Galley
From Free net encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Galley (disambiguation).
Image:Willaerts, Galley and men of war.jpg The term galley can refer to any ship propelled primarily by man-power, using oars. Most galleys also use masts and sails as a secondary means of propulsion.
Various types of galleys dominated naval warfare in the Mediterranean from the time of Homer to the development of effective naval gunnery around the 15th and 16th centuries. Galleys fought in the wars of ancient Persia, Greece, Carthage and Rome until the 4th century. After the fall of the Roman Empire, galleys saw continued, if somewhat reduced, use by the Byzantine Empire and other successors, as well as by the new Muslim states. Medieval Mediterranean states (notably the Italian maritime republics like Venice, Pisa, Genoa) revived the use of galleys from the 14th century until the ocean-going man of war rendered them obsolete. The Battle of Lepanto (1571) proved one of the largest naval battles in which the galley played the principal part. Galleys continued in mainstream use until the introduction of the broadside sailing ship into the Mediterranean in the 17th Century and then continued to function in minor and auxiliary roles until the advent of steam propulsion.
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Ancient galleys
The first galleys
Galleys travelled the Mediterranean from perhaps 3000 BC. The Greeks and Phoenicians built and operated the first known ships to navigate the Mediterranean: merchant vessels with square-rigged sails. The first military vessels, as described in the works of Homer and represented in paintings, had a single row of oarsmen along each side (in addition to the sail) to provide speed and manoeuvrability.
Early sailors had very little in the way of navigational tools. Compasses did not come in to use for navigation until the 13th century AD, and the development of sextants, octants and accurate chronometers, together with the mathematics required to determine longitude and latitude, had to wait until considerably later. Ancient sailors navigated by means of the sun and of the prevailing wind. By the first millennium BC they had started using the stars to navigate at night. But if blown out of sight of land then they became lost. The implications for ship design meant that manoeuvrability remained paramount for coast-hugging and threading through archipelagos, while reliable (non-wind-based) speed became a sine qua non for daylight expeditions across open water. Massed oars provided the optimal technological solution to the problems.
Penteconters
The development of the ram in about 800 BC changed the nature of naval warfare, which had until that point involved boarding and hand-to-hand fighting. Now a more manoeuvrable ship could render a slower ship useless by staving in its sides. Some doubt exists as to whether the winners in naval encounters usually sank defeated galleys. The Greek word for "sunk" can also mean "waterlogged", and reports survive of victorious galleys towing the defeated ship away after a battle. The paucity of archaeological remains of sunken ships, in comparison with the abundance of galleys according to the writings of contemporaries, provides further evidence that victors may not have commonly sunk defeated ships.
Building an efficient galley posed difficult technical problems. A ship travelling at high speed creates a bow-wave and has to expend considerable energy climbing this wave instead of increasing its speed. The longer the ship, the faster it can travel before this effect hampers it, but the available technology in the ancient Mediterranean made long ships difficult to construct. Through a process of trial and error, the monoreme — a galley with one row of oars on each side — reached the peak of its development in the penteconter, about 38 m long, with 25 oarsmen on each side. Historians believe that it could reach speeds of about 9 knots (18 km/h), only a knot or so slower than modern rowed racing-boats. The penteconter's size required that its builders stretch cables between the bow and stern to distribute the stress evenly.
Biremes and Triremes
Main article: Trireme
Around the 7th or 6th century BC the design of galleys changed. Shipbuilders, probably first in Phoenicia, added a second row of oars above the first, creating the biere or bireme (although probably neither term was used at the time). They copied the idea from the Phoenicians (seafaring people who lived on the southern and eastern coasts of the mediteranean). Very soon afterwards, a third row of oars was added. These new galleys became known as trieres ("three-fitted";) in Greek; the Romans called this design the triremis (in English, "trireme"). The origin of these changes remains uncertain; Thucydides attributes the innovation to the boat-builder Aminocles of Corinth in about 700 BC, but some scholars distrust this and suggest that the design came from Phoenicia. Herodotus (484 BC - ca. 425 BC) provides the first mention of triremes in action: he mentions that Polycrates, tyrant of Samos from 535 BC to 515 BC, had triremes in his fleet in 539 BC.
The early 5th century BC saw a conflict between the city-states of Greece and the expansionist Persian Empire under Darius (reigned 521 - 485 BC) and Xerxes (reigned 485 - 465 BC), who hired ships from their Phoenician satrapies.
The Athenians defeated the first invasion force on land at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, but saw the waging of land battles against the more numerous Persians as hopeless in the long term. When news came that Xerxes had started to amass an enormous invasion force in Asia Minor, the Greek cities expanded their navies: in 482 BC the Athenian ruler Themistocles started a programme for the construction of 200 triremes. The project must have met with considerable success, as 150 Athenian triremes reputedly saw action in the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC and participated in the defeat of Xerxes' invasion fleet there.
Triremes fought in the naval battles of the Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 BC), including the Battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC, which sealed the defeat of the Athenian Empire by Sparta and her allies.
Quinqueremes and polyremes
Main article: Quinquereme
In the 4th century BC, after the Peloponnesian War, navies experienced a shortage of oarsmen of sufficient skill to man large numbers of triremes. The search for designs of galley that would allow oarsmen to use muscle-power instead of skill led Dionysius of Syracuse (ruled 405 - 367 BC) to build tetreres (quadriremes) and penteres (quinqueremes).
According to modern historians, the numbers used to describe these larger galleys counted the number of rows of men on each side, and not the numbers of oars. Thus quadriremes had three possible designs: one row of oars with four men on each oar, two rows of oars with two men on each oar or three rows of oars with two men pulling the top oars on each side. Probably galleys of all three designs existed. Scholars believe that quinqueremes had three rows of oars, with two men pulling each of the top two oars.
Along with the change in galley design came an increased reliance on tactics such as boarding and as using warships as platforms for artillery. In the wars of the Diadochi (322 - 281 BC), the successors to the empire of Alexander the Great built bigger and bigger galleys. Macedon in 340 BC built sexiremes (probably with two men on each of three oars) and in 315 BC septiremes, which saw action at the Battle of Salamis in Cyprus (306 BC). Demetrius I of Macedon (reigned 294 - 288 BC), involved in a naval war with Ptolemy of Egypt (reigned 323 - 283 BC), built eights (octeres), nines, tens, twelves and finally sixteens!
Triremes and smaller vessels continued in use, however. Light versions called liburnians served as auxiliary vessels, and proved quite effective against the heavier ships thanks to their greater manoeuvrability. In the last great naval battle of the ancient world, at Actium in 31 BC, Octavian's lighter and more manoeuvrable ships defeated Antony's heavy fleet. After that, with the Roman Empire in charge of the entire Mediterranean, large fighting navies became redundant. By AD 325 no more galleys with multiple rows of oars existed.
Image:Galere-Pierre Puget 1655.png
Later galleys
Medieval galleys in northern Europe
A development of the Viking longships and knaars, north European galleys, clinker-built, used a square sail and rows of oars, and looked very like their Norse predecessors.
In the waters off the west of Scotland between 1263 and 1500, the Lords of the Isles used galleys both for warfare and for transport around their maritime domain, which included the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, the Hebrides, and Antrim in Ireland. They employed these ships for sea-battles and for attacking castles or forts built close to the sea. As a feudal superior, the Lord of the Isles required the service of a specified number and size of galleys from each holding of land. Examples include the Isle of Man, which had to provide six galleys of 26 oars; and Sleat in Skye, which had to provide an 18-oar galley.
Carvings of galleys on tombstones from 1350 onwards show the construction of these boats. From the 14th century, they abandoned a steering-oar in favour of a stern rudder, with a straight stern to suit. From a document of 1624, a galley proper would have 18 to 24 oars, a birlinn 12 to 18 oars and a lymphad fewer still.
The Renaissance
Galleys saw a European comeback in the 14th century as Venice expanded its influence in the Mediterranean in response to increased Turkish naval presence after 1470, but medieval triremes used a simpler arrangement with one row of oars and three rowers to each oar.
The galleass or "galliass" (known as a "mahon" in Turkey) developed from large merchant galleys which were no longer profitable after the introduction of "round ships" (sailing ships which were the precursor of the galleon type). As converted for military use they were higher and larger than regular ("light") galleys, and mounted a large number (around 50) guns, mostly along the sides interspersed with the oars, and pointing forward. They had as many as thirty-two oars, each worked by up to 5 men. They usually carried three masts and had a forecastle and aftcastle. Much effort was made in Venice to make these galleasses as fast as they could be so they could compete with regular galleys. The gun-deck usually ran over the rowers' heads, although pictures showing the opposite arrangement exist. Galleasses usually carried more sails than true galleys, and were far deadlier; a galley caught broadside lay all but helpless, but coming broadside to a galleass, as with a ship of the line, merely exposed an attacker to her gunfire. The galleass exemplified an intermediate type between the galley and the true man-of-war. Relatively few galleasses were built - one disadvantage was that, being more reliant on sails, their position at the front of the galley line at the start of a battle could not be guaranteed - but they featured at the Battle of Lepanto (7 October 1571), their firepower helping to win victory for the Christian fleet, and some sufficiently seaworthy galleasses accompanied the Spanish Armada in 1588. In the Mediterranean, with its shallower waters, less dangerous weather and fickle winds, galleasses and galleys alike continued in use, particularly in Venice and Turkey, long after they became regarded as obsolete elsewhere. Later, "round ships" and galleasses were replaced by galleons and ships of the line which originated in northern Europe. The first Venetian ship of the line was built in 1660.
The galliot emerged as a small, light type of galley. The number of oars or sweeps varied, the larger galley having twenty-five on each side.
Galley slaves
For ancient galley designs, with each rower being solely responsible for managing one oar, rowing was a skilled job, performed by trained volunteers. If, in times of need, it became necessary to use slaves, these were typically freed and trained first. However, for later designs, with 3 to 7 people handling one oar, individual skill mattered less, and it became possible to use slaves and even a leash.
It became the custom among the Mediterranean powers to sentence condemned criminals to row in the war-galleys of the state (initially only in time of war). Traces of this practice appear in France as early as 1532, but the first legislative enactment comes in the Ordonnance d'Orléans of 1561. In 1564 Charles IX of France forbade the sentencing of prisoners to the galleys for fewer than ten years. A brand of the letters GAL identified the condemned galley-slaves. King Louis XIV, who wanted a bigger fleet, ordered that the courts should sentence men to the galleys as often as possible, even in times of peace; he even sought to transform the death penalty to sentencing to the galleys for life.
By the end of the reign of Louis XIV of France in 1715 the use of the galley for war purposes had practically ceased, but the French Navy did not incorporate the corps of the galleys until 1748. From the reign of Henry IV (dies 1610), Toulon functioned as a naval military port, Marseille having become a merchant port, and served as the headquarters of the galleys and of the convict rowers (galériens). After the incorporation of the galleys, the system sent the majority of these latter to Toulon, the others to Rochefort and to Brest, where they worked in the arsenal. Convict rowers also went to a large number of other French and non-French cities: Nice, Le Havre, Nimes, Lorient, Cherbourg, Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, La Spezia, Anvers and Civitavecchia; but Toulon, Brest and Rochefort predominated. At Toulon the convicts remained (in chains) on the galleys, which were moored as hulks in the harbour. Their shore prisons had the name bagnes ("baths"), a name given to such penal establishments first by the Italians (bagno), and allegedly deriving from the prison at Constantinople situated close by or attached to the great baths there. All French convicts continued to use the name galérien even after galleys went out of use; only after the French Revolution did the new authorities officially change the hated name — with all it signified — to forçat. The use of the term galérien nevertheless continued until 1873, when the last bagne in France (as opposed to the bagnes relocated to French Guyana), the bagne of Toulon, closed definitively. In Spain, the word galera continued in use as late as the early 19th century for a criminal condemned to penal servitude.
A vivid account of the life of galley-slaves in France appears in Jean Marteilhes's Memoirs of a Protestant, translated by Oliver Goldsmith, which describes the experiences of one of the Huguenots who suffered after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Galley-slaves lived in unsavoury conditions, so even though some sentences prescribed a restricted number of years, most rowers would eventually die, even if they survived shipwreck and slaughter or torture at the hands of enemies or of pirates. All naval forces often turned 'infidel' prisoners-of-war into galley-slaves.
The last galleys
The 15th century saw the development of the man-of-war, a truly ocean-going warship, carrying advanced sails that permitted tacking into the wind, and heavily armed with cannon. The man-of-war eventually rendered the galley obsolete except for operations close to shore in calm weather.
Galleys made their final appearance in a Mediterranean battle in the Battle of Chesma in 1770; they lingered on in the shallow Baltic Sea and took part in the Russo-Swedish War in 1790. In America they were used in the Battle of Valcour Island in 1776.
References
- Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, Princeton University Press, 1971.
- Brian Lavery, Maritime Scotland, B T Batsford Ltd., 2001, ISBN 0-7134-8520-5ca:La Galera
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