THE NAVY OF OARS. THE GALLEY, THE GALEASSE, AND THE NEF
In the sixteenth century the vessel of war in the Mediterranean was
essentially that oar-propelled craft known to us as the galley. As time
went on she was gradually superseded by the sailing man-of-war which
was able to carry that heavy ordnance which the light scantling of the
galley did not permit of her mounting; but for the use of the corsairs
who lived by means of raids and surprise attacks, whose business it was
to lie perdu on the trade routes, the mobility of the galley was of
prime importance, and they could not afford to trust to the wind alone
as a motive power. The galley was analogous to the steam vessel in that
it was independent of the wind to a large extent: human bone and muscle
supplied the part of engines, and those who fought upon the sea caused
themselves to be moved over the face of the waters by the exertions
of their enemies. It is true that upon one occasion, as we have seen,
Kheyred-Din Barbarossa did possess a fleet of galleys the rowers of
which were all Moslems, which crew upon battle being joined dropped
their oars, seized their weapons and assisted in the conquest of the
foe. But this was an isolated instance, as it was almost impossible
at any time and in any circumstances to procure free men ready to
undertake a life of such intolerable suffering as that of a rower
on board a galley; in consequence these men were almost invariably
slaves, or else in later times condemned felons whose judges had sent
them to work out their sentences upon the rowers’ bench. The great
characteristic of the galley was her mobility, and in a comparative
degree her speed, as for a short burst, when her crew of rowers were
fresh, their trained muscles were capable of tremendous exertion; for
any length of time, however, it is obvious that her speed must have
declined as the rowers became exhausted. She was long, narrow, of
extremely low freeboard, and slight depth of hold; a galley of 125 feet
between perpendiculars would perhaps be 180 feet over all taking in
the poop and the prow. A galley of this length would only have a beam
of 19 feet and a depth of hold of 7 feet 6 inches. The sailing ship
of contemporary times would for the same length have had a beam of
about 40 feet and an extremely high freeboard; she was in consequence
necessarily slow and incapable of sailing on a wind.
So distinct at this time was the line drawn between the sailing vessel
and the galley that the actual terminology used was entirely different;
that is to say, the names of such things as masts, sails, rudder,
tiller, stern, stempost, cutwater, etc., were not the same words; the
sailor who used sails could not understand his brother mariner who used
oars, and _vice versa_.
[Illustration: GALLEY UNDER OARS.]
What was necessary of course in the galley was many oars and many
hands to use them; the vessel was most skilfully constructed for this
purpose so as to get the fullest power from her human engines; the
result was that men were crowded on board of her to such an extent that
there was scarcely room to breathe, such a craft as the one of which
the dimensions have been given having on board some four hundred men.
Barras de la Penne, a French officer who in 1713 first went on board a
galley, thus describes what he saw:
“Those who see a galley for the first time are astonished
to see so many persons; there are an infinite number of
villages in Europe which do not contain an equal number
of inhabitants; however, this is not the principal cause
of one’s surprise, but that so many men can be assembled
in so small a space. It is truth that many of them have
not room to sleep at full length, for they put seven men
on one bench; that is to say, on a space about ten feet
long and four broad; at the bows one sees some thirty
sailors who have for their lodging the floor space of the
rambades (this is the platform at the prow of the galley)
which consists of a rectangular space ten feet long by
eight in width. The captain and officers who live on the
poop are scarcely better lodged, and one is tempted to
compare their grandeur with that of Diogenes in his tub.
“When the unpitying Libyan Sea surprises these galleys
upon the Roman coasts, when the Norther lashes to foam
the Gulf of Lyons, when the humid east wind of Syria
is driving them off shore, everything combines to make
life on board a modern galley a hell of misery and
discomfort. The creaking of the blocks and cordage, the
loud cries of the sailors, the horrible maledictions
of the galley slaves, the groaning of the timbers,
mingled with the clank of chains and the bellowings of
the tempest, produce sentiments of affright in the most
intrepid breasts. The rain, the hail, the lightning,
habitual accompaniments of these terrific storms, the
waves which dash over the vessel, all add to the horror
of the situation, and although devotion is not as a rule
very strongly marked on board a galley, you will hear
these folk praying to God, and others making vows to the
Saints; these would do much better not to forget God and
his Saints when the danger is past.
“Calm itself has also its inconveniences, as the evil
smells which arise from the galley are then so strong
that one cannot get away from them in spite of the
tobacco with which one is obliged to plug one’s nostrils
from morning till night.”
The gallant officer here goes into further details concerning the
vermin on board which it will be as well to spare the reader.
Jean Marteille de Bergeraq, who died at Culenbourg in 1777, was
condemned to serve on board the galleys in 1707 “in his quality of
Protestant”; he must indeed have been a man of iron constitution as he
lived to the age of ninety-five. This is his description of the life of
a _forçat_:
“They are chained six to a bench; the benches are four
feet wide covered with sacking stuffed with wool over
which are thrown sheepskins which reach to the floor.
The officer who is master of the galley slaves remains
aft with the captain to receive his orders; there are
two under officers, one amidships and one at the prow;
all of these are armed with whips, with which they flog
the absolutely naked bodies of the slaves. When the
captain gives the order to row, the officer gives the
signal with a silver whistle which hangs on a cord round
his neck; the signal is repeated by the under officers
and very soon all the fifty oars strike the water as
one. Imagine six men chained to a bench as naked as they
were born, one foot on the stretcher the other raised
and placed on the bench in front of them, holding in
their hands an oar of enormous weight, stretching their
bodies towards the after part of the galley with arms
extended to push the loom of the oar clear of the backs
of those in front of them who are in the same attitude.
They plunge the blades of the oars into the water and
throw themselves back, falling on to the seat which bends
beneath their weight. Sometimes the galley slaves row
thus ten, twelve, even twenty hours at a stretch, without
the slightest relapse or rest, and on these occasions
the officer will go round putting into the mouths of
the wretched rowers pieces of bread soaked in wine to
prevent them from fainting. Then the captain will call
upon the officers to redouble their blows, and if one of
the slaves falls fainting upon his oar, which is a common
occurrence, he is flogged until he appears to be dead and
is then flung overboard without ceremony.”
The Italian captain, Pantero Pantera, of the _Santa Lucia_ galley, in his
work on “L’Armata Navale” published in 1614, gives it as his opinion
that although soldiers and sailors could be obtained for service in the
galleys if good pay were given, still no money could tempt any free man
to adventure himself as a rower for any length of time owing to the
intolerable sufferings which the “gallerian” was called upon to endure.
As, however, in the opinion of the captain it was most necessary
that the galleys should be manned, he thought that all judges should
in future send criminals aboard; those who had committed murder as
“lifers,” those who had committed lesser crimes _pro rata_. Those who by
the nobility of their birth or their physical incompetence were unable
to handle the oar should be called upon to pay for substitutes to act
for them; these were called “Buone-Voglie.”
There was not much difference after all between the methods used by the
seventeenth-century Italian to those actually in force in England at a
much later date when the Press Gang swept the honest and the dishonest
into its net in its midnight raids.
“The galley slaves,” observes Pantera, “cherish repose and sincerely
wish to avoid fatigue; in order to incite them to do their duty it is
necessary to use the whip as well as the whistle; by using it with
severity the officers will find that they are better obeyed, and it
will in consequence be good for the service, for fear of the whip is
the principal cause of good behaviour among the gallerians.” Further on
he observes that it is well not to flog them too severely and without
reason, “for this irritates the gallerians, as I have frequently
observed: this may cause them to despair and to wish for death as the
only sure way out of their troubles.” The excellent Pantera a little
later on even says that he cannot agree that the attempt to cure a sick
gallerian “is all nonsense, as is maintained by some persons,” as sick
men are a source of danger on board. He apparently was not prepared to
throw them overboard alive, but urges that the best way to avoid such
pestilences among them as killed forty thousand Venetians at the
port of Zara in 1570 is to embark sound and good victuals.
It is interesting to have a contemporary view of the correct treatment
of the galley slave from those who had to do with him. In the case
of the corsairs and their adversaries the gallerians were as a rule
prisoners of war, but as time went on and wars became less frequent
than they were throughout the sixteenth century, another source of
supply was tapped by sending to the galleys the criminals of any
country which desired to fill up the rowers’ benches. In consequence
there was always one thing which was feared above all others on board a
galley, and that was a rising of the slaves.
If they were not your enemies officially, they were a set of desperate
criminals ripe for any mischief should they get loose, and chained,
starved, beaten, frozen with the cold, baked by the summer heats,
tortured, murdered, they had nothing earthly for which to hope except
escape. If in the heat of battle there should occur a rising of the
slaves, then their masters knew that victory would declare itself
surely on the side of the enemy. Therefore that they should be
securely chained was the first and most important thing to which the
boatswain of a galley and his mates had to see. If by a bold stroke
they once freed themselves from their shackles it was a fight to the
death for those who erstwhile had been in command, as the gallerians,
outnumbering them and caring nought for their lives in comparison to
their liberties, were far the most formidable foes that they could be
called upon to encounter. When men are so treated that their daily
life is one long martyrdom they become the most dangerous force
in existence, and on the occasions which sometimes happened that the
slaves got the upper hand, there were none left of the fighting men of
the galley to tell the tale of their discomfiture.
In time of battle the gallerians were of course equally exposed to
death and wounds from the projectiles of the enemy as were the orthodox
fighting men; but to them came no rejoicing at the sound of victory;
rather they prayed for the defeat of their masters, as it frequently
happened that those against whom they were arrayed were their own
countrymen and friends by whom they hoped for release. Thus at Lepanto,
the Christian slaves, seeing the right wing of the Turkish fleet thrown
into disorder by the galleys of the Allies, broke out into furious
mutiny, succeeded in shattering their fetters and chains, attacked
their masters the Turks in the rear with incredible energy with any
weapons upon which they could lay their hands, and thus contributed in
no small measure to the ultimate triumph of the Christian arms.
The Captain Pantero Pantera and Barras de la Peine have written
exhaustively on the galley, her crew, her armament, her manner of
provisioning, her masts, sails, rigging, etc., and Admiral Jurien de
la Gravière has given a most painstaking exposition concerning the
technicalities of these craft. But to enter into too much detail would
be to weary the reader unnecessarily, who, it is apprehended, merely
desires that a general idea should be given of the way in which these
vessels were handled and fought.
It would appear that during the whole time that oar-propelled vessels
were used as warships their form did not differ to any material
extent, as certain limitations of size were obviously imposed on them
by the mere fact that they had to be moved by so finite and feeble a
force as human muscles, hearts, and lungs. No cruelty, however ghastly,
could extract from the gallerians more than a certain amount of work,
and the Captain Pantero Pantera, as we have seen, even advocates that a
certain minimum of consideration should be shown to them in order that
better work might be obtained. It was probable, however, that in the
case of the Christian slaves captured by the corsairs even this minimum
was to seek, as the numbers swept off by them were so enormous that
they could be used up and replaced without inconveniencing these rovers
of the sea, to whom compassion for suffering was absolutely unknown.
The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, or the Knights of Malta as they
were also called, used the galley in their unceasing warfare with the
Moslem. The General of the Galleys was a Grand Cross of the Order; the
captains were knights, and the second officer, or first lieutenant, was
known as the Patron. The crew of a galley of the knights had twenty-six
rowing benches and carried two hundred and eighty rowers and two
hundred and eighty combatants; the armament consisted of one bow cannon
which discharged a forty-eight pound ball, four other small guns, eight
pounders, and fourteen others which discharged stones.
“The Religion,” as the Knights were in the habit of describing
themselves, had certain definite stations assigned to each knight,
seaman, or officer during action. It is to be imagined, however,
that these were merely for the preliminary stages of the fight,
as it was seldom that time allowed for more than one discharge, or
at the most two, of the artillery, before the opposing galleys met
in a hand-to-hand conflict which must have immediately become an
indiscriminate mêlée.
The manner in which the galley should engage is thus contained in an
answer to a question of Don John of Austria, the victor of Lepanto. He
wrote to Garcia de Toledo, fourth Marquis of Villafranca, and General
of the Galleys of Sicily, to ask his opinion as to what distance it was
most efficacious to open fire in a naval action. Toledo replied that
“one cannot fire more than twice before the galleys close. I should
therefore recommend that the arquebussiers should hold their fire
until they are so close to the enemy that his blood will leap into the
face of him who discharges his piece. I have always heard it said, and
this by captains who are well skilled in the art of war, that the last
discharge of the cannon should be coincident with the noise made by the
breaking of the spurs carried in the prows of the galleys; in fact that
the two noises should be as one; some propose to fire before the enemy
does: this is by no means my advice.”
Artillery, it will be seen from this, played a comparatively
unimportant part in the combats between galley and galley; that in
these craft men still relied on the strength of their right arm and the
edge of their swords; there was still a certain contempt for villainous
saltpetre, which was looked upon as a somewhat cowardly substance,
preventing the warrior from settling his disputes in the good old
fashion of his forbears. In any case, when you practically had to
push the muzzle of your gun against your enemy’s body in order to hit
him, it was not a weapon upon which much reliance was to be placed.
There were, in addition to the galley, the nef and the galeasse;
the former of these was a sailing vessel pure and simple like those
remarkable caravels in which Columbus discovered America.
What these caravels were exactly like it was the good fortune of
the writer to see in the year 1893. This was the date of the great
exhibition of Chicago, and the American Government were most anxious to
have, and to exhibit if possible, an exact replica of these historic
craft. They accordingly communicated with the Spanish Government and
inquired if by any chance they possessed the plans and specifications
of the caravels of Columbus? Search was made in the archives of Cadiz
Dockyard and these priceless documents were discovered. From them the
ships were built in every respect the same as the wonderful originals
and then towed across the Atlantic by the United States cruiser
_Lancaster_. On their way they were brought to Gibraltar, where the
writer’s ship was then stationed, and were anchored inside the New
Mole. The _Santa Maria_, the flagship of Columbus, was a three-masted
vessel with a very high “forecastle” and “sterncastle” and very deep in
the waist; she had three masts, the foremast carrying one square sail,
the mainmast having both mainsail and main-topsail, the mizzen was
rigged with a lateen sail, on the mainsail was painted the Maltese and
on the foresail the Papal cross, and on deck she carried a brick-built
cooking galley. A most beautiful model of this vessel is to be seen
in the Science and Art Department of the South Kensington Museum.
The nef in its later manifestations became a much more seaworthy vessel
than this, with four masts, the two foremost ones square-rigged and
carrying courses and topsails, the two after ones carrying lateen
sails; the latter from their small size and their proximity to one
another could not have had much effect on the sailing qualities of the
ship. The nefs in the fleet of Don John of Austria in 1571 were rigged
in this fashion and comprised vessels of eight hundred, nine hundred,
and even one thousand tons, while a contemporary English vessel, the
_Great Harry_ or _Henri Grace à Dieu_, was as much as fifteen hundred
tons, and carried no less than one hundred and eighty-four pieces
of ordnance. It was from the nef and the galeasse that the sailing
man-of-war arrived by the process of evolution. The galley in the first
instance was the vessel of men who fought hand to hand, the men in
whom personal strength and desperate valour were blended, who desired
nothing so much as to come to close grips with their enemy. Such rude
engines of war as the pierriers, or short cannons which discharged
some forty or fifty pounds of broken stone upon the enemy, were first
mounted in the galley; these were followed by improved artillery as
time went on. But although the galleys eventually carried quite big
guns, as instanced by the forty-eight pounder in the galleys of the
Knights of St. John, still it soon became apparent that the limit was
reached by guns of this weight; the galley was essentially a light
vessel and was not built to withstand those rude shocks caused by
firing heavy charges of powder.
The galeasse was the connecting link between the navy of oars and the
navy of sails. The navy of oars was in its generation apt for warlike
purposes; but it was in its essence a force analogous to the light
cavalry of the land; useful for a raid, a sudden dash, but without that
great strength and solidity which came in later years to the building
of the sailing line of battleship.
The galeasse was really a magnified galley, one which used both sails
and oars, on board of which the rowers were under cover; she was built
with a forecastle and a sterncastle which were elevated some six feet
above the benches of the rowers, and her very long and immensely heavy
oars were of course proportionate to the size of the vessel. The
description of a galeasse of nearly one thousand tons burden is set
forth as follows by Jurien de la Gravière:
“Her draught of water was about 18 feet 6 inches, she
was propelled by 52 oars, 48 feet in length, each oar
being worked by 9 men. Her crew consisted of 452 rowers,
350 soldiers, 60 marines, 12 steersmen, 40 ordinary
seamen, 86 cannoneers, 12 petty officers, 4 boatswains’
mates, 3 pilots, 2 sub-pilots, 4 counsellors, 2 surgeons,
4 writers, 2 sergeants, 2 carpenters, 2 caulkers, 2
coopers, 2 bakers, 10 servants, a captain, a lieutenant,
a purser. In all some thousand men, or about the same
number as the crew of a three-decker of a later date.”
The fleet of the “Holy League” at the battle of Lepanto had in it
six galeasses from the arsenal of Venice; and whereas an average
galley carried 110 soldiers and 222 galley slaves, the crews of these
galeasses comprised 270 soldiers, 130 sailors, and 300 galley slaves.
The speed of the galley was calculated by the French engineer Forfait
to be in the most favourable circumstances, that is to say in a flat
calm, but four and a half knots for the first hour, and two and a
quarter to one and a half miles per hour for subsequent hours; the
exhaustion of the rowers consequent on their arduous toil would not
admit of a greater speed than this. The studies of Forfait were made
when the invasion of England by rowing boats was a topic of burning
interest. It is evident from this that long voyages, trusting to the
oar alone, could not be undertaken; but as we have seen, the galley was
also provided with motive power in the shape of two masts carrying the
lateen sail, which may be still seen in so many Mediterranean craft.
That the galley was no vessel in which to embark in bad weather is
instanced for us by the disasters which befell a Spanish fleet of
these craft in 1567 under the Grand Commander of Castile, Don Luiz
de Requesens. A revolt of the Moors in Granada had caused Philip the
Second to wish to withdraw a certain number of Spanish troops from
Italy. Requesens was sent to Genoa with twenty-four galleys to embark
a detachment of an army corps then stationed in Piedmont. Each galley
embarked one hundred and fifty soldiers; they then got under way and
reached the island of Hyères, where they anchored, the weather being
too bad to proceed. At the end of their eighth day in port a number
of vessels were seen flying to the eastward before the wind; it was
a squadron of Genoese.
Requesens, who was no seaman, was furious. Here were the Genoese at
sea, and he wasting his time in harbour; if they could keep the sea
why could not he, he demanded? He instantly ordered the anchors to be
weighed. The commander of the Tuscan galleys, of which there were ten
in the fleet, immediately went on board the galley in which Requesens
was embarked and represented that the wind was foul and that should
they leave their anchorage they could make no headway once they got
clear of the land. But Requesens was obstinate: “if others can go
on their way it is shameful that I should not proceed on mine,” he
protested. Alfonso d’Aragona argued with him in vain, representing
that his master, the Duke of Tuscany, would hold the Grand Commander
responsible for damage to his galleys. It was all in vain, as the Grand
Commander was too arrogant and stupid to listen to advice from anybody.
The fleet put to sea and struggled out a mile from the land; when they
got thus far Requesens discovered his mistake and regretted that he had
not taken the advice of the mariners; but it was now too late, they had
drifted to leeward of their anchorage and could not get back again.
One galley, a new vessel, ran into another which was an old one, and
sank her on the spot, carrying all her luckless crew to the bottom.
The remaining vessels scattered far and wide; Alfonso d’Aragona
found refuge in the Bay of Alghieri, two more of his galleys reached
an anchorage in the Isle of St. Pierre, another sheltered in the
Gulf of Oristano; three galleys were shipwrecked on the coast in
this neighbourhood and lost many of their men; yet another, called
the _Florence_, was twice nearly wrecked on the coast of Barbary, and
eventually reached the Bay of Cagliari. A Genoese captain found himself
as far afield as the Island of Pantellaria, two galleys were never
heard of again, and the Grand Commander himself anchored eventually in
the Bay of Palamos on the Spanish coast. Of the twenty-four galleys
which left their anchorage twelve were lost and the twelve which
remained were practically valueless until large sums had been spent in
repairs.
It is small wonder in the light of these events that the seamen who
ranged the Mediterranean in vessels propelled by oars regarded the
winter as a close season and laid up their galleys in harbour. They
were seaworthy enough for ordinary weather, but could not withstand
such a tempest as the one in which Requesens put to sea. The whole
story is only a further proof of the folly of putting supreme command
of a sea-going venture in the hands of a man totally ignorant of the
hazards he was called upon to encounter. In the sixteenth and even in
the seventeenth centuries this was done perpetually, and if no disaster
occurred it was because no bad weather was encountered.
[Illustration: BRIGANTINE CHASING FELUCCA.]
As time went on the sailing ship became larger and larger and was
able to mount more and more powerful ordnance; this had the effect of
discounting the value of the galley as a fighting ship; in consequence
she became practically obsolete, for the line of battle, after the
combat at Lepanto. In spite of this she was to linger on for many
long years to come as the weapon of the corsairs who had established
themselves on the coast of Africa. The “long ship” was still to be the
cause of many an awful sea tragedy, whether the actors therein were
the pirates who hailed from the Barbary coast or their most capable
imitators the notorious rovers of Sallee.