Galley

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

A French galley and Dutch men-of-war off a port by Abraham Willaerts, 17th century

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 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, 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

Ancient Greece and Mediterranean

A reconstruction of ancient Greek galleys.

Galleys traversed the Mediterranean from around 3000 BC. The Phoenicians and the Greeks 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 maneuverability. These were very popular for merchant use.

Early 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).

As ships hugged the coast and threaded through archipelagos rather than risking the open sea, they had to be designed for maneuverability. The ability to travel without regard to the direction or strength of the wind became a sine qua non for daylight expeditions across open water. Massed oars provided maneuverability and reliable propulsion.

Penteconters

Further information: Penteconter (ship)

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 maneuverable ship could render a slower ship useless by staving in its sides. The few archaeological remains of sunken ships compared to the many galleys in use according to the writings of contemporaries suggests that victors may not usually have sunk the vanquished. Besides Athlit bronze rams, the only other parts of ancient galleys to survive are parts of two Punic biremes off western Sicily (see Basch & Frost). These Punic galleys are estimated to have been 35 m long, 4.80 m wide, with a displacement tonnage of 120 tonnes. These biremes had evidence of an easily breakable pointed ram, more like the Assyrian image than the Athlit ram. This type of ram may have been designed to break off to protect the ramming vessel from damaging itself.

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).

Biremes and triremes

Main articles: Bireme and Trireme

Assyrian warship, a bireme with pointed bow. 700 BC

In the 7th or 6th century BC the design of galleys changed. Shipbuilders, probably Phoenician (seafaring people who lived on the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean), added a second row of oars above the first, creating the ship widely known by its Greek name, biērēs (Template:Lang-en). These terms were probably not used until later. The idea was copied around the Mediterranean. Soon afterwards a third row of oars was added, by adding an outrigger to the hull of a bireme. These new galleys were called triērēis ("three-fitted", Sing. triērēs) in Greek; the Romans later called this design the triremis (in English, "trireme"). Thucydides attributes the innovation to the boat-builder Ameinoklēs of Corinth in 700 BC, but some suggest that the design also 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.

In the early 5th century BC the city-states of Greece and the expansionist Persian Empire under Darius (reigned 521 - 485 BC) and Xerxes (reigned 485 - 465 BC) came into conflict.

The Persians 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 program for the construction of 200 triremes. The project must have met with considerable success, as 150 Athenian triremes are said to have fought 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

Further information: Hellenistic-era warships

Considerable skill was required to row the ships used at the time of the Peloponnesian War, and there were not enough skilled oarsmen to man large numbers of triremes in the 4th century BC. The search for designs 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 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

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.

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 fourteenth 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 fifteenth 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.

The second battle of Svensksund in 1790 between the Swedish and Russian navies was the last great galley battle.

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.

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; they lingered on in the shallow Baltic Sea and took part in the Russo-Swedish War in 1790. Galleys were used, ineffectively, by the Knights of Malta during Napoleon's siege of Valetta in 1798. The last war galleys were constructed in 1796 for the Russian navy as a countermeasure to arch rival in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish Archipelago Navy. 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 auxilliary 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 mad 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 (trireme), 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

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 would have looked like 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 compliment 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, the place where a ram would most likely hit. There are are records of a counter-tactic to this used by Rhodian ship commanders to trim down the 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 achieve 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 compliments 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 compliments and more men per oar, a technique that required less skill, resulted in lowered mobility and was not 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 first 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 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 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 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

• Anderson, Roger Charles, Oared fighting ships: From classical times to the coming of steam. London. 1962.
• Bamford, Paul W., Fighting ships and prisons : the Mediterranean Galleys of France in the Age of Louis XIV. Cambridge University Press, London. 1974. ISBN 0-8166-0655-2
• Basch, L. & Frost, H. Another Punic wreck off Sicily: its ram International journal of Nautical Archaeology vol 4.2, 201-228, 1975
• Bass, George F. (editor), A History of Seafaring, Thames & Hudson, 1972
• Capulli, Massimo: Le Navi della Serenissima - La Galea Veneziana di Lazise. Marsilio Editore, Venezia, 2003.
• Casson, Lionel, "Galley Slaves" in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35-44
• Casson, Lionel, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, Princeton University Press, 1971
• Casson, Lionel, "The Age of the Supergalleys" in Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times, University of Texas Press, 1994. ISBN 029271162X[3], pp. 78-95
• Guilmartin, John Francis, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, London. 1974. ISBN 0-521-20272-8
• Hattendorf, John B. & Unger, Richard W. (editors), War at Sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Woodbridge, Suffolk. 2002. ISBN 0-85115-903-6[4]
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  • Doumerc, Bernard, "An Exemplary Maritime Republic: Venice at the End of the Middle Ages", pp. 151-65
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  • Glete, Jan, "Naval Power and Control of the Sea in the Baltic in the Sixteenth Century", pp. 215-32
  • Hattendorf, John B., "Theories of Naval Power: A. T. Mahan and the Naval History of Medieval and Renaissance Europe", pp. 1-22
  • Mott, Lawrence V., "Iberian Naval Power, 1000-1650", pp. 103-118
  • Pryor, John H., "Byzantium and the Sea: Byzantine Fleets and the History of the Empire in the Age of the Macedonian Emperors, c. 900-1025 CE", pp. 83-104
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• Hutchinson, Gillian, Medieval Ships and Shipping. Leicester University Press, London. 1997. ISBN 0-7185-0117-9
• Lehmann, L. Th., Galleys in the Netherlands. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam. 1984. ISBN 90-290-1854-2
• Morrison, John S. & Gardiner, Robert (editors), The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times. Conway Maritime, London, 1995. ISBN 0-85177-554-3
  • Alertz, Ulrich, "The Naval Architecture and Oar Systems of Medieval and Later Galleys", pp. 142-62
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  • Casson, Lionel, "Merchant Galleys", pp. 117-26
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  • Dotson, John E, "Economics and Logistics of Galley Warfare", pp. 217-23
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• Mallett, Michael E., The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century, Oxford, 1967
• Morrison, John S. & Coates, John F., The Athenian Trireme: the History and Reconstruction of An Ancient Greek Warship. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2000. ISBN
• Template:Sv Norman, Hans (editor), Skärgårdsflottan: uppbyggnad, militär användning och förankring i det svenska samhället 1700-1824. Historiska media, Lund. 2000. ISBN 91-88930-50-5
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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