The final act in all these engagements was to close, secure your opponent to you with grapnels, and pour on board. As the galley ran into the attack the archers and crossbow-men would open fire, hoping to clear the decks so as to facilitate the entrance of the boarding party. The latter was composed of Knights and men-at-arms, who were stationed on a platform forward of the main mast known as the rambades. At a later date this area carried light cannon and anti-personnel weapons which were also used to clear the opponent’s decks during the run-in.

The human machinery that toiled below decks in circumstances of almost unbelievable hardship was made up of condemned criminals and captive Moslem slaves. At a later date these were supplemented by the buonavoglie, usually men who to escape the jail that awaited debtors had come to an arrangement with their creditors and served a necessary number of years until their debts were cleared. These men of course were paid; they also enjoyed better living conditions than the slaves and criminals; and they were distinguished from them by a curious kind of haircut (rather like a Red Indian’s) which left a plume of hair growing down the centre of the head with either side close-shaved.

The conditions of a galley slave’s life have been often enough described and the expression ‘working like a galley slave’ has passed into the language. One of the best descriptions was given some centuries later by a Frenchman who had himself been condemned to the galleys. Despite the difference in time, the ships and the lives of the men who laboured in them had changed little.

 

(The galley slaves) are chained six to a bench; these are four foot wide and covered with sacking stuffed with wool, over which are laid sheepskins that reach down to the deck. The officer in charge of the galley slaves stays aft with the captain from whom he receives his orders. There are also two under-officers, one amidships and one at the prow. Both of these are armed with whips with which they flog the naked bodies of the slaves. When the captain gives the order to row, the officer gives the signal with a silver whistle which hangs on a cord round his neck; the signal is repeated by the under-officers, and very soon all fifty oars strike the water as one. Picture to yourself six men chained to a bench naked as they were born, one foot on the stretcher, the other lifted and placed against the bench in front of him, supporting in their hands a vastly heavy oar and stretching their bodies backwards while their arms are extended to push the loom of the oars clear of the backs of those in front of them… Sometimes the galley slaves row ten, twelve, even twenty hours at a stretch, without the slightest rest or break. On these occasions the officer will go round and put pieces of bread soaked in wine into the mouths of the wretched rowers, to prevent them from fainting. Then the captain will call upon the officers to redouble their blows, and if one of the slaves falls exhausted over his oar (which is not uncommon) he is flogged until he appears to be dead and is thrown overboard without ceremony.

 

It is little wonder that slave revolts aboard galleys were marked by unimaginable savagery. These would most often occur during close action and boarding work. If it appeared that their own vessel was being taken by the enemy the slaves would all rattle their chains and howl to be set free, for if it was a Moslem vessel that was being captured the rowers at the oars would almost all be Christians, and vice versa. It was the captured and defeated enemy who provided the main working power of the galley. The use of the galley slave at sea produced further problems when ships were in harbour. The slaves could not of course live permanently aboard, so elaborate prison quarters had to be constructed to house them. These also required guards and maximum security, for a slave revolt ashore might be even more disastrous than one in a ship. During the winter months when the galleys were laid up for refit the slaves were employed on harbour and defence works. Many of the great walls and fortified towers that grace the city of Rhodes were erected by slave labour working under the orders of Rhodian masons to the designs of Italian fortress engineers. It is little wonder that an Italian viewing some Turkish galley slaves could remark, ‘Poor creatures! They must envy the dead.’ But exactly the same fate befell any Christians who fell into Moslem hands. Many a Knight of St John in the centuries to come would end his days on the oar bench unless, or until, his ransom was forthcoming. A hard world breeds hard men, and in the clash between Crescent and Cross that was to continue all over the Mediterranean for some five centuries these conditions of life were to be known by generation upon generation.

From the outside, however, the galley was a thing of beauty. Her lean graceful lines led up forward to her heavily decorated and painted prow and figurehead, and at the stern to her equally gilded and ornamented poop where the officers had their living quarters. In a typical galley of this period the captain would be a Knight of the Order, assisted by a professional Rhodian sailing master who was in charge of the Rhodian seamen who manned the yards and sails and did all the shipwork. The second in command was also a Knight and there would inevitably be a number of novices who were doing their year’s training at sea. A galley of this period would be manned by about two hundred oarsmen, from fifty to two hundred soldiers, and up to fifty sailors. The latter would include carpenters and shipwrights, cooks, the master barber and his assistants (he was also the surgeon), as well as one or more pilots and Rhodian helmsmen.