Rowing for War: The Age of the Galley
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In the 14th and 15th centuries, one technical innovation changed European naval warfare drastically: equipping ships with heavy artillery. Contrary to popular belief, at first, not the ships of the line that would later rule the seas with imposing broadsides but rowing ships, especially galleys were the most important element of naval warfare. For almost two centuries, the galley with cannons on the bow gave ships and fortresses the shivers and conquered not only the Mediterranean, but also the North and Baltic Seas and the nearby Atlantic Ocean. In this video we investigate how the galley equipped with artillery dominated naval warfare in Europe.
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Bibliography:
DeVries, Kelly, The Effectiveness of Fifteenth-Century Shipboard Artillery’, Mariner’ Mirror 84 (1998), 389-99
Parker, Geoffrey, Ships of the Line, in: The Cambridge History of Warfare, Cambridge 2005.
Glete, J., Warfare at Sea, 1500-1650: Maritime Conflicts and the Transformation of Europe, London and New York 2000.
Guilmartin, J. F., Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century, 2nd edn., London 2003.
Guilmartin, J. F. Galleons and Galleys, London 2002.
Rodger, N. A. M., The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660-1649, London 1997.
Sicking, Louis, Naval warfare in Europe, c. 1330-c. 1680, in: Tallet, Frank/Trim, D. J. B. (Ed.), European Warfare 1350-1750, Cambridge 2010, p. 242.
Reading list:
Warfare:
Duffy, C., Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World 1494-1660, Vol. 1, 1979. amzn.to/32dvvwM
Devries, K., Douglas, R., Medieval Military Technology, 1992, amzn.to/3IazYoC.
Rogers, C.J., The military revolution debate. Readings on the military transformation of early modern Europe, 1995. amzn.to/3geVDMM
Rogers, C.J., Soldiers' Lives through History - The Middle Ages, 2006. amzn.to/3j2kQvG
Parker, C., The Cambridge History of Warfare, 2005. amzn.to/32ggn1L
Van Nimwegen, O., The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588-1688, 2010. amzn.to/2E3Fc95
Fiction related to the Early modern period:
Alexandre Dumas,The Three Musketeers amzn.to/2CJVAuu
Alexandre Dumas, 20 Years After amzn.to/32g82Lv
Alexandre Dumas, The Vicomte de Bragelonne amzn.to/2EnIOCB
Markus Heitz, The Dark Lands amzn.to/3ntZgEu
Military Si-Fi recommendations:
Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe (Series of 22 books on the Napoleonic Wars), amzn.to/3RZyty0
Dan Abnett, The Founding: A Gaunt's Ghosts Omnibus (Gaunt’s Ghosts) amzn.to/3vdGxkZ
Dan Abnett, The Lost: A Gaunt's Ghosts Omnibus (Gaunt’s Ghosts) amzn.to/3osvFvA
Dan Abnett, The Saint A Gaunt's Ghosts Omnibus (Gaunt’s Ghosts) amzn.to/3orikUk
Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company Series Book 1) amzn.to/3PVgyGV
Historiography:
Neville Morley, Writing Ancient History 1999. amzn.to/3NCyoNl
Albeit focused on ancient history, it's a brilliant book for anybody who is interested in what history actually is. Is it a story? How does it work in practise? Can writing history be objective? Is it "scientific"? What makes it a proper discipline at university?
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As a specialised researcher in sixteenth-century Spanish galleys (I study their construction in Barcelona), I can tell this is the best account of Early Modern galleys I have watched on CZcams. Congratulations on your excellent work and your quality content :D
The Dutch galleys also were used in the South China sea. The Ming navy mentioned the Dutch using "centipede ships" during engagements, where they had much greater mobility to Chinese sail ships. The Ming navy would replicate similar designes afterwards.
Galley warfare has always fascinated me so this is heaven sent
I studied early modern history at university and this is by far the clearest, best resource on early modern naval warfare I've seen.
Galleys actually held out in the Baltic Sea much longer than the Great Northern War: the Swedish Archipelago Fleet, that was only built in the 1750s, consisted mainly of galleys of different kinds. Eventually they incorporated some pretty ingenious ship designs, the so called "archipelago frigates" that allowed them to have the mobility of the rowing ships combined with the broadside of sailing ships. The galleys were able to score an impressive victory over the Russians at Svensksund as late as 1790, and they were used as late as 1814, when Sweden invaded Norway.
Amazing how galleys were one of the longest lived warships, spanning the ancient times to the early modern period.
It makes sense that they didn't just instantly came up with the ship of the line. When new technologies arise, you first fit them on what you already have. It's only later that new tactics are implemented.
This is fascinating because I’ve never understood why my EU4 galley’s have a buff in inland seas!
Astonishing how a concept like the galley prevailed for more than a thousend years
And there's also the Karakoa, a raiding war ship from the pre-colonial Philippines. A war galley with a second deck space for more people, and supported by floaters manned by two rows of, well, rowers (hehe) as the main source of the ship's movement on open waters, in addition to a single sail. And on the bow were one or two Lantakas, portable cannons, as forward assault weapons.
I’m fascinated by this era. I wish there were more movies about the age of sail.
Unexpected places for Galleys. On Lake Geneva a fleet was operating for Berne. They brought a Genoese Shipwright to build them.
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Please a video of the battle of Lepanto and the siege of castelnouvo and oran
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I've got to appreciate the subtle but recognizable sea shanties and "pirate music" in the background! Fine work as always!
Thank you so much for making this video! I've been looking for a long time on information on galley naval warfare. Most I find is bits and pieces or side notes from naval battle. Like I know the Irish pirate queen Grace O'Malley used galleys in the late 16th century but there was virtually nothing on how the galleys were used. So thank you again for this video!
It's hard for modern people to wrap their heads around just how world-changing the adevnt of reliable sailing ships was to the European world. For thousands of years, humans on the seas were forced to hug the coast in rowed ships that had to make stops every few days for food and water, because most of the space on the ship was taken up by men and oars. One of the things that made the Vikings of the early medieval period so astonishing and terrifying was that they could cross opens stretches of the sea in a manner no one else (from Europe, anyway) had ever been able to reliably do, and to the people of the time, seemed to materialize where no ships ought to have been. But even they used, and were limited by, the same basic sea-going technology that Europeans had used for millennia. However, at the end of the 16th/beginning of the 17th century, in a relatively short amount of time, technological advancements allowed for ships to be built that had plenty of space for supplies for their smaller crews, were stable and reliable enough to leave the coast and cross open ocean, and could be pretty effectively operated and defended by a handful of well-trained men. The change in perspective--and ambition--that this allowed Europeans is hard to imagine today. There might be analogs in the invention of aircraft or spacecraft, but I don't think those comparisons really capture the enormity of the revolution that was the Age of Sail. After all, commercial flight just made it quicker and easier to get to places people had previously sailed to, and even today, very few people will ever travel into space. The only modern technological development I can think of that has affected such a fundamental societal change as sailing ships did is cell phone technology. It has completely changed the way we view and interact with the world, and in some ways, it has altered our very perception of time and space. I would image that having a way to get around the world and back in just a few years, with a reasonable chance of surviving the journey, must have also fundamentally changed Europeans' conceptualizations of space and time, and their relationship to the world.