Galliformes

“ Romans to haul their galleys ashore nearly every night. Again, we must bear in mind that the Roman or Greek war vessel was primarily a rowing boat and not a sailing ship, and that mast and sail were always lowered before going into battle. Yet, for all that, the Greek vases bearing pictures of war galleys still show the Egyptian stern. But when we come to consider the Greek and Roman merchant ships, we find the Egyptian stern and a modified Egyptian bow unmistakably present. And we must remember that the merchant ships were primarily sailing ships and only used their oars as auxiliaries. ”

“ I have come across a galley drifting idly before the wind, with all her crew, a grim row of skeletons, hanging in a row along her yard, and swinging this way and that, and rattling drearily against the sail and each other in melancholy unison with the listless wallow of their vessel. At another time, a Roman trireme fell upon a big pirate of Melita and stormed and captured her. The three hundred men on board were too ugly and wicked to sell, so the Romans drove them overboard like sheep, and burned the boat. ”

“ Indeed, the ancients practised this art with the greatest care, and the rowers were frequently exercised on benches erected on the shore, and their harmonious movements were sometimes made an object of display in their theatres. In nearly every case they plied their oars to the sound of either vocal or instrumental music, so that a fleet of the larger description of galleys, when under way on the smooth waters of the Levant, must have been, as various ancient authors describe, a heart-stirring and magnificent display. ”

“ But the long ship was always some sort of galley, which, as we have seen repeatedly, depended on its oars and used sails only occasionally, and then not in action, while the round ship was built to carry cargo and to go under sail. The Italian naval architects, then the most scientific in the world, were trying to evolve two types of vessel: one that could act as light cavalry on the wings of a galley fleet, the other that could carry big cargoes safely through the pirate-haunted seas. In both types sail power and fighting power were essential. ”

“ If this view is correct, the ancient warship was a galley with a single row of long oars on either side, and three men pulling together each heavy oar. We know that in the old navies of the Papal States and the Republics of Venice and Genoa in the Middle Ages and the days of the Renaissance, and in the royal galleys of the old French monarchy, there were no ships with superposed banks of oars, but there were galleys known as "triremes," "quadriremes," and "pentaremes," driven by long oars each worked by three, four, or five rowers. ”

“ The Palaeolithic Age, says the professor, ‘was continental, the Neolithic insular in North-Western Europe.’1589 He means that in the Palaeolithic Age Great Britain was an outlying part of the Continent, and that the neolithic invaders had to sail across the Channel.1590 But why should the formation of the Channel have extinguished the palaeolithic race? ‘There is obviously,’ continues the professor, ‘a great gulf fixed between the rude hunter civilisation of the one and the agricultural and pastoral civilisation of the other.’ Obviously. ”

“ When the first light of history dawns upon the Gallic race, we find them settled in that territory which is bounded by the Rhine, the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, and the ocean, and in the British isles. There they lived, leading a pastoral life, wandering about from place to place, and ready to descend with their flocks and herds wherever cupidity might lead, or fancy direct them. They first turned their footsteps towards Spain; tribe after tribe crossed the Pyrenees, and either expelled or amalgamated with the aboriginal inhabitants. ”

“ The king has many gallies, an hundred, as I think, some of them so large as to carry four hundred men. These are all made like wherries, very long, narrow, and open, without deck, forecastle, or poop, or any upper works whatever. Instead of oars, they have paddles, about four feet long, made like shovels, which they hold in their hands, not resting them on the gunwales, or in row-locks, as we do. The gallies have no ordnance; yet with these he holds all his neighbours under subjection. His admiral is a woman, as he trusts no man with that high office. ”

“ Up to this point, in making out how the simpler kinds of boats came into existence, history gives no help. Not only does their origin mostly lie beyond record, but by the time we come fairly into history we find the ancient nations knowing how to build vessels of more advanced order, framed with keel and ribs, and sheathed with nailed planks, in fact the direct predecessors of our own ships. Egypt, or somewhere else in that Old World region of ancient culture, may have been the original centre whence the higher shipwrights’ craft spread over the world. ”

“ A week later, in a strait between two islands like tinted clouds, we fought a very great galleon from sunrise to noon, pierced her hull through and through and silenced her ordnance, then boarded her and found a king’s ransom in gold and silver. When the fighting had ceased and the treasure was ours, then we four stood side by side on the deck of the slowly sinking galleon, in front of our prisoners—of the men who had fought well, of the ashen priests and the trembling women. ”

“ The galley has always been the type of business ship on the Mediterranean. All through the classical wars the rowing galley was the mainstay of power. The Homeric catalogue of ships, the Phœnician coinage, the Assyrian sculptures, the Greek fleets, the Carthaginian navy and its destroyers of Rome, the pirates of Liburnia and Lycia, down to the Venetian fleet and the French galleys of a couple of centuries ago, all show the dominance of the oar. ”

“ In Germany and France, where diplomatics, or the art of deciphering charters and the like, and of discriminating the genuine from the false, have for many years been regarded as a science, the subject of seals, which constitutes so important a branch of it, has received a corresponding share of attention, and their history and characteristics have been discussed in a manner unparalleled in this country. [2] But the seals which have been studied by the foreign diplomatists have been chiefly those of sovereigns and the higher orders of the nobility and clergy ”

“ After the conquest of Phoenicia, they had knowledge of Phoenician naval enterprise, and accordingly we find the war galley of the Phoenicians represented on the walls of the palaces unearthed by Layard and his followers in Assyrian discovery. But the date does not carry us to an earlier period than 700 B.C. The vessel represented is a bireme war galley which is “aphract,” that is to say, has the upper tier of rowers unprotected and exposed to view. The apertures for the lower oars are of the same character as those which appear in Egyptian ships of a much earlier date, but without oars. ”

“ If we exact these qualifications as essential, armory as a fact and as a science is a product of later days, and is the evolution from the idea of tribal badges and tribal means and methods of honour applied to the decoration of implements of warfare. It is the conjunction and association of these two distinct ideas to which is added the no less important idea of heredity. The civilisation of England before the Conquest has left us no trace of any sort or kind that the Saxons, the Danes, or the Celts either knew or practised armory. ”

“ Next to the big ships, or galleons as they were called, were four galleasses, each carrying fifty guns and 450 soldiers and sailors, and rowed by 300 slaves. Besides these were four galleys, fifty-six great armed merchant ships, the finest Spain possessed, and twenty caravels or small vessels. Thus the fighting fleet amounted to 129 vessels, carrying in all 2430 cannon. On board was stored an enormous quantity of provisions for the use of the army after it landed in England, there being sufficient to feed 40,000 men for six months. ”

“ Under Henry VIII. Italians were brought in largely to serve both as seamen and shipbuilders, but by that time a larger class of vessel and a more extensive art of seamanship had begun to prevail. The galley, as has been already said, has never been found to answer in the Channel, and its brief appearances there have been of little note. For the classes of vessels he mainly used, that is, ships which might take to the oar as a subsidiary resource, but relied chiefly on the sail, the king could find men in abundance among his own subjects. ”

“ One of the important reasons for the north European interest in ships had come about as a result of the discovery of the New World and, with that, the discovery that the world was actually round. That dynamic age now often called the age of discovery opened up new lands that lent themselves to colonization, and because Europe was filled with energy and was in a proper frame of mind to take advantage of the opportunity, important colonies sprang up in the Americas, in the Pacific, and in Africa. ”

“ If they do not serve, it is impossible to maintain galleys here, because there are no other people to row. What I have been able to accomplish is that the Indians are to remain on the galleys until your Majesty shall advise me of the plan which you are pleased to adopt. I have manned one of the galleys with four hundred Çambales, who were captured in war. They were given to me by some captains and soldiers, and I have used them in your Majesty's service. ”

“ If you agree to give up to me your galliot, and the cargo of the Ionian schooner, I have no objection to your sending a supercargo of your own to Zante on board the Ionian vessel, nor that your galliot should go there under Greek colours, and manned by her own crew, provided both sail under my custody. If the authorities at Zante conceive you had a right to capture this vessel, you well know that both she and her cargo, as well as your own galliot, will be returned to you. ”

“ In their gloomy country of the north, however, the Franks find neither sunshine nor good wine, nor fine weapons, nor brilliant clothes, nor gold and silver goblets, nor large and well built cities, nor superb palaces, nor beautiful Gallic women—all these things are to be found among you, Gallic dogs! ”

“ From this place they could not see the Gallic fleet, anchored at the furthest part of the bay at almost two leagues' distance, and screened from all eyes by a lofty promontory.
"Now," said Albinik to the interpreter, "We now run only one danger; it is a great one. Before us are shifting sandbanks, occasionally displaced by the high tides; the galleys might ground there. It is necessary, then, that I reconnoitre the passage plummet in hand, before bringing the fleet into it. Let them rest as they are on their oars. Order the smallest boat your galley has to be launched, with two rowers. ”

“ Being got about thirty Days' voyage towards Smyrna, where I design'd to make my Escape, we espied seven or eight Venetian Gallies at Anchor under the Shoar. The Turks had a great Tooth for these Gallies, but knew not how to come to them, not being able to adventure so far as Gallies safely may. At length they consulted, being fifteen Ships in number, to hoist French Colours. ”

“ Comparing with the Egyptian vessels the ancient galleys and ships of the Mediterranean, whether Phœnician, Greek, or Roman, it is impossible to think these can have come into existence by separate lines of invention; the family likeness among them is too strong. ”

“ This was granted them on very severe terms: all the cities and provinces which they possessed in Africa previously to the war, they were indeed permitted to retain, but they were stripped of Spain, and of all the islands in the Mediterranean; all their ships of war, except ten galleys, were to be delivered up to the Romans; and, for the future, they were not to maintain above that number at one time: even the size of their fishing boats and of their trading vessels was regulated. In the course of fifty years ten thousand talents were to be paid to the Romans. ”

“ It was now Lord Lisle's turn to act on the offensive. In calms and light airs the French galleys had an advantage over him; in a strong breeze the galleys were useless; and the massive and ably-manned English ships might compensate, with their size and the weight of metal which they carried, for their inferiority in numbers. ”

“ There the great Galleons took aboard the gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, spices, and woods, as well as cargoes of slaves, then sailed away with them across the Spanish Main.
But gold breeds robbers. And along the coast and on the Caribbean Sea, swarmed pirate ships waiting to swoop down upon the Galleons. Oftentimes, buccaneers grappled with the Treasure-Ships, putting the Spaniards to the knife, and carrying off the booty to their pirate-islands. ”

“ And it has been very much suspected that Ships have loaded with Provisions at the English Colonies, on pretence of Trading on the Coast of Africa, when they have in reality been consigned to them; and tho’ a shew of Violence is offered to them when they meet, yet they are pretty sure of bringing their Cargo to a good Market. ”

“ This gallant exploit appears to be the last naval enterprise of the Anglo-Saxons. The arts of navigation, by which they had acquired the empire of Britain and of the sea, were soon neglected by the indolent Barbarians, who supinely renounced all the commercial advantages of their insular situation. Seven [164] independent kingdoms were agitated by perpetual discord; and the British world was seldom connected, either in peace or war, with the nations of the continent. ”