A galleass was a warship that combined the sails and armament of a galleon with the maneuverability of the oared galley. [1] While never quite matching up to the full expectations for its design, the galleass nevertheless remained in use during the 16th and 17th centuries. [2]
Galleasses were higher, larger and slower than regular galleys. They had up to 32 oars, each worked by up to five men. They usually had three masts, and unlike galleys, proper forecastles and an aftcastles. Much effort was made in Venice to make galleasses as fast as possible to compete with regular galleys. The gun deck usually ran over the rowers' heads, but there are also pictures showing the opposite arrangement. Galleasses usually carried more sails than galleys and had far more firepower; [3] a galley caught in a galleass's broadside was in great danger, since it exposed to a large amount of gunfire. Relatively few galleasses were built—one disadvantage was that, being more reliant on sails, their position at the front of the galley line at the start of a battle could not be guaranteed.
Venetian galleasses fought at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, their firepower helping to break the force of the first Turkish attack, [4] and eventually helping to win victory for the Holy League fleet. [5] Four great Naples galleasses were deemed sufficiently seaworthy to accompany the Spanish Armada in 1588 (e.g. La Girona, eventually wrecked off Ireland), where they formed part of the front-line of fighting ships. [6] During the Channel actions, they were repeatedly called on as a squad in any calm, to rescue Spanish stragglers or cut-off a stray English ship. [7] With 50 guns apiece, 300 soldiers and sailors, and 300 rowers, they were formidable ships; but their leader was wrecked after the Calais fire ship attack, (the Battle of Gravelines), and only two of the four made it back safely to Spain. [8]
In the Mediterranean, with its less dangerous weather and fickle winds, both galleasses and galleys continued to be in use, particularly in Venice and the Ottoman Empire, long after they became obsolete elsewhere. Later, "round ships" and galleasses were replaced by galleons and ships of the line which originated in Atlantic Europe. The first Venetian ship of the line was built in 1660.
The Battle of Lepanto was a naval engagement that took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic states arranged by Pope Pius V, inflicted a major defeat on the fleet of the Ottoman Empire in the Gulf of Patras. The Ottoman forces were sailing westward from their naval station in Lepanto when they met the fleet of the Holy League which was sailing east from Messina, Sicily.
Galleons were large, multi-decked sailing ships developed in Spain and first used as armed cargo carriers by Europeans from the 16th to 18th centuries during the Age of Sail and were the principal vessels drafted for use as warships until the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the mid-1600s. Galleons generally carried three or more masts with a lateen fore-and-aft rig on the rear masts, were carvel built with a prominent squared off raised stern, and used square-rigged sail plans on their fore-mast and main-masts.
The Holy League of 1571 was arranged by Pope Pius V and included the major Catholic powers of southern Europe, specifically the Spanish Empire as well as the Italian maritime powers. It was intended to break the Ottoman Empire’s control of the eastern Mediterranean Sea and was formally concluded on 25 May 1571.
The Venetian Arsenal is a complex of former shipyards and armories clustered together in the city of Venice in northern Italy. Owned by the state, the Arsenal was responsible for the bulk of the Venetian Republic's naval power from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period. It was "one of the earliest large-scale industrial enterprises in history".
The Battle of Focchies was a significant naval engagement that took place on 12 May 1649, in the harbour of Focchies, Smyrna between a Venetian force of nineteen warships under the command of Giacomo da Riva, and an Ottoman force of eleven warships, ten galleasses, and seventy-two galleys, with the battle resulting in a crushing victory for the Venetian fleet. The battle was an episode in the Cretan War from 1645 to 1669 between the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire over dominance of various territories in the Mediterranean Sea. The war was one in a series of wars between the two warring powers, which contested for control of the Adriatic and Mediterranean trade routes. The primary territory that was contested during the war was Crete, the largest and most profitable of the overseas holdings of the Venetian Republic. The battle came after a squadron of Venetian ships under the command of Giacomo da Riva, a Venetian admiral, came to the rescue of the blockading Venetian force in the Dardanelles Straits, after the blockade had run into unexpected weather conditions and many ships sunk as a result.
This battle took place on 21 June 1655 inside the mouth of the Dardanelles Strait. It was a clear victory for Venice over the Ottoman Empire during the Cretan War.
The Third Battle of the Dardanelles in the Fifth Ottoman-Venetian War took place on 26 and 27 June 1656 inside the Dardanelles Strait. The battle was a clear victory for Venice and the Knights Hospitaller over the Ottoman Empire, although their commander, Lorenzo Marcello, was killed on the first day.
This battle, which took place on 16 May 1654, was the first of a series of tough battles just inside the mouth of the Dardanelles Strait, as Venice and sometimes the other Christian forces attempted to hold the Turks back from their invasion of Crete by attacking them early.
This battle was fought on 10 July 1651, with some minor fighting on 8 July, south of Naxos in the Greek Islands, between Venetian and Turkish sailing ship/galley forces. It was a Venetian victory.
A galley was a type of ship which relied mostly on oars for propulsion that was used for warfare, trade, and piracy mostly in the seas surrounding Europe. It developed in the Mediterranean world during antiquity and continued to exist in various forms until the early 19th century. It typically had a long, slender hull, shallow draft, and often a low freeboard. Most types of galleys also had sails that could be used in favourable winds, but they relied primarily on oars to move independently of winds and currents. The term "galley" originated from a Greek term for a small type of galley and came in use in English from about 1300. It has occasionally been used for unrelated vessels with similar military functions as galley but which were not Mediterranean in origin, such as medieval Scandinavian longships, 16th-century Acehnese ghalis and 18th-century North American gunboats.
This is the order of battle during the Battle of Lepanto on 7 October 1571 in which the Holy League deployed 6 galleasses and 206 galleys, while the Ottoman forces numbered 216 galleys and 56 galliots.
The naval Battle of Vila Franca do Campo, also known as Battle of Ponta Delgada and Naval Battle of Terceira Island, took place on 26 July 1582, off the coast of the island of São Miguel in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores, during the War of the Portuguese Succession. A combined corsair expedition, mainly French, sailed against a Spanish naval force made up of Portuguese and Castilian ships, to preserve control of the Azores under the pretender António, Prior of Crato and to defend the islands from incorporation into the Iberian Union, the largest French force sent overseas before the age of Louis XIV.
The Spanish Armada in Ireland refers to the landfall made upon the coast of Ireland in September 1588 of a large portion of the 130-strong fleet sent by Philip II to invade England.
Kemal Reis was an Ottoman privateer and admiral. He was also the paternal uncle of the famous Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis, who accompanied him in most of his important naval expeditions.
A hemmema was a type of warship built for the Swedish archipelago fleet and the Russian Baltic Fleet in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The hemmema was initially developed for use against the Imperial Russian Navy in the Archipelago Sea and along the coasts of Svealand and Finland. It was designed by the prolific and innovative Swedish naval architect Fredrik Henrik af Chapman (1721–1808) in collaboration with Augustin Ehrensvärd (1710–1772), an artillery officer and later commander of the Swedish archipelago fleet. The hemmema was a specialized vessel for use in the shallow waters and narrow passages that surround the thousands of islands and islets extending from the Swedish capital of Stockholm into the Gulf of Finland.
The Venetian navy was the navy of the Venetian Republic which played an important role in the history of the republic and the Mediterranean world. It was the premier navy in the Mediterranean Sea for many centuries between the medieval and early modern periods, providing Venice with control and influence over trade and politics far in excess of the republic's size and population. It was one of the first navies to mount gunpowder weapons aboard ships, and through an organised system of naval dockyards, armouries and chandlers was able to continually keep ships at sea and rapidly replace losses. The Venetian Arsenal was one of the greatest concentrations of industrial capacity prior to the Industrial Revolution and responsible for the bulk of the republic's naval power.
Hugo of Montcada i Gralla was the commander of the Galleasses of the Spanish Armada. He was the second son of Francesc I de Montcada, first Marquess of Aitona and Count of Osona, and his wife, Lucrècia Gralla.
A zabra (zah-brə) was a small or midsized sailing vessel used off the coasts of Spain and Portugal to carry goods by sea from the 13th century until the mid-16th century; they were well-armed to defend themselves against pirates and corsairs.
Media related to Galleasses at Wikimedia Commons
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