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530 Mahmut Halef Cevrioğlu

A. Konstam, Reniassance War Galley, 1470-1590, Osprey, Oxford, 2002, pp. 28-29.

Fig. 1 – A Spanish Galley (ca. 1571)

In terms of technology, there were concrete differences between the
preferred model of Ottoman vessels and the ships of the northern trad-
ers: the Ottoman navy relied heavily on the two-millennia-old primary
medium of transportation of the Mediterranean, the galley (kadırga).
With a hull size of up to thirty meters in length and five meters in
width, flat and low-lying galleys could only be moved with hundreds
of rowers, the limited number of sails on board serving only as com-
plementary. Due to the constant need for supplies and clean water
required by such crowded crews, galleys could not navigate far from
the shore; and if they did, it was not for long. The handful of canons
at the prows (three to five) suggested that the striking force of the ves-
sel was not firepower, but rather the melee skills and prowess of the
crew after boarding. The spur placed about the prows since antiquity
manifested that galleys adopted “boarding” as the primary method of
assault during military encounters: a galley would first fire a single
round from its canons (the strongest being the centre gun, the so-
called corsiero, whereas the flanking pieces were of lower calibre) and
then try boarding the enemy vessel .
14

14 J.F. Guilmartin, Galleons and Galleys, Cassel&Co, London, 2002, pp. 158-
163; J.H. Pryor, Geography, Technology, and War: Studies in the maritime history
of the Mediterranean, 649-1571, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1988; M.
Morin, Artiglerie navali in ambito veneziano: tipologia e tecniche di realizazzione,

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XX - Dicembre 2023
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)