A galley is a type of ship optimised for propulsion by oars. Galleys were historically used for warfare, trade, and piracy mostly in the seas surrounding Europe. It developed in the Mediterranean world during antiquity and continued to exist in various forms until the early 19th century. It typically had a long, slender hull, shallow draft, and often a low freeboard. Most types of galleys also had sails that could be used in favourable winds, but they relied primarily on oars to move independently of winds and currents or in battle. The term "galley" originated from a Greek term for a small type of galley and came in use in English from about 1300. It has occasionally been used for unrelated vessels with similar military functions as galley but which were not Mediterranean in origin, such as medieval Scandinavian longships, 16th-century Acehnese ghalis and 18th-century North American gunboats. Galleys were the primary warships used by the ancient Mediterranean naval powers, including the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. The galley remained the dominant type of vessel used for war and piracy in the Mediterranean Sea until the start of the early modern period. A final revival of galley warfare occurred during the 18th century in the Baltic Sea during the wars between Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. In the Mediterranean, they remained in use until the very end of the 18th century, and survived in part because of their prestige and association with chivalry and land warfare. In war, galleys were used in landing raids, as troop transports and were very effective in amphibious warfare. While they usually served in wars or for defense against piracy, galleys also served as trade vessels for high-priority or expensive goods up to the end of the Middle Ages. Its oars guaranteed that it could make progress where a sailing ship would have been becalmed, and its large crew could defend it against attacks from pirates and raiders. This also made it one of the safest and most reliable forms of passenger transport, especially for Christian pilgrims during the High and Late Middle Ages. For naval combat, galleys were equipped with various weapons: rams and occasionally catapults until late antiquity, Greek fire during the Early Middle Ages, and cannons from the 15th century. However, they relied primarily on their large crews to overpower enemy vessels through boarding. Galleys were the first vessels to effectively use heavy gunpowder artillery against other ships and naval fortifications. Early 16th-century galleys had heavy guns in the bow which were aimed by manoeuvring the entire vessel. Initially, gun galleys posed a serious threat to sailing warships, but were gradually made obsolete by the development of full-rigged ships with superior broadside armament. Galleys were unsuitable in the wider ocean, far from land and bases of resupply. They had difficulty in rough weather. Their role as flexible cruisers and patrol craft in the Mediterranean was also taken over by xebecs and other oar-sail hybrids. Oars on ancient galleys were usually arranged in 15–30 pairs, from monoremes with a single line of oars to triremes with three lines of oars in a tiered arrangement. Occasionally, much larger polyremes had multiple rowers per oar and hundreds of rowers per galley. Ancient shipwrights built galleys using a labour-intensive, shell-first mortise and tenon technique up until the Early Middle Ages. It was gradually replaced by a less expensive skeleton-first carvel method. The rowing setup was also simplified and eventually developed into a system called alla sensile with up to three rowers sharing a single bench, handling one oar each. This was suitable for skilled, professional rowers. This was further simplified to the a scaloccio method with rowers sharing a bench but using just a single large oar, sometimes with up to seven or more rowers per oar in the very largest war galleys. This method was more suitable for the use of forced labour, both galley slaves and convicts. Most galleys were equipped with sails that could be used when the wind was favourable: basic square sails until the Early Middle Ages and later lateen sails.
Etymology The word galley has been attested in English from about 1300. Variants of the same term were established in many other European languages from around 1500 both as a general term for oared warships or more specifically for the Mediterranean-style vessel. The term derives from the Medieval Greek galea, a smaller version of the dromon, the prime warship of the Byzantine navy. The origin of the Greek word is unclear but could possibly be related to galeos, the Greek word for dogfish shark.
Terminology Throughout history, there has been a wide variety of terms used for different types of galleys. In modern historical literature, a galley is defined as a vessel relying primarily on oars, but which can also use sails when necessary, and which developed in the Mediterranean. "Galley" is also occasionally used as a generic term for any type of oared vessels that are larger than boats and with similar functions but which are built according to other shipbuilding traditions. It was only from the Late Middle Ages that a unified galley concept started to come into use. Ancient galleys were named according to the number of oars, the number of banks of oars or rows of rowers. The terms are based on contemporary language use combined with recent compounds of Greek and Latin words. The earliest Greek single-banked galleys are called triaconters (from triakontoroi, "thirty-oars") and penteconters (pentēkontoroi, "fifty-oars"). For later galleys with more than one bank of oars, the terminology is based on Latin numerals with the suffix -reme from rēmus, "oar". A monoreme has one bank of oars, a bireme two, and a trireme three. A human-powered oared vessel is not practically feasible as four or more oars to a bank will either interfere with each other, or be too high above the waterline to be practicable. In describing galleys, any number higher than three did not refer to banks of oars, but to additional rowers per oar. Quinquereme (quintus + rēmus) was literally a "five-oar", but actually meant that there were more than one rower per oar in a bireme or trireme arrangement. For simplicity, many modern scholars refer to these as "fives", "sixes", "eights", "elevens", etc. Anything above six or seven rows of rowers was uncommon, but even an entirely unique "forty" has been attested from the 3rd century BC. Any galley with more than three or four lines of rowers is often referred to as a "polyreme". Medieval and early modern galleys were described based on the changing designs that evolved after the ancient designs and rowing arrangement had been forgotten. Among the most important is the Byzantine dromon, the predecessor to the Italian galea sottile, the final form of the Mediterranean war galley. As galleys became an integral part of an advanced, early modern system of warfare and state administration, they were divided into a number of ranked grades based on the size of the vessel and the number of its crew. The most basic types were the large commander "lantern galleys", half-galleys, galiots, fustas, brigantines, and fregatas. Naval historian Jan Glete has described these as a sort of predecessor of the later rating system of the Royal Navy and other sailing fleets in Northern Europe.
Similar oared vessels
Classicist Lionel Casson has applied the term "galley" to oared Viking ships of the Early and High Middle Ages, both their well known longship warships and their less familiar merchant galleys. Oared military vessels built on the British Isles in the 11th to 13th centuries were based on Scandinavian designs, but were referred to as "galleys" because of the similarity in function. Many of them were similar to birlinns (a smaller version of the Highland galley), close relatives of longship types like the snekkja. By the 14th century, they were replaced with balingers in southern Britain while longship-type Highland and Irish galleys and birlinns remained in use throughout the Middle Ages in northern Britain. The French navy and the Royal Navy built a series of "galley frigates" from around 1670–1690 that were small two-decked sailing cruisers with a single row of oarports on the lower deck, close to the waterline. The three British galley frigates also had distinctive names – James Galley, Charles Galley, and Mary Galley. In the late 18th century, the term "galley" was sometimes used to describe small oared gun-armed vessels. In North America, during the American Revolutionary War and other wars with France and Britain, the early US Navy and the navies they fought built vessels that were referred to "galleys" or "row galleys". These are today best described as brigantines or Baltic-style gunboats. The North American "galleys" were classified based on their military role, and in part due to technicalities in administration and naval financing. In the latter part of the 19th century, the Royal Navy term for the gig reserved for the captain's use was "galley" even though it was issued to the ship by the navy dockyard as a "gig".
Early history
Among the earliest known watercraft were canoes made from hollowed-out logs, the earliest ancestors of galleys. Their narrow hulls required them to be paddled in a fixed sitting position facing forward, a less efficient form of propulsion than rowing with proper oars, facing backward. Seagoing paddled craft have been attested by finds of terracotta sculptures and lead models in the region of the Aegean Sea from the 3rd millennium BC. However, archaeologists believe that the Stone Age colonization of islands in the Mediterranean around 8,000 BC required larger seaworthy vessels that were paddled and possibly even equipped with sails. The first evidence of more complex craft considered prototypes for later galleys comes from Ancient Egypt during the Old Kingdom (about 2700–2200 BC). Under the rule of pharaoh Pepi I (2332–2283 BC) these vessels were used to transport troops to raid settlements along the Levantine coast and to ship back slaves and timber. During the reign of Hatshepsut (about 1479–1457 BC), Egyptian galleys traded in luxuries on the Red Sea with the enigmatic Land of Punt, as recorded on wall paintings at the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. The first Greek galley-like ships appeared around the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. In the epic poem, the Iliad, set in the 12th century BC, oared vessels with a single row of oarmen were used primarily to transport soldiers between land battles. The first recorded naval battle occurred as early as 1175 BC, the Battle of the Delta between Egyptian forces under Ramesses III and the enigmatic alliance known as the Sea Peoples. It is the first known engagement between organized armed forces using sea vessels as weapons of war, though primarily as fighting platforms. The Phoenicians were among the most significant naval civilizations in early classical antiquity, but little detailed evidence has been found of what kind of ships they used. The best depictions found so far have been small, highly stylized images on seals which illustrate crescent-shaped vessels equipped with a single mast and bank of oars. Colorful frescoes at the Minoan settlement on Santorini (about 1600 BC) depict vessels with tents arranged in a ceremonial procession. Some of the vessels are rowed, but others are paddled. This has been interpreted as a possible ritual reenactment of more ancient types of vessels, alluding to a time before rowing was invented. Little is otherwise known about the use and design of Minoan ships. Mediterranean galleys from around the 9th century BC typically had 15 and 25 pairs of oars ("triaconters" and "penteconters", respectively) with just one level of oars on each side, or "monoremes". Sometime during the 8th century BC the first bireme galleys were built by adding a second level of rowers, one level above the other. This created a second bank of oars, adding more propulsion power with the same length of hull. It made galleys faster, more maneuverable and sturdier. Phoenician shipbuilders were likely the first to build two-level galleys, and bireme designs were soon adopted and further developed by the Greeks. A third bank of oar was added by attaching an outrigger to a bireme. The outrigger was a projecting frame that gave additional leverage for a third rower to handle an oar efficiently. It has been hypothesized that early forms of three-banked ships may have existed as early as 700 BC, but the earliest conclusive written reference dates to 542 BC. These new galleys were called triērēs (literally "three-fitted") in Greek. Romans later applied the term triremis which is the origin of "trireme" and the name used most commonly today.
Trade and travel
Until at least the late 2nd century BC, there was no clear distinction between ships of trade and war other than how they were used. River boats plied the waterways of ancient Egypt during the Old Kingdom (2700–2200 BC) and seagoing galley-like vessels were recorded bringing back luxuries from across the Red Sea in the reign of pharaoh Hatshepsut. When rams or cutwaters were fitted to the bows of warships sometime around 700 BC, it resulted in a more distinct split between warships and trade ships. Phoenicians used galleys for trade that were less elongated, carried fewer oars and relied more on sails. Carthaginian trade galley wrecks found off Sicily that date to the 3rd or 2nd century BC had a length to breadth ratio of 6:1, proportions that fell between the 4:1 of sailing merchant ships and the 8:1 or 10:1 of war galleys. Most of the surviving documentary evidence comes from Greek and Roman shipping, though it is likely that merchant galleys all over the Mediterranean were highly similar. In Greek they were referred to as histiokopos ("sail-oar-er") to reflect that they relied on both types of propulsion. In Latin they were called actuaria (navis), "(ship) that moves", stressing that they were capable of making progress regardless of weather conditions. As an example of the speed and reliability, during an instance of the famous "Carthago delenda est" speech, Cato the Elder demonstrated the close proximity of the Roman arch enemy Carthage by displaying a fresh fig to his audience that he claimed had been picked in North Africa only three days past. Other cargoes carried by galleys were honey, cheese, meat, and live animals intended for gladiator combat. The Romans had several types of merchant galleys that specialized in various tasks, out of which the actuaria with up to 50 rowers was the most versatile, including the phaselus (lit. "bean pod") for passenger transport and the lembus, a small-scale express carrier. Many of these designs continued to be used until the Middle Ages. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire around the 5th century AD, the old Mediterranean economy collapsed and the volume of trade went down drastically. The Eastern Roman Empire neglected to revive overland trade routes, but was dependent on keeping the sea lanes open to keep the empire together. In 600–750 AD bulk trade declined while luxury trade increased. Galleys remained in service, but were profitable mainly in the luxury trade, which set off their high maintenance cost. In the 10th century, there was a sharp increase in piracy which resulted in larger trade ships with more numerous crews. These were mostly built by the growing maritime republics of Italy which were emerging as the dominant sea powers, including Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. Their merchant galleys were similar to dromons, but without heavy weapons and both faster and wider. The largest types were used by Venice, based on galley types like the pamphylon and chelandion. They had tower-like superstructures and could be manned by crews of up to 1,000 men and could be employed in warfare when required. A further boost to the development of the large merchant galleys was the increase in Western European pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. In Northern Europe, Viking longships and their derivations, knarrs, dominated trading and shipping. They functioned and were propelled similar to the Mediterranean galleys, but developed from a separate building tradition.
In the Mediterranean, merchant galleys continued to be used during the High and Late Middle Ages, even as sailing vessels evolved more efficient hulls and rigging. The zenith in the design of merchant galleys came with the state-owned "great galleys" of the Venetian Republic, first built in the 1290s. The great galleys were in all respects larger than contemporary war galleys (up to 46 m) and had a deeper draft, with more room for cargo (140–250 tonnes). With a full complement of rowers ranging from 150 to 180 men, all available to defend the ship from attack, they were also very safe modes of travel. This attracted a business of carrying rich pilgrims to the Holy Land, a trip that could be accomplished in as little 29 days on the route Venice–Jaffa, despite landfalls for rest and watering, or to shelter from rough weather. Later routes linked ports around the Mediterranean, between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and between the Mediterranean and Bruges. In 1447 Florentine galleys could stop at as many as 14 ports on their way to and from Alexandria in Egypt.
Ancient and medieval warfare The earliest use for galleys in warfare was to ferry fighters from one place to another, and until the middle of the 2nd millennium BC had no real distinction from merchant freighters. Around the 14th century BC, the first dedicated fighting ships were developed, sleeker and with cleaner lines than the bulkier merchants. They were used for raiding, capturing merchants and for dispatches. During this early period, raiding became the most important form of organized violence in the Mediterranean region. Casson used the example of Homer's works to show that seaborne raiding was considered a common and legitimate occupation among ancient maritime peoples. The later Athenian historian Thucydides described it as having been "without stigma" before his time. The development of the ram sometime before the 8th century BC changed the nature of naval warfare, which had until then been a matter of boarding and hand-to-hand fighting. With a heavy projection at the foot of the bow, sheathed with metal, usually bronze, a ship could incapacitate an enemy ship by punching a hole in its planking. The relative speed and nimbleness of ships became important, since a slower ship could be outmaneuvered and disabled by a faster one. The earliest designs had only one row of rowers that sat in undecked hulls, rowing against thole pins, or oarports, that were placed directly along the railings. The practical upper limit for wooden constructions fast and maneuverable enough for warfare was around 25–30 oars per side. By adding another level of oars, a development that occurred no later than c. 750 BC, the galley could be made shorter with as many rowers, while making them strong enough to be effective ramming weapons. The emergence of more advanced states and intensified competition between them spurred on the development of advanced galleys with multiple banks of rowers. During the middle of the first millennium BC, the Mediterranean powers developed successively larger and more complex vessels, the most advanced being the classical trireme with up to 170 rowers. Triremes fought several important engagements in the naval battles of the Greco-Persian Wars (502–449 BC) and the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), including the Battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC, which sealed the defeat of Athens by Sparta and its allies. The trireme was an advanced ship that was expensive to build and to maintain due its large crew. By the 5th century, advanced war galleys had been developed that required sizable states with an advanced economy to build and maintain. It was associated with the latest in warship technology around the 4th century BC and could only be employed by an advanced state with an advanced economy and administration. They required considerable skill to row and oarsmen were mostly free citizens who had years of experience at the oar.
Hellenistic era and rise of the Republic
As civilizations around the Mediterranean grew in size and complexity, both their navies and the galleys that made up their numbers became successively larger. The basic design of two or three rows of oars remained the same, but more rowers were added to each oar. The exact reasons are not known, but are believed to have been caused by addition of more troops and the use of more advanced ranged weapons on ships, such as catapults. The size of the new naval forces also made it difficult to find enough skilled rowers for the one-man-per-oar system of the earliest triremes. With more than one man per oar, a single rower could set the pace for the others to follow, meaning that more unskilled rowers could be employed. The successor states of Alexander the Great's empire built galleys that were like triremes or biremes in oar layout, but manned with additional rowers for each oar. The ruler Dionysius I of Syracuse (c. 432–367 BC) is credited with pioneering the "five" and "six", meaning five or six rows of rowers plying two or three rows of oars. Ptolemy II (283–46 BC) is known to have built a large fleet of very large galleys with several experimental designs rowed by everything from 12 up to 40 rows of rowers, though most of these are considered to have been quite impractical. Fleets with large galleys were put in action in conflicts such as the Punic Wars (246–146 BC) between the Roman Republic and Carthage, which included massive naval battles with hundreds of vessels and tens of thousands of soldiers, seamen, and rowers.
Roman Imperial era
The Battle of Actium in 31 BC between the forces of Augustus and Mark Antony marked the peak of the Roman fleet arm. After Augustus' victory at Actium, most of the Roman fleet was dismantled and burned. The Roman civil wars were fought mostly by land forces, and from the 160s until the 4th century AD, no major fleet actions were recorded. During this time, most of the galley crews were disbanded or employed for entertainment purposes in mock battles or in handling the sail-like sun-screens in the larger Roman arenas. What fleets remained were treated as auxiliaries of the land forces, and galley crewmen themselves called themselves milites, "soldiers", rather than nautae, "sailors". The Roman galley fleets were turned into provincial patrol forces that were smaller and relied largely on liburnians, compact biremes with 25 pairs of oars. These were named after an Illyrian tribe known by Romans for their sea roving practices, and these smaller craft were based on, or inspired by, their vessels of choice. The liburnians and other small galleys patrolled the rivers of continental Europe and reached as far as the Baltic, where they were used to fight local uprisings and assist in checking foreign invasions. The Romans maintained numerous bases around the empire: along the rivers of Central Europe, chains of forts along the northern European coasts and the British Isles, Mesopotamia, and North Africa, including Trabzon, Vienna, Belgrade, Dover, Seleucia, and Alexandria. Few actual galley battles in the provinces are found in records. One action in 70 AD at the unspecified location of the "Island of the Batavians" during the Batavian Rebellion was recorded, and included a trireme as the Roman flagship. The last provincial fleet, the classis Britannica, was reduced by the late 200s, though there was a minor upswing under the rule of Constantine (272–337). His rule also saw the last major naval battle of the unified Roman Empire (before the permanent split into Western and Eastern [later "Byzantine"] Empires), the Battle of the Hellespont of 324. Some time after the Battle of the Hellespont, the classical trireme fell out of use, and its design was forgotten.
Early and High Middle Ages A transition from galley to sailing vessels as the most common types of warships began in the High Middle Ages (c. 11th century). Large high-sided sailing ships had always been formidable obstacles for galleys. To low-freeboard oared vessels, the bulkier sailing ships, the cog and the carrack, were almost like floating fortresses, being difficult to board and even harder to capture. Galleys remained useful as warships throughout the entire Middle Ages because of their maneuverability. Sailing ships of the time had only one mast, usually with just a single, large square sail. This made them cumbersome to steer. Though equipped to beat to windward, their performance at this would have been limited. Galleys were therefore important for coastal raiding and amphibious landings, both key elements of medieval warfare. In the eastern Mediterranean, the Byzantine Empire struggled with the incursion from invading Muslim Arabs from the 7th century, leading to fierce competition, a buildup of fleet, and war galleys of increasing size. Soon after conquering Egypt and the Levant, the Arab rulers built ships highly similar to Byzantine dromons with the help of local Coptic shipwrights from former Byzantine naval bases. By the 9th century, the struggle between the Byzantines and Arabs had turned the Eastern Mediterranean into a no-man's land for merchant activity. In the 820s Crete was captured by Al-Andalus Muslims who had fled a failed revolt against the Emirate of Cordoba, turning the island into a base for (galley) attacks on Christian shipping until the island was recaptured by the Byzantines in 960. In the western Mediterranean and Atlantic, the division of the Carolingian Empire in the late 9th century brought on a period of instability, meaning increased piracy and raiding in the Mediterranean, particularly by newly arrived Muslim invaders. The situation was worsened by raiding Scandinavian Vikings who used longships, vessels that in many ways were very close to galleys in design and functionality and also employed similar tactics. To counter the threat, local rulers began to build large oared vessels, some with up to 30 pairs of oars, that were larger, faster, and with higher sides than Viking ships. Scandinavian expansion, including incursions into the Mediterranean and attacks on both Muslim Iberia and even Constantinople itself, subsided by the mid-11th century. By this time, greater stability in merchant traffic was achieved by the emergence of Christian kingdoms such as those of France, Hungary, and Poland. Around the same time, Italian port towns and city states, like Venice, Pisa, and Amalfi, rose on the fringes of the Byzantine Empire as it struggled with eastern threats.
Late Middle Ages ottomanLate medieval maritime warfare was divided in two distinct regions. In the Mediterranean galleys were used for raiding along coasts, and in the constant fighting for naval bases. In the Atlantic and Baltic there was greater focus on sailing ships that were used mostly for troop transport, with galleys providing fighting support. Galleys were still widely used in the north and were the most numerous warships used by Mediterranean powers with interests in the north, especially France, the Iberian kingdoms and the Italian merchant republics. The kings of France operated the Clos de Galées (literally "galley enclosure") in Rouen during the 14th and 15th century where they had southern-style war galleys built . The Clos was built by Genoese in 1298 and they continued to dominate shipbuilding there until its destruction in 1419 so that they wouldn't fall into English hands.
During the 13th and 14th century, the galley evolved into the design that was to remain essentially the same until it was phased out in the early 19th century. The new type descended from the ships used by Byzantine and Muslim fleets in the Early Middle Ages. These were the mainstay of all Christian powers until the 14th century, including the great maritime republics of Genoa and Venice, the Papacy, the Hospitallers, Aragon, and Castile, as well as by various pirates and corsairs. The overall term used for these types of vessels was gallee sottili ("slender galleys"). The later Ottoman Navy used similar designs, but they were generally faster under sail, and smaller, but slower under oars. Galley designs were intended solely for close action with hand-held weapons and projectile weapons like bows and crossbows. In the 13th century the Iberian Crown of Aragon built several fleet of galleys (known as Catalan galleys) with high castles, manned with Catalan crossbowmen, and regularly defeated numerically superior Angevin forces.
Transition to sailing ships During the early 15th century, sailing ships began to dominate naval warfare in northern waters. A Castilian naval raid on the island of Jersey in 1405 employed a naval force consisting mostly of cogs or carracks, rather than the oared-powered galleys. The Battle of Gibraltar between Castile and Portugal in 1476 was another important sign of change; it was the first recorded battle where the primary combatants were full-rigged ships armed with wrought-iron guns on the upper decks and in the waists, foretelling of the slow decline of the war galley. The sailing vessel was always at the mercy of the wind for propulsion, and those that did carry oars were placed at a disadvantage because they were not optimized for oar use. The galley did have disadvantages compared to the sailing vessel though. Their smaller hulls were not able to hold as much cargo and this limited their range as the crews were required to replenish food stuffs more frequently. The low freeboard of the galley meant that in close action with a sailing vessel, the sailing vessel would usually maintain a height advantage. The sailing vessel could also fight more effectively farther out at sea and in rougher wind conditions because of the height of their freeboard. Under sail, an oared warship was placed at much greater risk as a result of the piercings for the oars which were required to be near the waterline and would allow water to ingress into the galley if the vessel heeled too far to one side. These advantages and disadvantages led the galley to be and remain a primarily coastal vessel. The shift to sailing vessels in the Mediterranean was the result of the negation of some of the galley's advantages as well as the adoption of gunpowder weapons on a much larger institutional scale. The sailing vessel was propelled in a different manner than the galley but the tactics were often the same until the 16th century. The real-estate afforded to the sailing vessel to place larger cannons and other armament mattered little because early gunpowder weapons had limited range and were expensive to produce. The eventual creation of cast iron cannons allowed vessels and armies to be outfitted much more cheaply. The cost of gunpowder also fell in this period. The armament of both vessel types varied between larger weapons such as bombards and the smaller swivel guns. For logistical purposes it became convenient for those with larger shore establishments to standardize upon a given size of cannon. Traditionally the English in the North and the Venetians in the Mediterranean are seen as some the earliest to move in this direction. The improving sail rigs of northern vessels also allowed them to navigate in the coastal waters of the Mediterranean to a much larger degree than before. Aside from warships the decrease in the cost of gunpowder weapons also led to the arming of merchants. The larger vessels of the north continued to mature while the galley retained its defining characteristics. Attempts were made to stave this off such as the addition of fighting castles in the bow, but such additions to counter the threats brought by larger sailing vessels often offset the advantages of galley. Attempts to combine the advantages of both rowing and sailing ships were done in the 16th century, resulting in galleasses. Despite their common name, their different types entailed different to one or another design. Venetian galleasses were particularly large and powerful galleys with hulls more akin to sailing ships, while in turn, Spanish Atlantic galleasses were essentially sailing ships fitted with a line of rows, which would be used strategically to assist maneuver and sprint while in battle.
Early modern war galleys
From around 1450, three major naval powers established a dominance over different parts of the Mediterranean, using galleys as their primary weapons at sea: the Ottomans in the east, Venice in the center and Habsburg Spain in the west. The core of their fleets were concentrated in the three major, wholly dependable naval bases in the Mediterranean: Constantinople, Venice, and Barcelona. The main difference between the Christan and Ottoman galley navies laid on quality against quantity. Western galley squads proved tactically superior, as noted in both Spanish and Turkish sources, but in turn, Constantinople could put out immense numbers of ships and crews. In 1564, García de Toledo wrote in his report that Christians could only trust on mobile attacks rather than seeking frontal battle. Major encounters involved necessarily alliances between Venice, Spain and the Spanish satellites in Italy in order to match the Ottoman naval potency. This created an uniquely unequal relationship, as Venice depended on Spain and its allies for defense against Ottoman expansionism, but would rarely help them in the opposite case. Naval warfare in the 16th-century Mediterranean was fought mostly on smaller scale, with raiding and minor actions dominating. Ottoman Barbary corsairs launched attacks on lightly defended coastal settlements, while the Christian Knights Hospitaller against politically relevant targets in the Levant. Only three truly major fleet engagements were actually fought in the 16th century: the battles of Preveza in 1538, Djerba in 1560, and Lepanto in 1571. Lepanto became the last large all-galley battle ever, and was also one of the largest battle in sheer number of participants in early modern Europe before the Napoleonic Wars.
Spanish galley fleet Spain maintained four permanent galley squadrons to guard its coasts and trade routes against the Ottomans, the French, and their corsairs. Together they formed the largest stable galley navy in the Mediterranean in the early 17th century. They were the backbone of the Spanish Mediterranean war fleet and were used for ferrying troops, supplies, horses, and munitions to Spain's Italian and African possessions. Galleys were also fielded in conjunction with sailing ships like galleons and carracks, such as in the relief of Coron, where their Genoese admiral Andrea Doria used galleys to assist his sailing ships in lack of wind. The Spanish also used galley forces for conflicts outside the Mediterranean, including deployments in their colonial possessions in the Caribbean and the Philippines to hunt pirates, and sporadically used them in the Netherlands and the Bay of Biscay. Their admiral Álvaro de Bazán the Elder also designed and built Atlantic galleasses, essentially galleons with rows, to hunt down pirates and foreign privateers. Spain also sent galley squadrons to the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War which successfully operated against Dutch forces in the enclosed, shallow coastal waters. From the late 1560s, galleys were also used to transport silver to Genoese bankers to finance Spanish troops against the Dutch uprising. Mediterranean galleasses and galleys were part of an invasion force of over 16,000 men under Álvaro de Bazán the Younger that conquered the Azores in 1583. During this conquest, captain Diego de Medrano is noted for innovating naval warfare techniques by enhancing the design of his galleys, becoming the first person to successfully cross the ocean with this type of galley. Around 2,000 galley rowers under the command of Medrano were on board ships of the famous 1588 Spanish Armada, though few of these actually made it to the battle itself. At the end of the 17th century, galleys called periaguas were fielded to deal with foreign pirates and privateers in Spanish Caribbean. Spanish privateers specialized in countering piracy, the guarda costa, used periaguas to chase their sailing ships against the wind or to conduct night attacks on them.
Southeast Asia Ottoman galleys contested the Portuguese intrusion in the Indian Ocean in the 16th century, but failed against the high-sided, massive Portuguese carracks in open waters. Even though the carracks themselves were soon surpassed by other types of sailing vessels, their greater range, great size, and high superstructures, armed with numerous wrought iron guns easily outmatched the short-ranged, low-freeboard Turkish galleys. In Southeast Asia during the 16th and early 17th century, the Aceh Sultanate had fleets of up to 100 native galley-like vessels (ghali) as well as smaller rowed vessels, there were described by Europeans as lancarans, galliots, and fustas. Some of the larger vessels were very large with heavier armament than standard Mediterranean galleys, with raised platforms for infantry and some with stern structures similar in height to that of contemporary galleons.
Introduction of guns
Galleys had been synonymous with warships in the Mediterranean for at least 2,000 years, and continued to fulfill that role with the invention of gunpowder and heavy artillery. Though early 20th-century historians often dismissed the galleys as hopelessly outclassed with the first introduction of naval artillery on sailing ships, it was the galley that was favored by the introduction of heavy naval guns. Galleys were a more "mature" technology with long-established tactics and traditions of supporting social institutions and naval organizations. In combination with the intensified conflicts this led to a substantial increase in the size of galley fleets from c. 1520–80, above all in the Mediterranean, but also in other European theatres. Galleys and similar oared vessels remained uncontested as the most effective gun-armed warships in theory until the 1560s, and in practice for a few decades more, and were actually considered a grave risk to sailing warships. They could effectively fight other galleys, attack sailing ships in calm weather or in unfavorable winds (or deny them action if needed) and act as floating siege batteries. They were also unequaled in their amphibious capabilities, even at extended ranges, as exemplified by French interventions as far north as Scotland in the mid-16th century.
Heavy artillery on galleys was mounted in the bow, which aligned easily with the long-standing tactical tradition of attacking head on, bow first. The ordnance on galleys was heavy from its introduction in the 1480s, and capable of quickly demolishing the high, thin medieval stone walls that still prevailed in the 16th century. This temporarily upended the strength of older seaside fortresses, which had to be rebuilt to cope with gunpowder weapons. The addition of guns also improved the amphibious abilities of galleys as they could make assaults supported with heavy firepower, and were even more effectively defended when beached stern-first. An accumulation and generalizing of bronze cannons and small firearms in the Mediterranean during the 16th century increased the cost of warfare, but also made those dependent on them more resilient to manpower losses. Older ranged weapons, like bows or even crossbows, required considerable skill to handle, sometimes a lifetime of practice, while gunpowder weapons required considerably less training to use successfully. According to an influential study by military historian John F. Guilmart