THE MEDITERRANEAN GALLEYS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 759, 17 September 1886, Page 8

THE MEDITERRANEAN GALLEYS.

Gentlenan's Magazine.

The ferocious criminal legislation of the middle ages, while sparing the noblesse, struck indiscriminately at all beneath them, and punished with equal severity youthful rashness, offences against life and property, and individuality of opinion. The word * galley ’ was introduced by the historians of the Crusades and the writers of the Lower Empire, and is of doubtful etymology, but the vessels themselves had an antiquity older then recorded history, and had certainly altered b it little from those used by the Romans and Carthaginians in comparatively recent fcim-'B. The galley proper was from 110 to 130 feet long, and from 15 to 18 feet wide, with ususliy twenty-five oars a side. After the introduction of artillery, at each end of the ship was built a forecastle and a poop, containing guns which had a direct fire ahead and astern, and the prow was armed by a f-trong beak sheathed with iron, twelvo or more feet in length, and capable of tearing opeu the side of the hostile shin. Down the whole length of the centre of the vessel ran a raised platform, called the ‘ coursier,’ some six feet wide, and reserved for the use of the boatswains, soldiers and officers. At right angles to this platform were placed the rowing benches, each about four feet apart, and on these benches eat the slaves, their shoulders leyel with the conrsier, while between them they slept at night, their heads meeting in the centre of the space. The oars were from thirty-five to forly feet in length, of which some sevea-Lent-hs were outside and three-tenths inside the vessel. As only the extreme inside end was small enough to be grasped by the hands, the slaves, except the furthest one inside, worked it by handles. There were usually two masts, lateen rigged. In respect of motor power a Spanish galley trusted chiefly to her slaves, of whom she carried from 150 to 200. Of these there were three kinds : convicted criminals—a cla?s which we have seen included all grades, from murderers down to mere disorderly characters and suspected heretics ; Mahommedan prison-

ers; and, strange as it appears, volunteers, these last being obtained by pressure oE destitution, by kidnapping, and sach other arts as were common in England in the days of impressment. No difference, however, was made in their treatment, except that they had a monthly pay of two crowns (twelve shillings). Collected in tbe prisons of the large towns, the slaves were marched in ohains across the country to the port of embarkation, their passage being dreaded by peasants and shopkeepers who had anything to lose. Arrived on board, four, five, or seven of them were allot ed to each bench, according to the length and position of the oar; each man was then ohaiued by the ankle, and bis head and beard shaved, leaving the moustache to tb« volunteers. A red frock and cap, together with a few other articles, were issued to eaoh one, but were worn oat or stolen long before others replaced them. The daily ration was thirty ounces of biscuit, with water, and sometimes vegetable soup ; four times a year, on certain Church festivals, they were given meat and wine. The reader of to-day can hardly picture to himself the life of these outcasts, the majority of whom, be it remembered, were either absolutelv innocent, or at worst guilty of but light offences. Chained to the deck, unprotected from wind, weather, or the enemies’ shot, they labored in gangs at the oar. Down tbe rows of oarsmen ran the boatswains with their whips, the lashes plying pitilessly on their backs. If a slave were too young or too old for the work, too feeble or too ill, the only refreshment administered was redoubled flogging. If this stimulant failed he was taken out of his chains and thrown into the filth of the hold on the possibility of recovery, or if obviously too far gone for even that poor chance, at once flung overboard. And amoog9t themselves the strong illtreated and robbed the weak, even of their miserable food, while the officers terrorized over all. Naked, vermin-tortured, and half started, toiling ceaselessly and unsheltered under a southern sun, herded and fettered like beasts, their only spur and their only reward the expectation of the lash, it was small wonder that the bestiality and savagery of galley slaves became proverbial, and their fate and character synonymous with the lowest depths to which human beings could sink. Impudence or abuse to a boatswain involved tbe loss or mutilation of the tongue, and flagging to death, deprivation of nose and ears, and keelhauling, were other disciplinary measures. On account of their strength and fatalitsio submissivenoss the Turkish and Moorish captives were highly valued as oarsmen, and as Spain was in a state of chronic warfare with the Molsem there was usually no laek of sach recruits. But while Turkish cavaliers endured the boatswain’s whip there were, on the other hand, a still greater number of Christian sufferers in the Sultan’s galleya, which were manned more exclusively by Christian slaves. Thera was no distinction of rank under the Turkish lash, and it not infrequently happened that nobles of the highest birth, soldiers of renown, and knights of the famous military orders, found themselves by a turn of Fortune’s wheel, shoulder to shoulder, with the sweepings of Italian and Spanish gutters sharing the same miseries, bat perhaps 1 more forlorn, as having a keener consciousness of their downfall. Enslishraen, naturally, formed but a email minority of Turkish captives, but of these few some, who escaped, have given us a glimpse of their Jives while slaves. Turning to France, the history of the galleys has a special interest in being more intimately allied with the po'itical ambicions of the nation, and the domes ic legislation of its rulers, than was that of other countries. The systematic organisation of the' galleys does not, appear to go farther back than the reign of Charles VII., in the first half of the fifteenth century, and it was not until more than one hundred years later that, in 1544, Francis I. ordere 1 that criminals condemned for crimes o'her than heresy or treason should be sent to the oar instead of suffering death or other punishment. In 1685 was published the Revocation of the Eaict of Nantes, and within twelve months there were more than six hundred Protestants at the gulleys, who were treated with exceptional severity if they remained constant to their faith. The majority of these men had, but a year before, been well to-do tradesmen, respected clergymen, or even country gentlemen, and now suddenly found themselves martyred for their religion, in company with murderers, thieves, smugglers and mere beggars, who. by the irony of the law, were martyrs for their poverty, together with Mahommedan slaves suffering for Christian siu3 ; and negroes from Africa, who, when useless for rowing purposes, were sent to America by the economical government and there sold. Those condemned by legal process had the head and face entirely shaved ; those purchased retained a tuft of hair on the head ; while volunteers retained a moustache as well as the tuft, and were paid four sous a day while at sea. Each man carried a piece of cork fastened round his neck, which he was frequently ordered to put into his mouth to ensure silence ; sometimes a whole crew would be thus gagged, but would A nevertheless be still expected to keep ,up the regular rate of twenty-six stroke* -a minute, and that for five or six hours without cessation. The daily and nightly torments endured—for, putting aside the whip and"'--other punishments, five or seven men lived and slept chained in a space seven feet long by four feet broad—ltd to epidemics of suicide. We hear from M. Jean Bion, sometime chaplain of La Superbe, of the slave’s solace and treatment when ill:—‘There is in the hold a close dark room. The air is admitted only by the scuttle, two feet square, which 13 the only passage into it. At each end of the said room there is a 6ort of scaffold, called Taular, on which the sick are laid promiscuously, without beds or anything under them. ... In this horrid place all kind of vermin rule with arbitrary away. . . . When the duties of my function called me in among them to confess and advise, I was in an instant covered all over with them. Bat when I was in, methought I walked, in a literal sense, “in the shades”of death. . . . And the whole space between the ceiling and Taular beincr but three feet, I wa3 obliged to lie down and stretch myself along their sides to hear them confess, and often while I was confessing one another expired just by my side.’ From the same authority we learn that after victims had been flogged unlil ‘the sHn is flayed efif their bones,’ a mixture of vinegar and salt waa

applied to the wounds. The first recorded sea fight between organised fleets of war gal ' Lye occurred in B.C. 537, and the united Carthaginian and Etruscan squadrons. The last was that of between fifteen French, and fifteen Spanish galleys, in which the Span.ards were defeated Ind their ships captured The last French galley, La Ferine, was broken up in 18 U, at the age, it is said, of one hundred and twentyfire years. Her last Italian sister—and pro bably final example of an instrument so lon a and so intimately connected with the hist y, progress, and sufferings of man shar fate at Genoa in 1841. —M. Qppenheim.