 Chapter 4 of Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale The gold nobles of the coinage of King Edward III show in conventional fashion the king standing in the waste of a ship with a high bow and poop, the Red Cross banner of St. George at the stern, and the lines of England and the lilies of France emblazoned on a shield. The revise typifies his claim to the sovereignty of the narrow seas between England and the continent, the prize won for him by the fleet that conquered at Sleuth. Sleuth is often spoken of as the sea fight that inaugurated the long victorious career of the British navy. It would be more correct to say that it was the battle which, by giving King Edward the command of the Channel, made his successful invasion of France possible, and secured for England the possession of Calais. Holding both Dover and Calais, the English for two centuries were masters of the narrow sea gate through which all the trade between northern Europe and the rest of the world had to pass. They had the power of bringing severe pressure to bear upon the German cities of the Hansa League, the trade of the low countries, the merchants of Spain, Genoa, and Venice by their control of this all important waterway. Hence the claim upheld till the seventeenth century that the King of England was sovereign of the seas, and that in the Channel and the North Sea every foreign ship had to lower her sails and salute any English kingship that she met. Sleuth, which had such far-reaching consequences, was not the first of English naval victories. Alfred the Great maintained in the latter part of his reign a fleet of small ships to guard the coasts against the Norse and Danish pirates, and this won him the name of founder of the British navy. But for centuries after there was no attempt at forming or keeping up a regular naval establishment, Alfred's navy must have been dispersed under his weaker successors, for the Northmen never found any serious obstacles to their raids. Harold had no navy, and the result was that in a single twelve-month England was twice invaded, first by Harold Hadrada and Tostich, who were beaten at Stamford Bridge, and then by William the Norman, who conquered at Hastings, but even the conqueror had no fighting fleet. His ships were used merely to ferry his army across the Channel, and he made no attempt to use them against the Northmen, who harried the East Coast. The record of victory begins with the reign of King John, when in 1213 William Longsword, his half-brother, with a fleet guarded from the shipping of Dover and the south-eastern ports, destroyed a French fleet that had assembled on the coast of the Netherlands to transport an invading army to England. That is, the dams or embankments to keep out the sea was then a fortified port. It is now a Dutch village some miles from the coast in the midst of green meadows, one from the sea, with roads shaded by avenues of trees and only the traffic of its canal to remind it that it once had a harbour. Four years later, Hubert de Burg, governor of Dover Castle, defeated another attempted raid on England by improvising a fleet and attacking the French squadron in the straits. The Burg got to windward of the French, then sailed down on them, grappled and boarded them. There was an incident which happily we do not hear of again in naval warfare. As the English scrambled on board of the French ships, they threw quicklime in the eyes of their opponents. It was no doubt an ugly trick of peretical fighting, for in those days, when there was no police of the seas, there was a certain amount of piracy and smuggling carried on by the men of Dover and the Chinkapots. Just as for lack of police protection, highway robbery was a danger of travel by road, so till organised naval power had developed, there was a good deal of piracy in the European seas, and peaceful traders sailed in large fleets for mutual protection, just as travellers on land took care to have companions for a journey. The channel was also enlivened by occasional fights for fishing grounds between fleets of fishing-craft, and the quicklime trick of Ebert de Burg's battle was probably one of the methods of this irregular warfare. Edward I had a navy which did useful service by coasting northward, as his armies marched into Scotland and securing for them regular supplies and reinforcements by sea. Under his weak successor the sea was neglected, and it was the third Edward who used the navy effectually to secure that his quarrel with France should be fought out not on English ground but on the continent, and thus became the founder of the sea power of England. There was no royal navy in the modern sense of the term. When the king went to war his fleet was recruited from three different sources. The warship was a merchantman, on board of which a number of fighting men, knights, men at arms, archers and billmen were embarked. These were more numerous than the crew of sailors which navigated the ship, for the largest vessels of the time were not of more than two to three hundred tons, and as oars were not used in the rough seas of the channel, and there was only one mast with a single square sail, and perhaps a jib foresail, the necessary hands for sailing her were few. There was a dual command, the knight or noble who led the fighting man being no sailor, and having a pilot under him who commanded sailors and navigated the ship. This dual arrangement, which we have seen at work in the fleets of more ancient days, left its traces in our navy up to the middle of the 19th century, when ships of the royal navy still had, besides the captain, a sailing master among their officers. The king owned a small number of ships which he maintained, just as he kept a number of knights in his pay to form his personal revenue on land. During peace he hired these ships out to merchants, and when he called them back for war service he took the crews that navigated them into his pay and sent his fighting men on board. But the king's ships were the least numerous element in the war fleet. Merchantmen were impressed for service from London and the other maritime towns and cities, the feudal levy providing the fighting complement. A third element in the fleet was obtained from the Chinca ports. There were really seven, not five of them, Dover, Hithe, Hastings, Winchelsea, Rye, Romney and Sandwich, under their charter they enjoyed valuable privileges, in return for which they were bound to provide, when the king called upon them, fifty-seven ships and twelve hundred men and boys for fifteen days at their own expense, and as long after as the king paid the necessary charges. The naming of so short a term of service shows that maritime operations were expected not to last long. It was indeed a difficult matter to keep a medieval fleet at sea, and the conditions that produced this state of things lasted far into the modern period. Small ships crowded with fighting men had no room for any large store of provisions and water. When the first scanty supply was exhausted, unless they were in close touch with a friendly port, they had to be accompanied by a crowd of stall ships, and as the best merchantmen would naturally have been impressed for the actual fighting, these would be small, inferior, unless sea-worthy ships, and the fleet would have to pay as much attention to guarding its convoy as to operating against an enemy. No wonder that as a rule the most that could be attempted was a short voyage and a single stroke. It was in 1340 that King Edward III challenged the title of Philip of Valois to the crown of France, and by claiming it for himself began the Hundred Years War. Both sides of the quarrel began to collect fleets and armies, and both realized that the first struggle would be on the sea. It would be thus decided whether the war was to be fought out on French or on English ground. The French king collected ships from his ports and strengthened his fleet by hiring a number of large warships from Genoa, then one of the great maritime republics of the Mediterranean. The Genoese sailors knew the northern seas, for there were always some of their ships in the great trading fleet that passed up the channel each spring, bringing the produce of the Mediterranean countries and the east to the northern ports of Europe, and returned in a late summer laden with the merchandise of the Hansa traders. Early in the year King Philip had assembled 190 ships, large and small, French and Genoese, off the little town of Sluse on the coast of Flanders. The fleet lay in the estuary of the river Aidae. Like Dama, Sluse has now become an inland village. Its name means the Sluse, and like Dama, reminds us how the people of the Netherlands have for centuries been winning their land from the sea by their great system of dams to keep the sea water back, and sluices to carry the river water to the sea. The estuary of the Aidae, where the French fleet anchored, is now pasture land traversed by a canal, and the embankments that keep the sea from the meadowlands lie some miles to the westward of the place where King Edward won his great naval victory. Had the French acted at once, there was nothing to prevent them from opening the war by invading England. Perhaps they did not know how slowly the English fleet was assembling. In the late spring, when the French armament was nearly complete, King Edward had only forty ships ready. They lay in the estuaries of the Orwell and the Starr inside Harwich, long a place of importance for English naval wars in the North Sea. Gradually, week after week, other ships came in from the Thames and the Northern Seaports, from Southampton and the Chinkaports, and even from Bristol, creeping slowly along the coasts from Harbour to Harbour. All this time, the French might have swept the seas and destroyed the English in detail, but they waited for more ships and more men, and the time of opportunity went by. At last, in the beginning of June, the English king had two hundred ships assembled, from decked vessels down to open sailing boats. An army crowded on board of them, knights and nobles in shining armour, burgers and peasants in steel caps and leather jergens, armed with a longbow or a combined pike and long battle-axe known as the Bill. The kingship flew the newly adopted royal standard in which the golden lions on a red field, the arms of England, were quartered with the golden lilies of France on a field of blue, and another banner displaying the device that is still the flag of the Royal Navy, the Red Cross of St. George on a field of white, the banner adopted by Richard Cœur de Lyon in its crusade. The other ships flew the banners of the barons and knights who commanded them, and on the royal ship and those of the chief commanders, there were trumpeters, whose martial notes were to give the signal for battle. As a knight of the middle ages despised the idea of fighting on foot, and there might be a landing in Flanders, some of the barons had provided for all eventualities by taking with them their heavy war horses, uncomfortably stabled in the hulls of the larger ships. The fleet sailed southward along the coast, keeping the land in sight. The two hundred ships of varying rates of speed and handiness could not move in the ordered lines of a modern naval armament, but streamed along in an irregular procession, closing up when they anchored for the night. From the north foreland, with a favourable wind behind them, they put out into the open sea, and, steering eastward, were out of sight of land for a few hours. A more venturous voyage for these coasting-craft than the crossing of the Atlantic is for us today. It must have been a trying experience for knight and yeoman, and they must have felt that a great peril was passed when the tops of church-towers and windmills showed above the horizon, and then the low shore fringed with sand-hills and the green dykes came in sight. Coasting along the shore northeast wits, the fleet reached a point to the northwest of Bruges, not far from where the watering-place of Blankenberg now stands. It had been a-certained from fishermen and coastfolk that the French fleet was still at sluice, and it was decided to proceed no further without reconnoitering the enemy. The larger ships anchored, the smaller were beached. The fighting man landed and camped on the shore to recover from the distresses of their voyage, during which they would have been cramped up in narrow quarters. Instead of like a modern admiral sending some of his lights and swifter ships to take a look at the enemy, King Edward arranged a cavalry reconnaissance, a simple matter for his nightly following. Some of the horses were got ashore, and a party of knights mounted and rode over the sand-hills towards sluice. They reached a point where, without being observed by the enemy, they could get a good view of the hostile fleet, and they brought back news that made the king decide to attack next day. The French fleet was commanded by two knights, the Sieux de Créer and the Sieux de Bauche. Créer's name suggests that he came of the Breton race that has given so many good sailors and naval officers to France, so perhaps he knew something of the sea. Associated with the two French commanders, there was an experienced fighting admiral, a veteran of the wars of the Mediterranean, Barbara Vera, who commanded the Genoese ships. Though they had a slight superiority of numbers and more large ships than the English, Créer and Bauche were, as one might expect from their prolonged inactivity, very wanting an enterprise now that the crisis had come. They were preparing to fight on the defensive. It was in vain that the experienced commander Barbara Vera urged that they should weigh anchor and fight the English in the open sea, where numbers and weight would give them an advantage that would be lost in the narrow waters of the Ede estuary. They persisted in awaiting the attack. The French fleet was anchored along the south shore of the river mouth, sterns to the land, its left towards the river mouth, its right towards the town of Slous. The vessel on the extreme left was an English ship of large size, the great Christopher, captured in the Channel in the first days of the war. The ships were grouped in three divisions, left, centre and right. Créer and Bauche adopted the same plan of battle that King Olaf had used at Svold. The ships in each of those three divisions were lashed together side by side, so that they could only be boarded by the high narrow bows, and there was an addition to the Norse plan. For inboard across the bows, barricades had been erected, formed of ores, spars and planking, fastened across the four castle decks. Behind these barriers, archers and January's crossbowmen were posted. There was a second line of archers in the fighting tops. For since the times of Norse warfare, the masts had become heavier, and now supported above the crossyard a kind of crow's nest, where two or three bowmen could be stationed, with shields hung round them as a parapet. The fleet thus was converted into a series of three long, narrow, floating forts. It was an intelligible plan of defence for a weak fleet against a strong one, but a hopeless plan for an armament strong enough to have met its opponents on the open sea, ship to ship. At Svold, Ergyarl had shown that such an array could be destroyed piecemeal if assailed on an exposed flank, and at Sluis the left, where the great Christopher laid to seaward, positively invited such an attack. King Edward saw his advantage as soon as his knights came back from their adventurous ride and told him what they had seen, and he arranged his plans accordingly. His great ships were to lead the attack and concentrate their efforts on the left of the French line. The rest were to pass inside them and engage the enemy in front, on the left, and centre. The enemy had by tying up his ships made it impossible to come to the rescue of the left, even if the narrow waters of the estuary would have allowed him to deploy his force into line. The English would have, and could not fail to keep, a local superiority from the very outset on the left of the enemy, and once it came to close quarters they would clear the French and Genoese decks from end to end of the line, taking ship after ship. While the attack developed, the English archers would prepare the way for it by thinning the ranks of their enemies on the ships in the centre and then on the right. At dawn on 24th June, the day of battle, the wind was blowing fair into the mouth of Ida, but the tide was ebbing and the attack could not be driven home till it turned and gave deep water everywhere between the banks of the inlet. King Edward used the interval to array his fleet and get it into position for the dash into the river. His ships stood out to sea on the starboard tech, a brave sight with the midsummer sun shining on the white sails, the hundreds of banners glowing with red, blue, white and gold, the painted shields hanging on poop and bulwark. On the raised bowels and sterns to the larger ships, barons and knights and men at arms sudo raid in complete armour. The archers were ranged along the bulwarks or looked out from the crow's nest tops over the swelling sails. Old Papa Vera must have longed to cut lashings, slip cables, drift out on the tide and meet the English in the open, but he was in a minority of one against two. And now the tide was dead slack and began to turn, and King Edward's trumpets gave the expected signal for action. As their notes rang over the sea, the shouting sailors squared the yards and the fleet began to scutper for the wind for the river mouth, where beyond the green dykes that kept the entrance free, a forest of masts bristled along the bank towards Sluice. The English came in with wind and tide helping them, several ships abreast, the rest following each as quickly as she might, like a great flock of seabirds streaming towards the shore. There could be no long-ranging fire to prelude the close attack. At some sixty yards, when men could see each other's faces across the gap, the English archers drew their bows, and the clothyard arrows began to fly, their first target, the great Christopher, on the flank of the line. Bolts from crossbows came whizzing back in reply. But, as at Chrissie, soon after, the longbow, with its rapid discharge of arrows, proved its superiority over the slower, mechanical weapon of the Genoese crossbowmen. But no time was lost in mere shooting. Two English ships crashed into the bows and the port side of the Christopher, and with the cry of, Saint George for England, a score of knights vied with each other for the honour of being first on board of the enemy. The other ships of the English van swung round bow to bow with the necks of the French line, grappled and fought to board them. King Edward, himself, climbed over the bows of a French ship, risking his life as freely as the youngest of his esquires. Then, for a while on the French left, it was a question of which could best handle the long heavy swords made not for deft fencing work, but for sheer hard hacking at helmet and breastplate. Behind this fight on the flank, ship after ship slipped into the river, but at first attacked only the left division closely, those that had pushed furthest in opening with arrow fire on the centre and leaving the right to look helplessly on. The English archers soon cleared the enemy's tops of their bowmen, and then, from the English masts shot Cooley into the throng on the hostile decks, their comrades at the bulwarks shooting over the heads of those engaged in the bows. The English arrows inflicted severe loss on the enemy, but the real business was done by the close attack of the boarding parties that cleared ship after ship from the left inwards, each ship attacked in turn having to meet the knights and men at arms from several of the English vessels. But the French fought with determined courage, and hour after hour went by as the attack slowly worked its way along the line. The slaughter was terrible, for in a sea-fight, as in the storming of a city wall, no quarter was asked or given. The crews with the captured ships were cut down as they fought or driven over the stern into the water, where, for the most part, their heavy armour drowned them. It was past noon, and the tide was turning when the left and centre, the squadrons of Kyrie and Baushe, were all captured. Then the attack raged round the nearest vessels on the right, tall ships of the Genoese. Most of these too were taken, but as the tide ran out, King Edward feared as large ships would ground in the upper waters of the estuary, and the signal was given to break off the attack, an order welcome even to the wary victors. Barbara Vera, with a few ships, got clear of the beaten right wing and lay up near Sluse while the English plundered and burned some of their prizes and took the best of them out to sea on the ebbing tide. In the night the Genoese admiral slipped out to sea and got safely away. The French fleet had been utterly destroyed, and the Genoese sailors had no intention of further risking themselves in King Philip's quarrel. They thought only of returning as soon as might be to the Mediterranean. King Edward went on to Ghent, after lending his fighting men and sending his fleet to bring further forces from England. Henceforth for many a long year he might regard the channel as a safe highway for men and supplies for the war in France. The victory of the English had cost them a relatively trifling loss. The French losses are said to have been nearly thirty thousand men. Strange to say, among the English dead were four ladies who had embarked on the King's ship to join the Queen's court at Ghent. How they were killed is not stated. Probably they were courageous dames whose curiosity led them to watch the fight from the tall poop of the flagship as they would have watched a tournament from the galleries of the Lists, and there the crossbow bolts of the Genoese found them. There is an old story that men feared to tell King Philip the news of the disaster, and the court jester broke the tidings with a casual remark that the French must be braver than the English, for they jumped into the sea by schools while the islanders stuck to their ships. The defeat at sea prepared the way for other defeats by land, and in these campaigns there appeared a new weapon of war, rudely fashioned cannon of short range and slow inaccurate fire, the precursors of heavier artillery that was to change the whole character of naval warfare. It was the coming of the cannon that inaugurated the modern period, but before telling of battles in which artillery played the chief part, we must tell of a decisive battle that was a link between old and new. Lepanto, the battle that broke the Turkish power in the Mediterranean, saw, like the sea fights of later days, artillery in action, and at the same time ore-driven galleys fighting with the tactics that had been employed at Salamis and Actium, and knights in armor storming the enemy's ships like Erik Jaal at Svold and King Edward at Sluice. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Leeson. Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale. Chapter 5. Lepanto, 1571. Part 1. The Turk has long been known as the sick man of Europe, and the story of the Ottoman Empire for a hundred years has been a tale of gradual dismemberment. Thus it is no easy matter for us to realize that for centuries the Ottoman power was the terror of the civilized world. It was in 1358 that the Ottomans seized Gallipoli on the Dardanelles and thus obtained their first footing in Europe. They soon made themselves masters of Philippopolis and Adrianople. A crusading army gathered to drive the Asiatic horde from Europe was cut to pieces by the Sultan Bayazit at Nicopolis in 1396. On the day after the battle, 10,000 Christian prisoners were massacred before the Sultan, the slaughter going on from day break till late in the afternoon. The Turk had become the terror of Europe. Constantinople was taken by Muhammad II in 1453, and the Greek Empire came to an inglorious end. Then for more than a century, Austrians, Hungarians, and Poles formed a barrier to the advance of the Asiatic power into Central Europe. But the Turks during this century became a maritime power. They had conquered the Crimea and were masters of the Black Sea. They had overrun Greece and most of the islands of the archipelago. They had threatened Venice with their fleets and had for a while a foothold in southern Italy. They took roads from the Knights of St. John, annexed Syria and Egypt, and the Sultan of Constantinople was acknowledged as the Caliph of Islam, the representative of the Prophet by the Muhammeden states of North Africa, Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco. In 1526 the victory of Mohawk made the Turks masters of Hungary. They had driven a wedge deep into Europe, and there was danger that their fleets would soon hold the command of the Mediterranean. These fleets were composed chiefly of large galleys, lineal descendants, so to say, of the ancient Triremes. There was a row of long oars on either side, but sail power had so far developed that there were also one, two, even three tall masts, each crossed by a long yard that carried a triangular Latin sail. The base of the triangle lay along the yard, and the apex was the lower corner of the triangular sail, which could be hauled over to either side of the ship, one end of the yard being hauled down on the other side. The sail thus lay at an angle with the line of the keel, with one point of the yard high above the mast head, and by carrying the sheet tackle of the point of the sail across the ship, and reversing the position of the yard, the galley was put on one tack or the other. Forward, pointing ahead, was a battery of two or more guns, and there was sometimes a second, but lighter battery, a stern, to be used when the galley was escaping from a ship of superior force. Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean, Moors in the West, recruited their crews of rowers by capturing Christian ships and raiding Christian villages to carry off captives who could be trained to the oar. This piracy, plundering and slave hunting, went on in the Mediterranean up to the first years of the 19th century, when, after the Turks themselves had long abandoned it, the sea rovers of the Barbary States in the western waters of the inland sea still kept it up, and European nations paid blackmail to the bays of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers to secure immunity for their ships and sailors. In the 15th and 16th centuries, no part of the Mediterranean was free from the raid of the Muslim pirates. Such was the peril of the sea that ships used to carry two sets of sails, one white for use by day, the other black, in order to conceal their movements in the darkness. Thousands of Christian slaves were always wearing out their miserable lives in the galleys and prisons of the Mohammedan ports. Isolated expeditions were sometimes made by this or that Christian power for their deliverance. Two religious orders were founded to collect alms for their ransom, to minister to them in their captivity, and to negotiate for their deliverance. But all this was only a mitigation of the evil, and year after year there went on the enslavement of Europeans, men for the galleys, women for the harems. One would have thought that all Europe would have banded itself together to drive back the Turk from the Danube, and sweep the Corsairs from the Mediterranean, to their honor be it said that successive popes endeavored to arouse the old crusading spirit, and banned civilized and Christian Europe together for an enterprise that was to the advantage of all, and the neglect of which was a lasting disgrace. But their efforts were long defeated by the mutual quarrels and jealousies and the selfish policy of the European powers. Venice and Genoa long preferred to maintain peace with the sultans in order to have the undisturbed monopoly of the Eastern trade. France was too often the ally of the Turk, thanks to her traditional rivalry with the House of Austria, the rulers of the German Empire. The pressure of Turkish armies on the Eastern frontiers of the Empire made it impossible for the emperors to use their full strength on the Rhine, or in North Italy. Again and again Rome uttered the cry of alarm, and the warning passed unheeded. But at last it was listened to, when a new outburst of aggressive activity on the part of the Turks for a while roused the maritime nations of the Mediterranean from their lethargy, and then a glorious page was added to the story of naval warfare. In the year 1566 Suleiman the Magnificent died. He had conquered at Mohawk and besieged Vienna, enlarged the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire on land, and made its fleets the terror of the Mediterranean. But the year before he died his paches had failed disastrously in their attempt on Malta, and his successor Selim II, whom Ottoman historians surnamed the drunkard, was reported to be a half imbecile wretch devoid of either intelligence or enterprise. So Europe breathed more freely. But while the drunkard idled in his sorrelio by the golden horn, the old statesmen, generals, and admirals, whom Suleiman had formed, were still living, and Europe had lulled itself with false hopes of peace. For the sake of their eastern trade interests the Venetians had as far as possible stood neutral in the wars between Turk and Christian, and had longed in an undisturbed possession of Cyprus. For eighty years they had held it under a treaty that recognized certain rights of the Sultan to the island as a dependency of Egypt. They had stood neutral while Suleiman took roads and besieged Malta, though on either occasion the intervention of the Venetian fleet would have been a serious blow to the Ottoman power. The Venetian Senate was therefore disagreeably surprised when an envoy from Constantinople demanded the evacuation of Cyprus, and announced that the Sultan intended to exercise his full rights as sovereign of the island. The armaments of the Republic were at a low ebb, but Doge and Senate rejected the Ottoman demand and defied the menace of war that accompanied it. The neutrality of Venice had been the chief obstacle to the efforts of Pius V to form a league of the maritime powers of southern Europe against the common enemy of Christendom. When, therefore, the Venetian ambassadors applied to the Vatican for help, the Pope put the limited resources of his own states at their disposal, and exerted his influence to procure for them help from other countries. Pius saw the possibility of at last forming a league against the Turk, and was statesman enough to perceive that a more effective blow would be struck against them by attacking them on the sea than by gathering a crusading army on the Thais and the Danube. His own galleys were prepared for service under the orders of Prince Colonna, and a subsidy was sent to Venice from the papal treasury to aid in the equipment of the Venetian fleet. The papal envoys appealed to the Genoese Republic, the Knights of Malta, and the Kings of France and Spain to reinforce the fleets of Rome and Venice. But France and Spain were more interested in their own local ambitions and jealousies, and even Philip II gave at first very limited help. With endless difficulty a fleet of galleys was at last assembled, Maltese, Genoese, Roman, Venetian, united under the command of Colonna. By the time the Christian armament was ready a larger Turkish fleet had appeared in the waters of Cyprus and landed an army, which, under its protection, began the siege of Nicosia. After long delays, Colonna's fleet reached Suda Bay in Crete and joined a squadron of Venetian galleys kept for guard ship duties in Cretan waters. Though Colonna was in nominal command, the fleet was really controlled by a committee of the chiefs of its various squadrons. There were endless councils of war, and it is a trite saying that councils of war do not fight. Prudent caution is oftener the outcome of such debates than daring enterprises. There was a time in the first days of September when, if the Suda fleet had gone boldly to the relief of Nicosia, it might have raised the siege, for the Venetian garrison was making such a vigorous defense that in order to press the siege the Turkish Pashas had stripped their fleet of thousands of fighting men to employ them in the trenches. But the golden opportunity passed by, and when at last Colonna took his galleys across to the coast of Asia Minor, Nicosia had fallen, and the Turks had begun the siege of the other Cypriot fortress, Famagusta. Again there were divided councils and pitiful irresolution. The commanders of the various contingents were brave men, veterans of the Mediterranean wars, but the coalition lacked one determined leader who could dominate the rest, decide upon a definite plan of action, and put it into energetic execution. Time was wasted till the bad weather began. Then the various squadrons made their way to the ports where they were to pass the winter. A squadron of the Venetians remained in the Cretan ports. The rest dispersed to the harbors of Italy and the Ionian islands. The aged pontiff heard with bitter disappointment that nothing had been accomplished. The news might well have made even a younger man lose heart, but with undaunted courage he devoted himself to forming a more powerful combination for the great effort of the coming summer. It was all important to secure the alliance of the King of Spain, who was also ruler of Naples and Sicily, but it was only after long negotiations and smoothing away of endless jealousies between Spain and Venice that at last the Treaty of the Holy League was signed by the Republic of Venice, the King of Spain, and the Pope, pious the fifth undertaking to bring in help from the minor princes and republics of Italy and the Knights of Malta. It was proposed that there should be a fleet of three hundred ships, of which two hundred were to be galleys and a hundred navi, that is, full-rigged sailing ships. It was the first time that the sailing ship had been given so important a place in naval projects in the Mediterranean, and this shows the change that was rapidly coming into naval methods. The allies were jointly to raise a force of fifty thousand fighting men, including five hundred gunners. Once the treaty was arranged, preparations were pushed forward, but again there were weary some delays. It was easy enough to build galleys. The arsenal of Venice had once laid a keel at sunrise and launched the galley before sunset, but to recruit the thousands of oarsmen was a longer business. It was not till well into the summer of 1571 that the armada of the Holy League began to assemble at the appointed rendezvous, Messina. Meanwhile the Turks were pressing the siege of Famigusta, blockading it by land and sea, and sapping slowly up to its walls. The heroic commandant of this place, Antonio Bragadino, a worthy son of Venice, made an active defense, retarding by frequent sorties the progress of the enemy's siege works. By the month of June the Turks had lost nearly thirty thousand men, including those who fell victims to the fever that raged in their camps. Bragadino's garrison had been thinned by the enemy's fire, by sickness and by semi-starvation, and at the same time the magazines of ammunition were nearly empty. Behind the yawning breaches of the rampart an inner line of improvised defenses had been erected, and the citadel was still intact. If he had had a little more flour and gunpowder, Bragadino would have held out as stubbornly as ever. But with starving men, empty magazines, and no sign of relief, he had to accept the inevitable. He sent a flag of truce to Mustafa Pasha, the Ottoman general, and relying on the impression made by his stubborn defense asked for generous terms. Mustafa professed a chivalrous admiration for the heroism of the Venetians. It was agreed that the garrison should march out with the honors of war and be transported under a flag of truce to Crete and their set at liberty. The Ottoman general pledged himself to protect the people of Fomagusta and secure for them the free exercise of their religion. The war-worn soldiers marched out. Bragadino, with the Venetian nobles, were received at Mustafa's tent with every mark of honor. But no sooner had the officers been separated from their men, and these divided into small parties, than all were made prisoners, bound, and robbed of all their personal property. The Turks had often shown remorseless cruelty after victory, but they generally observed the terms of a capitulation honorably. Mustafa's conduct was an unexampled case of treachery and barbarity. The Venetian officers were sent on board the Turkish galleys and chained to their oars as slaves. Bragadino saw his officers beheaded before the Pasha's tent. He might have saved his life by becoming a renegade, but he was incapable of such apostasy and treason. The barbarian, in whose power he was, invented new torments for his victim. Bragadino had his ears and nose cut off, and thus mutilated he was paraded round the Turkish army, and then rode in a boat through the fleet, and everywhere greeted with insult and mockery. Then Mustafa sentenced his prisoner to be flayed alive. The torture had hardly begun when he expired, dying the death of a hero and a martyr. Mustafa sent to Salim the drunkard as trophies of the conquest of Cyprus, the heads of the Venetian nobles, and the skin of Bragadino stuffed with straw. The news of the fall of Famagusta and the horrors that followed it did not reach the Allied fleet till long after it had sailed from Messina. But even during the period of preparation, there were tidings that might well have inspired the leaders of the league with a new energy. The danger from the east was pressing. In the spring, the Ottoman fleet in the waters of Cyprus had been reinforced with new galleys from the arsenal of Constantinople, and a squadron of Algerine corsairs under the renegade Pasha Ulagali, one of the best of the Turkish admirals. Thus strengthened, the fleet numbered some 250 sail. Even before Famagusta fell, Mustafa detached powerful squadrons which harried the Greek archipelago, and then rounding the capes of the Moria made prizes of peaceful traders and raided villages along the western shores of Greece and in the Ionian islands. During the period of the Turkish power, Europe was saved again and again from grave danger, because the Ottoman sultans and the Pashas of Barbary never seemed to have grasped the main principles of maritime warfare. They had no wide views. Most of the men who commanded for them on the sea had the spirit of pirates and buccaneers rather than of admirals. They put to sea to harry the trade of the Christian states and to raid their coast villages, and so secure prizes, plunder, and slaves. They frittered away their strength on these minor enterprises. Again and again occasions offered when to concentrate their naval forces for a series of campaigns that would sweep the Christian fleets one by one from the sea would have made them masters of the Mediterranean, placed its commerce and its coasts at their mercy, and opened the way for a career of conquest, but they allowed these opportunities to escape. The peril that menaced European civilization in 1571 was that at last the Muslim powers of the Mediterranean were actually combining their sea forces for a great effort of maritime conquest. Their operations were still delayed by their traditional disposition to indulge in plundering raids, or to wait for the fall of a blockaded fortress, instead of making the destruction of the opposing sea power their first object. If the pashas of Selene's fleet had really understood their business, they might have destroyed the Christian squadrons in detail before they could affect their concentration in the waters of Messina. But the Turkish admirals let the opportunity escape them during the long months when the Holy League was being formed and its fleets made ready for action. That the danger was met by the organization of a united effort to break the Muslim power on the sea was entirely due to the clear-sided initiative and the persistent energy of the aged Pius V. He had fully realized that the naval campaign of 1570 had been paralyzed by the Christian fleet being directed not by one vigorous will, but by the cautious decisions of a permanent council of war. He insisted on the armament of 1571 being under the direction of one chief, and exercising his right as chief of the League, Pius V had to select the commander of its forces. He named as Captain General of the Christian Armada, Don Juan of Austria. Don Juan was then a young soldier, 24 years of age. He was the son of the Emperor Charles V and his mistress, Barbara Blomberg, of Ratispan. His boyhood had been passed, unknown and unacknowledged by his father, in a peasant household in Castile. As a youth he had been adopted by a noble family of Valladolid. Then Philip II had acknowledged him as his half-brother and given him the rank of a Spanish prince. He studied at Alcala, having for his friends and companions Alexander Farnese, the great captain of future years, and the unfortunate Don Carlos. Don Juan's rank gave him early the opportunity of displaying in high command his market genius for war. He was employed in expeditions in the Mediterranean and directed the suppression of the Moorish revolt in Granada in 1570. He was then named Captain General del Mar, High Admiral of the Spanish fleets. Young as he was when Pius V appointed him commander in chief of the forces of the Holy League, his services by land and sea, as well as his princely rank, gave him the necessary prestige to enable him to command even older generals like Marco Antonio Colonna, the leader of the papal and Italian forces, and the veteran Sebastian Veniero, who directed those of Venice. During the period of concentration it was Veniero who had the most difficult problem to solve. The Venetian fleet had separated into two divisions at the close of the campaign of 1570. The weaker wintered in the harbors of Crete. The stronger detachment passed the winter at Corfu in the Ionian islands. In the early summer of 1571 Veniero took command at Corfu and occupied himself with preparing the fleet for sea and reinforcing it with new galleys from the arsenal of Venice and newly raised drafts of sailors, rowers, and fighting men. Before his preparations were complete the vanguard of the Turkish armada continually reinforced from the east appeared on the western coasts of Greece. To attack them with the force he had at hand would be to court destruction. Ulug Ali, who commanded the vanguard of the enemy, was perhaps the best hated of the Muslim admirals. A Calabrese fisherman he had been captured as a young man by one of the Barbary Corsairs and spent some miserable years chained as a galleyslave at an ore. At last his endurance broke down and he escaped from his misery by becoming a Muhammadan. Under his new name he rose rapidly to command, enriched himself by successful piracy, and before long won himself the rank of a Pasha and a vice royalty in North Africa. But, happily for Europe at large, though unfortunately for many a village along the shores of Greece and Illyria, Ulug Ali as admiral of the Turkish fleets remained still a pirate, with the fixed idea that a plundering cruise was better than a naval campaign. Had the renegade been more admiral than pirate, he had an opportunity of changing the course of history in that early summer of 1571. His fleet cruising off the coasts of Epirus held a central strategic position in relation to the still dispersed Christian fleets. The papal contingents on the western shores of Italy and the Spanish fleets in the ports of the two Sicilies, or coasting from Spain by the Gulf of Leons and the Italian shores, were, it is true, beyond his immediate reach. But he could easily lop off one important branch of the Triple League by cutting off the Venetians. The squadron from Crete must pass him to the southward. The more important contingent from Corfu must pass between him and southern Italy in narrow seas where he could hardly fail to bring it to action, and if it fought, the chances were he would overwhelm it. Or he might attack it at Corfu, or drive it from the island back upon Venice. If he had good luck, he might hope to be in time even after this to strike a blow also at the Cretan squadron. But he thought only of plundering and burning along the coasts, carrying off crowds of prisoners, some of whom were at once added to his crews of chained rowers. Veniero at Corfu had to steal his heart against entreaties to come to the rescue of the mainland coast population. He could not save them, and he dared not destroy his fleet in a hopeless effort. He must seize the opportunity while the Turks were occupied with their raids to sail unopposed to Messina. He decided even to risk the loss of Corfu. He was acting on the sound principle that in war all minor objects must be sacrificed to the chief end of the campaign. But he could not be sure that in obeying his original orders and taking his fleet to Messina he was not in another way risking his position, perhaps his life. He was leaving to the Turks the temporary command of the Adriatic. After he left Corfu they carried fire and sword along the Illyrian coast. There was a panic in Venice, and the city of the Lagoons made hasty preparations for defense. But Veniero's action was soon justified. The news that the Christian armada was assembled at Messina alarmed Ulug Ali into abandoning any further enterprises in the Adriatic, and his squadrons withdrew to join the concentration of the Turkish fleets at the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth. It was not till 23 August that the Spanish Prince arrived at Messina, took command of the assembled fleets, and proceeded at once to organize his forces and issued his sailing and battle orders. Nearly 300 ships crowded the harbor of Messina. There were three fleets, the Italian squadrons under the Papal Admiral Colonna, the Venetian fleet, and the fleet of Philip II formed of the ships of Spain and Naples. The main force of the three fleets was made up of galleys. But there were also six Galleases, and some seventy frigates, the former depending chiefly, the latter entirely, on sail power for propulsion. The frigate was, in the following century, and almost up to our time, what the cruiser is in the armoured navies of today. But in the Mediterranean fleets of the fifteenth century the frigata represented only an early type, out of which the frigate of later days was developed. She was a small sailing ship, sometimes a mere yacht, armed only with a few light guns. The frigates were used to convey stores, the swifter among them being often employed as dispatch boats. Depending entirely on the wind, it was not always easy for them to accompany a fleet of galleys. Don Juan gave up the idea of making them part of his fighting fleet. It was still the period of the ore-driven man of war, though the day of sales was close at hand. End of Chapter 5, Part 1. Chapter 5 of Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Leeson. Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale. Chapter 5. La Panto, 1571. Part 2. The six galleys represented a new type, a link between the oared ships of the past and the sailing fleets of the immediate future. They were heavy, three-masted ships with rounded bows, and their upper works built with an inward curve so that the width across the bulwarks amid ships was less than that of the gun deck below. The frames of warships were built on these lines till after Nelson's days. This tumble home of the sides, as it was called, was adopted to bring the weight of the broadside guns nearer the center line of the ship and so lessened the leverage and strain on her framework. The guns had first been fired over the bulwarks, but at a very early date, portholes were adopted for them. The galleys had a high forecastle and poop, each with its battery of guns, pointing ahead, a stern, and on each side. Other guns were mounted on the broadsides in the waist of the ship, and to command the main deck, in case an enemy's borders got possession of it, lighter guns were mounted on swivels at the back of the forecastle and on the fore part of the poop. Compared to the low, crowded galley, the galleys was a roomy and much more seaworthy ship. She was generally a slow sailor, but in order to enable her to make some progress, even in calms or against a headwind, and so work with a fleet of galleys, she had a rowers deck under her main or gun deck, and on each side, 12 or 15 oars of enormous length, each worked by several men. She had the drawbacks of most compromises, she could not sail as well as the frigate, and her speed with the ore was much less than that of the galley. But the gain was that she could be used as a floating battery, carrying many more guns than the few pieces mounted in the galley's bows. The galleys' guns were high above the water, and the galleys dreaded their plunging fire. Each of Don Juan's six galleys' carried some 30 guns of various calibers, and to defend their high sides against an attack by borders, their fighting men were chiefly archbosiers. In order to fuse the triple fleet of the allies into one armada, and to avoid the risk of international jealousies, Don Juan proceeded to form his galleys into five squadrons, each made up of ships selected from the three fleets, so that none of these divisions could claim to act only for Rome or Spain or Venice. The organization of the Christian armada may be thus summed up in tabular form. Division Vanguard, commander Juan de Cardona, galleys 7. Mainline of battle, division left wing, commander Agostina Barbarigo, galleys 53. Division Center, commander Don Juan de Austria, galleys 62. Division Right Wing, commander Giovanni Andrea Doria, galleys 50. Division Reserve, commander Alvaro de Buzan, Marquis de Santa Cruz, galleys 30. Total galleys 202. Sailing ships, galeases 6. Frigates 70. Total sailing ships 76. These frigates sailed during the voyage as a separate squadron under Don Cesar de Avalos. They were employed as store ships and tenders. Total, 202 galleys plus 76 sailing ships, equals 278 ships in all. It is interesting to note that instead of choosing one of the large sailing vessels as his flagship, Don Juan displayed his flag, the standard of the league, from the masthead of the largest of the Spanish galleys, the Reale, a splendid ship built for the viceroy of Catalonia three years before. She had 60 oars, a battery of guns pointing forward through a breastwork in the bow, and another gun on her high poop pointing over her stern, which was adorned with elaborate wood carvings, the work of Vasquez of Seville, one of the most famous sculptors of the day. She had a crew of 300 rowers and 400 fighting men. In the battle line two other great galleys were to lie to right and left of the Reale, on her starboard, the flagship of Colona, the papal admiral, and to port that of Venero, the Venetian, flying the lion banner of Saint Mark. Next to these were the galleys of the princes of Parma and Urbino. On the extreme right of the center was the post of the flag ship of the Knights of Malta, commanded by the grandmaster Giustiniani. All the galleys of the central squadron flew blue penons as their distinguishing flag. The vanguard and the right flew green triangular flags. When the line was formed Cardona and his seven galleys were to take post on the left or inner flank of the right division. Doria, the Genoese admiral, was on the extreme right. The left flew yellow penons. Its admiral was the Venetian Barbarigo, a veteran of many a hard-fought campaign. Santa Cruz, the admiral of the reserve squadron, was posted in the middle of his line, flying his flag on board the Capitana or flagship of the Neapolitan squadron. All the flagships had as a distinctive mark a long red penon at the four-mast head. Twenty-eight thousand fighting men were embarked on the fleet. The Italian soldiers were the most numerous, then came the Spaniards. There were about two thousand of other nationalities, chiefly Germans. The Venetian galleys were rather short of fighting men and to remedy this weakness Vignero, though with some reluctance, consented to receive on board of them detachments of Don Juan's Spanish infantry. On almost every ship there were serving a number of young gentlemen volunteers. To give a list of their names and of the commanders of Galleases and galleys and detachments of troops embarked would be to draw up a role of the historic names of Italy and Spain. Lepanto might well be described as not only the closing battle of crusading days, but the last battle of the age of chivalry. And, strange to say, on board of one of Colona's galleys, acting as second in command of its fighting men, there was a young Spaniard who was to laugh Europe out of its chivalry, Don Miguel Cervantes Saavedra. Author of Don Quixote, some thirty years later. At the end of the first week of September the fleet was ready for sea, but the start was delayed by bad weather. For several days a storm raged in the Straits of Messina, accompanied by thunder and lightning and torrents of rain. At length, on the fourteenth, the sky cleared and the sea went down. Next day Don Juan sent off the squadron of frigates under the command of Don Cesar de Avalos, with orders to proceed to Toronto and await the main body of the fleet there. At sunrise, on the sixteenth, the great fleet left Messina. The Reale led the way. The tall Galleases were towed out by the galleys. It took some hours for the whole Armada to clear the harbor. Then, on the Admiral's signal, they set their sails, and with wind and ore, steered southwestward across the Straits. The first day's voyage was only a few miles. Don Juan was taking the opportunity of reviewing his fleet and testing his arrangements for its formation. Each captain had his written orders giving his position when underway and in the line of battle. It was in this formation the fleet anchored along the Italian coast beyond Reggio, on a front of five miles. Next day the fleet rounded Cape Spartavento, the toe of Italy, and after an attempt to continue the voyage on the nineteenth, was forced by bad weather to put back an anchor under shelter of the land for some twenty-four hours. As the weather improved, Don Juan decided not to coast round the Gulf by Toronto, but to lay his course from Cape Colona for Cape Santa Maria, the heel of Italy, and then across the opening of the Adriatic to Corfu. A frigate was sent to inform to Avalos of the change of plans, and the Armada, helped by a favoring wind, stood out to see and for a while lost sight of land. It was known that the Turkish fleet had concentrated in or near the opening of the Gulf of Corinth. It might also have put to sea, and Don Juan took precautions in view of a possible encounter during his voyage. Cardona, with his seven swift galleys of the vanguard, was directed to keep twenty miles ahead during the daytime, closing in to a distance of only eight miles at sunset, and increasing the interval again at dawn. The three squadrons of the main body appear to have been formed each in line ahead, the leading ships, those of the admirals, at the head of each squadron, with such lateral intervals between the columns that line of battle could be formed by the ships coming up to right and left of their flagships. Santa Cruz, with the reserve, acted as a rearguard, and was to assist any vessel that might be in difficulties. The rear ship of each squadron was to display a large lantern at the masthead after dark. The admiral's ship was distinguished by three large lanterns. Forty galleys were detached to bring reinforcements of infantry from Toronto and Gallipoli. Four swift galleys under the command of Gilda Adrada were sent on in advance to obtain information of the Ottoman fleet. From Cape Santa Maria the course was set for the Ionian islands. On the morning of 24 September, through the driving rain that accompanied a heavy thunderstorm, the lookouts of the vanguard could distinguish the chain of islands north of Corfu, the islets of Merlera, Fano, and Samothraki, which with the reefs that almost connect them form a natural break water. The wind and sea were rising, and the fleet anchored inside the shelter of the islands and reefs. It was not until 26 September that it reached at length the harbor of Corfu. It had taken ten days to complete a passage that the tourist from Messina to Corfu now covers in a single day. At Corfu the commandant of the fortress had terrible tales to tell of Ulug Ali's raid on the island and the horrors that the Turks had perpetrated in the villages, which now presented a scene of ruin and desolation. Gilda Andrada rejoined the fleet there. He had not seen the Turkish armament, but he had obtained news of it from coasters and fishermen. He estimated from these reports that it was inferior in numbers to the Christian fleet, and he had learned that, as if conscious of its weakness, it had taken shelter well up the Gulf of Corinth in the Bay of Lepanto. The bay lies eastward of the point where the Gulf contracts into a narrow strait between the castles of Rumelia and the Moria, then held by the Turks. The defences were of such strength that at the time the strait was popularly known as the Little Dardanelles. It was thought that it would be hopeless for the Allied fleet to attempt to force the passage. Four days were spent in the waters of Corfu, and four thousand troops of the garrison were embarked. Gilda Andrada's four galleys had again been sent away to reconnoiter the enemy. On 30 September the weather was fine and the wind favourable, so Don Juan led his fleet from Corfu to the Bay of Gomernica, 30 miles to the southeast, on the coast of Albania. The galleys guarded the entrance of the bay, the galleys were moored inside it, bowed on to the shore, with their guns thus directed towards it. Working parties were landed under their protection to obtain supplies of wood and water. On two October some Spaniards engaged in the work were surprised and made prisoners by Turkish Irregulars, Albanian horsemen, who carried them off to the headquarters of Ali Pasha, the Turkish Generalissimo at Lepanto. Gilda Andrada rejoined at Gomernica with news that the Turkish fleet was not more than two hundred strong, that pestilence had broken out among its fighting men, and that many of the galleys were undermanned. This encouraged Don Juan to attempt an attack upon it as they lay in the gulf. But Ali Pasha had also received reports that led him to underrate the strength of the Christian armada, and so induced him to put out to sea in search of it. Twice he had reconnoitred the Allied fleet. Before Don Juan arrived at Messina, Ulug Ali had sent one of his corsairs, Karakoja, to cruise in Sicilian waters. The corsair painted every part of his ship a dead black, and one dark night under black sails he slipped into Messina Harbour. The utter daring of his Enterprise assisted him, gliding like a ghost about the roadstead, unmarked and unchallenged, he counted galleys, galleasses, and frigates, and brought back an underestimate of the Allied strength only because the fleet was not yet all assembled. He repeated his exploit while the fleet lay in the waters of Corfu. He could not approach so closely as at Messina, but what he saw led him to believe it was no stronger than when he first reconnoitred it. When Ali Pasha questioned the prisoners taken at Gomenica, using torture to make them answer him, he thought their admissions confirmed Karakoja's reports, so he decided to come out of Lepanto and attack the Allied armada. Thus each fleet believed the other to be inferior in strength and consequently desired an early engagement. The Turkish fleet was made up of 210 galleys and 64 galliots and smaller craft, 274 sail in all, and its commander, Ali Pasha, was one of the veteran admirals of Suleiman's victorious days. Twenty-five thousand soldiers had been embarked under the Saraskir or general, Pertev Pasha. Ali had organized his fleet in four divisions, center, right wing, left wing, and reserve. All the ships had oars as well as sails, and though Ali had no huge floating batteries, like the six galliasses of Don Juan's fleet, the Turkish admiral could match the Christians with galley for galley and have a surplus of eight galleys and 66 smaller craft. Of these the 44 galliots were almost as useful as the galleys. Unlike the latter, which had two and often three masts, the galliot had only one and was smaller in size. But the Turkish galliots, mostly belonging to the peratical states of North Africa, were as large as many of the Christian galleys of the second class. They could sail well and they were manned by crews of fighting men that had a long record of peratical warfare. The organization of Ali's fleet was mainline of battle. Division right wing. Galli's 54. Galliots 2. Total 56. Division center. Galli's 87. Galliots 8. Total 95. Division left wing. Galli's 61. Galliots 32. Total 93. Division reserve. Galli's 8. Galliots 2. Smaller craft 20. Total 30. Totals 210. Galli's 44. Galliots 20. Smaller craft. Total 274. The 50 galli's of the right wing were ships from Egypt, the ports of Asia Minor and the arsenal of Constantinople united under the command of Mohammed Chuluk Bey, governor of Alexandria, known among the Christian sailors of the Mediterranean as Mohammed Shirako. The center commanded by Ali in person was made up of galli's from Rhodes and the Greek islands and from Constantinople and Gallipoli and the Tripolitan squadron under Jaffir Agha, governor of Tripoli. The left under Ulug Ali, the viceroy of Algiers, included ships from Constantinople, Asia Minor, Syria and the ports of Northwest Africa. The reserve, chiefly composed of small craft, was under the command of Murad Draguot of Constantinople. There were a good many Greek and Calabresi renegades among the captains of the galli's, but the Syrians and the mixed-air abrasive Alexandria had learned the ways of the sea. Some even of the Turks were good sailors and the men of Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers had made the sea their element. The thousands of rowers who provided the propelling power of the galli's were for the most part Christian slaves, chained to their heavy oars, by which they slept when the fleet anchored, living a life of weary labor, often half-starved, always badly clothed, so that they suffered from cold and wet. Death was the immediate penalty of any show of insubordination, and the whip of their taskmasters kept them to their work. There were men of all classes among them, sailors taken from prizes, passengers who had the bad luck to be on board captured ships, fishermen and tillers of the soil carried off in coast raids. They were short-lived, for their masters did not spare them, and considered it a more economic policy to work the rowers to the utmost and replace them by other captures when they broke down. The oarsmen of the Allied fleet had also a hard lot, but not as bad as that of Ali Pasha's galli slaves, because in the Christian fleet there was a considerable proportion of men hired for the campaign. But there was also a servile element, Turks taken prisoner in previous campaigns and chained to the oar in reprisal for the treatment of Christian captives by Ottoman commanders, and a considerable number of what we should now call convicts, sentenced to hard labor, a rough lot of murderers, brigands, thieves and the like. It must be remembered that in most European countries the sentence for such offenses would have been death. The convict galli slaves of Don Juan's fleet were encouraged by the prospect of winning either complete pardon or a remission of part of their sentences if there was a victory, and to enable them to cooperate in winning it they were told that they would be freed from their chains and armed when the day of battle came. The twenty-five thousand fighting men of Ali Pasha's fleet were chiefly militia. There were only a few thousand of the formidable Janissaries, and among the small arms of the Turkish fleet there were more bows and arrows than muskets. Don Juan had, on the other hand, a considerable number of archbosiers on his ships. He had the further advantage that while even the largest of the Turkish galli had only low bulwarks, the galleys of the Allied fleet were provided with pavasades, large bucklers and shields, to be fitted among the bulwarks when clearing for action, and also permanent cross-barriers to prevent a raking fire, fore and aft. When Ali left the roadstead of Lepanto and brought his fleet out from behind the batteries of the little Dardanelles, he believed he had such a marked superiority over the Allied fleet that victory was a certainty, and he expected to find Don Juan either at Gomenica or in the waters of the Ionian islands. Pertev Pasha and several of the admirals had opposed Ali's decision and had urged him either to remain at Lepanto or run out of the Gulf, round the Moria, and wait in the eastern seas for the campaign of next year. Their reason for this advice was that many of the fighting men were new levees unused to the sea, but Ali's self-confidence made him reject this prudent council. On two October, Don Juan had made up his mind to leave Gomenica, enter the Gulf of Corinth, and risk an attack on the passage of the little Dardanelles. Accordingly in the afternoon he gave orders that the fleet should prepare to sail at sunrise next day. During the long delay in the island waters, belated news came that Famagusta had fallen on 18 August, and with the news there was a terrible story of the horrors that had followed the broken capitulation. The news was now six weeks old, and this meant that the whole of the enemy's fleet might be concentrated in the Gulf of Corinth, but after the disasters of Cyprus an attempt must be made to win a victory against all or any odds. At sunrise the armada streamed out of the bay of Gomenica and sped southwards with ore and sail. The Gulf of Arta was passed, and the admirals were reminded not of the far off battle that saw the flight of the Egyptian Queen and the epic making victory of Augustus Caesar, but of a sea fight in the same waters only a few years ago that had ended in dire disaster to the Christian arms. Then through the hours of darkness the fleet worked its way past the rockbound shores of Santa Mora, whose cliffs glimmered in the moonlight. The roar of the breakers at their base warned the pilots to give them good sea room. In the gray of the morning the peaks and ridges of Ithaca and Cephalonia rose out of the haze upon the sea, and soon after sunrise the fleet was moving through the narrow strait between the islands. In the strait there were shelter and smooth water, but the wind was rising backing from northwest to west and raising a sea outside Cephalonia that sent a heavy swell sweeping round its southern point and into the opening of the narrows. As the leading ships reached the mouth of the strait Don Juan did not like the look of the weather and decided to anchor in the bay of Fiscardo, a large opening in the Cephalonian shore just inside the strait. For two days the fleet lay weatherbound in the bay. During one of these days of storm Caracogia, the Algerine, tried again to reconnoiter the fleet, but was driven off by the guard ships at the entrance of the strait. On 6 October the winds shifted to the east and the sea began to go down. Don Juan refused to wait any longer. The fleet put to sea under bare masts and rowing hard against the wind and through rough water it worked its way slowly across to the sheltered waters on the mainland coast between it and the islands of Curzolari. Here the fleet anchored for the night just outside the opening of the Gulf of Corinth. Not twenty miles away up the Gulf lay the Turkish fleet, for Ali had brought it out of the bay of Lepanto and anchored in the bay of Caledon. When the sun rose on the seventh the wind was still contrary, blowing from the southeast, but at dawn the ships were under way and moving slowly in long procession between the mainland and the islands that fringed the coast. There was a certain amount of straggling. It was difficult to keep the divisions closed up and the tall Galleases especially felt the effect of the headwind and some of the Galleys had to assist them by towing. As the ships of the Vanguard began to clear the channel between Oksia Island and Cape Scrofa and the wide expanse of water at the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth opened before them, the lookouts reported several ships hauled down on the horizon to the eastward, the sun shining on their white sails that showed like flecks of cloud on the sea-line. End of Chapter 5 Part 2 Chapter 5 of Famous Sea Fights This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by David Leeson Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale Chapter 5 Lepanto 1571 Part 3 The signal was sent back enemy in sight for the number of sails told it must be a fleet and could be none other than that of Ali Pasha. The Allied squadrons began to clear for action and Don Juan displayed for the first time the consecrated banner sent him by Pius V, a large square flag embroidered with the crucifix and the figures of Saints Peter and Paul. It was an anxious time for the Christian admiral. His fleet now straggling for miles along the coast had to close up, issue from the channel, round Cape Scrofa and form in battle array in the open water to the eastward. If the Turks who had the wind to help them came up before this complex operation was completed, he risked being beaten in detail. While the fleet was still working its way through the channel, Don Juan had sent one of the Roman pilots, Cecho Pisani, forward in a swift galley to reconnoiter. Pisani landed on Auxia, climbed one of its crags, and from this lofty outlook counted 250 sail in the enemy's fleet, which was coming out along the north shore of the Gulf, the three main squadrons abreast, the reserve, a stern of them. Returning to the Reali, the pilot gave a guarded report to Don Juan, fearing to discourage the young commander now that battle was inevitable. But to his own admiral, the veteran Colona, he spoke freely. Sr., he said, you must put out all your claws, for it will be a hard fight. Then the wind suddenly fell and the sea became calm as a lake. The Turks were seen to be furling their now useless sails. The rapidity with which the maneuver was simultaneously executed by hundreds of ships excited the admiration of the Christians. It showed the enemy had well-disciplined and practiced crews. But at the same time, the fact that at a crisis, when every moment gained was priceless, the Turks had lost the fair wind, convinced the allies that heaven was aiding them, and gave them confidence in the promises of their chaplains, gray cowed Franciscans and black-robed Dominicans who were telling them that the prayers of Christendom would assure them a victory. Their young chief, Don Juan, left the Reali and embarked in a swift brigantine in which he rode along the forming line of the fleet. Clad in complete armor, he stood in the bow, holding up a crucifix. And as he passed each galley, he called on officers and men to spare no effort in the holy cause for which they were about to fight. Then he returned to his post on the poop of the Reali, which was in the center of the line with several other large galleys grouped around her. As each ship was pulled into her fighting position, the Christian galley slaves were freed from the oar and given weapons with which to fight for the common cause and their own freedom. It was intended that the galleys of the left, center, and right should form one long line with the six galleases well out in front of them, two before each division. These were to break the force of the Turkish onset with their cannon. But when the long line of the enemy's galleys came rushing to the onset, Don Juan's battle array was still incomplete. Barbarigo's flagship was on the extreme left under the land. His division had formed upon this mark, dressing by the left, as a soldier would say, the tall galleases of two gallant brothers, the Venetians Ambrodio and Antonio Bragedino, kensmen of the hero of Famagusta, lay well out in front of the left division. All the ships had their sails furled and the long yards hauled for and aft. Don Juan had formed up the center division two more galleases out in front, the reyali in the middle of the line, the galleys of Veniero and Colonna to right and left, and two selected galleys lying astern, covering the intervals between them and the flagship. Only a few oars were being used to keep the ships in their stations. So far so good, but the rest of the Allied fleet was still coming up. The reserve was only issuing from the channel behind Cape Scrofa, and Doria was leading the right division into line, with his two galleases working up a stern, where their artillery would be useless. Thus, when the battle began, not much more than half of the Christian armada was actually in line, but for the sudden calm the position would have been even worse. It was almost noon when the battle began. The first shots were fired by the four galleases, as the long line of Ottoman galleys came sweeping on into range of their guns. Heavy cannons, such as they carried, were still something of a novelty in naval war, and the Turks had a dread of these tall floating castles that bristled with guns, from which fire, smoke, and iron were now hurled against them. One of the first shots crashed into the deck of Ali Pasha's flagship, scattering destruction as it came. The Turkish line swayed and lost its even array. Some ships hesitated, others crowded together in order to pass clear of the galleases. Daring captains, who ventured to approach with an idea of boarding them, shrank back under the storm of musketry that burst from their lofty bulwarks. The Turkish fleet surged past the galleases, broken into confused masses of ships, with wide intervals between each squadron as a stream is divided by the piles of a bridge. This disarray of the Turkish attack diminished the fire their bow guns could bring to bear on the Christian line, for the leading galleys masked the batteries of those that followed. Along the allied left and center, lying in even array bows to the attack, the guns roared out in a heavy cannonade, but then as the Ottoman bows came rushing through the smoke and the fleets closed on each other, the guns of the galleys were silent. For a few moments the fight had been like a modern battle, with hundreds of guns thundering over the sea. Now it was a fight like Salamis or Actium, except for the sharp reports of musketry in the melee and the cannon of the galleases making the Turkish galleys their mark when they could fire into the mass without danger to their friends. The first to meet in close conflict were Barbarigo's division on the allied left and Mohamed Shirako's squadron, which was opposed to it on the Turkish right. The Egyptian Pasha brought his own galley into action on the extreme flank bow to bow with the Venetian flagship, and some of the lighter Turkish galleys by working through the shallows between Barbarigo and the land were able to fall on the rear of the extreme left of the line while the larger galleys pressed the attack in front. The Venetian flagship was rushed by a boarding party of Janissaries and her decks cleared as far as the main must. Barbarigo fighting with his visor open was mortally wounded with an arrow in his face and was carried below. But his nephew Contorini restored the fight and with the help of reinforcements from the next galley drove the borders from the decks of the flagship. Contorini was mortally wounded in the midst of his success, but two of his comrades Nani and Portia led a rush of Venetians and Spaniards onto Mohamed Shirako's flagship, whose decks were swept by the fire of the archbosiers before the charge of swords and pikes burst over her bows. The onset was irresistible. The Turks were cut down, stabbed, hurled overboard, Mohamed himself being killed in the melee. By the time the great galley of Alexandria was thus captured, the landward wings of the two fleets were mingled together in a confused fight in which there was little left of the original order. There was more trace of a line on the allied or Christian side. The Turks had not broken through them, but they had swung round, somewhat forcing Mohamed's galleys toward the shore. When the standard of the Egyptian admiral was hauled down by the victorious Venetians and the rowers suddenly ceased to be slaves and fraternized with the conquerors, some of the captains on the Turkish right lost heart, drove their galleys aground in the shallows and deserted them for the shore, where they hoped to find refuge among friends. On Don Juan's left, though the fighting continued in a fierce melee of ships locked together and with crews doing wild work with loud arch-bus and clashing sword, the battle was practically won. Meanwhile, there had been close and deadly fighting in the center. The main squadron of the Turks had, like their right division, suffered from the fire of the advanced Galiases. Several shots had struck the huge galley that flew the flag of the Capitan Pasha, Ali, a white penon sent from Mecca, embroidered in gold with verses of the Quran. Ali steered straight for the center of the Christian line, where the group of large galleys, the Reale, with the embroidered standard of the Holy League, Cologne's ship with its ensign of the papal keys, and Vineros with the lion flag of Saint Mark, told him he was striking at the heart of the Confederacy. He chose Don Juan's Reale for his adversary, relying on the Saraskir Pertiv Pasha and the Pasha of Mitalin on his left and right to support him by attacking the other two flagships. Ali held the fire of his bow guns till he was within a short musket shot of his enemy, and then fired at point blank. One of his cannon balls crashed through the bow barrier of the Reale and raked the rowers' benches, killing several oarsmen. As the guns of the Reale thundered out their reply, the bow of the Turkish flagship, towering over the forecastle of Don Juan's vessel, came through the smoke cloud and struck the Spanish ship stern to stern with a grinding crash and a splintering of timber, throwing down many of the crew. The Turkish bow dug deep into the Spanish ship, and in the confusion of the collision it was thought for a moment she was sinking, but a forward bulkhead kept her afloat. Ali's ship rebounded from the shock, then glided alongside the Reale with much mutual smashing of oars. The two ships grappled and the hand-to-hand fight began. At the same time Pertevpasha grappled Vignero's flagship and another Turkish galley, commanded by Ali's two sons, forced its way through the line and engaged the two galleys that lay a stern of the flagship. Then the Pasha of Middleene closed upon Kolona's ship, and all along the center the galleys came dashing together, the crash of broken oars, the rattling explosions of arc buses and grenades, the war notes of the Christian trumpets and the Turkish drums, the clash of swords, the shouts and yells of the combatants rose in a deafening den. Fwasar wrote in an earlier day that sea fights were always murderous. This last great battle of the medieval navies had the characters of its predecessors. In this fight at close quarters on the narrow space afforded by the galleys decks, there was no question of surrender on either side, no thought but of which could strike the hardest and kill the most. Nor could men striving hand to hand in the confusion of the floating melee know anything of what was being done beyond their limited range of view so that even the admirals became, for the moment only leaders of small groups of fighting men. On the poop and forecastle of the Reale were gathered men whose names recalled all that was greatest in the annals of Spanish chivalry, veterans who had fought the moor and voyaged the western ocean and young cavaliers eager to show themselves worthy sons of the lines of Guzman and Mendoza, Benavides and Salazar. Don Juan, arrayed in complete steel, stood by the flagstaff of the consecrated standard. Along the bulwark's four hundred Castilian arcbossiers in corselit and headpiece represented the pick of the yet unconquared Spanish infantry. The three hundred rowers had left the oars and, armed with pike and sword, were ready to second them, when the musket ceased and the storming of the Turkish galleys began. From Ali's ship a hundred archers and three hundred musketeers of the Janissary corps replied to the fire of the Spaniards. The range was a few feet. Men were firing in each other's faces and at such close quarters the arcboss with its heavy ball was a more death dealing weapon than the modern rifle. Such slaughter could not last and the Caballeros were eager to end it by closing on the Turks with cold steel. Twice they dashed through the smoke over Ali's bulwarks and for a while gained a footing on the deck of the enemy's flagship. Twice they were driven back by the reinforcements that Ali drew from the crews of galleys that had crowded to his aid. Then the Turks came clambering over the boughs of the Reale and nearly cleared the forecastle. Don Bernardino de Cardinas brought up a reserve from the waste of the ship and attacked the Turkish borders in the boughs. He was struck by a musket ball. It dented his steel helmet but failed to penetrate. Cardinas fell, stunned by the shock of the blow and died next day though he showed no sign of a wound. Don Juan himself was going forward sword in hand to assist in the fight in the boughs of the Reale and Ali was hurrying up reinforcements to the attack. It was a critical moment but Kelona just then struck a decisive blow. He had boarded and stormed the ship that attacked him along Gali commanded by the Bay of Negropont. Having thus disposed of his immediate adversary he saw the peril of the Reale. Manning all his oars he drove the bow of his flagship deep into the stern of Ali's ship swept her decks with a volley of musketry and sent a storming party on to her poop. The diversion saved the Reale. The Spaniards hustled the Turks over her bows at point of pike and Ali attacked on two sides had now to fight on the defensive. On the other side of the Reale Vignero's flagship was making a splendid fight. It is the details of those old battles that bring home to us the changes of three centuries. A modern admiral stands sheltered in his conning tower amid voice tubes and electrical transmitters. Vignero, a veteran of 70 years stood by the poop rail of his Gali thinking less of commanding than of doing his own share of the killing. Balls and arrows whistled around him along the bulwarks amid ships his men were fighting hand to hand with the Saraskir's Gali that lay lashed alongside. There were no orders to give for the moment so he occupied himself with firing a blunderbuss into the crowd on the Turkish deck and handing it to a servant to reload with half a dozen balls and then firing again and again. Here, too, in the main squadron were fighting the galleys of Spinola of Genoa, of the young Duke of Urbino, of the Prince of Parma, of Bonelli, the nephew of Pius V, of Forza of Milan, and Gonzaga of Solferino, and the young heirs of the Roman houses of Colonna and Orsini. Venice had not all the glory of Lepanto and Italy still remembers that every noble family, every famous city, from the Alps to Sicily had its part in the battle. Colonna's timely aid to the Reale was the turning point of the fight in the center led by Vasquez Coronada and Gil de Andrada, the Spanish infantry poured into Ali's ship and, winning their way foot by foot, cleared her decks. Not one of her 400 fighting men survived. Ali himself was one of the last to fall. One account says that when all was lost he cut his throat with his dagger, another that he was shot down at close quarters. His head was cut off, placed on a pike, and carried to Don Juan with the captured standard of mecca. The chivalrous young admiral turned with disgust from the sight of the blood-dripping head and ordered it to be thrown into the sea. The battle had lasted an hour and a half. Don Juan saw in the capture of the enemy's flagship the assurance of victory. Like all great commanders he knew the value of moral effect. He hoisted the consecrated banner of the league at the tall masked head of the conquered galley and bade his trumpeters blow a flourish and his men shout victory. In the confusion and uproar of the melee not many of the ships would see what was happening round the Reale but this demonstration would attract the attention of friends and foes in the center of the fight. It was just one of the moments when both parties becoming exhausted by the prolonged struggle success would belong to the side that could put forth even for a while the more vigorous effort and the sight of the papal standard fluttering from the Turkish mast instead of the banner of mecca inspired this effort on the part of the Christians and depressed and discouraged their adversaries. Pertev Pasha had lost heavily under the fire of the Venetian flagship and had failed in an effort to board her. He cut his galley a drift. Veniero let her go and turned to attack other enemies. Pertev's ship drifted down on two Christian galleys and was promptly boarded and taken. The Saraskyr slipped on board of a small craft he was towing a stern reached another ship and giving up all hope of victory fled with her from the fight. Veniero had meanwhile rammed and sunk two other galleys. He was wounded with a bullet in the leg but he had the wound bandaged and remained on deck. The old man gave Venice good reason to be proud of her admiral. Along the left and center of the Christian armada there was now victory. Admurals and captains were busy storming or sinking such of the enemy's ships as still maintained the fight. On the left Barbarigo had been mortally wounded and the losses had been heavy but the success was so pronounced that large numbers of men had been landed to hunt down the Turkish fugitives on the shore. In the center there was still some hard fighting here it was that Miguel Cervantes, leading the stormers to the capture of a Turkish galley received three wounds one of which cost him his left hand. When the battle began at noon first on the allied left then in the center Doria, the Genoese admiral who commanded the right was not yet in position. His orders were to mark with his flagship the extreme right of the line of battle so that the rest of his division could form on that point. But it was soon seen that he was keeping away steering southward into the open sea with his division trailing after him in a long line the Galleases that should have been out in front coming slowly up behind the squadron. Ulug Ali with the left wing of the Turkish fleet had also altered his course and was steering on a parallel line to that taken by the Genoese. Some of the Christian captains who watched these movements from the right center thought that Doria was deserting the Armada and even that he was in flight pursued by Ulug Ali. Doria afterwards explained that as he steered out from behind the center to take up his position in the battle line he saw that Ulug Ali instead of forming on Ali Pasha's flank was working out to seaward and he therefore believed that the Algerine was trying to get upon the flank of the Allied line in order to envelop it and attack from both front and rear so as to crush the extreme right with a local superiority of force. His plan was therefore to confine himself to observing Ulug Ali's movements steering on a parallel course in the hope of eventually closing and meeting him fairly ship to ship. Doria was an old sailor perhaps the most experienced leader in the fleet except the veteran Veniero. If he had been less of a tactician perhaps he would have come into action sooner and it is strange that while playing for position against Ulug Ali he did not realize that if instead of continually increasing his own distance from the center he had at any moment turned back towards it he could thus force the Algerine admiral either to close with him or leave him free to overwhelm the Turkish main squadron by enveloping its left. It was Ulug Ali not Doria who turned back and ventured on a stroke like this. The Algerine had after all outmaneuvered the over clever Genoese. The course taken by the two squadrons had with the drift of the current placed Ulug Ali's rearmost ships actually somewhat nearer the seaward flank of the main fighting lines than Doria's galleys which his squadron also outnumbered. A signal ran down the long line of the Turkish left and while some of the galleys turned and bore down on Doria's division the rest swung round and before Doria had quite realized what was happening Ulug Ali with the heaviest ships of his division was rushing towards the fight in the center. The brunt of the Algerine's onset fell upon a dozen galleys on Don Juan's right flank. The furthest out the flagship of the Knights of Malta was attacked by seven of the enemy's vessels. Next to her lay the papal galley Fiorenza, the Piedmontese Margarita de Savoia and seven or eight Venetian ships. All these were enveloped in the Turkish attack which engaged the line in front, flank, and rear. There were no enemies the Algerines hated so fiercely as the Knights of Malta but, even though they had the flagship of the order at such a fearful disadvantage they did not venture to close with it until they had overwhelmed the Knights and their crew with a murderous fire of bullets and arrows at close quarters. Then they boarded the ship and disposed of the few surviving defenders. The commander, Giustiniani, wounded by five arrows and a Sicilian and a Spanish Knight alone survived and these only because they were left for dead among the heaps of slain that encumbered the deck. Ulug Ali secured as a trophy of his success the standard of the Knights. In the same way the Fiorenza and the San Giovanni of the papal squadron and the Piedmontese ship were rushed in rapid succession on the Fiorenza the only survivors were her captain Tomasso de Medici and sixteen men all wounded the captain of the San Giovanni was killed with most of his men and the captain of the Savoyard ship survived an equally terrible slaughter after receiving no less than eleven wounds. But Ulug Ali was not to be allowed to eat up the line ship by ship. Reinforcements were now arriving in rapid succession first Santa Cruz with the reserve dashed into the fight and though twice wounded with shot from a Turkish archbus drove his flagship into the midst of the Algerians. Don Juan cut a drift a captured ship he had just taken in tow and with twelve galleys hastened to assist the reserve in restoring the fight. Doria leaving part of his division to encounter the galleys Ulug Ali had detached against it led the rest into the melee. Colona and Vignero were supporting Don Juan the local advantage of numbers which Ulug Ali at first possessed soon disappeared but for more than an hour the fight continued with heavy loss on both sides. Then the Algerian admiral struggled out of the melee and with fourteen ships fled north westward steering for Cape Oxia and the wide channel between Ithaca and the mainland. Santa Cruz and Doria pursued for a while but a wind sprang up from the southeast and the fugitives set their long Latin sails. Under sail and ore a corsair could generally defy pursuit. The pursuers gave up the chase and returned to where Don Juan and the other admirals were securing their prizes clearing the decks of dead collecting the wounded and hurriedly repairing damages. It was now after four o'clock and less than three hours of daylight remained for these operations. Besides the handful that had escaped with Ulug Ali a few galleys had got away into the Gulf of Corinth making for Lepanto but the great Turkish Armada had been destroyed and the victorious armament was mistress of the Mediterranean. The success had been dearly bought. On both sides the losses in the hard fought battle had been terrible. The allies had about 7,500 men killed or drowned two-thirds of these fighting men the rest rowers. The nobles and knights had exposed themselves freely in the melee and Spain, Malta, Venice and the Italian cities had each and all their role of heroic dead. The list of the Venetians begins with the names of 17 captains of ships including the admiral Barbarigo besides 12 other chiefs of great houses who fought under the standard of St. Mark in command of companies of fighting men. No less than 60 of the Knights of St. John gave their lives that day for the cause of Christ to quote the Analyst of the Order. Several others were wounded and of these the prior Giustiniani and his captain Naro of Syracuse died soon after. One of the knights killed in the battle was a Frenchman Raymond de Loubière a Provençal. Another Frenchman the veteran de Romegas fought beside Don Juan on the Reale and to his counsel and aide the commander in chief attributed much of his success in the campaign. The long lists of the Spanish Neapolitan, Roman and Genoese nobles who fell at La Panto include many historic names. The losses of the defeated Muslims were still heavier. The lowest estimate makes the number of the dead 20,000 the highest 30,000. Ali Pasha and most of his captains were killed. Ali's two sons and several of his best officers were among the prisoners. 15 Turkish galleys were sunk or burned no less than 190 ships were the prizes of the victors. A few galleys had escaped by the little Dardanelles to La Panto. A dozen more had found refuge with Ulug Ali in the fortified harbor of Santa Mora. The Algerine eventually reached Constantinople and laid at the feet of Sultan Selim the standard of the Knights of Malta which he had secured when he was in temporary possession of Justiniani's flagship. Don Juan's best trophies of victory were the 12,000 Christian slaves found on board the captured galleys. They were men of all nations and some of them had for years toiled at the ore. Freed from their bondage they carried throughout all Christendom the news of the victory and the fame of their deliverer. Hardly three hours of daylight remained when the battle ended and the Christian admirals reluctantly abandoned the pursuit of Ulug Ali. The breeze that had aided the Algerine in his flight was rapidly increasing to a gale and the sea was rising fast. The Christian fleet encumbered with nearly 200 prizes and crippled by the loss of thousands of ores shattered in the fight was in serious danger in the exposed waters that had been the scene of the battle. By strenuous and well directed efforts the crews of oresmen were hurriedly reorganized. Happily the wind was favorable for a run through the oxy a channel to the bay of Patala. The prizes were taken in tow, sales were set, weary men tugged at the ores, knights and nobles taking their places among them. As the October night deepened into darkness amid driving rain and roaring wind squalls the fleet anchored in the sheltered bay. The gale that swept the Adriatic was a warning that the season for active operations was drawing to a close and the admirals reluctantly decided that no more could be done until next spring. The swiftest ships were sent off to carry the good news of Lepanto to Rome and Messina, Venice and Genoa, Naples and Barcelona. The fleet returned in triumph to Messina and entered the port trailing the captured Turkish standards in the water astern of the ships that had taken them while peeling bells and saluting cannon greeted the victors. Lepanto worthily closed the long history of the ore driven navies. The Galeases with their tall masts and great sails and their bristling batteries of cannon which lay in front of Don Juan's battle line represented the new type of ship that was soon to alter the whole aspect of naval war. So quickly came the change that men who had fought at Lepanto were present only seventeen years later at another world-famed battle that was fought under sail the defeat of King Philip's Grand Armada in the narrow seas of the North. End of Chapter 5