The galleys of the Middle Ages, like the long vessels of antiquity, may be divided into several varieties. The large galley (Fig. 68), strong in build and swift in sailing, had received from the Greeks the significant name of dromon (runner). In the fifth century Theodoric had a thousand dromons constructed for the defence of the Italian coasts and for the transport of corn; in the ninth, the Emperor Leo the Philosopher, in the military precepts he gave to his son, recommended the construction of dromons with two tiers of oars, five-and-twenty in each tier on each side. For the flag-ship (if we may use the term) of the commander of the fleet, he recommended the construction of a much larger dromon with a hundred oars in each tier, similar to those that used to be built in Pamphylia, and which, for that reason, were known as pamphiles. The fleet was to be accompanied by smaller dromons, with a single tier of oars, for the purpose of carrying despatches, and to act as scouts. These bore more particularly the name of galleys. For more than three hundred years the construction and rigging of ships underwent no change (Fig. 69); in the twelfth century the dromon was still the principal type of the class of ships propelled by oars. Next came the galley, smaller than the dromon, but fitted, like it, with two tiers of oars, and lastly, the galion or galéide (termed later the galiot), a much smaller vessel than the galley.
Fig. 68.—Poop of an Ancient Galley.—From Pompeian Paintings collected in the Bourbon Museum, Naples.
The largest and the best-armed galley which at that period ploughed the Mediterranean was the one encountered by Richard Cœur de Lion, according to the historian Matthew Paris, on the 3rd of June, 1191, near the coast of Syria, and which was carrying large reinforcements to the camp of the unbelievers, who were besieging at that time the town of Acre. When the sailors of the English fleet first perceived this gigantic vessel, whose vast hull was painted with the most brilliant colours, whose poop was surmounted with a castellated tower, whose three masts unfurled to the wind an immense expanse of canvas, and whose long oars beat the waves with majestic rhythm, they were surprised, and undecided how to act. Richard, however, ordered his men to attack the floating fortress. His lighter galleys surrounded it on all sides, in spite of the arrows and glass vases showered on them by the dromon. These vases broke when they came in contact with the galleys, and enveloped them in Greek fire. The captain of the Arab craft attempted to sail away from his swarm of assailants, but the wind fell, and half his rowers having been slain by the English arrows, he was forced to accept battle. The galleys skirmished around the dromon, striking it repeated blows with their brazen prows, and making large holes in its sides. At last, after a desperate resistance, the giant was engulfed in the waters with all its defenders.
Fig. 69.—A Norman Vessel (Eleventh Century).—Restoration from the Bayeux Tapestry.
A companion craft to the dromon, as before mentioned, was the pamphile, which, before disappearing in the fifteenth century, frequently changed its shape and character. Nor must we forget the chelande (Fig. 70), or sélandre, which a writer of the eleventh century represents as a ship of extraordinary length, of great speed, possessing two tiers of oars, and a crew of a hundred and fifty men, and which, three centuries later, became a large flat sailing vessel, and was termed chaland. The taride, a kind of merchant galley with oars, and the huissier, the name of which was derived from a huis, or large door, which opened in its side in front of the poop to allow of the embarkation of horses, were contemporaneous with the pamphile and with the sélandre; as also was the chat or chatte, which William of Tyre mentions in connection with a maritime war which took place in 1121. According to him it was a ram-armed vessel larger than a galley, and carried a hundred oars, each of which was handled by two men.
Besides all these there were the bucentaures (Fig. 71), large Venetian galleys, and the sagettes, or saïties (arrows), whose names denote their slender shape and speed, and which, with their twelve or fifteen oars on each side, played the same part in the twelfth century as the baliner, or barineal, and the brigantin played from the fourteenth to the seventeenth.
Fig. 70.—Turreted Vessel which protected the Port of Venice.—From a Medal struck in honour of the Doge P. Candiano I., who died in 887 (Venetian Museum).