Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/543

 heavier, from six to seven men, seated upon the same bench, were employed upon it.

The galeass figures among the drawings of other vessels of a similar class in the representation of a naval engagement, of, as is presumed, the fourteenth or fifteenth century. With the exception of the very high poop, she, in nearly all other respects, resembles the galeasses which formed the vanguard of the fleet at the battle of Lepanto ( 1571). Of these a drawing may be seen in Charnock's work on Naval Architecture.

In the tenth century the Saracens possessed large and very heavy ships, which, according to the Emperor Leo, were called Cumbaries, or Gombories. The Venetians adopted this large ship of burden, and Sagarino, the chancellor, says that they, by whom they were called Galleons, built and armed thirty-three of these vessels. Charnock furnishes a drawing of a Galleon of the sixteenth century, 1564.

These vessels were built with round sides, and broad throughout; short, high out of the water, and of considerable draught when laden. The Venetians had also a merchant vessel called the Buzo, or Busse, which was not unlike the galleon, with the sides bulging out and sitting well upon the water, capable of carrying very large and heavy cargoes. According to Matthew Paris, Richard I. had several busses in the fleet which he took to the Holy Land. Although they had three masts, they were, he says, "scantily provided with sails." It is not known precisely in what manner the ships (nefs) differed