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A galley? didn't know they had forward batteries.
Exactly forward ones! Galleys with portside and starboard cannons were rather rare phenomenon. Galleys' crews, mostly, relied on boarding in battle. Very often there were no standard canons abord at all, they had heavy mortar instead.
I knew they relied on ramming, hence the pointed, reinforced bow.
I didn't know they had ANY form of ranged attack, whether it be cannon or mortar
Do you know if they had chaser guns? I'm an expert at more European/American vessel, not the Barbary Corsairs.
Hm, hm, hm. It is not such an easy situation with ramming. Yeah, ramming was a significant part of boarding. (1st ramming, then boarding). If ramming was too successeful, boarding was needless. But let's turn a little back to history. What can we say about evolution of galleys? If we consider such ships as unireme and bireme as galley's predecessors, we can state that the most significant modernisation in galleys were...crews' modernisation! Spears, bows and crossbows were replaced with firearms; catapults, mangonels and ballistas were replaced with cannons and mortars. Such a situation established because ships in battles sustained heavy casualties of rowers. That's why professional rowers were replaced with slaves (cannon fodder). Of course nobody cared about them. Predecessors of galleys relied only on ramming and board cannons, because crew couldn't fight well and had very poor arm weaponry. BUT! For ramming they had not only reinforced bows, but heavy, metalic, few centners of weight(!!!) sharp spile. They also had portable rams aboard. As to the latest versions of galleys, bow rams as weapons and ramming as a tactics almost dissapeared, actually. Simple interchange of priorities. Long range weapons were more effective than close combat. That's why byzantines, for example, mounted a flamethrower and than bombards at bow.
If u want, I can tell more...
It's all right, I'm finally on Spring Break so I'm tired of "learning" but I do appreciate this information on the old galley. And mrparty was right, ye do know your stuff.
Dang Stalin, you know your stuff!
Yo! It is my stuff :D
Good Point, didn't see that... heh...
Here is where Cossacks helps! :D
I've heard of Galleys,but don't know to much things about it! -.-'
Cossacks went even farther. They had deckless and mastless boats, named chaika (seagull). Actually they had masts, but it was used only during favorable weather. Crew was little less than hundred of men. There were also few falconets aboard. Usual speed of chaikas was up to 15 km/h.(better than galleys had). During boarding they used portable rams and axes to destroy hulls of enemy ships. They (chaikas and their crews) were deadly both for enemy ships and enemy fortresses.