al
effort. Venice contributed 81 galleys, the Pope sent 36, and Spain,
30. Later the Emperor sent 50 transports with 10,000 soldiers,
and 49 galleys, together with a number of large sailing ships.
Venice also added 14 sailing ships of war, or "nefs," and Doria
22; these formed a special squadron. The Venetian nefs were headed
by Condalmiero in his flagship the _Galleon of Venice_, the most
formidable warship in the Mediterranean, and the precursor of a
revolution in naval architecture and naval tactics.

[Illustration: 16TH CENTURY GALLEY]

Although the sailing ship was coming more and more into favor because
of the discoveries across the Atlantic, the galley was the man
of war of this period. The dromons of the Eastern empire, with
their stout build and two banks of oars, had given way to a long,
narrow vessel with a single bank of oars which had been developed
by men who lived on the shores of the sheltered lagoons of the
Adriatic. The prime characteristic of this type was its mobility.
For the pirate whose business it was to lie in wait and dash out
on a merchantman, this quality of mobility--independence of wind
and speed of movement--was of chief importance. Similarly, in order
to combat the pirate it was necessary to possess the same
characteristic. Of course, as in all the days of rowed ships, this
freedom of movement was limited by the physical exhaustion of the
rowers. In the ships of Greek and Roman days these men had some
protection from the weapons of the enemy and from the weather,
but in the 16th century galley, whether Turkish or Christian, they
were chained naked to their benches day and night, with practically
nothing to shelter them from the weather or from the weapons of
an enemy. So frightful were the hardships of the life that the
rowers were almost always captives, or felons who worked out their
sentences on the rowers' bench. An important difference between
the galley of this period and the earlier types of rowed ship is
the fact that in the galley there was but one row of oars on a
side, but these oars were very long and manned by four or five men
apiece.

A typical galley was about 180 feet over all with a beam of 19
feet and a depth of hold of about 7-1/2 feet. A single deck sloped
from about the water line to a structure that ran fore and aft
amidships, about six feet wide, which served as a gangway between
forecastle and poop and gave access to the hold. The forecastle
carried the main