He died peacefully in his bed at Constantinople in July, 1546, to the grief of the world of Islam and the inexpressible joy of Christendom.  “The king of the sea is dead,” expressed in three Arabic words, gives the numerical value 953, the year of the Hegira in which he died.

For many years after his death no Turkish ship ever left the Golden Horn without her crew repeating a prayer and firing a salute over the tomb of Beshiktsah, where lie the bones of the first and greatest of Turkish admirals, the corsair who was at one and the same time admiral, pirate, and king.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NAVY OF OARS.  THE GALLEY, THE GALEASSE, AND THE NEF

In the sixteenth century the vessel of war in the Mediterranean was essentially that oar-propelled craft known to us as the galley.  As time went on she was gradually superseded by the sailing man-of-war which was able to carry that heavy ordnance which the light scantling of the galley did not permit of her mounting; but for the use of the corsairs who lived by means of raids and surprise attacks, whose business it was to lie perdu on the trade routes, the mobility of the galley was of prime importance, and they could not afford to trust to the wind alone as a motive power.  The galley was analogous to the steam vessel in that it was independent of the wind to a large extent:  human bone and muscle supplied the part of engines, and those who fought upon the sea caused themselves to be moved over the face of the waters by the exertions of their enemies.  It is true that upon one occasion, as we have seen, Kheyred-Din Barbarossa did possess a fleet of galleys the rowers of which were all Moslems, which crew upon battle being joined dropped their oars, seized their weapons and assisted in the conquest of the foe.  But this was an isolated instance, as it was almost impossible at any time and in any circumstances to procure free men ready to undertake a life of such intolerable suffering as that of a rower on board a galley; in consequence these men were almost invariably slaves, or else in later times condemned felons whose judges had sent them to work out their sentences upon the rowers’ bench.  The great characteristic of the galley was her mobility, and in a comparative degree her speed, as for a short burst, when her crew of rowers were fresh, their trained muscles were capable of tremendous exertion; for any length of time, however, it is obvious that her speed must have declined as the rowers became exhausted.  She was long, narrow, of extremely low freeboard, and slight depth of hold; a galley of 125 feet between perpendiculars would perhaps be 180 feet over all taking in the poop and the prow.  A galley of this length would only have a beam of 19 feet and a depth of hold of 7 feet 6 inches.  The sailing ship of contemporary times would for the same length have had a beam of about 40 feet and an extremely high freeboard; she was in consequence necessarily slow and incapable of sailing on a wind.