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Updated: June 21, 2025
Next to the big ships, or galleons as they were called, were four galleasses, each carrying fifty guns and 450 soldiers and sailors, and rowed by 300 slaves. Besides these were four galleys, fifty-six great armed merchant ships, the finest Spain possessed, and twenty caravels or small vessels. Thus the fighting fleet amounted to 129 vessels, carrying in all 2430 cannon.
Yāni's big ships played an important part in the action. Two galleasses, each containing a thousand men, and two other vessels, surrounded Borāk Reïs, but the smaller ships could not fire over the koka's lofty sides, and were speedily sunk.
Don Juan de Cardona leads the van with seven galleys; Don John himself, between Marcantonio Colonna and Veniero, commands the centre of sixty-two large galleys; G. A. Doria has fifty in the right wing; Barbarigo of Venice fifty-three in the left; Don Alvaro de Bazan commands the reserve of thirty galleys: the galleasses are ranged before the lines, each with five hundred arquebusiers on board.
Two of the galleasses came to her assistance and tried to take her in tow, but the waves were running so high that the cable broke. Pedro de Valdez had been commander of the Spanish fleet on the coast of Holland, and knew the English Channel and the northern shores of France and Holland well. The duke therefore despatched boats to bring him off with his crew, but he refused to leave his charge.
Lord Howard's Ark Royal, the Golden Lion of his brother, Lord Sheffield's Bear, and others towed by fisher boats met them with such salvos of shot that, had not the Spanish fleet come up to rescue them, they would have shared the fate of Valdez. After this time the galleasses would not fight again. The wind sprang up by noon and the fight became general.
They lay to six miles from shore, intending to return in the morning and recover their anchors; but Drake with his division of the fleet, and Seymour with the squadron from the Thames, weighed their anchors and stood off after them, while Howard with his division remained off Calais, where, in the morning, the largest of the four galleasses was seen aground on Calais Bar.
The Venetian galleasses deserve special mention because they attracted considerable attention by the part they subsequently played in the action. Sometimes the word was applied to any specially large galley, but these represented something different from anything in either Christian or Turkish fleets.
Even of the thirty Queen's ships which formed its main body, there were but four which equalled in tonnage the smallest of the Spanish galleons. Sixty-five of these galleons formed the most formidable half of the Spanish fleet; and four galleys, four galleasses armed with fifty guns apiece, fifty-six armed merchantmen, and twenty pinnaces made up the rest.
Borāk Reïs threw burning pitch into the galleasses, and burnt up crews and ships, till, his own vessel catching fire, he and other notable captains, after performing prodigies of valour, perished in the flames. Wherefore the island of Prodano is by the Turks called Borāk Isle to this day.
The Ottoman fleet was marshalled in the same order as the Christian, except that there were no galleasses. The line of battle, nearly a mile long, was divided into centre, and right and left wing, and behind the centre was the reserve. Between the two lines stood forth the heavy galleasses, like great breakwaters, turning aside and dividing the flowing rush of the Ottoman galleys.
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