OARED GALLEYS – THE STORY OF LA REAL: PART 1

When people think of Barbary corsairs, they often envision them in oared galleys massing to attack European sailing ships—rather like the illustration above, in which you can see the stern of a European squared-rigged ship with two oared galleys attacking it. In the background are more square-rigged ships. In the left foreground, the hind end of a galley sinks beneath the choppy waves (the hoop-like structure draped in red cloth is the sinking galley’s sterncastle).

Barbary corsairs did use oared galleys, and they did operate in packs to attack European shipping in the Mediterranean. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they were not the only ones who made use of such ships.

Everybody used galleys.

Oared galleys—or their equivalent—have been around in the Mediterranean since classical times (Greek and Roman triremes and quinqueremes were essentially galleys). All such ships are variations on the same fundamental design: a long, narrow hull, a relatively shallow draft, banks of oars on each side, and some combination of sails. Such vessels are fast and maneuverable, regardless of wind conditions. They do, however, have their limitations. Their long, sleek hull and shallow draft render them unstable in the heaving and turbulent waters of the open ocean, and having to feed and water dozens (or hundreds, depending on the size of the ship) of oarsmen means long-distance voyages are impractical. In the relatively placid waters of the Mediterranean, though, with ports dotting pretty much every part of the coastline… galleys ruled.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, every Mediterranean country—Christian or Muslim—that had a navy made use of galleys. They were in a sense the original motorized ships, able to operate completely independent of wind conditions—powered by brute human muscle. Barbary corsairs tended to favor smaller versions (called galiots, fustas, or brigantines, depending on their size), which were ideal for the hit-and-run tactics such corsairs preferred. The European powers turned galleys into battleships and strung them together into fleets.

All this was a very long time ago, of course, and the oared galleys that once crisscrossed the Mediterranean—at the time, people would probably have said infested the Mediterranean—have long since rotted away into nothing.

With a couple of exceptions.

In Istanbul, in the Maritime Museum there, you can see the last remaining original seventeenth century (it might even be older than that) galley: the Kadırga (Turkish for “galley”). The Kadirga was the royal galley, the personal vehicle of the Ottoman Sultans—which no doubt explains how it managed to survive all these years. The vessel is about 130 feet (just shy of 40 meters) long, with 48 oars (24 to a side) requiring three men per oar.

There’s also another galley you can inspect, this one European. Unlike the Kadırga, though, it’s a replica.

During the sixteenth century, the two great Mediterranean empires—the Ottoman and the Habsburg—fought each other essentially to a standstill. One of the last great clashes was a huge naval battle that occurred in the fall of 1571 in the waters near Lepanto, in the Gulf of Patras, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth (the stretch of water that separates Central Greece from the Peloponnese).

The Habsburgs didn’t have sufficient power to confront the Ottoman navy alone—no individual European nation did at that time. So in preparation to confront the Ottomans, a European coalition was formed: the Holy League.

The Battle of Lepanto (as the conflict between the ships of the Holy League and the Ottoman navy is known) was a sprawling, bloody affair. According to the standard estimates, the Holy League fielded 212 ships, all galleys of one sort or another; the Ottomans fielded 278, all galleys as well—making the Battle of Lepanto one of the largest galley battles ever fought. The Holy League had a total of nearly 70,000 men, soldiers and sailors combined; the ottomans over 80,000.

According, again, to the standard estimates, by battle’s end, the Holy League had lost 17 galleys and their casualties amounted to 10,000 men. The Ottomans had lost 200 galleys (more than two thirds of their fleet) and 40,000 of their men had been killed. The Holy League also managed to liberate 12,000 Christian slaves from the defeated Ottoman ships. This European triumph occurred in large part thanks to a half dozen Venetian galleasses, gigantic galleys that were far better armed than anything else at the time. In other words, advanced weaponry won the day.

The Supreme Commander of the Holy League was a young man in his mid-twenties named Don Juan of Austria. He came by the position because he was the (illegitimate) son of Charles V, the Spanish Habsburg Emperor (you can see an image of Don Juan below). Don Juan took part in the battle of Lepanto—and coordinated the chaotic fighting as best he could—from the deck of his own galley, which served as the flagship for the fleet.

Back in 1971, as part of a commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, a replica of Don Juan’s galley was built in Barcelona (where the original had been built way back in the 1500s) and put on display in the Barcelona Maritime Museum. It’s still there.

The ship is known as La Real (“the Royal” in Spanish). This name is a bit of a misnomer, though. It’s more of a designation than an actual individual ship name. The Real was the name given to the lead ship of a Spanish squadron or fleet of ships. The English version at this time was “Admiral.” When you read in a sixteenth or seventeenth century English text that the “Admiral” was attacked, it doesn’t mean that a man of that naval rank was attacked; it means that the lead ship of the squadron or fleet involved was attacked. La Real got its name because it was the lead ship—the flagship—of the Holy League’s fleet.

But La Real it is.

It was a large vessel for its time: just under 200 feet (60 meters) long and about 20 feet (6 meters) wide amidships, with thirty banks of oars along each side, each oar manned by four men. At Lepanto, it would have packed in an additional 400 or so soldiers and sailors—making for a very crowded ship.

The oared galleys of this period were, by modern standards, appalling things. The oarsmen, mostly slaves or convicts, were chained to their rowing benches for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. They had no place to sleep, no place to relive themselves, and no shelter from the elements. It was said at the time that you could smell a galley coming from a mile away.

Yet some of them—including both the Turkish Kadırga and Don Juan’s La Real—were also extravagant works of art. Such vessels were, after all, conspicuous representations the prestige and wealth of the powers that fielded them. For flagships like La Real, no expense was spared. The result was, to modern sensibilities, a bizarre and creepy mixture of the sublime and the disgusting.

The sublime part could be quite splendid, though.

For more on La Real, and for photos and illustrations of the ship, go to Oared Galleys – The Story of La Real: Part 2.