A COMBAT OF ROMAN GALLEYS (BIREMES).
With the introduction of gunpowder and cannon into naval vessels, the ornamental top-works—a picturesque relic of which remains in the Venetian gondola of to-day—disappeared, as we see when the clear light of history begins to shine on the fleets of Venice and Genoa, when these cities were leaders of the world in navigation. Turkey—the successor of the old Byzantine empire and of the Greek power—was then, as now, the great enemy of the west, but in those days it was aggressive. Its fleets were strong and well manned, and they threatened to cross the Adriatic and fasten the baneful grasp of the Moslem upon Italy in revenge for the persecution of the Moors in Spain. Perhaps they would have done so had not John of Austria, admiral of the allied navies of Spain, Venice, and Rome, won that great victory in the harbor of Lepanto, near the isthmus of Corinth, which destroyed nearly the whole Turkish fleet, and released fifteen thousand Christian galley-slaves. This was in October, 1571, and it saved the West from being overrun by the barbarous East, as exactly fifteen and a half centuries before it had been saved near Actium, a famous promontory on the northwestern coast of Greece, where Octavius defeated the forces of Antony and Cleopatra.
It is doubtful whether the ships that fought in the later battle were much different in either build or rig from those of the earlier conflict, but their decks no more gleamed with men in armor, and in place of catapult, crane, and caldron were cannonades and falconets, arquebuses and hand-grenades. Perhaps, however, they had already taken on more of that long, low shape characterizing later the French and Italian galleys, common enough in Mediterranean ports up to about one hundred years ago, which differed mainly from the ancient ones in their use of much longer oars or sweeps, balanced upon a sort of extended outrigger or shelf projecting from the vessel’s side. The galleass of which we hear in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was a large war-ship of this style, which foreshadowed the Atlantic ships, to be spoken of presently, in having castellated structures fore and aft, in which were mounted sometimes twenty guns; besides its two or three lateen-rigged masts, it often had thirty-two sweeps on each side, each about forty-five feet long, and handled with a long, slow stroke by five or six men—in France mainly convicts “condemned to the galleys.”[5]
Such vessels continued to be used by the Spaniards, Maltese, Italians, and Turks long after they had been abandoned by the French navy, but latterly, after the suppression of piracy, in which they were of especial service, for the conveyance of important personages and occasions of ceremony rather than for practical service; and in the state barge of the Doge of Venice, brought out annually to this day at the ceremony of re-wedding Venice to the Adriatic, we have a magnificent relic of these stately craft.
TYPE OF VENETIAN GALLEY.
But such boats were adapted only to the comparatively calm and simple navigation of the Mediterranean; and although imitated in the similar waters of the eastern Baltic, they never flourished north of Spain. When they gradually disappeared, their successor inside the gates of Gibraltar was the xebec, which began to appear under Arab or Spanish control in the seventeenth century; this was supposed to be able to withstand any weather, and carried from fourteen to twenty-two guns on deck, with small ports for oars between the guns. A picturesque relative was the Portuguese muleta.
The English liked this kind of vessel on account of its strong sailing qualities, but when they took it into their own stormy waters they found it necessary to raise its sides to fit them for breasting the high seas that roll in the open Atlantic or are tossed by the contending tides of the English Channel, and developed out of it a style of swift and handy vessel called a frigate.
During all these “middle” ages the northern nations had been sailing and fighting on the sea as well as the southerners. Stories of sturdy battles have come down in tradition and in such chronicles as those of Froissart; but those old conflicts seem to have produced little change in ship-building or armament until the experience and wisdom brought back by the Crusaders began to spread abroad even in the half-savage North, and to produce that revival of learning which by and by was to make such striking changes in western Europe; and here the leaders are Englishmen.