In the centre line of the deck ran, the whole length of the vessel, a raised gangway called the corsia, for passage clear of the oars.

[Illustration]

The benches were arranged as in this diagram.  The part of the bench next the gunnel was at right angles to it, but the other two-thirds of the bench were thrown forward obliquely, a, b, c, indicate the position of the three rowers.  The shortest oar a was called Terlicchio, the middle one b Posticcio, the long oar c Piamero.[11]

[Illustration:  Galley-Fight, from a Mediaeval Fresco at Siena. (See p. 36)]

I do not find any information as to how the oars worked on the gunnels.  The Siena fresco (see p. 35) appears to show them attached by loops and pins, which is the usual practice in boats of the Mediterranean now.  In the cut from D. Tintoretto (p. 37) the groups of oars protrude through regular ports in the bulwarks, but this probably represents the use of a later day.  In any case the oars of each bench must have worked in very close proximity.  Sanudo states the length of the galleys of his time (1300-1320) as 117 feet.  This was doubtless length of keel, for that is specified ("da ruoda a ruoda”) in other Venetian measurements, but the whole oar space could scarcely have been so much, and with twenty-eight benches to a side there could not have been more than 4 feet gunnel-space to each bench.  And as one of the objects of the grouping of the oars was to allow room between the benches for the action of cross-bowmen, &c., it is plain that the rowlock space for the three oars must have been very much compressed.[12]

The rowers were divided into three classes, with graduated pay.  The highest class, who pulled the poop or stroke oars, were called Portolati; those at the bow, called Prodieri, formed the second class.[13]

Some elucidation of the arrangements that we have tried to describe will be found in our cuts.  That at p. 35 is from a drawing, by the aid of a very imperfect photograph, of part of one of the frescoes of Spinello Aretini in the Municipal Palace at Siena, representing a victory of the Venetians over the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa’s fleet, commanded by his son Otho, in 1176; but no doubt the galleys, &c., are of the artist’s own age, the middle of the 14th century.[14] In this we see plainly the projecting opera-morta, and the rowers sitting two to a bench, each with his oar, for these are two-banked.  We can also discern the Latin rudder on the quarter. (See this volume, p. 119.) In a picture in the Uffizj, at Florence, of about the same date, by Pietro Laurato (it is in the corridor near the entrance), may be seen a small figure of a galley with the oars also very distinctly coupled.[15] Casoni has engraved, after Cristoforo Canale, a pictorial plan of a Venetian trireme of the 16th century, which shows the arrangement of the oars in triplets very plainly.