Galley

This article is about ships powered by oarsmen. For other uses, see Galley (disambiguation).

A model of a Maltese of a design typical of the 16th century, the last great era of the wargalley

A galley is a ship that is propelled by human oarsmen, used for trade and warfare. Galleys dominated naval warfare in the Mediterranean Sea from the 8th century BC to the development of effective naval gunnery in the 16th century. Galleys fought in the wars of Assyria, ancient Phoenicia, Greece, Carthage and Rome until the 4th century. After the fall of the Roman Empire galleys formed the mainstay of the Byzantine navy and other navies of successors of the Roman Empire, as well as new Muslim navies. Medieval Mediterranean states, notably the Italian maritime republics, including Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, used galleys until the ocean-going man-of-war made them obsolete. The Battle of Lepanto was one of the largest naval battles in which galleys played the principal part.

Galleys were in common use until the introduction of broadside sailing ships of war into the Mediterranean in the 17th Century, but continued to be applied minor roles until steam propulsion.

Definition and terminology

The modern term "galley" derives from the medieval Greek γαλέα galea, originally an oared vessel similar to the Byzantine dromon, though smaller and with only one row of oars. The origin of the Greek word is unclear but could possibly be related to, γαλέος galeos, "dog-fish; small shark". It has been attested in English from c. 1300 and present in most European languages from around 1500 as a general term for oared war vessels, especially contemporary types used in the Mediterranean.

"Galley" has been used as a term for oared vessels in literature on their development, though the "true" galley is generally considered to be the Mediterranean ships. The distinction is not clear with different writers placing different criteria. Naval historian Richard C. Anderson defined the pre-modern galley in the Mediterranean as a ship that possesses a ram, but also points that this criterion does not hold true in northern Europe. Lionel Casson uses "galley" to describe all North European shipping in the early and high Middle Ages, including Viking merchants and even their famous longships. Recent studies of the history have used "galley" as a catch-all term for the entire history of vessels larger than boats that are have been propelled primarily by oar power and only on occasion by sail.

History

Among the earliest known watercraft were canoes made from hollowed-out logs, the earliest ancestors of galleys. Their narrow hulls however, required them to be paddled in a fixed sitting position facing forwards, a less efficient form of propulsion than rowing with oars. Sea-going paddled craft have been attested by finds of terracotta sculptures and lead models in the region Aegean Sea from the 3rd millennium BC. However, archaeologists believe that the Stone Age colonization of islands in the Mediterranean around 8000 BC required fairly large, seaworthy vessels that were paddled and possibly even equipped with sails. The first evidence of early types of more complex ships that could rightfully be considered as prototype galleys come from Ancient Egypt during the Old Kingdom, (c. 2700-2200 BC). Under the rule of pharaoh Pepi I (2332 – 2283 BC) these vessels were used to transport troops to raid settlements along the Levant coast and to ship back slaves and timber. By the 1400s BC Egyptian galleys were trading in luxuries on the Red Sea with the enigmatic Land of Punt, initiated by queen Hatshepsut (c. 1479-57 BC). The types of ships used have been recorded at the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari.

These early vessels had few, if any, navigational tools. Ancient ships remained in sight of the coast for safety, trading opportunities, and coastal currents and winds that could be used to work against and around prevailing winds. Ships hugged the coast and threaded through archipelagos rather than risking the open sea, and as such had to be designed for maneuverability. The ability to travel without regard to the direction or strength of the wind became invaluable for daylight expeditions across open water. Massed oars provided maneuverability and reliable propulsion.

While Phoenicians were among the most important naval civilizations in Antiquity, little evidence have been found concerning the types of ships they used. At most there are small. highly stylized images on seals which depict crescent-shape vessels equipped with one mast and oars. The colorful frescoes on the Minoan settlement on Santorini (c. 1600 BC) show more detailed pictures of vessels with ceremonial tents on deck in a procession. Some of these are rowed, but others are laboriously paddled with men bent over the railing. This has been interpreted as a possible ritual reenactment of more ancient types of vessels, alluding to a time before rowing was invented, but little is otherwise known about their usage and design.

The first warships

Further information: Hellenistic-era warships

Assyrian warship, a bireme with pointed bow. 700 BC

The first Greek galleys appeared around the second half of the 2nd millenium BC. In the Iliad, set in the 12th century BC, galleys with a single row of oarsmen were used primarily to transport soldiers to and from various land battles. The first recorded naval battle, the battle of the Delta between Egyptian and the enigmatic Sea Peoples, occured as early as 1175 BC, but was distinguished by being fought against an anchored fleet close to shore with land-based archer support. It is not known whether the ships that were used were in any way distinct from trade vessels.

The development of the ram sometime before the 8th century BC changed the nature of naval warfare, which had until then been a matter of boarding and hand-to-hand fighting. With a heavy projection at the foot of the bow sheathed with metal, a ship could render an enemy galley useless by staving in its sides. The relative speed and nimbleness of ships became important, since a slower ship could be outmaneuvered and disabled by a faster one. Early designs had only one row of rowers that sat in undecked hulls, rowing against tholes, or oarports, placed directly along the railings. The practical upper limit for wooden constructions fast and maneuverable enough for warfare was around 25-30 banks of oars per side. By adding another level, a development that occured no later than c. 750 BC, galley could be made shorter with as many rowers, while making them strong enough to be effective ramming weapons. Shipbuilders, probably Phoenician, a seafaring people who lived on the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, were the first to create the two-level galley that would be widely known under its Greek name, biērēs, or bireme.

A reconstruction of an ancient Greek galley fleet based on images of the Olympias

Soon afterwards a third row of oars was added by adding an outrigger to the hull of a bireme. These new galley was called triērēs ("three-fitted") in Greek; the Romans later called this design the triremis, trireme, the name it is today best known under. It has been hypothesized that early types of triremes existed in 701 BC, but the earliest positive literary reference dates to 542 BC. According to the Greek historian Herodotos, the first ramming action occurred in 535 BC between 60 Phocaean penteconters against 120 Etruscan and Carthaginian ships. On this occasion it was described as a innovation that allowed Phocaeans to defeat a larger force. Triremes fought several important engagements 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.

Triremes fought several important engagements 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. The trireme was an advanced ship that was expensive to build and to maintain due its large crew. It was associated with the latest in warship technology around the 4th century BC and could only employed by sizable states with an advanced economy. Triremes required considerable skill to row and oarsmen were mostly free citizens that had a lifetime of training at the oar.

Greeks and Phoenicians

Early Greek vessels had few navigational tools. Most ancient and medieval shipping remained in sight of the coast for ease of navigation, safety, trading opportunities, and coastal currents and winds that could be used to work against and around prevailing winds. It was more important for galleys than sailing ships to remain near the coast because they needed more frequent re-supply of fresh water for their large, sweating, crews and were more vulnerable to storms. Unlike ships primarily dependent on sails, they could use small bays and beaches as harbors, travel up rivers, operate in water only a meter or so deep, and be dragged overland to be launched on lakes, or other branches of the sea. This made them suitable for launching attacks on land. In antiquity a famous portage was the diolkos of Corinth. In 429 BC (Thucydides 2.56.2), but probably earlier (Herodotus 6.48.2, 7.21.2, 7.97), galleys were adapted to carry horses to provide cavalry support to troops also landed by galleys.

The compass did not come into use for navigation until the 13th century AD, and sextants, octants, accurate marine chronometers, and the mathematics required to determine longitude and latitude were developed much later. Ancient sailors navigated by the sun and the prevailing wind. By the first millennium BC they had started using the stars to navigate at night. By 500 BC they had the sounding lead (Herodotus 2.5).

Galleys were hauled out of the water whenever possible to keep them dry, light and fast and free from worm, rot and seaweed. Galleys were usually overwintered in ship sheds which leave distinctive archeological remains. There is evidence that the hulls of the Punic wrecks were sheathed in lead.

Building an efficient galley posed technical problems. The faster a ship travels, the more energy it uses. Through a process of trial and error, the unireme or 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. It could reach 9 knots (18 km/h), only a knot or so slower than modern rowed racing-boats. To maintain the strength of such a long craft tensioned cables were fitted from the bow to the stern; this provided rigidity without adding weight. This technique kept the joints of the hull under compression - tighter, and more waterproof. The tension in the modern trireme replica anti-hogging cables was 300 kN (Morrison p198).

Roman era

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 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 increasingly 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 of thousand marines.

The political unification of the lands around the entire Mediterranean sea by the Roman Empire reduced the need for warships. By AD 79 the Roman navy probably had nothing larger than a quadrireme in service, as Pliny the Elder, commander of the fleet, investigated the eruption of Vesuvius in a quadrireme (Pliny the younger 6,16) which was presumably his flagship and the largest class of vessel in the fleet. We last hear of triremes, from Zosimus, in 324 when Constantine's son Crispus defeated Licinius in the Battle of the Hellespont: allegedly 200 triremes were defeated by 80 30-oared vessels (Morrisson p8 who gives the wrong year). Galleys with two banks of oars were known in the 9th and 12th centuries but no continuity of development through the Dark Ages can be established. Ships in the ancient world, presumably including galleys, were constructed skin first, with the frame inserted later. Medieval ships, including galleys, were constructed frame first. For this intermediate period see the Roman Navy and Byzantine Navy articles.

Middle Ages

A 13th century war galley depicted in a Byzantine-style fresco.

Late medieval maritime warfare was divided in two distinct regions. In the Mediterranean galleys were used for raiding along coasts, and in the constant fighting for suitable naval bases. In the Atlantic and Baltic there was greater focus on sailing ships that were used mostly for troop transport, with galleys providing fighting support. Galleys were still widely used in the north and were the most numerous warships used by Mediterranean powers with interests in the north, especially the French and Iberian kingdoms. A transition from galley to sailing vessels as the most common types of warships began in the high Middle Ages (c. 11th century). Large high-sided sailing ships had always been formidable obstacles for galleys. To low-freeboard oared vessels, the innovations of the carrack and the cog acted almost like floating fortresses, difficult to board and even harder to capture. What made galleys useful as warships throughout the Middle Ages was their ability to maneuver in a way that contemporary sailing vessels were completely incapable of. Sailing ships of the time had only one mast, usually with just one large square sail, which made them cumbersome to steer and virtually impossible to sail in the wind direction. This allowed the galleys great freedom of movement along coasts for raiding and putting ashore troops.

Galleys descended from the types used by the Byzantine and Muslim fleets remained the mainstay of all Christian powers until the 14th century, including Genoa, Venice, the Papacy, the Hospitallers, Aragon and Castile, as well as by various pirates and corsairs. The overall term used for these types of vessels was gallee sottili ("slender galleys"). The later Ottoman navy used similar vessels, though generally smaller, and faster under sail, but slower under oars. Galley designs were still dominated by vessels that were intended solely for close action with hand-held weapons and projectile weapons like bows and crossbows. In the 13th century Aragon built several fleet of galleys with high castles, manned with Catalan crossbowman, regularly defeating numerically superior Angevin forces.

The English of the 13th century made extensive use of galleys for convoy duty, enforcing customs regulations and relieving besieged castles. These were called balingers or barges and were different from the southern galleys as they were generally smaller and built according to the clinker method, with overlapping hull planks that supported the structure of the vessel. There were, however, examples of galleys as large as 42 m (138 ft) long and 6 m (20 ft) wide.

By the 14th century, galleys began to be equipped with cannons of various sizes, mostly smaller ones at first, but also larger bombardas on vessels belonging to Alfonso V of Aragon. During the early 15th century, a transition in naval warfare in the northern European seas began. A Castilian naval raid on Jersey in 1405 was the first recorded battle where most ships were either sailing cogs or so-called nefs, rather than oared-powered galleys. Though the transition was obvious in the north, galleys remained the mainstay warship in the south. The battle of Gibraltar in 1476 is considered to be a definitive transition point in northern naval warfare. The battle featured mostly full-rigged ships armed with wrought-iron guns on the upper decks and in the waists, and it marked the future dominance of sailing warships in the Atlantic and the North Sea.

Use in northern Europe

There is good archaeological evidence for Dark Age northern galleys from ship burials, unlike ancient Mediterranean galleys. The most stunning is the Gokstad ship. A development of the Viking longships and knarrs, medieval 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. For examples the Isle of Man had to provide six galleys of 26 oars, and Sleat in Skye had to provide one 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.

Use as merchant vessels

From the first half of the 14th century the Venetian galere da mercato the "merchantman galley" was being built in the shipyards of the state-run Arsenal as "a combination of state enterprise and private association, the latter being a kind of consortium of export merchants", as Fernand Braudel described them. The ships sailed in convoy, defended by archers and slingsmen (ballestieri) aboard, and later carrying cannon.

In the 14th and 15th centuries merchant galleys traded high-value goods and carried passengers. Major routes in the time of the early Crusades carried the pilgrim traffic to the Holy Land. Later routes linked ports around the Mediterranean, between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (a grain trade soon squeezed off by the Turkish capture of Constantinople, 1453) and between the Mediterranean and Bruges— where the first Genoese galley arrived at Sluys in 1277, the first Venetian galere in 1314— and Southampton. Although primarily sailing vessels, they used oars to enter and leave many trading ports of call, the most effective way of entering and leaving the Lagoon of Venice. The Venetian galere, beginning at 100 tons and built as large as 300, was not the largest merchantman of its day, when the Genoese carrack of the 15th century might exceed 1000 tons. In 1447, for instance, Florentine galleys planned to call at 14 ports on their way to and from Alexandria (Pryor p57). The availability of oars enabled these ships to navigate close to the shore where they could exploit land and sea breezes and coastal currents, to work reliable and comparatively fast passages against the prevailing wind. The large crews also provided protection against piracy. These ships were very seaworthy; a Florentine great galley left Southampton on 23 February 1430 and returned to its port at Pisa in 32 days. They were so safe that merchandise was often not insured (Mallet). These ships increased in size during this period, and were the template from which the galleass developed.

Decline

Stern of the Réale, the prestige galley of Louis XIV.

The decline of the galley was extremely protracted, beginning before the development of cannon and continuing slowly for centuries. As early as 1304 the type of ship required by the Danish defence organization changed from galley to cog, a flat-bottomed sailing ship (Bass p191). Large high-sided sailing ships had always been very formidable obstacles for galleys. As early as 413 BC defeated triremes could seek shelter behind a screen of merchant ships (Thucydides (7, 41), Needham 4, pt3, p693). The late 15th century saw the development of the man-of-war, a truly ocean-going trader and warship, beginning with the carrack, which evolved into the galleon and then into the square rigger. These warships carried advanced sails that permitted tacking into the wind, and were heavily armed with cannons. In the Mediterranean, the decline of the galley began at around 1595–1605. This began with an influx of Dutch merchantment in the 17th century. These were so heavily armed and manned and were so seaworthy that they could compete simultaneously by trade and theft, as pirates. Venetian galleys could barely cope with their piracy in summer, and were no answer to their piracy in winter (Tenenti). Militarily, the man-of-war eventually rendered the galley obsolete except for operations close to shore in calm weather. In the ocean the dominance of the man-of-war became apparent with the Portuguese victory at the Battle of Diu in 1509. The slow transition in the Mediterranean began with a battle in 1616, when a small Spanish fleet of galleons defeated a large Ottoman fleet of galleys. But the escape of the galleys to avoid destruction also illustrates the continued advantages of these craft in the fickle conditions of the Mediterranean. By the 1660s even a purely Mediterranean power like Venice began building men-of-war. By the end of the 17th century, when Captain Kidd christened his privateering ship the Adventure Galley, galleys were no longer the mainstay in major battles, but as Kidd's choice shows, remained useful as fast and nimble privateering and coastal raiding vessels.

Galleys remained a mainstay of North African corsair fleets and continued to play a significant role in the Mediterranean well into the 18th century. They made one of their final appearances in a Mediterranean battle in the Battle of Chesma in 1770. Galleys were used, ineffectively, by the Knights of Malta during Napoleon's siege of Valetta in 1798. In America they were used in the Battle of Valcour Island in 1776. Galleys were also used during the American Revolutionary War by whalers who used their ships to raid British shipping along the American coast. These raiding parties were useful in supplying the Continental Army with many much needed supplies.

Baltic revival

The second battle of Svensksund in 1790 between the Swedish and Russian navies was the last major naval battle between forces that included large numbers of galleys and other oared vessels.

In the 18th century, galleys experienced a revival in the Baltic Sea due to particular geographic conditions of the region. The extensive archipelago chain that extends from the eastern coast of central Sweden near the capital of Stockholm, via the Åland Islands and along the coast of the Gulf of Finland was ideally suited for amphibious warfare. At the other end of this chain lies Saint Petersburg, then the capital of the ascending new great power of Russia and its primary naval base in the Baltic. The thousands of rocky islets, islands with cramped inlets, shallows and sandbanks made it difficult for high sea fleets to enter these areas, which meant that shallow-draft galleys and other types of oared vessels had to provide naval support. Denmark was the first Baltic power to build genuine galleys in the 1660s, though they were less useful along its areas of conflict with Sweden. Sweden and Russia began to launch galleys and various rowed vessels during the Great Northern War in the 1700s.

Sweden was late in the game when it came to building an effective oared fighting fleet. During the Great Northern War the Russian fleet under Tsar Peter I developed an efficient supporting element of the army which it used to infiltrate and raid the easter Swedish coast. It was not until the 1720s, after the war ended, that the Swedes realized the importance of oared vessels and began to build up a separate organization known as the "archipelago navy" (skärgårdsflottan), under Gustav III officially the "Navy of the Army". The Swedish and Russian galley fleets fought in the the war of 1741-43 and engaged in raiding and amphibious actions. The two forces reached their peak during theRusso-Swedish War in 1790. The last Russian galleys were constructed in 1796 and remained in service for many years, though they saw little action. The last time galleys were deployed in action was when the Russian navy attacked Åbo (Turku) in 1854 as part of the Crimean War. The Swedish navy still retained 27 galleys in 1809, and the last Swedish-built galley remained on the ship rolls until 1835, before it was retired at an age of 86 years.

Design and construction

Galleys have since their first appearance in ancient times been intended as highly maneuverable vessels, independent of winds by being rowed, and usually with a focus on speed under oars. The profile has therefore been that of a markedly elongated hull with a ratio of breadth to length at the waterline of at least 1:5, and in the case of ancient Mediterranean galleys as much as 1:10 with a small draught, the measurement of how much of a ship's structure that is submerged under water. To make it possible to efficiently row the vessels, the freeboard, the height of the railing to the surface of the water, was by necessity kept low. This gave oarsmen enough leverage to row efficiently, but at the expense of seaworthiness. These design characteristics made the galley fast and maneuverable, but more vulnerable to rough weather.

The documentary evidence for the construction of ancient galleys is highly fragmentary, particularly in pre-Roman times. Plans and schematics in the modern sense did not exist and nothing like them has survived. How galleys were constructed has therefore been a matter of looking at circumstantial evidence in literature, art, coinage and monuments that include ships, some of them actually in natural size. Since the war galleys floated even with a ruptured hull and virtually never had any ballast or heavy cargo that could sink them, not a single wreckage of one has so far been found. The only exception has been a partial wreckage of a small auxiliary galley from the Roman era.

A model of a typical ancient Greek trireme. Deutsches Museum, Munich.

The construction of the earliest oared vessels is virtually unknown and highly conjectural. They were likely used a mortise construction, but were sewn together rather than pinned together with nails and dowels. Being completely open, they were rowed (or even paddled) from the open deck, and likely had "ram entries", projections from the bow which made them slightly more hydrodynamic. The first true galleys, the triaconters ("thirty-oarers") and penteconters ("fifty-oarers") developed from these early designs and set the standard for larger ships that would come later. They were rowed on only one level, making them fairly slow, likely only 5-5.5 knots. By the 8th century BC the first galleys rowed at two levels had been developed, among the earliest being the two-level penteconters which were considerably shorter than the one-level equivalents, and therefore more maneuverable. They were an estimated 25 m in length and displaced 15 tonnes with 25 pairs of oars. These could have reached an estimated top speed of up to 7.5 knots, making them the first genuine warships when fitted with bow rams. They were equipped with a single square sail on mast set roughly roughly halfway along the length of the hull.

On the funerary monument of king Sahure of the 5th dynasty in Abusir, there are relief images of vessels with a marked sheer (the curvature along its length) and seven pairs of oars along its side, a number that was likely to have been merely symbolical, and steering oars in the stern. They have one mast, all lowered and vertical posts at stem and stern, with the front decorated with an Eye of Horus, the first example of such a decoration. It was later used by other Mediterranean cultures to decorate sea going craft in the belief that it helped to guide the ship safely to its destination. These early galleys apparently lacked a keel meaning they lacked stiffness along their length. There fore they had large cables connecting stem and stern resting on massive crutches on deck. They were held in tension to avoid hogging, bending the ship's construction upwards in the middle, while at sea. In the 15th century BC, Egyptian galleys were still depicted with the distinctive extreme sheer, but had by then developed the distinctive forward-curving stern decorations with ornaments in the shape of lotus flowers. They had possibly developed a primitive type of keel, but still retained the large cables intended to prevent hogging.

Ancient

The ram bow of the trireme Olympias, a modern full-scale reconstruction of a classical Greek trireme.

The first dedicated war galleys fitted with rams were built with a mortise and tenon technique (see illustration), a so-called shell-first method. In this, the planking of the hull was strong enough to hold the ship together structurally, and was also watertight. The ram, the primary weapon of Ancient galleys from around the 8th to the 4th century, was fitted onto a structure that was attached to hull rather than directly on the hull. This way galleys would not be holed if the ram was twisted off in action. It consisted of a massive projecting timber with a thick bronze casting with horizontal blades that could weigh from 400 kg up to 2 tonnes.

By the 5th century BC, the first triremes were in use by various powers in the eastern Mediterranean. It had now become a fully developed, highly specialized vessel of war that was capable of high speeds and complex maneuvers. At nearly 40 m in length, displacing nearly 50 tonnes, it was more than three times as expensive than a two-level penteconter. A trireme had an additional mast with a smaller square sail placed near the bow. Up to 170 oarsmen sat on three levels with one oar each that varied slightly in length. Two accommodate three levels of oars, rowers sat staggered on three levels. Arrangement of the three levels are believed to have varied, but the most well-documented design made use of a projecting structure, or outrigger, where the oarlock in the form of a thole pin was placed. This allowed the outermost row or oarsmen enough leverage to complete their strokes without lowering the efficiency.

Roman era

A schematic of the mortise and tenon technique for shipbuilding that dominated the Mediterranean until the 7th century BC.

Galleys from 4th century BC up to the early Roman Empire in the 1st century AD became successively larger and heavier. Three levels of oars had proved to be the practical limit, but it was still improved on by making ships longer, broader and heavier and placing more than one rower per oar. Naval conflict grew more intense and extensive, and by 100 BC galleys with four, five or even six rows of oarsmen were commonplace and carried large complements of soldiers and catapults. With high freeboards (up to 3 m) and additional tower structures from which missiles could be shot down onto enemy decks, they were intended to be more like floating fortresses. Designs with everything from eight rows and upwards were built, but most of them are believed to have been impractical show pieces never used in actual warfare. Ptolemy IV, the Greek pharaoh of Egypt 221-205 BC is recorded as building a gigantic ship with forty rows of oarsmen, but without specification of its design. A suggested construction was that of a huge trireme catamaran with up to 14 men per oar.

The size of ancient galleys, and fleets, reached their peak in ancient times with the defeat of Mark Antony by Octavian at the battle of Actium. Well-organized contenders for the power over the Mediterranean did not appear again until several centuries later, during the Roman civil wars of the 4th century, and the size of galleys decreased considerably. The huge polyremes disappeared and were replaced by triremes and liburnians, compact biremes with 50 oars that were well suited for patrol duty and chasing down pirates. In the northern provinces oared patrol boats were employed to keep local tribes in check along the shores of rivers like the Rhine and the Danube. As the need for large warships disappeared, the design of the trireme, the pinnacle of ancient war ship design, was forgotten. The last known reference to triremes in battle is dated to 324 at the battle of the Hellespont. In the late 5th century the Byzantine historian Zosimus declared the knowledge of how to build them to have been long since forgotten.

Middle Ages

Typical specifications

The earliest galley specification comes from an order of Charles I of Sicily, in 1275 AD (in both Bass & Pryor). Overall length 39.30 m, keel length 28.03 m, depth 2.08 m. Hull width 3.67 m. Width between outriggers 4.45 m. 108 oars, most 6.81 m long, some 7.86 m, 2 steering oars 6.03 m long. Foremast and middle mast respectively heights 16.08 m, 11.00 m; circumference both 0.79 m, yard lengths 26.72 m, 17.29 m. Overall deadweight tonnage approximately 80 metric tons. This type of vessel had two, later three, men on a bench, each working his own oar. This vessel had much longer oars than the Athenian trireme which were 4.41 m & 4.66 m long (Morrison p269). This type of warship was called galia sottil (Landström). According to Landström, the Medieval galleys had no rams as boarding was considered more important method of warfare than ramming.

Medieval galleys like this pioneered the use of naval guns, pointing forward as a supplement to the above-waterline beak designed to break the enemies outrigger. Only in the 16th century were ships called galleys developed with many men to each oar (Pryor p67).

Wooden model of a standard galley with 24 oars
City Museum of Rimini, Italy

At the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the standard Venetian war galleys were 42 m long and 5.1 m wide (6.7 m with the rowing frame), had a draught of 1.7 m and a freeboard of 1.0 m, and weighed empty about 140 tons. The larger flagship galleys (lanterna, "lantern") were 46 m long and 5.5 m wide (7.3 m with the rowing frame), had 1.8 m draught and 1.1 m freeboard. and weighed 180 tons. The standard galleys had 24 rowing benches on each side, with three rowers to a bench. (One bench on each side was typically removed to make space for platforms carrying the skiff and the stove.) The crew typically comprised 10 officers, about 65 sailors, gunners and other staff plus 138 rowers. The "lanterns" had 27 benches on each side, with 156 rowers, and a crew of 15 officers and about 105 other sailors, gunners and soldiers. The regular galleys carried one 50-pound cannon or a 32-pound culverin at the bow as well as four lighter cannon and four swivel guns. The larger lanterns carried one heavy gun plus six 12 and 6 pound culverins and eight swivel guns.

Byzantine navy

The primary warship of the Byzantine navy until the 12th century was the dromon and other similar ship types. Considered an evolution of the Roman liburnian, the term first appeared in the late 5th century, and was commonly used for a specific kind of war-galley by the 6th. The term dromōn itself comes from the Greek root drom-(áō), "to run", thus meaning "runner", and 6th-century authors like Procopius are explicit in their references to the speed of these vessels. During the next few centuries, as the naval struggle with the Arabs intensified, heavier versions with two or possibly even three banks of oars evolved.

The accepted view is that the main developments which differentiated the early dromons from the liburnians, and that henceforth characterized Mediterranean galleys, were the adoption of a full deck, the abandonment of rams on the bow in favor of an above-water spur, and the gradual introduction of lateen sails. The exact reasons for the abandonment of the ram are unclear. Depictions of upward-pointing beaks in the 4th-century Vatican Vergil manuscript may well illustrate that the ram had already been replaced by a spur in late Roman galleys. One possibility is that the change occurred because of the gradual evolution of the ancient shell-first construction method, against which rams had been designed, into the skeleton-first method, which produced a stronger and more flexible hull, less susceptible to ram attacks. At least by the early 7th century, the ram's original function had been forgotten. Belisarius' invasion fleet of 533 was at least partly fitted with lateen sails, making it probable that by the time the lateen had become the standard rig for the dromon, with the traditional square sail gradually falling from use in medieval navigation in the Mediterranean.

The dromons that Procopius described were single-banked ships of probably 25 oars per side. Unlike ancient vessels, which used an outrigger, these extended directly from the hull. In the later bireme dromons of the 9th and 10th centuries, the two oar banks were divided by the deck, with the first oar bank was situated below, whilst the second oar bank was situated above deck; these rowers were expected to fight alongside the marines in boarding operations. The overall length of these ships was probably about 32 meters. The stern (prymnē), which also housed a tent that covered the captain's berth. The prow featured an elevated forecastle (pseudopation), below which one or more siphons for the discharge of Greek fire projected. A pavesade on which marines could hang their shields ran around the sides of the ship, providing protection to the deck crew. Larger ships also had wooden castles on either side between the masts, providing archers with elevated firing platforms. The bow spur was intended to ride over an enemy ship's oars, breaking them and rendering it helpless against missile fire and boarding actions.

Strategy and tactics

In the earliest times of naval warfare boarding was the only means of deciding a naval engagement, but little to nothing is known about the tactics involved. In the first recorded naval battle in history, the battle of the Delta, the forces of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses III won a decisive victory over a force made up of the enigmatic group known as the Sea Peoples. As shown in commemorative reliefs of the battle, Egyptian archers on ships and the nearby shores of the Nile rain down arrows on the enemy ships. At the same time Egyptian galleys engage in boarding action and capsize the ships of the Sea Peoples with ropes attached to grappling hooks thrown into the rigging.

A schematic reconstruction of a defensive circle of galleys seen from above.

Around the 8th century BC, ramming began to be employed as war galleys were equipped with heavy bronze rams. Records of the Persian Wars in the early 5th century BC by the Ancient historian Herodotus (c. 484-25 BC) show that by this time ramming tactics had evolved among the Greeks. The formations could either be in columns in line ahead, one ship following the next, or in a line abreast, with the ships side by side, depending on the tactical situation and the surrounding geography. There were two primary methods for attack: by breaking through the enemy formation (diekplous) or by outflanking it (periplous). The diekplous involved a concentrated charge in line ahead so as to break a hole in the enemy line, allowing galleys to break through and then wheel to attack the enemy line from behind. The periplous involved outflanking or encircling the enemy so as to attack them in the vulnerable rear or side by line abreast. If one side knew that it had slower ships, a common tactic was to form a circle with the bows pointing outwards, thereby avoiding being outflanked. At a given signal, the circle could then fan out in all directions, trying to pick off individual enemy ships. To counter this formation, the attacking side would rapidly circle, feigning attacks in order to find gaps in the formation to exploit.

Ramming itself was done by smashing into the rear or side of an enemy ship, punching a hole in the planking. This did not actually sink an ancient galley unless it was heavily laden with cargo and stores. With a normal load, it was buoyant enough to float even with a breached hull. It could also maneuver for some time as long as the oarsmen were not incapacitated, but would gradually lose mobility and become unstable as it flooded. The winning side would then attempt to tow away the swamped hulks as prizes. Breaking the enemy's oars was another way of rendering ships immobile, rendering them into easier targets. If ramming was not possible or successful, the on-board complement of soldiers would attempt to board and capture the enemy vessel by attaching to it with grappling irons. Accompanied by missile fire, either with bow and arrow or javelins. Trying to set the enemy ship on fire by hurling incendiary missiles or by pouring the content of fire pots attached to long handles is thought to have been used, especially since smoke below decks would easily disable rowers.

The speed necessary for a successful impact depended on the angle of attack; the greater the angle, the lesser the speed required. At 60 degrees, 4 knots was enough to penetrate the hull, but this increased to 8 knots at 30 degrees. If the target for some reason was in motion towards the attacker, less speed was required, especially if the hit came amidships. War galleys gradually began to develop heavier hulls with reinforcing beams at the waterline, where a ram would most likely hit. There are records of a counter-tactic to this used by Rhodian ship commanders where they would angle down their bows to hit the enemy below the reinforced waterline belt. Besides ramming, breaking enemy oars was also a way to impede mobility and make it easier to drive home a successful ramming attack.

Despite the attempts to counter increasingly heavy ships, ramming tactics were superseded in the last centuries BC by the Macedonians and Romans who were primarily land-based powers. Hand-to-hand fighting with large complements of heavy infantry supported by ship-borne catapults dominated the fighting style during the Roman era, a move that was accompanied by the conversion to heavier ships with larger rowing complements and more men per oar. Though effectively lowering mobility, it meant that less skill was required from individual oarsmen. Fleets thereby became less dependent on rowers with a lifetime of experience at the oar.

Middle Ages

The Byzantine fleet repels the Rus' attack on Constantinople in 941. The Byzantine dromons are rolling over the Rus' vessels and smashing their oars with their spurs.

By late antiquity, in the 1st centuries AD, ramming tactics had completely disappeared along with the knowledge of the original trireme and its high speed and mobility. The ram was replaced by a long spur in the bow that was designed to break oars and to act as a boarding platform for storming enemy ship. The only remaining examples of ramming tactics was passing references to attempts to collide with ships in order to roll it over on its side.

With the collapse of the unified Roman empire came the revival of large fleet actions. The Byzantine navy, the largest Mediterranean war fleet throughout most of the early Middle Ages, employed crescent formations with the flagship in the center and the heavier ships at the horns of the formation, in order to turn the enemy's flanks. Similar tactics are believed to have been employed by the Arab fleets they frequently fought from th 7th century onwards. The Byzantines were the first to employ Greek fire, a highly effective incendiary liquid, as a naval weapon. It could be fired through a metal tube, or siphon mounted in the bows, similar to a modern flame thrower. The properties of Greek fire were close to that of napalm and was a key to several major Byzantine victories. By 835, the weapon had spread to the Arabs, who equipped harraqas, "fireships", with it.

Byzantine ship attacking with Greek fire. Madrid Skylitzes manuscript, 11th century.

Once the fleets were close enough, exchanges of missiles began, ranging from combustible projectiles to arrows, caltrops and javelins. The aim was not to sink ships, but to deplete the ranks of the enemy crews before the boarding commenced, which decided the outcome. Once the enemy strength was judged to have been reduced sufficiently, the fleets closed in, the ships grappled each other, and the marines and upper bank oarsmen boarded the enemy vessel and engaged in hand-to-hand combat. On Byzantine galleys, brunt of the fighting was done by heavily armed and armored troops called hoplites or kataphraktoi. These would attempt to stab the rowers through the oarports to reduce mobility, and then join the melée. If boarding was not deemed advantegous, the enemy ship could be pushed away with poles.

Early modern period

Contemporary depiction of the battle of Lepanto in 1571 that shows the strict formations of the opposing fleets. Fresco in the Gallery of Maps in Vatican Museum.

In large-scale galley engagements tactics remained essentially the same until the end of the 16th century. Cannons and small firearms were introduced around 14th century, but did not have any immediate effect on tactics; the same basic crescent formation in line abreast that was employed at at the battle of Lepanto in 1571 as was used by the Byzantine fleet almost a millennium earlier. Artillery was still quite expensive, scarce and not very effective. The galley therefore remained the most effective warship in the Mediterranean since it was the type of vessel that could most effective in boarding actions and in pulling off amphibious operations, particularly against seaside forts that had still not been adapted to heavy artillery. Artillery on galleys was initially not used primarily as a long-range standoff weapon since the distance at which early cannon were effective, c. 500 m (1600 ft), could be covered by any galley in about two minutes, much faster than they could be reloaded.

The estimated average speed of Renaissance-era galleys was fairly low, only 3 to 4 knots, and even lower, about 2 knots, when holding formation. Short speed bursts of up to 7 knots were possible for periods of no more than 20 minutes, but only at the expense of driving the rowers to the limit of their endurance and risking their exhaustion. This made galley actions, relatively slow affairs, especially when they involved large fleets of 100 galleys or more. The sides and especially the rear, the command center, was the weak points of a galley, and was the target of any attacker. Unless one side managed to outmaneuver the other, battle would be met with ships crashing into each other head on. Once the fighting began with galleys locking on to one another bow to bow, the fighting would be over the front line ships. Unless one was captured by a boarding party, fresh troops could be fed into the melée from reserve vessels in the rear. The armament of 15th and 16th century galleys usually held their fire until the last possible moment and unleashed just before impact to achieve maximum amount of damage before the melee began. The effect of this could often be quite dramatic, as exemplified by an account from 1528 where a galley of Genoese commander Antonio Doria instantly killed 40 men on board Sicilian Don Hugo de Moncada in single volley from a basilisk, two demi-cannons and four smaller guns that were all mounted in the bows.

Surviving examples

The naval museum in Istanbul contains the galley Kadırga (Turkish for "galley"), dating from the reign of Mehmed IV (1648–1687). She was the personal galley of the sultan, and remained in service until 1839. She is presumably the only surviving galley in the world, albeit without its masts. It is 37 m long, 5.7 m wide, has a draught of about 2 m, weighs about 140 tons, and has 48 oars powered by 144 oarsmen.

A 1971 reconstruction of the Real, the flagship of Don Juan de Austria in the Battle of Lepanto 1571, is in the Museu Marítim in Barcelona. The ship was 60 m long and 6.2 m wide, had a draught of 2.1 m, weighing 239 tons empty, was propelled by 290 rowers, and carried about 400 crew and fighting soldiers at Lepanto. She was substantially larger than the typical galleys of her time.

A group called "The Trireme Trust" operates, in conjunction with the Greek Navy, a reconstruction of an ancient Greek Trireme, the Olympias.

In the mid of 1990s, a sunken galley was found close to the island of San Marco in Boccalama, in the Venice Lagoon. The relic is mostly intact and it was not recovered due to high costs.

Rowers

Main article: Galley slave

Contrary to the popular image of rowers chained to the oars, conveyed by movies such as Ben Hur, there is no evidence that ancient navies ever made use of condemned criminals or slaves as oarsmen, with the possible exception of Ptolemaic Egypt.

The literary evidence indicates that Greek and Roman navies generally preferred to rely on freemen to man their galleys. Slaves were put at the oars only in exceptional circumstances. In some cases, these people were given freedom thereafter, while in others they began their service aboard as free men.

In early modern times however, 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. Galley-slaves lived in very unhealthy conditions, and many died even if sentenced only for a few years - and provided they escaped shipwreck and death in battle in the first place.

Prisoners of war were often used as galley-slaves. Several well-known historical figures served time as galley slaves after being captured by the enemy, the Ottoman corsair and admiral Turgut Reis, the Maltese Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette, and the author of Don Quijote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, among them.

References

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External links

• John F. Guilmartin, "The Tactics of the Battle of Lepanto Clarified: The Impact of Social, Economic, and Political Factors on Sixteenth Century Galley Warfare". A very detailed discussion of galley warfare at the Battle of Lepanto
• Rafael Rebolo Gómez - "The Carthaginian navy"., 2005, Treballs del Museu Arqueologic d'Eivissa e Formentera.
• "The Age Of The Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times", 2000, Conway's History of the Ship series, ISBN 978-0785812685.
• "Some Engineering Concepts applied to Ancient Greek Trireme Warships", John Coates, University of Oxford, The 18th Jenkin Lecture, 1 October 2005.
• The Boccalama's galley in Venice