“I, Pietro Querini from Venice, have promised myself to write down exactly, for the memory of posterity, the adversities that have befallen me and the places where they have happened to me according to the dispositions of the wheel of fate.

You must know that for the desire to acquire honour and riches, things of which we men never have enough, I threw myself into the enterprise of setting up a ship for a trip to Flanders, investing my belongings.

On April 25, I left Crete to embark on that journey that would have been very bitter and full of misfortunes. My state of mind was, as anyone can imagine, sad for the loss of my son, and full of pain, as if it were already a premonition of the many and unbearable misfortunes that would come”. 

An excerpt from the incipit of Pietro Querini’s report, from the manuscript preserved in the Vatican Library in Rome.
For the quote: iI Naufragio della Querina by Paolo Nelli