Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/316

 themselves are not better accommodated, for the chambers in the hold are designed only to hold the provisions and naval stores of the galley."

The author then proceeds to state that the French galley had a chamber in the poop or raised deck, only large enough to hold the captain's bed; that, contiguous to it, were compartments for the more valuable stores; and, after remarking on various details, he adds, that she had twenty-five benches for the rowers on each side of the vessel. These fifty benches, which were four feet apart, and ten feet long, are described as having been "covered with sackcloth, stuffed with flocks, and over this is thrown a cow-hide, which, reaching down to the banquet or footstool, gives them the resemblance of large trunks. To these the slaves are chained, six to a bench, along the bande runs a large rim of timber, about a foot thick which forms the gunwale of the galley. On this, which is called the apostic, the oars are worked. These are fifty feet long, and are poised in equilibrio upon the afore-mentioned piece of timber, so that the thirteen feet of oar which come inboard are equal in weight to the thirty-seven feet outboard; and as it would be impossible to hold them in the hand, because of their thickness, they have handles by which they are managed by the slaves."

If the oars of this vessel, which in their leading features no doubt resembled those of the large single-banked galleys of the ancients and of the middle ages, were fifty feet in length, then a beam of thirty feet would not suffice for oars of that enormous length. But if the beam was only one-fifth of her length, we may assume that the oars were not more