And men to a bench; but as it had
been found that three oars and men to a bench could be employed with great
advantage, after that date nearly all galleys adopted this arrangement,
which was called ai Terzaruoli.[4]
Moreover experiments made by the Venetians in 1316 had shown that four
rowers to a bench could be employed still more advantageously. And where
the galleys could be used on inland waters, and could be made more bulky,
Sanudo would even recommend five to a bench, or have gangs of rowers on
two decks with either three or four men to the bench on each deck.
[Sidenote: Change of System in the 16th century.]
26. This system of grouping the oars, and putting only one man to an oar,
continued down to the 16th century, during the first half of which came in
the more modern system of using great oars, equally spaced, and requiring
from four to seven men each to ply them, in the manner which endured till
late in the last century, when galleys became altogether obsolete. Captain
Pantero Pantera, the author of a work on Naval Tactics (1616), says he had
heard, from veterans who had commanded galleys equipped in the antiquated
fashion, that three men to a bench, with separate oars, answered better
than three men to one great oar, but four men to one great oar (he says)
were certainly more efficient than four men with separate oars. The
new-fashioned great oars, he tells us, were styled Remi di Scaloccio, the
old grouped oars Remi a Zenzile, - terms the etymology of which I cannot
explain.[5]
It may be doubted whether the four-banked and five-banked galleys, of
which Marino Sanudo speaks, really then came into practical use. A great
five-banked galley on this system, built in 1529 in the Venice Arsenal by
Vettor Fausto, was the subject of so much talk and excitement, that it
must evidently have been something quite new and unheard of.[6] So late as
1567 indeed the King of Spain built at Barcelona a galley of thirty-six
benches to the side, and seven men to the bench, with a separate oar to
each in the old fashion. But it proved a failure.[7]
Down to the introduction of the great oars the usual system appears to
have been three oars to a bench for the larger galleys, and two oars for
lighter ones. The fuste or lighter galleys of the Venetians, even to
about the middle of the 16th century, had their oars in pairs from the
stern to the mast, and single oars only from the mast forward.[8]
[Sidenote: Some details of the 13th century Galleys.]
27.
