sails[1] seem to have been occasionally carried, though in what position is doubtful.
The galleys rarely had more than two banks of oars, and they were long, low craft, provided with an above-water beak or ram. Above the rowers, at least in the larger craft, there seems to have been a platform on which stood the fighting men, whose shields, as in earlier days, were arranged round the bulwarks.[2] As for the fittings of the ships, Richard of Devizes[3] notes that the chief vessels of the fleet sent from England to the Levant in 1189 had each three spare rudders, or steering paddles, thirteen anchors (probably inclusive of grapnels), thirty oars, two sails, three sets of all kinds of ropes, and duplicates of all gear except mast and boat. Besides the captain and fifteen seamen, every large ship carried forty knights (or cavalrymen), with their horses, forty footmen, fourteen servants, and twelve months' provision for all. These large vessels are described as busses. A few of them are said to have carried double the complements mentioned, so that they had 210 men, besides horses, on board.
The weapons in use in English ships of war of the twelfth century were bows and arrows, pikes or lances, axes, swords, and engines for flinging stones or other heavy missiles; and to them was added, in or before the reign of Richard III., the famous invention known as Greek Fire. This material had apparently been first prepared by Callinicus of Heliopolis about the year 665. Of its composition nothing certain is known, but it probably included among its ingredients sulphur, saltpetre, naptha and pitch. It was liquid: it ignited upon exposure to the air: it was not extinguished by water but only by vinegar, or by sand or earth thrown upon it; and it produced suffocating fumes. It seems to have been employed in several ways. Sometimes it was forced through brazen tubes, much as water is now pumped from a fire engine; sometimes tow was impregnated with it and fastened to arrow-heads; and sometimes bottles or jars of it were used as hand-grenades, or as projectiles for ballistæ, and flung into fortresses or upon the decks of vessels. According to entries in the Pipe Rolls,[4] some of this terrible material was sent, about the year 1194, from London to Nottingham, with other warlike stores, to be employed on the business of the king, by Urric, an engineer. Allied to Greek Fire
