The Sultan's Admiral (12 page)

“By Arabs, My Lord,” they replied, “but not by Spaniards.”

“So would my Moors infallibly have served every mother’s son of you,” replied Kheir-ed-Din, “had I not given positive orders to the contrary. But to convince you that I am more a gentleman and man of honour than your faithless General, and mind my word somewhat better, I also promised you life and liberty. The first you actually enjoy; and the other you may, likewise, enjoy whensoever you think fit to purchase it, every one according to his abilities. Whereas all the wealth in Africa would not restore to me one of my slaughtered friends. Let your present servitude and future ransoms make some small atonement for their loss. And from henceforward let this be a warning for every one to have a greater regard to his word of honour.”

As a side issue, this anecdote raises an immediate question— in what language did Kheir-ed-Din speak to his Spanish prisoners? We have it on record that he spoke fluent Spanish with a Castilian lisp. Naturally he spoke Turkish; he also spoke Greek, Arabic, French (“well enough to create the belief that he was a native”), and Italian.

The wreck of the fleet, coupled with the considerable loss of life among the troops, was a sad setback to Charles’s hopes of exterminating the “Barbary pirates” and clearing his sea lanes. By the following year he was too occupied with events in Europe and with his long-drawn struggle with Francis I of France to concern himself with North Africa. Admiral Hugo de Moncada, meanwhile, had scudded northward with his depleted and damaged fleet to winter in Ibiza.

Kheir-ed-Din, contemplating the plunder and the wrecked shipping and the new slaves in the slave market could afford the luxury of a smile. He did not rest easy on his laurels, however, but continued to work on the defences of his city. In the spring he would summon in the galleys and galleots from their winter refits. The crescent flag of the Sublime Porte would shake above his ships along the coastlines of Christendom. The Kingdom of Algiers was now established. Soon Kheir-ed-Din would make himself master of the sea and, ultimately, High Admiral of the Ottoman Empire. With his base secured behind him, he would display that genius for naval warfare which entitles him to a high place among the great commanders of all time.

“Kheir-ed-Din, notwithstanding his being Sovereign, as it were, of so many States, never failed, once, or oftener in a year, going out on a cruise with his galleots . . It was upon this powerful platform of plunder that Kheir-ed-Din Barbarossa would consolidate his gains and finally ensure that the kingdom founded by his brother would endure for centuries. But, whereas Aruj had been primarily a fighting man, his younger brother was first and foremost a seaman, and—unusual for a sailor—a statesman.

His sea life is incomprehensible without some understanding of the world in which he lived. Like his great rival, Andrea Doria of Venice, he was a soldier as well as a sailor (the close-cut distinction between the one and the other did not really evolve until the eighteenth century). It was, however, as a seaman that Kheir-ed-Din Barbarossa made his mark upon the world. It was as a captain, or rais, of galleys and later as an admiral in charge of them that he transformed the Mediterranean.

“There was always a total difference,” wrote Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, “between the Navy of sail and the Navy of the

oared galley. There is nothing in common between these vessels.”

In fact, there was an almost totally uninterrupted tradition between the galleys of ancient Greece and those of Louis XIV of France. Certainly in the sixteenth century the methods of ma-nouvre, the conditions of life, and the tactics of warfare had changed very little. Navigation methods had definitely improved; so also had the “weight-for-power” ratio of the galleys. No longer were they the complicated two-, three-, or even four-deckers of the classical world.

The sixteenth-century galley was rowed by a crew of men who were all lodged on one deck, with up to six or seven of them handling the loom of the long oar. This technical achievement was comparatively simple, and was based on the same principle as the outrigger that supports the oar of a modern “eight.” As Torr comments in
Ancient Ships
: “The single bank of the galley was as effective as the numerous banks of the ancient oar-ships. One of these new systems increased the number of oars by placing them at shorter intervals along the bank, and making them of several different lengths inboard, the rowers being arranged in several lines along the deck: while the other maintained the number of oars at fifty or sixty, but increased their size and strength, several rowers working at every oar.”

The term galley derives from the Greek. It is first found in its current interpretation in a treatise attributed to the Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium, to denote warships with a single bank of oars. The great distinction between the galley and the galleon was that the former was primarily an oared vessel, whereas the galleon was a sailing ship only. In between these two came the galleasse, which was both oar- and sail-propelled. In the smaller tonnage class came the galleot, so favoured by the Turks, which was an oared vessel with auxiliary sails but usually with no more than three men to an oar.

In terms which the modern yachtsman can understand: the galleot was a fast, light,
powered
vessel; the galleasse a fifty-fifty (50 per cent power and 50 per cent sail); the galleon a large
sailing
vessel; and the galley a large,
powered
ship. These were the four main types which were to be found in the Mediterranean throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The rivalry between them was finally to be decided in favour of the galleon (or, in later British terms, ship of the line). With her greater beam and hold space, she was able to accommodate a power of armament that could blast her opponents out of the water long before they—even with their greater manoeuvrability—could get within range. This was something that was to be proved by Francis Drake at Cadiz in 1587 when he shattered the galleys of Spain inside a sheltered harbour where, according to the theories of the time, his sailing ships should have been at a vast disadvantage.

In somewhat similar style, Kheir-ed-Din Barbarossa recognised that for the type of actions which he would be initiating, the small galley or galleot would prove the most useful vessel. A sailing ship, it was true, was faster
when the wind blew
. But in the long Mediterranean summer, especially in the central area, calms often dominated the sea for days on end. Then again, the deeper draught of the sailing vessel was a distinct drawback in many coves and small harbours. Furthermore, a sailing ship could not be launched at its prey like a dart: a galley could be. At the same time, although he was later compelled to have large slave-driven galleys under his command, the smaller galleot manned by fellow Turks was a far more efficient fighting machine.

The objective of a raider like Barbarossa was, after all, not to sink his opponent but to capture him, together with everything and everybody on board. An action, then, consisted in laying your vessel alongside your opponent and capturing him by boarding. It was clearly advantageous to have rowers who, the moment ship was laid against ship, could down oars and add to your fighting strength. Quite apart from this, the hardy Turks were admirable material for the task. As one astute judge of “oar flesh” commented: “The Turks are the best for this work, being vigorous, enduring, uncomplaining, and often well-trained (having already been oarsmen in Turkish galleys) … The inhabitants of the Barbary Coast [i.e. Moors, Berbers, and Arabs] are nowhere near as good as the Turks, being of an awkward and nervous temperament, and inclined to dogged resistance and invincible stubbornness. They are very difficult to manage and cause innumerable troubles. Negro slaves, on the other hand, just waste away. They are soft and indolent, with little resistance to sickness, and at the slightest bit of cold they die like flies . . The buyer who knew this useful bit of advice could save a lot of time and money when looking round a slave market. For the slave market, of course, was not something confined to North Africa or the famous bagnio of Constantinople; it was part .and parcel of every great Mediterranean seaport. Whereas it was Christians who were for sale in Algiers, Moslems were for sale in Genoa and Venice.

Pantero Pantera, who was captain of the papal galleys, published an invaluable work on the Mediterranean ships of his period in Rome in 1614 in which he provides some interesting information about the size and types of oars used in galleys. Unfortunately there is no known equivalent Turkish work, but since the Turks and the other Moslems largely based their designs on European types, there is no reason to suppose that there was any great deal of difference between them. The oars of a galleot were usually worked by two or three men apiece. On the galley proper the normal crew to each oar loom was four, although sometimes there might be as many as five or six, while on the hybrid galleasse as many as eight or even more might share the same bench at the loom of one oar. By Pantera’s time, about half a century later than Barbarossa’s, the large galley had begun to supersede the galleot, since the ability of a ship to withstand the punishment of heavy cannon fire had now become most important. In the smaller Turkish vessels mainly used by Barbarossa, however, it was not unusual to have only two men to the oar, with a reserve of two. Thus the oars could be worked “watch-and-watch,” with two fresh men taking over at regular intervals after a sleep and something to eat.

The lateen sails which graced all Mediterranean galleys were Arabic in origin, although it is possible that they had been first adopted by the Arabs in the Red Sea from local or Indian vessels. Certainly this simple sailing rig had been used by Europeans as early as the first decades of the fifteenth century when the Portuguese caravels (which Prince Henry the Navigator sent out to explore west Africa and the Atlantic) were lateen-rigged. The short mast meant that there was little windage aloft, and in bad weather the long lateen yards could easily be sent down and stowed along the centre line of the vessel. Hoisted on a simple block and tackle, the sails were easy to control, and two or three men could handle a large area of canvas. The lateen had other advantages over the square sail of the contemporary sailing vessel in that it could be used to a certain extent for working to windward. Indeed, until the fore-and-aft rig came into general use in the nineteenth century, the lateen was the most efficient type of sail that man had discovered. In a galleot it was also possible to compensate for the “crabbing” effect on a shallow-draughted vessel—or the large amount of leeway that she would otherwise make—by having the oarsmen pull on the leeward side. Until comparatively recently, Sicilian fishing boats, manned by some ten men, were still sailing small versions of the galleot and going down to the Kerkenah banks off North Africa under oars and sail. In that old haunt of the Barbarossas, the island of Djerba, there are still trading and fishing vessels in commission which differ little from the galleots—except that the main emphasis now is on the sails, and only a few oars are shipped to help make harbour in a calm.

Now that Kheir-ed-Din had control of so much of the Algerian coastline and hinterland he had as much wood as was needed for the construction of an efficient fleet. Pine as always was an important wood in ship construction, although it seems that fir was often preferred for war galleys. But pine, cypress, and, when available, cedar were all used in galley building. The long keel timber was usually of pine, and onto this was fastened a “false keel” of almost any soft wood. This was the expandable keel which was renewed every year, since it tended to get torn or damaged every time that the vessel was run up a beach or onto a slipway.

The vessels were carvel-built, that is to say, with one plank sitting flush upon another, and not, as in the north, clinker-built, where the planks overlap from the gunwale downwards. The seams between the planks were caulked with tow and other packing material, and the caulking was then held in with wax or tar. The whole outer planking was protected by a coat of tar or wax, or the two mixed together. Colouring materials were often mixed with the wax when it was being heated, to improve the vessel’s appearance. This type of encaustic paint was reasonably resistant to the wind and weather. The Mediterranean has always been a bad place for the teredo worm, which loves to tunnel its way into wood (finally changing an apparently solid piece of timber into nothing more than a hollow honeycomb), and tar was used on the ships’ bottoms as a preventative against this. The frames, timbers, and planks were often secured with wooden dowels, although both bronze and iron nails were also used. The strongest part of the oared vessel was the bow, where heavy catheads stood out proud from the ship’s side to assist in tearing away the upper works of an enemy when the galley went in to attack. The
rambade
, or fighting foredeck, also needed additional strengthening, since it was here that the bow-chaser cannon were mounted.

Shallow-draughted as she was, this type of vessel needed some built-in stability to ensure her safety in the short and untidy seas that kick up in the Mediterranean at very short notice. The rowers themselves were disposed about her centre of gravity, but she had the windage of her masts to take into consideration, as well as her raised prow and her built-up quarters in the poop. Here the Turks were often more intelligent than their European foes: living rough and sleeping hard, they did not demand such comfortable quarters aft for their officers and leaders as did the gentry of Spain and Italy. Nevertheless, all galleys and even galleots needed some type of ballasting. This was provided by gravel or stone carried in the bilges and held in place by planks slotted into wooden uprights. These planks could be easily moved, and the ballast quickly transferred from one section of the bilges to another. In this way, by moving ballast from forward to aft, the bows could be elevated slightly—something that was important if the vessel was going in to ram—or, alternatively, if conditions of wind and sea demanded it, the bows could similarly be depressed. Inevitably, the hold collected a mass of foul bilge water, and this had to be kept down to a reasonable level either by a chain of men baling with buckets, or by a simple Archimedean screw worked either by a handle or by a geared-in treadmill.