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Galleys

THE galley was one of the earliest types of vessel. Its existence antedates all historical records. Oars were its principal dependence for motive power, and sail was originally employed only with a favouring breeze. Its form was primarily long and narrow as best suited for propulsion by rowers. Its simplicity of form has been one of its chief reasons of permanency. Jal, whose name will be often used and from whose writings liberal quotations will be made in this work, in his "Glossoire Nautique" devotes several pages to the presumptive derivation of the word "galley"-gallee, in the old French, modern French galere; and after dismissing several sources as ridiculous, gives as the most satisfactory origin, the Greek word <??> meaning a rowing vessel.

As distinguished from the ancient round ship whose proportions were about two and one half to three times as long as it was wide, the proportion of the length of the galley to its breadth or beam was as five, six, seven, eight, or even as nine is to one.

As oars gradually displaced paddles and the size of rowing vessels increased, it became necessary to extend the fulcrum so as to facilitate the employment of longer oars. For this purpose an outboard platform or gallery called "apostis" was constructed along the side of the vessel. It provided also a greater space for free circulation along the longitudinal axis of the craft inboard from the oarsmen, as well as for the more convenient and useful disposition of the rowing benches.

This arrangement was chiefly employed in the galleys of the southern European countries. The gallery or apostis seems not to have been adopted generally in northern ships. The loose-footed square sail, extended upon the single yard of early times, was later replaced by one or two lateen sails and it is in this form that we trace the galley to the date of its practical disappearance from Mediterranean waters in the late 18th Century, although a few specimens seem to have survived until as late as 1805. The speed of the galley when rowed and the fact that it could manoeuvre in a calm made it the chief instrument of naval warfare from the most remote past until a considerable time after the use of gunpowder by the Western World. The early galleys of the Mediterranean countries, armed with their deadly metal or metal-sheathed beaks, and propelled by scores of oars in the hands of highly trained and well-disciplined rowers, sought to gain their first advantage by ramming their adversaries. The shock of the impact was terrific and often must have been almost as disastrous to the attacker as to the attacked. When this coup failed, boarding was resorted to. Extending from the vessel's side the apostis offered a more easy access to the attacking forces. The ancient Roman galleys had wooden drawbridges raised vertically upon the sides so arranged that they could be dropped upon the deck of an enemy. Spikes extending from the under side, striking with the full force of the weight of the falling structure, effectively grappled or fastened together the two contending vessels and provided the means of engagement in a body-to-body combat. Military tops, after the yards had been lowered (for these vessels almost always furled sail before engaging), gave a position from which darts, stones, and flaming liquids could be projected down the enemy's decks. The carnage in these ancient sea fights was frightful.

Much nonsense has been written concerning the supposed arrangements of the oars in the larger ancient galleys. And it is one of the curious commentaries upon either the accuracy of the descriptive powers of the ancient writers or upon the apparent lack of understanding of their subsequent translators and would-be elucidators, that the question has never been satisfactorily settled. Many ingenious theories have been advanced, some ludicrously impossible from purely physical standpoints.

It is not the intention to discuss here any of these attempted explanations or to comment upon the etymological and grammatical discussions upon which most of them are based, but it may be safely stated that not more than two rows of oars could be successfully superposed vertically on separate decks. Recent opinion is that the trireme, the war vessel most employed in early times by the Mediterranean nations, and the most highly developed, was operated by oars extending from the vessel's side in groups or sets of three, emerging from practically the same oar port or opening and operated against three separate thole pins, or through openings separated by not more than a foot in the horizontal plane, each successively higher by a few inches. Such an arrangement applied to a bireme may be seen in the pediment of that masterpiece of classic sculpture known as the Winged Victory of Samothrace. In said pediment, two depressions each about eight inches long by three inches high show where the oar blades were intended to be thrust through the openings in the overhang of the apostis. This plan might have been developed to the limit of its physical possibilities. The theory is plausible and offers an explanation to many supposed and actual difficulties, besides being easily reconciled, it is claimed, with many of the more baffling points in the texts of the ancient writers. Be this as it may, the form of galley which we know from reliable pictorial descriptions and from actual examples, the galley of almost our own day, had only one row of oars all in the same place. But the galley had the deficiencies of its merits. Its low freeboard and length made it a poor sea vessel, for it is obvious that such a long hull demanded a wide arc for turning. It could only be effectively used in comparatively calm weather. It was strictly a coastwise vessel, and although long voyages in the open sea were sometimes engaged in, such was not the usual course of its employment. When the advance of naval science and the use of firearms changed all the canons of naval warfare, the galleys still lingered for a time, useful as the scouts or eyes of the fleet. But soon the further improvement of hulls, sails, and rigging robbed them of even this function, and their last principal employment was almost as ignoble as their early career had been glorious. They were used chiefly as the means of providing a safe repository for criminals where the physical powers of these unfortunate creatures could, through their labours at the oars, be turned to the advantage of the State.