Galley, a long, narrow row-boat, carrying a sail or two, but dependent for safety and movement mainly upon oars. These boats were called galleys, galleots, and brigantines (or frigates) according to their size: a galleot is a small galley, while a brigantine is still smaller. The number of men to each oar varied according to the vessel's size: a galley had four to six men working side by side to each oar, a galleot but two or three, and a brigantine one. A galley was 180 or 190 spans (of 9 to 10 inches) long, and its greatest beam was 25 spans broad. Such a vessel carried two masts—the albero maestro or mainmast, and the trinchetto or foremast, each with a great lateen sail. The Genoese and Venetians set the models of these vessels, and the Italian terms were generally used in all European navigation till the northern nations took the lead in sailing ships. These sails were often clewed up, however, for the mariner of the 16th century was ill-practised in the art of tacking, and very fearful of losing sight of land for long, so that unless he had a wind fair astern he preferred to trust to his oars. A short deck at the prow and poop served, the one to carry the fighting men and trumpeters and yardsmen, and to provide cover for the four guns; the other to accommodate the knights and gentlemen, and especially the admiral or captain. Between the two decks, in the ship's waist, was the propelling power—say fifty-four benches or banks, twenty-seven a side, supporting each four or five slaves, whose whole business in life was to tug at the fifty-four oars. If a Christian vessel, the rowers were either Turkish or Moorish captives, or Christian convicts; if a Barbary corsair, the rowers would all be Christian prisoners.
Sometimes a galley-slave worked as long as twenty years, sometimes for all his miserable life, at this fearful calling. The poor creatures were chained so close together on their narrow bench that they could not sleep at full length. Sometimes seven men (on French galleys, too, in the 18th century) had to live and sleep in a space 10 feet by 4. Between the two lines of rowers ran the bridge, and on it stood two boatswains armed with long whips, which they laid on to the bare backs of the rowers with merciless severity. Biscuit was made to last six or eight months, each slave getting 28 ounces thrice a week, and a spoonful of some mess of rice or bones or green stuff. The water-cans under the benches were too often foul. The full complement of a large galley included, besides 270 rowers and the captain, chaplain, doctor, scrivener, boatswains, and master or pilot, ten or fifteen gentlemen adventurers, friends of the captain, sharing his mess, and berthed in the poop, twelve helmsmen, six foretop able-bodied seamen, ten warders for the captives, twelve ordinary seamen, four gunners, a carpenter, smith, cooper, and a couple of cooks, together with fifty or sixty soldiers, so that the whole equipage of a fighting galley must have reached a total of about four hundred men.
What is true of a European galley is also generally applicable to a Barbary galleot of eighteen to twenty-four oars, except that the latter was generally smaller and lighter, and had commonly but one mast and no castle on the prow. The crew of about two hundred men was very densely packed, and about one hundred soldiers armed with muskets, bows, and scimitars occupied the poop. The rowers on Barbary galleys were generally Christian slaves belonging to the owners, but when these were not numerous enough other slaves, or Arabs and Moors, were hired. The complement of soldiers, whether volunteers or Ottoman janissaries, varied with the vessel's size, but generally was calculated at two to each oar, because there was just room for two men to sit beside each bank of rowers. They were not paid unless they took a prize, nor were they supplied with anything more than biscuit, vinegar, and oil—everything else they found themselves. Vinegar and water with a few drops of oil on the surface formed the chief drink of the galley-slaves, and their food was moistened biscuit or rusk and an occasional mess of gruel.
A galleass was originally a large, heavy galley, three-masted, and fitted with a rudder, since its bulk compelled it to trust to sails as well as oars. It was a sort of transition-ship between the galley and the galleon, and as time went on it became more and more of a sailing ship. It had high bulwarks with loopholes for muskets, and there was at least a partial cover for the crew. The Portuguese galleys in the Spanish Armada mounted each 110 soldiers and 222 galley-slaves; but the Neapolitan galleasses carried 700 men, of whom 130 were sailors, 270 soldiers, and 300 slaves of the oar. In France the convict galleys were gradually superseded from 1748 by the Bagnes (q.v.). John Knox laboured for eighteen months at the oar, and St Vincent de Paul (q.v.) did much for the galley-slaves. See also TRIREME, SHIPBUILDING.
Furtenbach, Architectura Navalis; S. Lane-Poole, The Barbary Corsairs ('Story of the Nations'); and M. Oppenheim, in Gentleman's Magazine (1885).