judges had sent them to work out
their sentences upon the rowers' bench. The great characteristic of the
galley was her mobility, and in a comparative degree her speed, as for a
short burst, when her crew of rowers were fresh, their trained muscles were
capable of tremendous exertion; for any length of time, however, it is
obvious that her speed must have declined as the rowers became exhausted.
She was long, narrow, of extremely low freeboard, and slight depth of hold;
a galley of 125 feet between perpendiculars would perhaps be 180 feet over
all taking in the poop and the prow. A galley of this length would only
have a beam of 19 feet and a depth of hold of 7 feet 6 inches. The sailing
ship of contemporary times would for the same length have had a beam of
about 40 feet and an extremely high freeboard; she was in consequence
necessarily slow and incapable of sailing on a wind.

So distinct at this time was the line drawn between the sailing vessel and
the galley that the actual terminology used was entirely different; that is
to say, the names of such things as masts, sails, rudder, tiller, stern,
stempost, cutwater, etc., were not the same words; the sailor who used
sails could not understand his brother mariner who used oars, and _vice
versa_.

[Illustration: GALLEY UNDER OARS.]

What was necessary of course in the galley was many oars and many hands to
use them; the vessel was most skilfully constructed for this purpose so as
to get the fullest power from her human engines; the result was that men
were crowded on board of her to such an extent that there was scarcely room
to breathe, such a craft as the one of which the dimensions have been given
having on board some four hundred men.

Barras de la Penne, a French officer who in 1713 first went on board a
galley, thus describes what he saw:

"Those who see a galley for the first time are astonished to see so many
persons; there are an infinite number of villages in Europe which do not
contain an equal number of inhabitants; however, this is not the
principal cause of one's surprise, but that so many men can be assembled
in so small a space. It is truth that many of them have not room to
sleep at full length, for they put seven men on one bench; that is to
say, on a space about ten feet long and four broad; at the bows one sees
some thirty sailors who have for their lodging the floor space of the
rambades (this is the platform at the prow of t