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Furttenbach gives a picture of the two boatswains in grimly humorous verse: how they stand, Beclad, belaced, betrimmed, with many knots bespick; Embroidered, padded, tied; all feathers and all flap; Curly and queued, equipped, curious of hood and cap: and how they "ever stolidly smite" the crew with the bastinado,
The Turkish caramuzel or tartan, says Furttenbach, stands high out of the water, is strong and swift, and mounts eighteen or twenty guns and as many as sixty well-armed pirates. It is a dangerous vessel to attack. From its commanding height its guns can pour down so furious a fire upon a Christian craft that the only alternative to surrender is positive extirpation.
A galley may be 180 or 190 spans long Furttenbach measures a ship by palmi, which varied from nine to ten inches in different places in Italy, say 150 feet, the length of an old seventy-four frigate, but with hardly a fifth of its cubit contents and its greatest beam is 25 spans broad. The one engraved on p. 37 is evidently an admiral's galley of the Knights of Malta.
Autres temps, autres moeurs! Furttenbach tells us much more about the galley; and how it was rigged out with brilliant cloths on the bulwarks on fête-days; how the biscuit was made to last six or eight months, each slave getting twenty-eight ounces thrice a week, and a spoonful of some mess of rice or bones or green stuff; of the trouble of keeping the water-cans under the benches full and fairly fresh.
See the Story of the Moors in Spain, 279. Furttenbach, Architectura Navalis, 107-110. Dan, Hist. de Barbarie, 277. Dan, l. c., 278. 17th and 18th Centuries. When galleys went out of fashion, and "round ships" took their place, it may be supposed that the captivity of Christian slaves diminished.
Furttenbach is an enthusiastic admirer of a ship's beauties, and he had seen all varieties; for his trade took him to Venice, where he had a galleasse, and he had doubtless viewed many a Corsair fleet, since he could remember the battle of Lepanto and the death of Ochiali.
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