497 English Galleys in the Sixteenth Century To the English mind the term ' galley ' has always had an unpleasant savour. It is redolent of criminals and forced labour, of the corsairs of the Mediterranean and the chained Huguenots of France, and it is usually forgotten that for a con- siderable time the English fleet had one or more galleys attached to it ; and these were true galleys in the Mediterranean sense of the term. Mr. Oppenheim has pointed out the vagueness with which the name was used in England under Henry VIII and Edward VI. It might mean a small barge,^ a galleasse, or even any sailing ship whatsoever that had a few oars or sweeps as an auxiliary means of propulsion ; and ultimately it came to imply an improved model, possibly built on finer lines than the heavy, slow moving hulks of the beginning of the reign, and expected to bear, to the ponderous 600 or 1,000 ton battle ship, the same relation in speed that the real galley bore to a mediaeval sailing vessel.^ This ambiguous use of the term has led to much confusion, and it seems desirable to try to find some test by which one can decide whether the term ' galley ' in a contemporary list of the navy really means a rowing galley of the long low Mediterranean type, or one of the several sorts of sailing ships that passed under that name. On one occasion, at least, a distinction was officially recognized, for in the list of 5 January 1548,^ fourteen ordinary ships are described as galleys, while the Galley Subtile, the only true galley in the fleet at that time, is marked out as the ' Roo Galley '. But this is the exception. Is there any safe and general guide ? The most that one can say is that if a ship of over 50 tons is found fairly regularly described during this period as having a smaller number of men in its complement (mariners, gunners, and soldiers) than tons in its tonnage, it may be assumed, in default of strong evidence to the contrary, that it was not a rowing galley ; apparent exceptions are accounted for by the very varying methods of estimating tonnage adopted by naval experts at this time, but ^ Acts of the Privy Council (ed. Dasent), iii. 33, 18 May 1550.
- The Administration of the Royal Navy, p. 59i
' Archaeologia, vi. 218-20. VOL. XXXV. — NO. CXI/. K k
