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# If you thought galleys were obsolete by the Age of Discovery, think again
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/esli-vy-dumali-chto-galery-ustareli-k-epokhe-velikikh-geograficheskikh-otkrytii-to-eto-sovsem-ne-tak/
- Published: 2025-07-04T06:34:49.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:29:32.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: The East, Observations, Science

If you thought galleys were obsolete by the Age of Discovery, think again. Here, by way of proof, is an image of an Ottoman galley in the Black Sea, late sixteenth century.

And although by this time the strong maritime powers, the Ottoman Empire among them, could boast a great number of sailing ships widely used for long voyages, especially in the Mediterranean, galleys still remained an important part of the fleet.

In the seventeenth century the Ottoman fleet possessed large sailing ships, galleons, which rapidly displaced galleys in military operations, but until then galleys held convincing sway over the waters of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

This had to do with the way naval war was waged. In the days of rivalry between Spain, the Turks and Venice in the Mediterranean, war at sea essentially imitated battles on land: after a bombardment by cannon, still not very long-ranged, came the closing of ships and boarding with hand-to-hand fighting. The rate of reloading guns was still not very high, and galleys, nimble by comparison with sailing ships, covered the distance to the enemy faster than the guns could be reloaded.

Moreover, galleys were used to land troops in raids and invasions of enemy territory. Note that these are vessels that are manoeuvrable and fast over short distances, and that move easily in shallow water. Galleys do not depend on the wind, which may well be absent; a large crew readily patches up breaches, and fighting strength does not rest on cannon alone.

However, the number of oarsmen, who had to be fed, made constant replenishment of supplies necessary, which made the galley fleet dependent on the proximity of a port or on the number of ports available for mooring.

The great Mediterranean powers staked precisely on a galley fleet supplemented by large sailing ships. Venice, Spain and the Ottoman Empire maintained an enormous number of galleys. But this made them dependent on a large number of people, constantly employed and possessing the necessary skills. The longer a confrontation dragged on, the more acute the shortage of seamen became, and so we see the emergence of galley slavery, which nevertheless could not solve the problem of tens of thousands of men lost in every major battle: a galley engagement, after all, led to colossal human losses.

Nor was it only in the Mediterranean: Russia demonstrated a successful use of galleys in the battles of the Great Northern War, when the Russian galley fleet destroyed all of Sweden's historical aspirations, about which I [wrote earlier.](https://theparnassian.com/k-1720-godu-shvetsiia-nekogda-groznyi-severnyi-lev-osoznaet-tshchetu-svoikh-ustremlenii-dominirovat-na-severe-evropy-byloe-velichie-rasteriano-v-cherede-porazhenii-ot-rossii/?ref=theparnassian.com)