry, in the La Spezia maritime district, is number 180.

His family opened Cantiere Moroni Navi in the early 1900s, about 15 kilometres up the Magra river from La Spezia. Moroni went to university first, then registered as a master shipwright and took over the family work. Today his yard works with Fincantieri on two of the Italian Navy's training ships, the Amerigo Vespucci and the Palinuro, maintaining their masts and wooden parts.

Both ships have long histories. The Vespucci, launched in 1931 and based in La Spezia, has a steel hull, but her decks, rails and many fittings are made of wood. In 1962 an American aircraft carrier, the USS Independence, signalled to ask who she was, then signalled back: "You are the most beautiful ship in the world." The Palinuro started out as a French barquentine that carried cod-fishing crews to the Newfoundland banks, before the Italian Navy bought her in the early 1950s.

Cesare Cortale came to the trade from somewhere else. He worked in mechanical carpentry until he restored a vintage boat called Lazzaro, and after that he changed direction. He trained in southern Italy under Giovanni Cammarano and Nino Aprea, qualified in 2017, and later repaired a 45-metre wooden vessel in France.

Now he runs a restoration workshop in Ameglia, where the Magra meets the sea. He specialises in the gozzo, the open Ligurian fishing boat with a pointed bow and stern, usually five to eight metres long, once used for net and line fishing close to shore.

Both men know why the trade is struggling. Moroni lists the reasons: it is hard to find workers, demand for woodwork is falling, materials are expensive, few people still own vintage boats, there are few facilities on the coast, and moving a boat by road costs a great deal. Cortale points to something more personal. Learning the craft means spending years travelling from one shipyard to another across Italy, as he did, and few young people are willing to do that.

At Moroni's yard, three of them have stayed for nearly three years. Next year the exam will decide whether the register gets three new names.