Galley
The term
galley can refer to any
ship propelled primarily by man-power, using
oars. Most galleys also use masts and sails as a secondary means of propulsion.
Various types of galleys dominated naval warfare in the
Mediterranean from the time of
Homer to the development of effective naval gunnery around the 15th and 16th centuries. Galleys fought in the wars of ancient
Persia,
Greece,
Carthage and
Rome until the
4th century. After the
fall of the Roman Empire, galleys saw continued, if somewhat reduced, use by the
Byzantine Empire and other successors, as well as by the new
Muslim states. Medieval
Mediterranean states (notably the Italian maritime republics like
Venice,
Pisa,
Genoa) revived the use of galleys from the
14th century until the ocean-going
man of war rendered them obsolete. The
Battle of Lepanto (1571) proved one of the largest
naval battles in which the galley played the principal part. Galleys continued in mainstream use until the introduction of the broadside sailing ship into the Mediterranean in the 17th Century and then continued to function in minor and auxiliary roles until the advent of
steam propulsion.
The first galleys
Galleys travelled the
Mediterranean from perhaps
3000 BC. The
Greeks and
Phoenicians built and operated the first known ships to navigate the Mediterranean: merchant vessels with
square-rigged sails. The first military vessels, as described in the works of
Homer and represented in paintings, had a single row of oarsmen along each side (in addition to the sail) to provide speed and manoeuvrability.
Early sailors had very little in the way of
navigational tools.
Compasses did not come in to use for navigation until the
13th century AD, and the development of
sextants,
octants and accurate
chronometers, together with the mathematics required to determine
longitude and
latitude, had to wait until considerably later. Ancient sailors navigated by means of the sun and of the prevailing wind. By the
first millennium BC they had started using the stars to navigate at night. But if blown out of sight of land then they became lost. The implications for ship design meant that manoeuvrability remained paramount for coast-hugging and threading through archipelagos, while reliable (non-wind-based) speed became a
sine qua non for daylight expeditions across open water. Massed oars provided the optimal technological solution to the problems.
Penteconters
The development of the
ram in about
800 BC changed the nature of naval warfare, which had until that point involved boarding and hand-to-hand fighting. Now a more manoeuvrable ship could render a slower ship useless by staving in its sides. Some doubt exists as to whether the winners in naval encounters usually sank defeated galleys. The Greek word for "sunk" can also mean "waterlogged", and reports survive of victorious galleys towing the defeated ship away after a battle. The paucity of archaeological remains of sunken ships, in comparison with the abundance of galleys according to the writings of contemporaries, provides further evidence that victors may not have commonly sunk defeated ships.
Building an efficient galley posed difficult technical problems. A ship travelling at high speed creates a
bow-wave and has to expend considerable energy climbing this wave instead of increasing its speed. The longer the ship, the faster it can travel before this effect hampers it, but the available technology in the ancient Mediterranean made long ships difficult to construct. Through a process of trial and error, the monoreme — a galley with one row of oars on each side — reached the peak of its development in the
penteconter, about 38 m long, with 25 oarsmen on each side. Historians believe that it could reach speeds of about 9 knots (18 km/h), only a knot or so slower than modern rowed racing-boats. The penteconter's size required that its builders stretch cables between the bow and stern to distribute the stress evenly.
Biremes and Triremes
Main article:
Trireme Around the
7th or
6th century BC the design of galleys changed. Shipbuilders, probably first in
Phoenicia, added a second row of oars above the first, creating the
biere or
bireme (although probably neither term was used at the time). They copied the idea from the
Phoenicians (seafaring people who lived on the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean). Very soon afterwards, a third row of oars was added. These new galleys became known as
trieres ("three-fitted";) in
Greek; the
Romans called this design the
triremis (in English, "
trireme"). The origin of these changes remains uncertain;
Thucydides attributes the innovation to the boat-builder Aminocles of
Corinth in about
700 BC, but some scholars distrust this and suggest that the design came from Phoenicia.
Herodotus (
484 BC - ca.
425 BC) provides the first mention of triremes in action: he mentions that
Polycrates,
tyrant of
Samos from
535 BC to
515 BC, had triremes in his fleet in
539 BC.
The early
5th century BC saw a conflict between the city-states of Greece and the expansionist
Persian Empire under
Darius (reigned 521 - 485 BC) and
Xerxes (reigned 485 - 465 BC), who hired ships from their Phoenician
satrapies.
The Athenians defeated the first invasion force on land at the
Battle of Marathon in
490 BC, but saw the waging of land battles against the more numerous Persians as hopeless in the long term. When news came that Xerxes had started to amass an enormous invasion force in Asia Minor, the Greek cities expanded their navies: in
482 BC the Athenian leader
Themistocles started a programme for the construction of 200 triremes. The project must have met with considerable success, as 150 Athenian triremes reputedly saw action in the
Battle of Salamis in
480 BC and participated in the defeat of Xerxes' invasion fleet there.
Triremes fought in the naval battles of the
Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 BC), including the
Battle of Aegospotami in
405 BC, which sealed the defeat of the
Athenian Empire by
Sparta and her allies.
Quinqueremes and polyremes
Main article:
QuinqueremeIn the
4th century BC, after the
Peloponnesian War, navies experienced a shortage of oarsmen of sufficient skill to man large numbers of
triremes. The search for designs of galley that would allow oarsmen to use muscle-power instead of skill led
Dionysius of Syracuse (ruled 405 - 367 BC) to build
tetreres (quadriremes) and
penteres (quinqueremes).
According to modern historians, the numbers used to describe these larger galleys counted the number of rows of men on each side, and not the numbers of oars. Thus quadriremes had three possible designs: one row of oars with four men on each oar, two rows of oars with two men on each oar or three rows of oars with two men pulling the top oars on each side. Probably galleys of all three designs existed. Scholars believe that quinqueremes had three rows of oars, with two men pulling each of the top two oars.
Along with the change in galley design came an increased reliance on tactics such as boarding and as using warships as platforms for
artillery. In the wars of the
Diadochi (322 - 281 BC), the successors to the empire of
Alexander the Great built bigger and bigger galleys.
Macedon in
340 BC built sexiremes (probably with two men on each of three oars) and in
315 BC septiremes, which saw action at the
Battle of Salamis in Cyprus (306 BC).
Demetrius I of Macedon (reigned 294 - 288 BC), involved in a naval war with
Ptolemy of Egypt (reigned 323 - 283 BC), built eights (
octeres), nines, tens, twelves and finally sixteens! Later Ptolemies continued this trend of expansion, creating twenties and thirties and, during the reign of Ptolemy IV, a monstrous forty over 400 feet long that was probably intended as a showpiece. According to a detailed description of the forty, the ship had two prows and two sterns, and this and other evidence has led some to believe that the forty, and probably the twenties and thirties, were constructed like huge catamarans with enough space between the hulls for the rowers in the middle to operate. The deck above them, stretching across the two hulls, could accommodate a couple thousand marines.
Triremes and smaller vessels continued in use, however. Light versions called
liburnians served as auxiliary vessels, and proved quite effective against the heavier ships thanks to their greater manoeuvrability. In the last great naval battle of the ancient world, at
Actium in
31 BC,
Octavian's lighter and more manoeuvrable ships defeated
Antony's heavy fleet. After that, with the
Roman Empire in charge of the entire
Mediterranean, large fighting navies became redundant. By
AD 325 no more galleys with multiple rows of oars existed.
|
A galley in port, 17th century engraving. |
The earliest galley specification comes from a document of 1275 AD (in both Bass & Pryor). All lengths in metres. Overall length 39.30m, keel length 28.03m, depth 2.08m. Hull width 3.67m. Width between outriggers 4.45m. 108 oars, most 6.81m long, some 7.86m, 2 steering oars 6.03m long. Foremast and middle mast respectively heights 16.08m, 11.00m circumference both 0.79m, yard lengths 26.72m, 17.29m. Overall deadweight tonnage approximately 80 metric tons.
In the 14th and 15th centuries a class of merchant galleys traded high value goods around the Mediterranean and to and from the Black Sea, in one direction, and Bruges and Southampton in the other direction. Although primarily sailing vessels they probably used oars to enter and leave many trading ports of call e.g. in 1447 Florentine galleys planned to call at 14 ports to and from Alexandria (Pryor p57).
Medieval galleys in northern Europe
A development of the
Viking longships and
knaars, north
European galleys,
clinker-built, used a square sail and rows of oars, and looked very like their Norse predecessors.
In the waters off the west of Scotland between
1263 and
1500, the
Lords of the Isles used galleys both for warfare and for transport around their maritime domain, which included the west coast of the
Scottish Highlands, the
Hebrides, and
Antrim in
Ireland. They employed these ships for sea-battles and for attacking castles or forts built close to the sea. As a
feudal superior, the Lord of the Isles required the service of a specified number and size of galleys from each holding of land. Examples include the
Isle of Man, which had to provide six galleys of 26 oars; and
Sleat in
Skye, which had to provide an 18-oar galley.
Carvings of galleys on tombstones from
1350 onwards show the construction of these boats. From the
14th century, they abandoned a steering-oar in favour of a stern rudder, with a straight stern to suit. From a document of
1624, a galley proper would have 18 to 24 oars, a
birlinn 12 to 18 oars and a
lymphad fewer still.
The Renaissance
Galleys saw a European comeback in the
14th century as
Venice expanded its influence in the Mediterranean in response to increased Turkish naval presence after 1470, but medieval triremes used a simpler arrangement with one row of oars and three rowers to each oar.
The
galleass or "galliass" (known as a "mahon" in Turkey) developed from large merchant galleys which were no longer profitable after the introduction of "round ships" (sailing ships which were the precursor of the galleon type). As converted for military use they were higher and larger than regular ("light") galleys, and mounted a large number (around 50) guns, mostly along the sides interspersed with the oars, and pointing forward. They had as many as thirty-two oars, each worked by up to 5 men. They usually carried three masts and had a
forecastle and
aftcastle. Much effort was made in Venice to make these galleasses as fast as they could be so they could compete with regular galleys. The gun-deck usually ran over the rowers' heads, although pictures showing the opposite arrangement exist. Galleasses usually carried more sails than true galleys, and were far deadlier; a galley caught broadside lay all but helpless, but coming broadside to a galleass, as with a ship of the line, merely exposed an attacker to her gunfire. The galleass exemplified an intermediate type between the galley and the true man-of-war. Relatively few galleasses were built - one disadvantage was that, being more reliant on sails, their position at the front of the galley line at the start of a battle could not be guaranteed - but they featured at the
Battle of Lepanto (
7 October 1571), their firepower helping to win victory for the Christian fleet, and some sufficiently seaworthy galleasses accompanied the
Spanish Armada in
1588 e.g.
La Girona. In the Mediterranean, with its shallower waters, less dangerous weather and fickle winds, galleasses and galleys alike continued in use, particularly in Venice and Turkey, long after they became regarded as obsolete elsewhere. Later, "round ships" and galleasses were replaced by galleons and ships of the line which originated in northern Europe. The first Venetian ship of the line was built in 1660.
The
galliot emerged as a small, light type of galley. The number of oars or sweeps varied, the larger galley having twenty-five on each side.
Galley slaves
For ancient galley designs, with each rower being solely responsible for managing one oar, rowing was a skilled job, performed by trained volunteers. If, in times of need, it became necessary to use slaves, these were typically freed and trained first. However, for later designs, with 3 to 7 people handling one oar, individual skill mattered less, and it became possible to use slaves and even a leash.
It became the custom among the Mediterranean powers to sentence condemned criminals to row in the war-galleys of the state (initially only in time of war). Traces of this practice appear in France as early as
1532, but the first legislative enactment comes in the
Ordonnance d'Orléans of
1561. In
1564 Charles IX of France forbade the sentencing of prisoners to the galleys for fewer than ten years. A
brand of the letters
GAL identified the condemned
galley-slaves. King
Louis XIV, who wanted a bigger fleet, ordered that the courts should sentence men to the galleys as often as possible, even in times of peace; he even sought to transform the
death penalty to sentencing to the galleys for life.
By the end of the reign of
Louis XIV of France in 1715 the use of the galley for war purposes had practically ceased, but the
French Navy did not incorporate the corps of the galleys until
1748. From the reign of
Henry IV (dies 1610),
Toulon functioned as a naval military port,
Marseille having become a merchant port, and served as the headquarters of the galleys and of the convict rowers (
galériens). After the incorporation of the galleys, the system sent the majority of these latter to
Toulon, the others to
Rochefort and to
Brest, where they worked in the
arsenal. Convict rowers also went to a large number of other French and non-French cities:
Nice,
Le Havre,
Nimes,
Lorient,
Cherbourg,
Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue,
La Spezia,
Anvers and
Civitavecchia; but Toulon, Brest and Rochefort predominated. At Toulon the convicts remained (in chains) on the galleys, which were moored as
hulks in the harbour. Their shore prisons had the name
bagnes ("baths"), a name given to such penal establishments first by the Italians (
bagno), and allegedly deriving from the prison at
Constantinople situated close by or attached to the great baths there. All French convicts continued to use the name
galérien even after galleys went out of use; only after the
French Revolution did the new authorities officially change the hated name â€" with all it signified â€" to
forçat. The use of the term
galérien nevertheless continued until 1873, when the last
bagne in France (as opposed to the bagnes relocated to
French Guyana), the bagne of Toulon, closed definitively. In
Spain, the word
galera continued in use as late as the early
19th century for a criminal condemned to
penal servitude.
A vivid account of the life of galley-slaves in France appears in
Jean Marteilhes's
Memoirs of a Protestant, translated by
Oliver Goldsmith, which describes the experiences of one of the
Huguenots who suffered after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes in 1685. Galley-slaves lived in unsavoury conditions, so even though some sentences prescribed a restricted number of years, most rowers would eventually die, even if they survived shipwreck and slaughter or torture at the hands of enemies or of pirates. All naval forces often turned 'infidel'
prisoners-of-war into galley-slaves.
The last galleys
The
15th century saw the development of the
man-of-war, a truly ocean-going warship, carrying advanced sails that permitted tacking into the wind, and heavily armed with
cannon. The man-of-war eventually rendered the galley obsolete except for operations close to shore in calm weather.
Galleys made their final appearance in a Mediterranean battle in the
Battle of Chesma in
1770; they lingered on in the shallow
Baltic Sea and took part in the
Russo-Swedish War in
1790. In America they were used in the
Battle of Valcour Island in
1776.
* George F. Bass ed. A History of Seafaring 1972 Thames & Hudson
* Lionel Casson,
Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, Princeton University Press, 1971.
* Brian Lavery,
Maritime Scotland, B T Batsford Ltd., 2001, ISBN 0-7134-8520-5
* John H. Pryor Geography, technology and war 1988 Cambridge University Press p57
