The manner in which the galley should engage is thus contained in an answer to a question of Don John of Austria, the victor of Lepanto.  He wrote to Garcia de Toledo, fourth Marquis of Villafranca, and General of the Galleys of Sicily, to ask his opinion as to what distance it was most efficacious to open fire in a naval action.  Toledo replied that “one cannot fire more than twice before the galleys close.  I should therefore recommend that the arquebussiers should hold their fire until they are so close to the enemy that his blood will leap into the face of him who discharges his piece. have always heard it said, and this by captains who are well skilled in the art of war, that the last discharge of the cannon should be coincident with the noise made by the breaking of the spurs carried in the prows of the galleys; in fact that the two noises should be as one; some propose to fire before the enemy does:  this is by no means my advice.”

Artillery, it will be seen from this, played a comparatively unimportant part in the combats between galley and galley; that in these craft men still relied on the strength of their right arm and the edge of their swords; there was still a certain contempt for villainous saltpetre, which was looked upon as a somewhat cowardly substance, preventing the warrior from settling his disputes in the good old fashion of his forbears.  In any case, when you practically had to push the muzzle of your gun against your enemy’s body in order to hit him, it was not a weapon upon which much reliance was to be placed.

There were, in addition to the galley, the nef and the galeasse; the former of these was a sailing vessel pure and simple like those remarkable caravels in which Columbus discovered America.

What these caravels were exactly like it was the good fortune of the writer to see in the year 1893.  This was the date of the great exhibition of Chicago, and the American Government were most anxious to have, and to exhibit if possible, an exact replica of these historic craft.  They accordingly communicated with the Spanish Government and inquired if by any chance they possessed the plans and specifications of the caravels of Columbus?  Search was made in the archives of Cadiz Dockyard and these priceless documents were discovered.  From them the ships were built in every respect the same as the wonderful originals and then towed across the Atlantic by the United States cruiser Lancaster.  On their way they were brought to Gibraltar, where the writer’s ship was then stationed, and were anchored inside the New Mole.  The Santa Maria, the flagship of Columbus, was a three-masted vessel with a very high “forecastle” and “sterncastle” and very deep in the waist; she had three masts, the foremast carrying one square sail, the mainmast having both mainsail and main-topsail, the mizzen was rigged with a lateen sail, on the mainsail was painted the Maltese and on the foresail the Papal cross, and on deck she carried a brick-built cooking galley.  A most beautiful model of this vessel is to be seen in the Science and Art Department of the South Kensington Museum.