17th century French galley...CG model.

[Frank Hipper]

A very convincing and as far as I can tell, very well researched, animated model of an example of the last generation of Mediterranean galley.

Posted in History rather than AMP to focus on the ship rather than the CGI.

[Sea Skimmer]

Beautiful model. It very nicely illustrates the incredibly limited ability of the galley to mount heavy cannon, and its hopeless inability to survive fire from them. As soon as cast iron cannon could be made, in far larger numbers then bronze, it was so doomed. The only advantage was agility, and what good could that do when even a crude ~50 gun ship of the line could match your firepower fore and aft, and make a beam approach near suicidal. This leaves harbor defense as your best mission, a limited if important one.

Very interesting way of recovering the boat too, which doesn’t say a lot for the stability of these things and the resulting ability to embark more swivel guns and infantry even if you had them. I'm sure that was a non trivial factor in why all the exposed oarsmen could be effective at all.

[Alyrium Denryle]

As I recall, the galleass was far more effective. Hell, at Lepanto, six of them wiped out the plurality of the ottoman galley fleet. Still, once you have built a galleass, you might as well take out the oars and build a galleon or caravel... which is exactly what they did.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah they were far more effective but they were also slow, making coordinating with a galley fleet difficult. Very transitional type.

Rowing took a long time to ago away completely though, aside from galleys being used as harbor defense ships, France and a few others were still building frigates with ports for oars at least until the French Revolution. The reason was that so many Mediterranean ports were difficult to get into and out of, and the wind could blow unfavorably for weeks on end. Towing a ship out with large row boats could be possible in peacetime, but its not very practical if the enemy is around or the water choppy. The rowing ability was also useful for coastal attacks to avoid being driven onto the rocks by unfavorable wind as well. As far as I can tell though ships like this were incapable of seriously fighting and rowing at the exact same time, the gun crews would be rowing on the gun deck.

The first uses of steam for naval warfare, coming just around the end of the Napoleonic Wars was for towing ships of the line into and out of port, matching up roughly with the final end of the large rowing warship. Impressively towing several thousand ton ships of the line worked okay with tugboats that had under 100hp. Took about 30 more years before you could actually power the ship of the line directly with steam and make a complete joke of any and all warships ever before.

[CJvR]

Well here is an example of both the advantages and the troubles with fighting oar vessels with regular sailing units...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grengam

You can pick the outcome that favors your argument.

Sweden even designed a special fleet for fighting in the shallows for the next wars...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archipelago_fleet

The gun sloops rapidly replaced the crew intensive galleys, and could take on even much larger ships under favorable conditions.

[Frank Hipper]

It's fascinating, to me at least, to compare the battle of Zonchio in 1499, St. Mathieu off Brest in 1513, Terceira in 1583.

At Zonchio, Ottoman galleys carried guns too small to be effective against the giant Venetian carracks (or barze) of Loredan and D'Armer, as was the case in The Golden Horn in 1453.

At Brest, a mere four French galleys literally smashed their way through an (admittedly unprepared) English fleet sinking an armed merchantman outright, came around and nearly sank the warship Great Bark, and then beached themselves stern-first in an unassailable defensive position.

At Terceira, Spanish galleys were used as close-in fire support for the landing of assault forces to very good effect.

An evolutionary process, and demonstrations of operational flexibilty beyond fleet action.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well here is an example of both the advantages and the troubles with fighting oar vessels with regular sailing units...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grengam

You can pick the outcome that favors your argument.

According to that the Russians had eleven times the manpower, six times the ships of the Swedish and two Swedish frigates ran aground while none of the Swedish vessels was particularly powerful for its rate. The fact that any Swedish vessels survived at all kind massively of points to the limitations of the galley.

Sweden even designed a special fleet for fighting in the shallows for the next wars...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archipelago_fleet

The gun sloops rapidly replaced the crew intensive galleys, and could take on even much larger ships under favorable conditions.

The US used similar small rowing warships against the British only to find that in fact they were very vulnerable to a skilled enemy attacking them with launches by night which could be deployed from larger warship. They require very specific, constricting conditions to be effective and it helps if the enemy is timid. The Swedish Archipelago isn't really a good place to demonstrate tactics which have much wider use; remember this is also the place you have the Swed's keeping around nuclear bomb resistant armored gun turrets and speed boats armed with Hellfire teams into almost the present day.