That the galley was no vessel in which to embark in bad weather is instanced for us by the disasters which befell a Spanish fleet of these craft in 1567 under the Grand Commander of Castile, Don Luiz de Requesens. A revolt of the Moors in Granada had caused Philip the Second to wish to withdraw a certain number of Spanish troops from Italy. Requesens was sent to Genoa with twenty-four galleys to embark a detachment of an army corps then stationed in Piedmont. Each galley embarked one hundred and fifty soldiers; they then got under way and reached the island of Hyères, where they anchored, the weather being too bad to proceed. At the end of their eighth day in port a number of vessels were seen flying to the eastward before the wind; it was a squadron of Genoese.
Requesens, who was no seaman, was furious. Here were the Genoese at sea, and he wasting his time in harbour; if they could keep the sea why could not he, he demanded? He instantly ordered the anchors to be weighed. The commander of the Tuscan galleys, of which there were ten in the fleet, immediately went on board the galley in which Requesens was embarked and represented that the wind was foul and that should they leave their anchorage they could make no headway once they got clear of the land. But Requesens was obstinate: “if others can go on their way it is shameful that I should not proceed on mine,” he protested. Alfonso d’Aragona argued with him in vain, representing that his master, the Duke of Tuscany, would hold the Grand Commander responsible for damage to his galleys. It was all in vain, as the Grand Commander was too arrogant and stupid to listen to advice from anybody. The fleet put to sea and struggled out a mile from the land; when they got thus far Requesens discovered his mistake and regretted that he had not taken the advice of the mariners; but it was now too late, they had drifted to leeward of their anchorage and could not get back again.
One galley, a new vessel, ran into another which was an old one, and sank her on the spot, carrying all her luckless crew to the bottom. The remaining vessels scattered far and wide; Alfonso d’Aragona found refuge in the Bay of Alghieri, two more of his galleys reached an anchorage in the Isle of St. Pierre, another sheltered in the Gulf of Oristano; three galleys were shipwrecked on the coast in this neighbourhood and lost many of their men; yet another, called the Florence, was twice nearly wrecked on the coast of Barbary, and eventually reached the Bay of Cagliari. A Genoese captain found himself as far afield as the Island of Pantellaria, two galleys were never heard of again, and the Grand Commander himself anchored eventually in the Bay of Palamos on the Spanish coast. Of the twenty-four galleys which left their anchorage twelve were lost and the twelve which remained were practically valueless until large sums had been spent in repairs.
It is small wonder in the light of these events that the seamen who ranged the Mediterranean in vessels propelled by oars regarded the winter as a close season and laid up their galleys in harbour. They were seaworthy enough for ordinary weather, but could not withstand such a tempest as the one in which Requesens put to sea. The whole story is only a further proof of the folly of putting supreme command of a sea-going venture in the hands of a man totally ignorant of the hazards he was called upon to encounter. In the sixteenth and even in the seventeenth centuries this was done perpetually, and if no disaster occurred it was because no bad weather was encountered.
BRIGANTINE CHASING FELUCCA.
As time went on the sailing ship became larger and larger and was able to mount more and more powerful ordnance; this had the effect of discounting the value of the galley as a fighting ship; in consequence she became practically obsolete, for the line of battle, after the combat at Lepanto. In spite of this she was to linger on for many long years to come as the weapon of the corsairs who had established themselves on the coast of Africa. The “long ship” was still to be the cause of many an awful sea tragedy, whether the actors therein were the pirates who hailed from the Barbary coast or their most capable imitators the notorious rovers of Sallee.