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Barbaloslar

Barbaros: Sword of the Mediterranean Episode 2

GALLEYS OF THE RAIDERS (Barbaroslar)

Majestically the great galley drove on southward bound down the coast. In the distance, out of sight below the rim of the horizon, her consort followed. To port of the leading vessel, the tawny hills behind the coastal plain of western Italy burned under the summer sun. To starboard lay the rocky island of Capraia. Beyond it, the northern peninsula of Corsica reared up against the hard blue sky. The sea was calm and there was too little wind to fill the great lateen sails. So the two ships came on, “negligently rowing along, no less than ten leagues asunder, careless, indolently supine, and, according to custom, in very indifferent order …”

It was the year 1504 and the two galleys so innocently running down the Italian coast belonged to no less a dignitary than Pope Julius II. At that time the occupant of St.
Peter’s chair was not averse to a little speculation in mercantile trading, and the galleys had recently loaded at Genoa with locally manufactured goods, imported luxuries, and silks and spices from the East. They were bound for the port of Civitavecchia, a little north of Rome, to unload their goods for transport to the capital by road.

The leading galley was the papal flagship, an ornate and elaborately decorated vessel—the flower of the shipbuilder’s craft. About 150 feet in length, riding the sea to the easy beat of her oars, she looked from a distance more like a work of art than a practical vessel designed for war or commerce. Her sails were brailed up along the two great curving yards that soared like wings above her fore and main masts. Except with a fair and following wind from astern, when she could run goosewinged before it, it was upon the motive power of her rowers that she mainly
depended. Now, in the high Mediterranean summer, the oarsmen got little respite.

At the prow and poop, a short deck provided accommodation for the fighting men and the sailors who worked the yards. They were at rest, reclining under awnings, anticipating no danger in this pacific part of the Italian seaboard. With them also there were trumpeters and heralds—those guardians of the pomp and authority so dear to the heart of Renaissance Europe. The poop itself was elaborately carved, painted, and gilded, and flaunted a purple damask awning under which the captain, chief officers, and other gentry embarked for the passage sat at their ease. On a special platform above the poop, the pilot and the helmsman directed the great vessel; the one giving his orders for the course, while the other leaned as necessary against the long tiller that was attached to the center-line rudder.
Apart from the center-line rudder in place of the old steering oar, there was little about this galley that would have been unfamiliar to the ancient Romans or the Greeks.

Perhaps a certain improvement in the sails—lateens instead of square sails—and a greater degree of color and decoration might have been remarked. Other than that, the main distinguishing feature of the galley—the original reason for her whole existence as a fighting ship—had remained little changed throughout the centuries. The great beaked prow standing out proudly from the forward fighting platform was a direct legacy from the ram of the classical world. Although techniques of fighting had changed with the advent of artillery—the forward guns taking over much of the old dudes of the ram—it remained an integral part of the warship. The long prow could still be used to impale the ship’s side of an enemy while the fighting men harassed her with arquebus fire as well as crossbow bolts and arrows, until such time as they could leap aboard and take her with cold steel.

Barbaros: Sword of the Mediterranean Episode 2

(onubad media)

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