Many Marseille shipwrights arrived from the south of Italy (the coast of Campania, Naples, Torre del Greco, Gaete, Amalfidès) in the 1850s through the immigration wave then established between Southern Italy and the French ports of the Mediterranean. Experts in the construction of gozzi, these small fishing boats found on the Italian coast, they worked as a family at unbeatable prices. These craftsmen quickly conquered the market for wooden shipbuilding in most Provence and Languedoc ports.