But we will leave a subject whose complicated details would lead us too far, and return to the equipment proper of vessels. As far back as the tenth century, the Emperor Leo originated the practice of building towers for attack and defence on the deck of the dromons; these towers, from the centre of which sprang the mainmast, reached half-way up the mast. This custom was still observed in the thirteenth century, and was no doubt handed down from very ancient times when it was usual to build towers and citadels on the decks of triremes. The round class of vessels were also provided with towers, one fore and another aft. In the smaller vessels these towers were simply platforms surrounded with a crenulated parapet and raised upon pillars (Fig. 89); in the larger ones, the towers were constructed of several stories added to the normal elevation of the poop and prow. Mangonels, catapults, and other projectile machines were placed on these towers and platforms. The big ships especially carried terrible engines of destruction, sometimes a heavy beam which worked horizontally like an ancient battering-ram against the sides of a hostile vessel, sometimes an immense bulk of timber, which was worked vertically from the top of the mast in order to shatter and sink a smaller craft. Around the masts, too, and nearly at their tops, châtelets or platforms were suspended, in which were hidden, behind a low parapet, slingers, archers, and stone-throwers. In the sixteenth century, these châtelets on board the vessels of the Mediterranean were called cages or gabies, while in the North sailors designated them by the Icelandic term of hunes (Fig. 90).
Fig. 90.—Seal of the Town of Boston (1575), on which the hune is depicted at the extremity of the mast.
The introduction of gunpowder on board ship was long subsequent to the invention of fire-arms, and was very slowly adopted by most navies. From the fact that, in the middle of the fifteenth century, a vessel of seven hundred and fifty tons burden had only a single piece of artillery, and one of fifteen hundred only eight guns, and as for a commission of four months—the usual length of a ship’s commission in the Middle Ages—each piece of artillery was only provided with five-and-twenty to thirty rounds, we see with what difficulty and how slowly the new style of weapons replaced the old one. In the ships’ inventories of 1441, side by side with bombardes, we find invariably figuring large cross-bows, viretons, darts, long lances, and complete sets of armour for the sailors. Things were not much more advanced than they were in 1379 at the celebrated naval battle of Chioggia, in which the Venetians made use, against the Genoese, of cannon constructed of pieces of metal, welded together and covered with a casing of wooden staves, bound round with stout iron bands and ropes. Some of these primitive guns exploded at their first discharge; one alone survives, and is now to be seen in the arsenal at Venice, the solitary specimen of the first attempt at projecting iron and stone shot from a tube by the ignition of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal.
Fig. 91.—Prows of Galleys armed with the Spur.—From Drawings by Breugel the Elder, engraved by Fr. Huys (1550).
More than a hundred years passed away before marine artillery attained any importance; it was not till the close of the sixteenth century that Brantôme was able to put on record that he had seen in the Mediterranean a galliot armed with two hundred pieces of artillery, belonging to Cosmo I. of Medici, the Grand-Duke of Tuscany.
The galleys of the Middle Ages and of the sixteenth century, armed at first with an iron spur and afterwards with four or five cannon placed in the bows, always engaged the enemy prow first, and bore down in order of battle, side by side, in a straight or curved line. The half-moon formation practised by the ancients was reserved for the largest fleets. At Lepanto (Fig. 92), for instance, the Christian fleet was drawn up in the form of a half-moon, and was divided into four squadrons: one in the centre, two at the wings, and one in reserve. In front of each division six galéasses were posted in couples to open the engagement; they were all one hundred and sixty feet in length, twenty-seven in breadth, and fifteen above the water-line, and they did a great deal of damage to the Turkish fleet with their powerful artillery. Previous to the construction of these gigantic galleys, a line of round vessels used to be placed in the van to receive the first brunt of the battle. Sometimes, besides this vanguard of sailing vessels, ships were placed at the wings, the most powerful in the quarter where it was imagined that the struggle would become the hottest. The smaller craft formed a line in reserve, always prepared to row to the assistance of a hard-pressed galley.
Fig. 92.—Plan of the Naval Battle of Lepanto.—From a Drawing by Don Juan, preserved in the Archives of Simancas, Spain.