The New Student's Reference Work/Galley

Galley, a long, narrow rowboat, carrying a sail or two, but depending for safety and movement upon oars. When small, galleys were called galleots and brigantines. An old-time galley was about 150 feet long, and its greatest beam was 20 feet wide. It carried two masts, a mainmast and a foremast, each with a great lateen-sail. There were a short deck at the prow and one at the stern. Between the two were sometimes 54 banks or benches, 27 on a side, occupied on either side by four or five slaves, whose duty was to propel the vessel by means of oars. If a Christian vessel, the rowers were either Turkish or Moorish captives or Christian convicts; if a Barbary corsair, the rowers were Christian prisoners. Sometimes a galley-slave worked as long as twenty years, sometimes all his life, at this onerous calling. Slaves were chained so close together on their narrow bench that they could not sleep at full length. Biscuit was made to last six or eight months, each slave getting 28 ounces three times a week and a spoonful of some mess of bones, rice or green stuff. Between the two lines of rowers ran the bridge, and on it stood two boatswains, armed with long whips with which they scourged the slaves. On a large galley, besides 270 rowers, there was a mixed crew of about 75 men, together with 50 or 60 soldiers; so that the whole equipment of a fighting-galley must have reached about 400 men. A galleas originally was a large, heavy galley, but later it became a sailing ship, as was the galleon of the Spaniards. See S. Lane-Poole’s The Barbary Corsairs.