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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
32 INTRODUCTION
of galleys so distinguished the Italians, of the later Middle Age
at least, did certainly apply, rightly or wrongly, the classical
terms of Bir eme, Trireme, and Quinque; eme, in the sense of galleys
having two men and two oars to a bench, three men and three
oars to a bench, and five men and five oars to a bench.*
That this was the mediæval arrangement is very certain
from the details afforded by Marino Sanudo the Elder, con-
firmed by later writers and by works of art. Previous to
1290, Sanudo tells us, almost all the galleys that went to the
Levant had but two oars and men to a bench ; but as it had
been found that three oars and men to a bench could be em-
ployed with great advantage, after that date nearly all galleys
adopted this arrangement, which was called ai Te1-zaruoli.4
Moreover experiments made by the Venetians in 1316 had
shown that four rowers to a bench could be employed still more
advantageously. And where the galleys could be used on
inland waters, and could be made more bulky, Sanudo would
even recommend five to a bench, or have gangs of rowers on two
decks with either three or four men to the bench on each
deck.
26. This system of grouping the oars, and putting only one
man to an oar, continued down to the 16th century, during the
Change of first half of which came in the more modern system of
System in using great oars, equally spaced, and requiring from
the i6th g g y p g
century. four to seven men each to ply them, in the manner
which endured till late in the last century, when galleys became
altogether obsolete. Captain Pantero Pantera, the author of a
work on Naval Tactics (1616), says he had heard, from veterans
* See Coronelli, Atlante Veneto, I. 139, 140. Marino Sanudo the Elder, though not using the term trireme, says it was well understood from ancient authors that the Romans employed their rowers three to a bench (p. 59).
t " Ad terzarolos " (Secreta Fideliu,n Crucis, p. 57). The Catalan Worthy, Ramon de Muntaner, indeed constantly denounces the practice of manning all the galleys with terzaruoli, or tersols, as his term is. But his reason is that these thirds-men were taken from the oar when crossbowmen were wanted, to act in that capacity, and as such they were good for nothing ; the crossbowmen, he insists, should be men specially enlisted for that service and kept to that. He would have some i o or 20 per cent. only of the fleet built very light and manned in threes. He does not seem to have contemplated oars three-banked, and crossbowmen besides, as Sanudo does. (See below ; and Muntaner, pp. 288, 323, 525, etc.)
In Sanudo we have a glimpse worth noting of the word soldiers advancing towards the modern sense ; he expresses a strong preference for soldati (viz. paid soldiers) over crusaders (viz. volunteers), p. 74.
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