Slide Sets

The Mediterranean war galley was a formidable fighting machine propelled into battle by the muscle and sweat of scores of oarsmen and driven over the sea by an enormous lateen sail. Evolved from a classical ancestry of long warships beginning with the Phoenicians’ biremes (two banks of oars) and continuing with Greek and Roman triremes (three banks of oars), the galley was reintroduced by the Italian Maritime Republics at the end of the ninth century. As a natural product of the Mediterranean, where uncertain winds did not favor vessels relying solely on sails, the medieval galley became a single-banked rowing ship with outriggers on each side to support longer oars. Sometime in the fourteenth century, an axial stern-mounted rudder replaced traditional steering oars and quarter rudders.

The typical sixteenth-century galley as built in Mediterranean shipyards was about 120 ft. long on deck by 15 ft. beam amidships, or eight times as long as it was wide. Lightly built with keel and frames covered by planking joined edge to edge, the hull of a galley sat very low in the water. The single deck was only five or six feet above the keel, and at its highest point on the poop, a galley might only have seven feet of freeboard.

The vessel was divided into three sections. The first was a fighting platform on the bow containing an array of large caliber artillery mounted on the centerline and pointing forward to fire at point blank range a murderous charge of scrap metal. The galley’s main weapon, however, was a long iron-reinforced ram, which was thrust through an enemy’s hull at ramming speed. Above the gun platform was a boarding platform, from which archers, musketeers, and swivel gunners could fire down upon their opponent’s vessel and leap aboard her at the moment of impact.

The second section of the vessel was a sterncastle and cabin aft, which housed the galley captain, the helmsman at the tiller of a large crescent-shaped rudder, and the drummer directing the strokes of the oarsmen. At the stern of the ship was a giant lantern, which marked the galley’s position in relation to others in the fleet at night.

Between the bow and the stern, the third section was composed of benches for the oarsmen, divided down the centerline by a gangway, which allowed access from poop deck to fighting platform. The benches slanted inwards toward the stern of the ship, allowing the long, heavy oars a maximum reach at the beginning of each stroke. The sides of the hull were extended by outrigger frames to give the oarsmen suitable leverage; about one-third of the length of the oar was inboard, and this was weighted to balance the outboard portion. Galleys were propelled by two basic arrangements: either by two or three men to a bench pulling independently with separate oars (a terzaruolo), or by several men to a bench pulling together on one oar (a scaloccio). The galley’s average cruising speed under oars was about three knots; normally oarsmen worked in shifts, a third of the complement at a time, and this pace could continue all day. In battle, a maximum rate of seven knots could be obtained, but only for a short spurt before impact.

Early galleys had one mast, situated a third of the way down the ship’s length, with a fighting top which also served as a lookout. A composite lateen yard, made of two yards lashed together, was longer than the mast itself and served also as a gangway in assaults on castle walls. Depending on wind conditions, different sizes of lateen sails were hoisted. Other galleys had two masts: a mainmast stepped amidships and a foremast in the bow. Sails were only used on voyages from one port to another in favorable wind conditions. Given the tactical advantages of a low-slung, sleek hull, there were disadvantages to the galley’s performance under sail. Waves came inboard even in a slight sea; during strong winds, the whole leeside of the deck went under water, which often reached the waists of the oarsmen.

Nevertheless, the galley was unrivalled as a warship and became the basic unit of every Mediterranean fleet. It comprised the main body and strike force of medieval navies for well over six centuries until transatlantic empires finally established the sail as the major means of naval propulsion.

Throughout the literature of the Age of Discovery, repeated mention is made of a new type of vessel called the caravel. Invariably associated with Portuguese and later Spanish voyages of exploration, the caravel became widely admired for a revolutionary combination of qualities that afforded early Renaissance mariners a passage into uncharted waters. Although the first documented use of the word caravela appears in a Portuguese manuscript of 1255 describing coastal fishing vessels, heavily planked barchas and barinels initially propelled Portuguese mariners down African shores in the fifteenth century. Headwinds and currents in the Gulf of Guinea, however, slowed the progress of exploration under square sail and oar. A slightly longer, larger and lighter vessel, with finer lines and partial decking, emerged to ride over heavy seas and to venture up equatorial river mouths. Greater sailing distances prompted a need for increased crews, provisions and trading truck, but also swifter and more maneuverable craft in which to return home to Lisbon.

The most important improvement in ship design, however, was a change from single-masted square-rigging to multiple lateen sails. This fore-and-aft triangular sail, employed on small Mediterranean craft from the seventh century, most likely was brought from the Indian Ocean by Arab conquests in Egypt. Northern European crusaders gave the lateen sail its present name when they encountered the distinctive rig in the southern waters of Latin countries. The segmented spread of triangular canvas distributed over a longer hull allowed a craft to point, pivot, tack and run as wind directions necessitated. Pre-constructed framing, upon which flush, edge-joined, (“carvel”) planking was nailed, provided support for the multiple lateen rig of the caravel. The addition of an axial stern rudder, as opposed to traditional steering oars on either stern quarter, proved essential for maneuverability in the open ocean.

This combination of multiple lateen rig, “carvel” hull and sternpost rudder, adapted from the seafaring attributes of different regions through maritime trial and error, comprised the characteristics of the classic caravel. Built for speed and seaworthiness rather than cargo capacity, the caravel possessed the qualities needed in her time. Expeditionary voyages down the western edge of the dark continent prompted the use of three lateen yards set on raked masts for clawing to windward and making rapid steering maneuvers. Aerodynamically, this grouping of triangular sails would have increased a caravela latina’s speed, especially if the mizzen sail was trimmed to spill wind into the main.

Beginning with the 1441 voyage of Nuno Tristão, caravels supported the landmark probes of Diogo Cão (1482-1484), and carried the expeditions of Bartolomeo Dias to the Cape of Good Hope and Vasco de Gama to India. Although they were the vanguard of European expansion eastward, they soon would face a broader challenge-the Atlantic Ocean. On his first voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus employed two caravels, changing the Niña rig in the Canaries from the traditional caravela latina to that of a square-rigged caravela redonda, in order to take advantage of following Atlantic trade winds. Each of his later voyages would also depend on shallow-draft, highly responsive caravels to comb the uncharted reefs of the West Indies. These were the “Mercury” spacecraft of a long line of transoceanic vessels, routinely crossing the Atlantic to give us for the first time a true world history and geography. Thus, the caravel’s combination of canvas and spars represents the ancestor of the traditional “ship rig” that climaxed with the clipper ship and is still carried by yachts today.

The exact origin of the carrack is unknown, but almost certainly was a product of the fusion between Baltic and Mediterranean shipbuilding in the fifteenth century. Developed for their generous cargo capacity, ships of this type could undertake long voyages outside of the Mediterranean Sea in the wake of European exploration and discovery. The broad-bellied hull of the carrack contained the largest cargo hold of her day; the narrow but towering bulwarks and castles protected against enemy fire, and provided defence from assault by boarding. But increased freeboard, designed to accommodate numerous passengers and weapons, made these floating fortresses extremely top-heavy and unmanageable at sea.

The evolution of single-masted, round merchant sailing ships, clinker-built in the north, but carvel-built in the south, rapidly advanced during the first half of the fifteenth century. The first stage in the development of the Mediterranean carrack was the stepping of a second mast into a small forecastle on the bow; an improvement that soon was imitated in the north. As early two-masted carracks ventured into the open ocean, their builders began to understand the need for a third sail aft of the mainmast to balance pressure on the rudder exerted by the foremast, and a mizzenmast was added at the stern. Soon, fully-rigged carracks increased their propulsive power to include four, and sometimes five masts. The introduction of topsails above the mainsails allowed the expanse of canvas to be separated into smaller combinations that made the ship easier to handle. To support this variable assemblage of spars and sails, heavier standing rigging was employed; shrouds came to be fitted with rope ladders (ratline), so that sailors could quickly clamber up the rigging to adjust the various sails. This rig became the standard for the later carracks, which were to ply between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans.

A typical carrack of the sixteenth century was a strongly-built round ship reinforced with numerous vertical fender wales attached to her sides. The now was surmounted with a high forecastle superstructure which often contained two decks and projected forwards over the stempost. The waist of the ship was relatively low, but the massive sterncastle was made up of two or more decks with galleries and gunports. Often, both castles were covered with large awnings supported by a network of open beams. The tonnage of carracks increased from around 400 tons at the beginning of the fifteenth century to more than 1000 tons at the beginning of the sixteenth. By the seventeenth century, some carracks carried 1000-1200 crew and passengers, and as much as 2000 tons of cargo.

The Portuguse carrack, Madre de Dios, captured by the English in 1592, was rated at 1600 tons; carried 900 tons of merchandise and had a crew of 600 or 700 men. As measured by her captors, the vessel's keel was 100 ft.; her overall length, 165 ft.; and her beam, 47 ft. She drew 31 ft. of water, had a mainmast 121 ft. high, and a main yard 106 ft. in length. Aside from her high forecastle, she had four complete decks, not including a poop and topgallant poop. At sea, her helm required the efforts of 12 to 14 men to keep her on course.

Beginning in the mid 1500s, Portugal’s annual India fleet—her only maritime link with the Far East—consisted of five or six vessels fitted out under the supervision of the Casa da India. The ships were fewer in number but larger than those that sailed between Spain and the Americas; the majority being carracks of some 500 to 1000 tons. Annual fleets usually departed Lisbon in the spring to catch a fair wind for the Cape Verdes, where they turned towards Brazil in order to find another fair wind to reach the Cape of Good Hope, which they cleared without sighting. Working up the East African coast, the fleet then picked up the westerly monsoon which brought them to Goa, India, between August and October. Having exchanged cargos and passengers, the ships’ homeward-bound voyage from India with the north-east monsoon commenced between November and January, reaching Lisbon the following summer or early autumn. The entire round-trip voyage normally averaged some 18 months, most of which was spent at sea in difficult conditions.

Combined with overcrowding, appalling filth and disease, life aboard Portuguese carracks was tenuous. It was not unusual for half the 1000 or so people crammed into a vessel some 50 m. long and 14 m. wide to die on the outward run to India. Ships literally fell apart, sank through stress of weather, or were lost through ignorance or incompetence of their officers and crew. Between 1605 and 1612, at least 24 Portuguese carracks were lost on the East India routes; of those passengers and mariners fortunate to survive initial wrecking along the African coast, many perished in death marched dogged by hostile tribes before they could reach the relative safety of the Cape.

Work-horses of the colonial maritime lifeline between Seville and the Americas, Spanish galleons were developed during the sixteenth century in response to a need for transatlantic speed and security. Born in the Mediterranean Sea of Italian, Portuguese and Spanish traditions, galleons combined the cargo capacity of the carrack and swift water-lines of galleys with sail patterns and rigging of oceanic caravels to become among the most advance sailing ships of their day.

Early sixteenth-century galleons essentially were similar to transport naos, but more heavily armed. As the wealth of the New World began to pour into Spain’s imperial coffers, and thence into her creditor’s hands, the need for greater cargo capacity initially was solved by increasing the ships’ beams and raising their bulwarks to accommodate bronze and iron cannons needed to defend their precious contents from corsairs. The Spanish admiral Alvaro de Bazán and his brother Alonso promoted this development by employing larger galleons of their own design for transport of merchandize and treasure. They also incorporated other innovations, such as copper bilge pumps, lead sheathing, and mixing preservatives in the wax with which the hull planks were treated.

To concentrate the weight of ordnance near the ship’s center of gravity, “tumble-home” (in which the top deck was much narrower than hull at waterline) was introduced. By the middle of the sixteenth century, galleons averaged between 300 and 600 tons; later in the century they grew to 1200 tons. As carrying capacity of the ships increased, decks often were added to house additional artillery and passengers for the Indies route. Supporting large fore and stern castles, as well as three or four masts, mid-sixteenth century galleons tended to be top-heavy in rough seas, especially when overloaded, and were prone to capsize in storms. Even when cleaned of bottom growth and not overloaded, these “castles of the sea” could not average more than four or five knots in favorable winds.

To combat unseaworthiness, a change in construction and theory was needed. Although she was sleeker and faster than older broad-beamed vessels, the galleon’s high sides and towering sterncastle made her roll and pitch, due to the short length of keel in proportion to length on deck. One advance in design was to develop a low square forecastle set back from stern, making it less apt to catch the wind and force the ship’s bow to leeward.

In the 1560s, Admiral Pedro Menédez de Avilés advocated a lengthening of the galleon’s keel in relation to its beam. Despite opposition from older builders, ships called galeoncetes, with a lighter draft, finer lines and a lower deck for rowers, were constructed in Cuba as defense against pirates. Later, the King of Spain ordered eight of these vessels built for use in the Bay of Biscay, since they proved to be good sailors. Menédez’s ideas were the first step in evolution of the frigate, and would eventually be adopted at the end of the seventeenth century by all European navies.

By the eighteenth century, the short, deep, tub-shaped ship of the sixteenth century had evolved into a longer vessel of lighter draft, lower freeboard and finer lines at bow and stern. Lessons realized with the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada caused Spanish naval shipwrights to imitate English galleon construction, but improvements were slow and confined to men-of-war. But at their zenith, heavily armed galleons of 1500 to 2000 tons plied the Atlantic between Spain and the Americas, acting as convoy escorts laden with crown treasure, while naos frigates, and smaller pataches carried private treasure and general cargo.

This map, which commemorates the West Indian voyage of Sir Francis Drake (1585-1586), depicts an English galleon flying the cross of St. George, and probably represents Drake’s flagship Elizabeth Bonaventure. She is a four-masted, race-built galleon with a single gundeck, riding rakishly low in the water. Her long projecting beakhead in the bow was a legacy from the galley, but was supported by a knee, which at the forward edge became a cutwater providing a swift path through the seas. A low forecastle, set back from the bow instead of overhanging it, was a major improvement from previous massive structures that caused a vessel to pitch and roll. The sterncastle, which consists of a half deck, quarter deck and a poop deck, acted as a navigating bridge, with an unobstructed view forward blanketed only by the sails. On mainmast, foremast and bowsprit, square sails were augmented with the attachment of lower bonnets. Above the fighting tops, topsails provided a substantial increase in propulsion. The mizzen and bonaventure masts carried lateen sails and smaller fighting tops, but no topsails.

Not only were these galleons the vehicles that carried intrepid Elizabethan adventurers to the Caribbean and Pacific, but they also were the ships that defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. As a seafaring people, the English had by the latter part of the sixteenth century extended their operations beyond the English Channel and into Spanish America. While other European nations still employed heavily armed cargo carracks and towering galleons, English shipwrights were experimenting with a new type of galleon. A manuscript, dated to about 1586 and attributed to one Matthew Baker, depicts plans and sections of a number of ships that are shaped much differently below the waterline. One of Baker’s plans reveals that he conceived the underbody of a ship as similar to the lines of a fish, with “a cod’s head and a mackerel’s tail.”

Although this design produced ships that were low and sleek for their time, there were other qualities that made them revolutionary fighting vessels. Galleons termed as race-built appear to have been a product of Sir John Hawkins, Treasurer of Queen Elizabeth’s ships, who knew from long experience that towering castles fore and aft hindered the sailing qualities of vessels at sea. He proposed a reduction in superstructure size and height to decrease wind resistance and afford more control. It is thought that the term “race” was derived from the French word ras, meaning shaven or flat, and describing what happened to the fore- and sterncastles: they were razed.

With less wind resistance, race-built galleons were more maneuverable, better to windward and quicker on the helm. They could outsail older-style ships while staying out of artillery range, then quickly come in to attack their opponent’s vulnerable hindquarters. Since more emphasis was placed on the improved sailing qualities of the new galleons, a new fighting technique at sea evolved, giving sailors a modern status in naval warfare. Instead of soldiers taking charge of the fighting, the sailors sailed the ship and manned the guns; success in a battle now depended on seamanship rather than medieval naval tactics.

The test of the race-built galleon’s abilities came in 1588 against the Spanish Armada. The Spanish vessels were of the old design, high-castled, manned by sailors who were under soldier’s orders, and still intent on grappling and boarding if the encounter turned into a fight. But the English race-built ships outmaneuvered them, never allowing the Spaniards a chance to close and board. Spanish naval commanders, as well as those of other European nations, quickly gained respect for their English counterparts, and soon adopted versions of the race-built galleon for their own purposes.

Only 50 years after becoming a free republic in 1609, the Dutch attained a golden age of riches and economic organization through the creation of a vast trading empire in the Far East. Founded in 1602, the United East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC) was given a monopoly of all Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Strait of Magellan. Endowed with enormous powers and privileges, the company managed to drive the Portuguese out of the Spice Islands and dealt mercilessly with rival English commerce. Dealing in oriental silks, spices and rare woods the VOC poured enormous fortunes into the coffers of Dutch stockholders through superior business methods, navigational skill and technical innovations in the lading and handling of ships.

In the New World, the West India Company (West Indische Compagnie or WIC) added immense profits in commodities and slaves, both of which were transported by the thousands to the Caribbean and South America. Created in 1621, the WIC originally undertook privateering enterprises against the Spaniards, but soon took control of the Hudson River, establishing a temporary capitalist colony in New Netherlands. But the company’s main goal was to secure control of the West African source of slaves and the market for them in Brazil. However, the slave trade was too large and competitive for one nation, let alone one corporation to monopolize. The Hudson Valley fell into English hands, and the Portuguese recovered their Brazilian colonies one by one. Ultimately, the Dutch South Atlantic empire collapsed as quickly as it had risen, while commerce in the East Indies continued to maintain its enormous profits.

Meanwhile, the Dutch had created the largest merchant fleets the world had yet seen. East and West Indian merchantmen traveled in company and were heavily armed, making them immune from opportunistic pirate attacks. Only half the burthen of earlier Portuguese carracks plying the same routes, Dutch East Indiamen were small, broad, roomy ships rigged as frigates and powerfully armed for both defense of their cargos, but also naval warfare. They were the successors of the merchant pinnaces that paved the way for commercial empire with their swift, shallow hull and innovative rigging.

Outwardly, Dutch ships differed little from those of the English and French, except for their comparatively sparse ornamentation. Nothing was wasted in the shipyards on elaborate decoration or creature comforts when profit motives were high. The companies’ aims were to keep freights low to secure the competitive advantage. Yet, Dutch shipbuilding became a model for many other European powers. Depicted flying the distinctive Dutch company tricolor in the Grand Atlas of Joan Blaeu, the ships had a lower galleon-style bow and beak, finer lines, and were rigged with a spritsail topsail on the end of the bowsprit. Over time, larger vessels of the VOC were built, rigged and armed as complete men-of-war. Their lines became bluffer, their hulls more squat, their masts relatively shorter and the weight of their artillery greater, so that with upwards of 150 men on board, they frequently were bigger than the republic’s largest warships.

Like those of the Portuguese, VOC vessels followed a maritime pattern determined by oceanic wind systems. Three separate fleets departed Europe annually for the Dutch East India entrepot of Batavia, near Java. The outward voyage normally took seven or eight months to round the Cape. After exchanging cargos, one fleet headed for home, while the other waited for cargos to come from China, Japan, and the Bay of Bengal. As with the Portuguese, who pioneered the East Indies route, and like the Spanish Pacific galleon trade, losses of life were great due to the length of the voyage and bad food. Although the cost in ships and men was high, often reaching fifteen percent, the returns in profit were much higher.

1. Detail from the view of “Candia” in Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (6 vols. Cologne, 1572-1618).
2. Detail from the view of Lisbon in the Civitates Orbis Terrarum.
3. Detail from the manuscript atlas of Sebastião Lopes, c. 1565.
4. Detail from the map of China in the Atlas of Gerard Mercator (Amsterdam, 1630).
5. Detail from Baptista Boazio, The famous West Indian voyage… (London, c. 1588).
6. Detail from the Grand Atlas of Joan Blaeu (12 vols. Amsterdam, 1663).