A Galley Battle in the Age of Gunpowder
On 7 October 1571 two enormous fleets of oared warships met in the Gulf of Patras, off the western coast of Greece. On one side was the Holy League, an alliance organised by Pope Pius V that brought together Spain, Venice, the Papal States, Genoa and several smaller Italian powers, with the Knights of Malta also taking part. On the other was the navy of the Ottoman Empire. Lepanto, as the battle is known in the West after the nearby town, is usually described as the last great fleet action fought mainly between galleys, though the claim needs some care because galleys continued to serve for more than a century afterwards.
The Background
The war began over Cyprus, then a Venetian possession, which the Ottomans invaded in 1570. The island’s defenders held out for a time, but its main cities fell in the course of 1571. The Holy League was formed in response and assembled a fleet in Sicily. Command went to Don John of Austria, the young half-brother of King Philip II of Spain, with experienced officers advising him.
The Mediterranean had long been a place where galleys, which were rowed and carried guns mainly in the bow, did most of the fighting. The Venetian Arsenal, the state shipyard that could turn out galleys in large numbers, was the best-known producer of such ships. The rivalry belonged to a very long tradition of Mediterranean seafaring.
The Fleets
Numbers vary by source, but historians generally agree that each side had well over 200 vessels, with the Holy League fleet somewhat smaller in galley count but larger in firepower. The galleys were powered by oarsmen, who included free men, convicts and slaves depending on the navy and the ship. Each also carried soldiers, who did much of the fighting by boarding.
The Holy League also brought six galleasses from Venice. These were larger, heavier ships with oars and a broadside of guns, and they were placed ahead of the main battle line. Their guns are generally credited with disordering the first Ottoman approach. The Ottomans fielded skilled sailors and archers, though their fleet is thought to have had fewer firearms among its soldiers than the Christian side.
The Battle
Both fleets formed up in a rough line abreast, divided into a centre, a left and a right. The action began in the morning and lasted for several hours. It was largely a series of boarding fights, with galleys locked together and soldiers fighting on the decks. The commander of the Ottoman fleet, Ali Pasha, was killed, and his flagship was captured. Many Ottoman ships were taken or destroyed. Holy League losses were also heavy, and thousands of men on both sides died; exact totals are uncertain and sources differ.
Among those wounded was the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, who later wrote of the experience. Many Christian rowers were freed from captured galleys.
What It Changed, and What It Did Not
The victory was celebrated across Catholic Europe, and later in paintings and church commemorations. Yet its strategic effects were limited. The league fell out in the following years, Venice made a separate peace with the Ottomans in 1573 and gave up Cyprus, and the Ottomans rebuilt their fleet quickly. The battle did, however, end a long period in which the Ottomans were thought to be nearly unbeatable at sea, and it cost them many experienced crews that were harder to replace than ships.
The Fading of the Galley
Galleys did not disappear. They stayed in use in the Mediterranean and, in the Baltic, well into the eighteenth century. But the future of naval war lay with sailing ships carrying heavy guns along their sides. The oared galley, restricted by crew needs and poor performance in rough seas, was increasingly a coastal and secondary weapon. The shift is visible in the treasure fleet galleons that carried Spanish silver across the Atlantic and in the later ship of the line. Lepanto stands near the end of an old style of war, not the beginning of a new one.