Part 12 (1/2)

What was necessary of course in the galley was many oars and many hands to use them; the vessel was most skilfully constructed for this purpose so as to get the fullest power from her human engines; the result was that men were crowded on board of her to such an extent that there was scarcely room to breathe, such a craft as the one of which the dimensions have been given having on board some four hundred men.

Barras de la Penne, a French officer who in 1713 first went on board a galley, thus describes what he saw:

”Those who see a galley for the first time are astonished to see so many persons; there are an infinite number of villages in Europe which do not contain an equal number of inhabitants; however, this is not the princ.i.p.al cause of one's surprise, but that so many men can be a.s.sembled in so small a s.p.a.ce. It is truth that many of them have not room to sleep at full length, for they put seven men on one bench; that is to say, on a s.p.a.ce about ten feet long and four broad; at the bows one sees some thirty sailors who have for their lodging the floor s.p.a.ce of the rambades (this is the platform at the prow of the galley) which consists of a rectangular s.p.a.ce ten feet long by eight in width. The captain and officers who live on the p.o.o.p are scarcely better lodged, and one is tempted to compare their grandeur with that of Diogenes in his tub.

”When the unpitying Libyan Sea surprises these galleys upon the Roman coasts, when the Norther lashes to foam the Gulf of Lyons, when the humid east wind of Syria is driving them off sh.o.r.e, everything combines to make life on board a modern galley a h.e.l.l of misery and discomfort.

The creaking of the blocks and cordage, the loud cries of the sailors, the horrible maledictions of the galley slaves, the groaning of the timbers, mingled with the clank of chains and the bellowings of the tempest, produce sentiments of affright in the most intrepid b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The rain, the hail, the lightning, habitual accompaniments of these terrific storms, the waves which dash over the vessel, all add to the horror of the situation, and although devotion is not as a rule very strongly marked on board a galley, you will hear these folk praying to G.o.d, and others making vows to the Saints; these would do much better not to forget G.o.d and his Saints when the danger is past.

”Calm itself has also its inconveniences, as the evil smells which arise from the galley are then so strong that one cannot get away from them in spite of the tobacco with which one is obliged to plug one's nostrils from morning till night.”

The gallant officer here goes into further details concerning the vermin on board which it will be as well to spare the reader.

Jean Marteille de Bergeraq, who died at Culenbourg in 1777, was condemned to serve on board the galleys in 1707 ”in his quality of Protestant”; he must indeed have been a man of iron const.i.tution as he lived to the age of ninety-five. This is his description of the life of a _forcat_:

”They are chained six to a bench; the benches are four feet wide covered with sacking stuffed with wool over which are thrown sheepskins which reach to the floor. The officer who is master of the galley slaves remains aft with the captain to receive his orders; there are two under officers, one amids.h.i.+ps and one at the prow; all of these are armed with whips, with which they flog the absolutely naked bodies of the slaves. When the captain gives the order to row, the officer gives the signal with a silver whistle which hangs on a cord round his neck; the signal is repeated by the under officers and very soon all the fifty oars strike the water as one. Imagine six men chained to a bench as naked as they were born, one foot on the stretcher the other raised and placed on the bench in front of them, holding in their hands an oar of enormous weight, stretching their bodies towards the after part of the galley with arms extended to push the loom of the oar clear of the backs of those in front of them who are in the same att.i.tude. They plunge the blades of the oars into the water and throw themselves back, falling on to the seat which bends beneath their weight. Sometimes the galley slaves row thus ten, twelve, even twenty hours at a stretch, without the slightest relapse or rest, and on these occasions the officer will go round putting into the mouths of the wretched rowers pieces of bread soaked in wine to prevent them from fainting. Then the captain will call upon the officers to redouble their blows, and if one of the slaves falls fainting upon his oar, which is a common occurrence, he is flogged until he appears to be dead and is then flung overboard without ceremony.”

The Italian captain, Pantero Pantera, of the _Santa Lucia_ galley, in his work on ”L'Armata Navale” published in 1614, gives it as his opinion that although soldiers and sailors could be obtained for service in the galleys if good pay were given, still no money could tempt any free man to adventure himself as a rower for any length of time owing to the intolerable sufferings which the ”gallerian” was called upon to endure. As, however, in the opinion of the captain it was most necessary that the galleys should be manned, he thought that all judges should in future send criminals aboard; those who had committed murder as ”lifers,” those who had committed lesser crimes _pro rata_. Those who by the n.o.bility of their birth or their physical incompetence were unable to handle the oar should be called upon to pay for subst.i.tutes to act for them; these were called ”Buone-Voglie.”

There was not much difference after all between the methods used by the seventeenth-century Italian to those actually in force in England at a much later date when the Press Gang swept the honest and the dishonest into its net in its midnight raids.

”The galley slaves,” observes Pantera, ”cherish repose and sincerely wish to avoid fatigue; in order to incite them to do their duty it is necessary to use the whip as well as the whistle; by using it with severity the officers will find that they are better obeyed, and it will in consequence be good for the service, for fear of the whip is the princ.i.p.al cause of good behaviour among the gallerians.” Further on he observes that it is well not to flog them too severely and without reason, ”for this irritates the gallerians, as I have frequently observed: this may cause them to despair and to wish for death as the only sure way out of their troubles.”

The excellent Pantera a little later on even says that he cannot agree that the attempt to cure a sick gallerian ”is all nonsense, as is maintained by some persons,” as sick men are a source of danger on board. He apparently was not prepared to throw them overboard alive, but urges that the best way to avoid such pestilences among them as killed forty thousand Venetians at the port of Zara in 1570 is to embark sound and good victuals.

It is interesting to have a contemporary view of the correct treatment of the galley slave from those who had to do with him. In the case of the corsairs and their adversaries the gallerians were as a rule prisoners of war, but as time went on and wars became less frequent than they were throughout the sixteenth century, another source of supply was tapped by sending to the galleys the criminals of any country which desired to fill up the rowers' benches. In consequence there was always one thing which was feared above all others on board a galley, and that was a rising of the slaves.

If they were not your enemies officially, they were a set of desperate criminals ripe for any mischief should they get loose, and chained, starved, beaten, frozen with the cold, baked by the summer heats, tortured, murdered, they had nothing earthly for which to hope except escape. If in the heat of battle there should occur a rising of the slaves, then their masters knew that victory would declare itself surely on the side of the enemy. Therefore that they should be securely chained was the first and most important thing to which the boatswain of a galley and his mates had to see. If by a bold stroke they once freed themselves from their shackles it was a fight to the death for those who erstwhile had been in command, as the gallerians, outnumbering them and caring nought for their lives in comparison to their liberties, were far the most formidable foes that they could be called upon to encounter. When men are so treated that their daily life is one long martyrdom they become the most dangerous force in existence, and on the occasions which sometimes happened that the slaves got the upper hand, there were none left of the fighting men of the galley to tell the tale of their discomfiture.

In time of battle the gallerians were of course equally exposed to death and wounds from the projectiles of the enemy as were the orthodox fighting men; but to them came no rejoicing at the sound of victory; rather they prayed for the defeat of their masters, as it frequently happened that those against whom they were arrayed were their own countrymen and friends by whom they hoped for release. Thus at Lepanto, the Christian slaves, seeing the right wing of the Turkish fleet thrown into disorder by the galleys of the Allies, broke out into furious mutiny, succeeded in shattering their fetters and chains, attacked their masters the Turks in the rear with incredible energy with any weapons upon which they could lay their hands, and thus contributed in no small measure to the ultimate triumph of the Christian arms.

The Captain Pantero Pantera and Barras de la Peine have written exhaustively on the galley, her crew, her armament, her manner of provisioning, her masts, sails, rigging, etc., and Admiral Jurien de la Graviere has given a most painstaking exposition concerning the technicalities of these craft. But to enter into too much detail would be to weary the reader unnecessarily, who, it is apprehended, merely desires that a general idea should be given of the way in which these vessels were handled and fought.

It would appear that during the whole time that oar-propelled vessels were used as wars.h.i.+ps their form did not differ to any material extent, as certain limitations of size were obviously imposed on them by the mere fact that they had to be moved by so finite and feeble a force as human muscles, hearts, and lungs. No cruelty, however ghastly, could extract from the gallerians more than a certain amount of work, and the Captain Pantero Pantera, as we have seen, even advocates that a certain minimum of consideration should be shown to them in order that better work might be obtained. It was probable, however, that in the case of the Christian slaves captured by the corsairs even this minimum was to seek, as the numbers swept off by them were so enormous that they could be used up and replaced without inconveniencing these rovers of the sea, to whom compa.s.sion for suffering was absolutely unknown.

The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, or the Knights of Malta as they were also called, used the galley in their unceasing warfare with the Moslem.

The General of the Galleys was a Grand Cross of the Order; the captains were knights, and the second officer, or first lieutenant, was known as the Patron. The crew of a galley of the knights had twenty-six rowing benches and carried two hundred and eighty rowers and two hundred and eighty combatants; the armament consisted of one bow cannon which discharged a forty-eight pound ball, four other small guns, eight pounders, and fourteen others which discharged stones.

”The Religion,” as the Knights were in the habit of describing themselves, had certain definite stations a.s.signed to each knight, seaman, or officer during action. It is to be imagined, however, that these were merely for the preliminary stages of the fight, as it was seldom that time allowed for more than one discharge, or at the most two, of the artillery, before the opposing galleys met in a hand-to-hand conflict which must have immediately become an indiscriminate melee.

The manner in which the galley should engage is thus contained in an answer to a question of Don John of Austria, the victor of Lepanto. He wrote to Garcia de Toledo, fourth Marquis of Villafranca, and General of the Galleys of Sicily, to ask his opinion as to what distance it was most efficacious to open fire in a naval action. Toledo replied that ”one cannot fire more than twice before the galleys close. I should therefore recommend that the arquebussiers should hold their fire until they are so close to the enemy that his blood will leap into the face of him who discharges his piece.

have always heard it said, and this by captains who are well skilled in the art of war, that the last discharge of the cannon should be coincident with the noise made by the breaking of the spurs carried in the prows of the galleys; in fact that the two noises should be as one; some propose to fire before the enemy does: this is by no means my advice.”

Artillery, it will be seen from this, played a comparatively unimportant part in the combats between galley and galley; that in these craft men still relied on the strength of their right arm and the edge of their swords; there was still a certain contempt for villainous saltpetre, which was looked upon as a somewhat cowardly substance, preventing the warrior from settling his disputes in the good old fas.h.i.+on of his forbears. In any case, when you practically had to push the muzzle of your gun against your enemy's body in order to hit him, it was not a weapon upon which much reliance was to be placed.

There were, in addition to the galley, the nef and the galea.s.se; the former of these was a sailing vessel pure and simple like those remarkable caravels in which Columbus discovered America.

What these caravels were exactly like it was the good fortune of the writer to see in the year 1893. This was the date of the great exhibition of Chicago, and the American Government were most anxious to have, and to exhibit if possible, an exact replica of these historic craft. They accordingly communicated with the Spanish Government and inquired if by any chance they possessed the plans and specifications of the caravels of Columbus? Search was made in the archives of Cadiz Dockyard and these priceless doc.u.ments were discovered. From them the s.h.i.+ps were built in every respect the same as the wonderful originals and then towed across the Atlantic by the United States cruiser _Lancaster_. On their way they were brought to Gibraltar, where the writer's s.h.i.+p was then stationed, and were anch.o.r.ed inside the New Mole. The _Santa Maria_, the flags.h.i.+p of Columbus, was a three-masted vessel with a very high ”forecastle” and ”sterncastle”