hirty-five miles to the south-eastward of Cape Bianco (the
southernmost point of the island of Corfu) lies Prevesa, at the entrance of
the Gulf of Arta, or, as it was known in classic times, the Ambracian Gulf.
In these seas, in the year 31 B.C., was fought one of the most memorable
battles of antiquity, for it was here that Octavius, afterward Augustus
Caesar, defeated the forces of Antony and Cleopatra. There have been many
controversies of late years as to whom the original idea of breaking the
line in naval combats is due: anyhow, it can claim a respectable antiquity,
as it was practised at the battle of Actium by Octavius, who by a skilful
manoeuvre caused Antony to lengthen his line, which he then cut through and
attacked the ships of Cleopatra, which were in support: this was too much
for the lady, who fled with her sixty ships, followed by Antony, to his
eternal disgrace. The remainder of his fleet fought bravely for a time, but
was eventually defeated, the land army also surrendering to Octavius. The
date of the actual battle of Actium was September 2nd, 31 B.C.: it was in
September 1538 that the battle of Prevesa between Andrea Doria and
Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa took place, and the conditions of the battle were
almost exactly similar.

To this very place came, 1569 years later, the Christian and the Moslem,
the Crescent and the Cross, each under its most renowned leader, each side
burning with an inextinguishable hate. It was one of the peculiarities of
this warfare that into it entered so much actual personal feeling, each
side hating the other for the love of God in the most poisonous fashion.
Save and except the battle of Lepanto in 1571 (with which we shall deal
later in the story of Ali Basha, or Occhiali as he was called by his
Christian opponents) the contest at Prevesa was far the most important ever
fought by those strange oar-propelled vessels known as galleys. It was
memorable in many ways, but particularly so for the ages of the men in
chief command. Andrea Doria was at this time seventy years of age; in fact,
Guglielmotti gives the date of his birth as 1466, thus making him two years
older. That amazing veteran Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, who died in his bed at
Constantinople on July 4th, 1546, at the age of ninety, must have been
eighty-two. Vicenzo Capello was sixty-eight, as the epitaph on his tomb at
Venice in the church of Santa Maria Formosa says that he was seventy-two in
the year of his death, 1