Merchant galleys. power, there was nothing of the kind superior to it in the world. Embracing a vast area of land and water, surrounded by walls, and flanked with towers, it presented the appearance of a stupendous fortress. The preparation and equipment of the fleets, destined either for the service of the republic, or for trading purposes, were here effected, as all commercial vessels trading to foreign ports were then, and long afterwards, armed for defence. Some of their galleys employed in distant voyages, such as to Flanders or England, are described as having had two sails only, one on each mast, of very great dimensions, the masts being of extraordinary length.[1]
A.D. 1172.
Their greatest size.
There is a tradition of a ship built at Venice,
shortly before the quarrel between the Venetians
and the Emperor Manuel, so large that, when she
reached Constantinople, it was remarked that "no
vessel of so great a bulk had ever been within that
port;" but no historian has furnished posterity with
her dimensions. She is merely described as a vessel
with three masts and "of immense size,"[2]—a statement
which may be one of comparison; and consequently
she may not have been greater in her
capacity than the larger class merchant ships of the*
- ↑ M. Jal has given, in his work on Naval Architecture, a drawing of one of these galleys, but of a much later period—A.D. 1620.
- ↑ It is stated by Cinnamis (p. 165) in his life of Manuel Comnenus, that this vessel was built by a private Venetian noble, then sold by the builder to his own republic, and then presented to Manuel. Nicetas adds, that this vessel was in the arsenal at Constantinople in 1172, when the emperor tried to imprison all the Venetians there; and that they took it and made their escape in it, in spite of the fire-ships immediately sent after it. M. Jal (ii. pp. 142-152) has given very interesting extracts on the subject of this great vessel from the treatises of Marino and Filiasi. Smedley shows that the Venetians had owned another enormous ship at the siege of Ancona in 1157, which was
