Thinking About Galleasses

I would like to represent the traditional galeazza or galleass in my Block Galleys games. Galley warfare in the Med is a fascinating subject I think, often overshadowed by the Armada campaign and later developments. So here's a bit of a food for thought post about that.

You could consider the galleass to be the forerunner of traditional broadside-armed ships: it predates the war galleon just a bit (I'm not counting galleons which were not purpose built warships). It was a honking big oar-and-sail driven ship, the largest ones could reach up to a thousand tons burden. 

The real problem is we do not really know how galleasses looked like. There are some reconstruction models based on period art, but that's it. So we have to look at things in a more practical way.

For my planned models my primary source is the Lepanto painting by Vasari and its derivatives. The painting was made right after the battle so it might just be possible the painter knew what he was doing. Further, this was the first major outing of the ship type, so it is entirely possible that later versions differed just a bit to allow creative freedom. If you look at the Spanish Armada paintings, for example, the rounded forecastle was replaced by ones more aligned with the general shape of the hull.

Venetian galleasses in the van of the Holy League battleline at Lepanto

Now the first thing to consider is shipboard artillery. We see galleasses mounting their guns on the large round forecastle and the deck above the oarsmen. If you think about later period artillery, you might wonder how that does not affect stability and seakeeping, and the answer is that late 16th century naval guns were basically pop guns compared to the peak development of roundshot-firing muzzleloader artillery of the 19th century. 

This is the direct consequence of two things: the lack of available guncasting and metallurgical technology (which got really boosted by the industrial revolution much later) and of ship construction. I'll put aside the former because it's a topic in and of itself, and focus on the latter a bit more.

If you read on the Armada campaign, a lot of the Spanish ships meant for the Mediterranean were basically falling apart before making any contact with the English fleet, and that's because they did absolutely not have the thick timbers of later ships that is required for extended sea voyages to resist the waves of the open ocean. And they didn't have that because the constructors didn't have the required raw material (thick straight timber from purposely cultivated woods) or the necessary building techniques. Thus a lightweight superstructure could not bear the weight of large cannon. That is why, usually, galleys also had only a single moderately bigger size piece along their centerline at the prow.

(On a side note, it is also a factor in the different styles of ship building in the Med and the Atlantic coastline that the Mediterranean basin has a lot of secure bays where a ship could enter, be careened and repaired, while the Atlantic has fewer suitable ports at longer intervals, and to top it off many would have been hostile to each other, increasing the distances between allied ports even more.)

To summarize it all up, while the galleass looks like it would be very bow and top heavy, in fact I have the firm belief that the large aft structures we see, and the hundreds of rowers packed under the gundeck at exceptionally large oars balance things out.

A ship with proper ballast is also less prone to be top heavy, but for oar-driven vessels the increased draught and high structures prone to catching on the wind increase resistance and make the rowers' lives even more miserable. So these hulking vessels must have been exceptionally slow when under oars. If you are running away from Berber slavers, better take a fast and furious fusta.

The second is the forecastle itself. I am sure that, as this was a period of revolution in siege technology as well, especially in Italy, the structure resembling a large rounded artillery bastion is not a coincidence. However, except for Venetian ships this seems to have fallen out of favour quickly, as hinted above. Even the Venetians moved towards traditional warships, but retained a version of the galleass with a more common form of forecastle well into the 18th century.

A later Venetian galleass

For that development, one must consider that this rounded structure has little space for the gun crews, no matter how diminutive the cannon themselves are, because in a star-like arrangement, the knockback and running out of each gun might obstruct the handling of the other (unless we talk of really, really small swivel guns). The other thing is that the more streamlined the forecastle is, the less it catches the wind - we for example know that the Armada ships and other high-built vessels such as carracks had a lot of problems when tacking, and most would not even have tried to tack if the wind was unfavourable.

Of course all of this is a theory as no archeological evidence survives.

As you might know I have a thing against too blocky ships. No true vessel would survive harsh conditions without being naturally streamlined up to a certain degree. So constructing galleasses shall be a process of trial and error. What are the best proportions for the prow and stern? How to arrange the oar banks? All of that has to be resolved. In the end I would always go with common sense instead of flights of fancy.