He received numerous awards and gratitude letters for his successful participation in battles against pirates and Ottomans during the Ottoman–Venetian War (1714–18).

[11] Balović began his sailing career in the Venetian navy as a ship's scribe and gradually advanced to the ranks of pilot, lieutenant, captain and finally shipmaster.

[14] Balović was the second generation of honorary guards and the keepers of the doge's standard on the Venetian flagship, which was also the position held by his father Matija.

He amended his transcription with three poems of unknown authors, including "Blind man sings of love events" (Serbo-Croatian: Slijepac pjeva zgode koje ljubav nosi) and completed it on 16 February 1692.

This manuscript contains a calligraphic inscription of different alphabets including Latin, Cyrillic (Serviano) and Glagolitic (Slavo Illirico) and a multilingual dictionary of the most often used words in everyday life on Italian (478), Slavo-Illirico (468), Greek (241), Albanian (201), and Turkish language(83).

[6] Balović's works include: The Croatian Encyclopedia describes him as a 'Croatian naval captain and chronicler' and notes that his Croatian-Italian dictionary was one of the first of its kind.