I will mention two more particulars before concluding this digression.  When captured galleys were towed into port it was stern foremost, and with their colours dragging on the surface of the sea.[28] And the custom of saluting at sunset (probably by music) was in vogue on board the galleys of the 13th century.[29]

We shall now sketch the circumstances that led to the appearance of our Traveller in the command of a war-galley.

[1] I regret not to have had access to Jal’s learned memoirs (Archeologie
    Navale, Paris, 1839) whilst writing this section, nor since, except
    for a hasty look at his Essay on the difficult subject of the oar
    arrangements.  I see that he rejects so great a number of oars as
    I deduce from the statements of Sanudo and others, and that he regards
    a large number of the rowers as supplementary.

[2] It seems the more desirable to elucidate this, because writers on
    mediaeval subjects so accomplished as Buchon and Capmany have (it
    would seem) entirely misconceived the matter, assuming that all the
    men on one bench pulled at one oar.

[3] See Coronelli, Atlante Veneto, I. 139, 140.  Marino Sanudo the Elder,
    though not using the term trireme, says it was well understood from
    ancient authors that the Romans employed their rowers three to
    a bench (p. 59).

[4] “Ad terzarolos” (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, p. 57).  The Catalan
    Worthy, Ramon de Muntaner, indeed constantly denounces the practice of
    manning all the galleys with terzaruoli, or tersols, as his term
    is.  But his reason is that these thirds-men were taken from the oar
    when crossbowmen were wanted, to act in that capacity, and as such
    they were good for nothing; the crossbowmen, he insists, should be men
    specially enlisted for that service and kept to that.  He would have
    some 10 or 20 per cent, only of the fleet built very light and manned
    in threes.  He does not seem to have contemplated oars three-banked,
    and crossbowmen besides, as Sanudo does. (See below; and Muntaner,
    pp. 288, 323, 525, etc.)

In Sanudo we have a glimpse worth noting of the word soldiers advancing towards the modern sense; he expresses a strong preference for soldati (viz. paid soldiers) over crusaders (viz. volunteers), p. 74.

[5] L’Armata Navale, Roma, 1616, pp. 150-151.

[6] See a work to which I am indebted for a good deal of light and
    information, the Engineer Giovanni Casoni’s Essay:  “Dei Navigli
    Poliremi usati nella Marina dagli Antichi Veneziani,” in
    “Esercitazioni dell’ Ateneo Veneto,” vol. ii. p. 338.  This great
    Quinquereme, as it was styled, is stated to have been struck by
    a fire-arrow, and blown up, in January 1570.