The Galleys, Which Were Very Low In The Water,[27] Could Not Keep The Sea In Rough Weather, And In Winter They Never Willingly Kept The Sea At Night, However Fair The Weather Might Be.

Yet Sanudo mentions that he had been with armed galleys to Sluys in Flanders.

I will mention two more particulars before concluding this digression. When captured galleys were towed into port it was stern foremost, and with their colours dragging on the surface of the sea.[28] And the custom of saluting at sunset (probably by music) was in vogue on board the galleys of the 13th century.[29]

We shall now sketch the circumstances that led to the appearance of our Traveller in the command of a war-galley.

[1] I regret not to have had access to Jal's learned memoirs (Archeologie Navale, Paris, 1839) whilst writing this section, nor since, except for a hasty look at his Essay on the difficult subject of the oar arrangements. I see that he rejects so great a number of oars as I deduce from the statements of Sanudo and others, and that he regards a large number of the rowers as supplementary.

[2] It seems the more desirable to elucidate this, because writers on mediaeval subjects so accomplished as Buchon and Capmany have (it would seem) entirely misconceived the matter, assuming that all the men on one bench pulled at one oar.

[3] See Coronelli, Atlante Veneto, I. 139, 140. Marino Sanudo the Elder, though not using the term trireme, says it was well understood from ancient authors that the Romans employed their rowers three to a bench (p. 59).

[4] "Ad terzarolos" (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, p. 57). The Catalan Worthy, Ramon de Muntaner, indeed constantly denounces the practice of manning all the galleys with terzaruoli, or tersols, as his term is. But his reason is that these thirds-men were taken from the oar when crossbowmen were wanted, to act in that capacity, and as such they were good for nothing; the crossbowmen, he insists, should be men specially enlisted for that service and kept to that. He would have some 10 or 20 per cent, only of the fleet built very light and manned in threes. He does not seem to have contemplated oars three-banked, and crossbowmen besides, as Sanudo does. (See below; and Muntaner, pp. 288, 323, 525, etc.)

In Sanudo we have a glimpse worth noting of the word soldiers advancing towards the modern sense; he expresses a strong preference for soldati (viz. paid soldiers) over crusaders (viz. volunteers), p. 74.

[5] L'Armata Navale, Roma, 1616, pp. 150-151.

[6] See a work to which I am indebted for a good deal of light and information, the Engineer Giovanni Casoni's Essay: "Dei Navigli Poliremi usati nella Marina dagli Antichi Veneziani," in "Esercitazioni dell' Ateneo Veneto," vol. ii. p. 338. This great Quinquereme, as it was styled, is stated to have been struck by a fire-arrow, and blown up, in January 1570.

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