A floating fortress, the galleass was the ultimate and unwieldy result
of an effort to combine both oars and broadside, taxing human muscle to the
limit. Heavy cannon and high bulwarks made them dangerous attackers - and also
impossible targets, for if they could not run down an enemy, they had little
need to run away from one.
Battle of Lepanto.
If the siphon itself had perished with the fall of Byzantine
Empire in 1453, other incendiary weapons had not. Both sides had men trained to
throw clay pots filled with flaming oil, animal fat or quick lime to set the
enemy decks ablaze or render them perilously slippery. Arms and cannon threw
hollow iron balls filled with burning matter onto enemy vessels, and the
flaming shower of sparks from the bomba marked the efforts of the Spanish
vessels. The galleasses used their oars to wear ship as required to bring their
stern, broadside or bow guns to bear on the targets offered, while the great
height of their wooden sides rendered them practically immune to Turkish
efforts to board them.
The goal of both fleets was to envelop the other, and fierce
fighting raged on the flanks of each line. Gunpowder and thick armour began to
make a difference in the Christians’ favour. As the Turkish marines perished,
another calamity befell their ships. The Christian slaves on the benches of the
Turkish fleet began availing themselves of weapons dropped in the carnage and
attacking their former masters. While the ships were so embroiled, they lost
all propulsion and hope of manoeuvre or escape.
Still the Turks fought on. Ali Pasha’s command squadron forced
its way through to a cluster of Christian flagships in the centre of Don Juan’s
line. Even the commanders became involved in the fighting: a septuagenarian
Venetian nobleman too weak to span his own crossbow picked off individual Turks
from the masthead while Ali Pasha himself bent a bow in the final surge of the
fighting.
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Faced with the very real threat of destruction in the
forthcoming battle, the Venetian Republic added a new and innovative element to
their preparations. By one recounting, six of the largest merchant galleys in
the Venetian state-operated fleet stood by in one of the Arsenal’s storage
basins while the preparations for the impending battle reached a fever pitch.
It occurred to some inspired soul that these huge vessels could be used to
carry freight rather more lethal than their usual cargoes of silks and spices.
No other shipyard in the world could have effected so sudden
and drastic a conversion. The traditional emphasis on bow armament shifted
under the pressure of necessity. Workman equipped the six galeazas (large
galleys), with specialized fighting structures at the bow, the stern and along
the sides to hold the largest cannon available from the Republic’s stockpiles.
The resulting ‘galleass’ was quite literally a castle on the sea. At the bows
of the ships, the high, protected forecastles bristled with cannon. These were
balanced by similar armament in the substantial aftercastles. Nine or so
periers, or full cannon, jutted out along each side - the guns and their
carriages were mounted above, below or even among the oarsmen. On a lighter
galley meant for speed and manoeuvre, such weaponry could never have been
accommodated. With the creation of the galleass, however, the broadside was
born.
Our detailed knowledge of the construction of the galleasses
comes from specifications for later versions of these formidable hybrids. These
were 49m (160ft) long and 12m (40ft) wide - twice as wide as the lighter
galleys. Six men pulled each of the 76 heavy oars, and the decks were protected
from boarding by the high freeboard, the long distance from the water to her
deck being a difficult obstacle for an attacker to surmount. A galleass’s
battery probably contained five or so full cannon firing a ball weighing 501b
(22.7kg); two or three 251b (11.3kg) balls; 23 lighter pieces of various sizes
and shapes; and around 20 rail-mounted swivel guns, used to slaughter rowers
and boarding parties. The heaviest Venetian galleasses could fire some 3251b
(147.4kg) of shot in every salvo. Five standard galleys would have been
required to carry a similar armament.
The new leviathans did require towing by their smaller
counterparts to achieve any sort of speed of manoeuvre - but this was no
problem in a large fleet of galleys; the wind could provide the same impetus it
gave to Edward III’s cogs at Sluys. Certainly on later examples, three huge
lateen sails, each on its own mast, loomed above the deck. The exact size and
armament of the six prototype galleasses at Lepanto is not known, but their
performance is well documented. The Venetians were about to surprise the Turks.
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