he is probably mistaken in saying that one of the dos timones specified was a spare one.  Joinville (p. 205) gives incidental evidence of the same:  “Those Marseilles ships have each two rudders, with each a tiller (? tison) attached to it in such an ingenious way that you can turn the ship right or left as fast as you would turn a horse.  So on the Friday the king was sitting upon one of these tillers, when he called me and said to me,” etc.[4] Francesco da Barberino, a poet of the 13th century, in the 7th part of his Documenti d’Amore (printed at Rome in 1640), which instructs the lover to whose lot it may fall to escort his lady on a sea-voyage (instructions carried so far as to provide even for the case of her death at sea!), alludes more than once to these plural rudders.  Thus—­

  “——­ se vedessi avenire
  Che vento ti rompesse
    Timoni ... 
  In luogo di timoni
    Fa spere[5] e in aqua poni.” (P. 272-273.)

[Illustration:  ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE DOUBLE RUDDER OF THE MIDDLE AGES
  12th Century Illumination (After Pertz)
  Seal of Winchelsea.
  12th Century Illumination (After Pertz)
  From Leaning Tower (After Jal)
  After Spinello Aretini at Siena
  From Monument of St Peter Martyr]

And again, when about to enter a port, it is needful to be on the alert and ready to run in case of a hostile reception, so the galley should enter stern foremost—­a movement which he reminds his lover involves the reversal of the ordinary use of the two rudders:—­

  “L’ un timon leva suso
    L’ altro leggier tien giuso,
  Ma convien levar mano
    Non mica com soleano,
  Ma per contraro, e face
    Cosi ’l guidar verace.” (P. 275.)

A representation of a vessel over the door of the Leaning Tower at Pisa shows this arrangement, which is also discernible in the frescoes of galley-fights by Spinello Aretini, in the Municipal Palace at Siena.

[Godinho de Eredia (1613), describing the smaller vessels of Malacca which he calls balos in ch. 13, De Embarcacoes, says:  “At the poop they have two rudders, one on each side to steer with.”  E por poupa dos ballos, tem 2 lemes, hum en cada lado pera o governo. (Malacca, l’Inde merid. et le Cathay, Bruxelles, 1882, 4to, f. 26.)—­H.  C.]

The midship rudder seems to have been the more usual in the western seas, and the double quarter-rudders in the Mediterranean.  The former are sometimes styled Navarresques and the latter Latins.  Yet early seals of some of the Cinque Ports show vessels with the double rudder; one of which (that of Winchelsea) is given in the cut.

In the Mediterranean the latter was still in occasional use late in the 16th century.  Captain Pantero Pantera in his book, L’Armata Navale (Rome, 1614, p. 44), says that the Galeasses, or great galleys, had the helm alla Navarresca, but also a great oar on each side of it to assist in turning the ship.  And I observe that the great galeasses which precede the Christian line of battle at Lepanto, in one of the frescoes by Vasari in the Royal Hall leading to the Sistine Chapel, have the quarter-rudder very distinctly.