On 2 October, Don Juan had made up his mind to leave Gomenizza, enter the Gulf of Corinth, and risk an attack on the passage of the Little Dardanelles. Accordingly in the afternoon he gave orders that the fleet should prepare to sail at sunrise next day. During the long delay in the island waters belated news came that Famagusta had fallen on 18 August, and with the news there was a terrible story of the horrors that had followed the broken capitulation. The news was now six weeks old, and this meant that the whole of the enemy's fleet might be concentrated in the Gulf of Corinth, but after the disasters of Cyprus an attempt must be made to win a victory against all or any odds.
At sunrise the armada streamed out of the Bay of Gomenizza, and sped southwards with oar and sail. The Gulf of Arta was passed, and the admirals were reminded not of the far-off battle that saw the flight of the Egyptian Queen and the epoch-making victory of Augustus Cæsar, but of a sea-fight in the same waters only a few years ago that had ended in dire disaster to the Christian arms. Then through the hours of darkness the fleet worked its way past the rock-bound shores of Santa Maura, whose cliffs glimmered in the moonlight. The roar of the breakers at their base warned the pilots to give them good sea room. In the grey of the morning the peaks and ridges of Ithaca and Cephalonia rose out of the haze upon the sea, and soon after sunrise the fleet was moving through the narrow strait between the islands.
In the strait there were shelter and smooth water, but the wind was rising, backing from north-west to west, and raising a sea outside Cephalonia that sent a heavy swell sweeping round its southern point and into the opening of the narrows. As the leading ships reached the mouth of the strait Don Juan did not like the look of the weather, and decided to anchor in the Bay of Phiscardo, a large opening in the Cephalonian shore just inside the strait.
For two days the fleet lay weather-bound in the bay. During one of these days of storm Kara Khodja, the Algerine, tried again to reconnoitre the fleet, but was driven off by the guardships at the entrance of the strait.
On 6 October the wind shifted to the east and the sea began to go down. Don Juan refused to wait any longer. The fleet put to sea, under bare masts, and, rowing hard against the wind and through rough water, it worked its way slowly across to the sheltered waters on the mainland coast between it and the islands of Curzolari. Here the fleet anchored for the night, just outside the opening of the Gulf of Corinth. Not twenty miles away up the gulf lay the Turkish fleet, for Ali had brought it out of the Bay of Lepanto, and anchored in the Bay of Calydon.
When the sun rose on the 7th, the wind was still contrary, blowing from the south-east. But at dawn the ships were under way, and moving slowly in long procession between the mainland and the islands that fringe the coast. There was a certain amount of straggling. It was difficult to keep the divisions closed up, and the tall galleasses especially felt the effect of the head wind, and some of the galleys had to assist them by towing.
As the ships of the vanguard began to clear the channel between Oxia Island and Cape Scropha, and the wide expanse of water at the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth opened before them, the look-outs reported several ships hull down on the horizon to the eastward, the sun shining on their white sails, that showed like flecks of cloud on the sea-line.
LEPANTO
course of allied fleet from ithaca channel to scene of battle