Galley Slaves
The life of a galley slave was one of dreadful hardship. They were chained five or six to an oar, fed on the scantiest of food, and a boatswain walked up and down a gangway in the centre wielding his terrible lash on those who incurred his anger.
The amazing feature of these galleys was the large number of oarsmen required; but this was an age when human life was regarded more cheaply than to-day. Slaves could be had by raiding towns or capturing ships. The work of pulling at the oar was healthy if terribly hard. A minimum of food and the stern lash of the boatswain as he walked up and down the gangway that ran fore-and-aft down the centre of the ship kept the men at their duty, and their shackles prevented them from deserting. But when their poor, wearied bodies became weak, they were thrown overboard before their last breath had left them. The prints, which are still in existence, show that the number of oarsmen in a sixteenth-century galley ran into hundreds—two or three hundred of these galley-slaves would be no rare occurrence in one craft. They retained the beak and the arrangement of the yards from the time of the Romans. At the stern sat the commander with his officers. When these craft carried cannon the armament was placed in the bows. By the sixteenth, or at any rate the seventeenth, century, the galley had reached her climax, and it was not thought remarkable that her length should be about 170 feet and her breadth only about 20 feet. She may be easily studied by the reader on referring to an accompanying illustration. Whether used by Christian or corsair, by Maltese knights or Moslem Turks, they were not very different from the picture which is here presented. With five men to each heavy oar, with seamen to handle the sails when employed, with soldiers to fight the ship, she was practically a curious kind of raft or floating platform. Irrespective of religion or race, it was customary for the sixteenth-century nations to condemn their prisoners to row chained to these benches. Thus, for example, when the Spaniards captured Elizabethan seamen, the latter were thus employed, just as Venetian prisoners were made to row in Moslem galleys. Convicted criminals were also punished by this means.
The difference between the old and new was never better seen than in the late sixteenth century, when the big-bellied man-of-war with sails and guns were beginning to discard the old boarding tactics. It was the gun and not the sword on which they were now relying. But the galley was dependent less on her gunnery than on boarding. It was her aim to fight not at a distance but at close quarters—to get right close alongside and then pour her soldiers on to the other ship and obtain possession. The galeass of the Mediterranean, although the word was somewhat largely used, signified an attempt to combine the sea-qualities of the big-bellied ship with the mobility of the galley. Compromises are, however, but rarely successful, and though the galleass was a much more potent fighting unit, yet she was less mobile, if a better sea craft. She began by being practically a big galley with forecastle and sterncastle and another deck; she ended in being little less clumsy than the contemporary ship of the line which relied on sails and guns. Anyone who cares to examine the contemporary pictures of the Spanish galleasses used by the Armada against England in the reign of Elizabeth can see this for himself. It is true that even as far north as Amsterdam in the seventeenth century the galley was employed, and there are many instances when she fought English ships in the Channel, off Portsmouth and elsewhere. For a time some lingered on in the British Navy, but they were totally unsuited for the waters of the North Sea and English Channel, and gave way to the sail-propelled ships of larger displacement.
CHAPTER VII
PIRACY IN ELIZABETHAN TIMES
But although the Mediterranean was the sphere of the Barbarian corsairs, yet this sea lawlessness was not confided to that area. The Narrow Seas were just about as bad as they had been in the Middle Ages. And Elizabeth, with the determination for which she was famous, took the matter in hand.
As early as the year 1564 she commanded Sir Peter Carew to fit out an expedition to clear the seas of any pirates and rovers that haunted the coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall; yet it was an almost impossible task. For the men of these parts especially had gotten the sea-fever. Fishing was less profitable than it might be, but to capture ships instead of fish was a very paying industry and had just that amount of adventure which appealed to the Elizabethans. And bear in mind that, as in the case of the later smugglers, these men had at their backs for financial support the rich land-owners, who found the investment tempting.
It was because the colonies in the New World were yielding such wondrous treasure that the English pirates found the Spanish ships so well worth waiting for and pillaging. Again and again did Philip make demands to Elizabeth that this nuisance should be stopped, insisting that in no case should a convicted English pirate be pardoned. He requested that Her Majesty’s officers in the west of England ports should cease from allowing these marauders to take stores aboard or even frequent these harbours. Rewards, he begged, should even be offered for their capture, and all persons on shore who aided these miscreants should be punished severely.