Thereupon he immediately blockaded Genoa with an enormous fleet.

The Provencal navy came promptly to the relief of its neighbors, and the Aragonese King forced the port of Marseilles, bearing away as trophy the chains that closed its entrance.
Ulysses nodded affirmatively.

The sailor king had deposited these chains in the cathedral of Valencia.

His godfather, the poet, had pointed them out to him in a Gothic chapel, forming a garland of iron over the black hewn stones.
The Catalan navy still continued to dominate the Mediterranean commercially, adding to its ancient vessels great galleons, lighter galleys, caravels, cattle boats, and other ships of the period.
"But Christopher Columbus," concluded the Catalan sadly, "discovered the Indies, thereby giving a death blow to the maritime riches of the Mediterranean.

Besides, Aragon and Castile became united and their life and power were then concentrated in the center of the Peninsula, far from the sea." Had Barcelona been the capital of Spain, Catalunia would have preserved the Mediterranean domination.