Galley: Encyclopedia II - Galley - Later galleys

Galley - Later galleys

Galley - 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.

Galley - 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.

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.

Galley - 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Later galleys", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki