The Impact of Social, Economic and Political Factors on Sixteenth

Century Galley Warfare

JOHN F. GUILMARTIN, JR., LT COL, USAF
A large body of naval history, reflecting a Mahanian bias, has
applied to Lepanto the conditions which later prevailed in the age of
sail. Overturning with ease this baggage of ill-conceived scholarship,
Colonel Guilmartin places Lepanto in its intercultural Mediterranean
setting. To explain the essential differences in design and tactical
capabilities of Spanish, Venetian, and Muslim war galleys, Guilmartin
downplays the narrow Mahanian emphasis on technological
innovation and lays greater stress on the human factors, especially
the social status of the oarsmen. Instead of portraying a "mindless
slugfest" in which the opponents fought a land battle at sea, the
author has done an admirable job of reconstructing from
fragmentary evidence the tactical complexities of Lepanto.
In the history of armed conflict at sea, there is no battle better
known and less understood than Lepanto. The name Lepanto stands
forth in virtually every general history as a convenient naval
semicolon separating the declining Mediterranean World from the
rising North Atlantic. It has been heralded by generations of
historians as the beginning of the end for the Ottoman Empire; it
has been described ad nauseum by students of warfare as "the last
great galley fight"; it has been routinely acknowledged by students
of literature as a source of Cervantes' inspiration.
For all that, there is little consensus among scholars as to what
the battle meant or how it was won and lost. This is due to a
pervasive Mahanian bias in virtually all naval history, a tendency to
view the entire history of armed conflict at sea in the analytical
terms applied so effectively to the naval conflicts of the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries by Mahan.#1 This approach reduces
to confusion any effort to make tactical sense of early modern
Mediterranean galley warfare in general and Lepanto in particular. It
does so by misplacingor ignoringthe impact of the human factor
in the political economic and social aspects of maritime conflict. As
evidence of the depth of the problem, consider that I have carefully
avoided any reference to "naval warfare" or to Lepanto as a "naval
battle," phrases loaded with implicit Mahanian assumptions about
the nature of the forces involved and their objectives.#2 My subject
is tactics, so the digression will be brief, but it is worth noting that a
substantial portion of the Christian forces engaged at Lepanto were

commanded by naval entrepreneurs whose objectiveslegitimate

from their point of viewwere quite different from those that we
normally associate with naval commanders in battle.#3
It is worth considering also, that while recent American
scholarship has illuminated the importance of Lepanto as an
important cultural and strategic watershed without having been
decisive in the orthodox, Mahanian sense, the work in question was
not by a naval historian, or even by a European historian, but by an
orientalist, Andrew Hess. Hess's success in placing Lepanto firmly
within an appropriate multi-cultural strategic context is largely a
product of his avoidance of Westernwhich militarily, is to say
Mahaniancultural and strategic assumptions from the outset.#4
Tactically, however, the darkness is nearly complete. The only
work of recent scholarship to contain a comprehensive treatment of
the tactics used at Lepanto, Lepante: la crise de l'empire
Ottoman by Michel Lesure of l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes
tudes,#5 is neither available in English nor written in the AngloAmerican tradition of naval history. When tactics are mentioned at
all, Lepanto comes across in Anglo-American naval historiography as
a nautical Donnybrook Fair, a mindless slugfest where the only
thought of the opposing commanders was to come to grips as
quickly as possible, eliminating all nautical subtleties to engage in a
"land battle at sea," whatever that means. The victory of the Holy
Alliance appears more the result of brainless determination and
religious fanaticism than the product of intelligent tactics.
The evidence does not support this view. Lepanto was shrewdly
planned and well fought on both sides. The battle plans of the
opposing commanders, Don John of Austria and Mezzinzade Ali
Pasha, were well conceived, sophisticated and comprehensive
without being excessively complicated. Both plans made the best
possible use of the forces available, of the shoreline and of the
inshore topography of the bottom, which is saying a great deal
considering the heterogeneous nature of the two fleets. Don John
had particularly grave problems in the deep-seated distrust,
differing objectives, and political stress within his command; stress
which threatened to tear it apart. Since our emphasis is on the
human side of armed conflict at sea, this is as good a place as any
to begin our tactical analysis.
The divergence of objectives within the component States of the
Holy League was sharp and barely reconcilable, a fact which was

founded in economic reality and reflected in tactical objectives.

Venice wanted a short war and a quick peace, something which
good Spaniards considered almost treasonable. War with the Turk
had cut Venice's commercial lifeline to the East and fleet
mobilization had gutted her workforce. With her fishermen, farmers,
and merchant sailors serving afloat as oarsmen, mariners, and
fighting men, Venetian commerce ground to a haltand Venice lived
on commerce. Sebastian Venier, the Venetian Capitano Generale de
Mar, wanted a major fleet engagementsomething approaching a
decisive Mahanian naval battlein the worst way; but he wanted it
for anything but the proper Mahanian reasons.#6
Mediterranean commerce meant little to Spain. Spain's vital
trade with America was well out of the line of fire and Spanish
commanders in the Mediterranean saw themselves as soldiers in an
unending holy war with the Turk, a view shared by the Pope. The
pressures on Spain were therefore more narrowly fiscal and military
than those on Venice. Already saddled with as large a standing
peacetime galley force as she could support, Spain found her naval
obligations to the Holy Alliance to be modest expansion in an
already large military budget.#7 As long as strategic gains in
captured port cities and destroyed Muslim forces justified the
expense, Spain was content to keep fightingand keeping the Turks
at bay in the Eastern Mediterranean, far from his North African and
Spanish Morisco allies, justified a great deal.
The objectives of Spain's Italian client stateswhich is almost,
but not quite, to say the objectives of Genoa and Gian Andrea Doria
were something else again. Genoa, like Venice, depended heavily
on commerce. Forced largely to abandon her commercial outposts in
the Eastern Mediterranean after centuries of bitter conflict with
Venice, Genoa still traded in the Ottoman domains. But where
Venice depended upon a monopoly of specified low bulk, high value,
luxury trades, the Genoese competitive edge was more a matter of
efficiency in hauling bulk cargos.#8 This gave the Genoese
considerably greater latitude in negotiations with the Turks; there
are indications, for example, that Genoese merchants had provided
the Tophane, the Ottoman Arsenal, with much of its bronze for
cannon founding.#9 But Genoa was also firmly within the economic
and political orbit of the Spanish Habsburgs.
Characteristically, then, Genoa's main naval contribution to the
Holy Alliance was in the form of 11 galleys under Gian Andrea Doria,
serving under a thoroughly commercial and highly remunerative

personal contract to the Spanish Crown. Not only were Doria and his
fellow condottieri well paid for their trouble on a galley per month
basis (each of Doria's galleys cost Spain a third more than an
equivalent Spanish vessel#10), they were pulling down a 14 percent
annual rate of interest on the money which Philip II had borrowed
from them to purchase their services! Is it entirely unreasonable to
assume, as the Venetians did, that Doria had little interest in coming
to hand strokes with the Ottoman forces?
Mass defection of the ships of one ally or another in mid-battle
was therefore a real possibility which Don John of Austria had to
guard against. With this in mind, the Christian order of battle
assumes considerable significance. In our analysis, the Muslim order
of battle provides a useful check, a control group of sorts. Although
there were undoubtedly differences in tactical philosophy between
the North African ghazi#11 warriors and the officials of the central
Ottoman naval establishment, the necessity for unified command
seems to have been clearly understood by all. Mezzinzade Ali
Pasha's dispositions were therefore driven primarily by the
limitations of his tactical instrument.
Just over half of the galleys in the combined Christian fleet which
fought at Lepanto were Venetian, some 108 out of 206 or roughly 52
percent. Spain and her Viceroyalties of Naples and Sicily contributed
49 galleys, about 24 percent. Gian Andrea Doria had 11 galleys in
his own squadron, 5 percent, while Genoa, Savoy, and the lesser
Italian naval entrepreneurs accounted for another 23, another 12
percent. The Papal contingent put 12 galleys on line and the Knights
of St. John of Malta 3-7 percent between them.#12
These percentages are only roughly indicative of combat power.
They do not, for example, include galiots and other, lesser oared
fighting craft. They do not include the six Venetian galeasses, nor do
they take into account the considerable differences in manning
between the galleys of the various contingents. Nevertheless,
galleys formed the main battle line, and each of the galleys included
in our computations occupied a place there. Preservation of the
tactical integrity of the line was absolutely vital to the Christian
cause; Christian galleys were, on the whole, less maneuverable than
their Muslim opposites, but they were more powerful tactically,
particularly in a formal, head-on clash when arrayed in an unbroken
line. This fact was well established; its recognition was implicit in
each side's order of battle. It is fair to say therefore, that the

percentages cited above give a generally accurate idea of the

relative importance of each contingent to the allied cause.
Don John ordered his fleet in the traditional four divisions: a
centerthe "main battle"plus left and right wings and a
reserve.#13 The organization into four squadrons, observed by both
sides, was dictated by the inherent limitations of galleys and galley
fleets. The symmetrical nature of the Muslim and Christian
dispositions as stated in raw numbers are evidence of this.
Each of the Christian wings on the day of battle had 53 galleys;
this represented the maximum number of galleys which could
maneuver
in
a
line
abreast
without
losing
formation
integrity.#14The Muslim right wing had 54 galleys, probably for the
same reason.#15 The Muslim left had no less than 87 galleys, but
there is reason to believe that they were intended to turn the
Christian flank individually, catch-as-catch-can, with no pretense at
formation keeping.
The Christian center, with less need to maneuver than the wings,
numbered 62 galleys, an arrangement mirrored by the Muslim
center which had 61 galleys on line. Don John's reserve squadron
had 38 galleysapparently those left over after putting the largest
number of galleys on line which was tactically feasible. Both Don
John and Mezzinzade Ali Pasha based their tactical plans on a
center of some 61 or 62 galleys flanked by covering squadrons of
marginally smaller size. But where Don John concentrated his
remaining galleys in a reserve squadron behind the main battle line
as a defensive "stopper," Mezzinzade Ali Pasha gave the bulk of
the remaining Muslim galleys to his left wing commander, Uluch Ali,
a master of maneuver,#16 with the evident hope of using their
superior numbers and maneuverability to turn the Christian flank.
One of Don John's earliest and most successful decisions was to
break up the national contingents, distributing them between the
various squadrons to prevent a national commander from leading
his forces in mass defection at a critical point. His assignment of
subordinate command reflected this philosophy: Don John in
his Real commanded the center personally, flanked in his post of
honor at the exact center of the line by Sebastian Venier in
the Capitana of Venice to the left and Marc Antonio Colonna, the
Papal commander, to the right in the Capitana of the Pope.#17 A
Venetian, Agostin Barbarigo, commanded the left wing and Gian

Andrea Doria commanded the right. A Spaniard, Don Alvaro de

Bazan, commanded the reserve.
But the apparent simplicity of this scheme vanishes when we
consider the actual distribution of galleys, squadron by squadron. If
Don John was primarily concerned with the possibility of the mass
withdrawal of a national contingent, what are we to make of the fact
that no less than 77 percent of the left wing's galleys were Venetian
under a Venetian commander! This question, based on the
numbers of galleys assigned to each squadron by nationality, must
be answered if we are to understand the human, tactical questions
posed by Lepanto.
It is necessary, at this point to go beyond the traditional,
Mahanian, analytical framework of naval history. The reasons for this
are pivotal: Lepanto's outcome hinged on differences in the design
and tactical capabilities of the warships engaged and on the way in
which the opposing commanders used them. This idea, stated as
bluntly as we have just done, is unremarkable. We have already
made reference to it. Technological differences in warship design
was, as we would expect from a traditional perspective, important.
The appearance of Venetian galeasses at Lepanto represented real
technological innovation, a fact long recognized as a major
contributory factor in the Muslim defeat.
The uniquely Mediterranean wrinkle lies in the fact that the key
differences in technical characteristics and tactical capabilities
among Spanish, Venetian, and Muslim war galleys were more the
product of human factors than of narrowly technical ones. The
galley's near total dependence on human energy for tactical
mobility and combat effectivenessand unlike sailing warships, the
two were directly interrelatedgave galley warfare a character
quite different from that of warfare between fleets of broadside
sailing warships.
Instead, human factorspolitical, economic, and social,
manifested themselves on several levels. We have briefly addressed
the political level. But human factors were also operative on a
second, tactical level, a fact which accounted for important
differences in the way in which the galleys of the various
contingents were armed. Before addressing this question in detail, it
is necessary to explain that the word "armed," in a proper
Mediterranean context and as we shall use it throughout,
encompassed both armament and manning.#18 The galleys which

fought at Lepanto were armed not just with artillery, but with
fighting manpower and oarsmen. The term covered armament and
manning indifferently, covering a galley's artillery, rowing gang
theciurma#19and specialized fighting men alike.
Finally, and least obviously, human factors affected the way in
which galleys were designed and fitted out, a point which is crucial
to an understanding of the battle of Lepanto and of Mediterranean
armed conflict at sea in general. We cannot say that a Venetian
galley was "better" than a Spanish or a Papal one; we cannot say
that a Neapolitan galley was superior to a Turkish galley or a North
African galiot, only that each was designed, fitted out, and armed to
extract the maximum tactical benefit from the human resources
available.
Having said this, we must admit that it would have been difficult
for the modern, untrained eye to distinguish at a distance between
an ordinary galley of Spain, Malta, Venice, or their Muslim opponents
without reference to flags, pennants, or other heraldic devices. All
had hulls about 136 feet long by about 17 or 18 feet wide topped by
an outrigger assembly, the rowing frame, which spanned some 24
feet and supported the thole pins.#20 All carried a main centerline
bow gun on a forward firing mount which ran back between the
foremost oarsmen's benches on recoil. This was typically a full
battery of cannon, weighing from 4,000 to 7,000 pounds exclusive
of the mount and firing a cast-iron cannonball of from 40 to 50
pounds.#21 This cannon was invariably flanked by a pair of smaller
guns (they had to be considerably smaller since there was much
less room for them to recoil). These generally weighed from 1,500 to
3,000 pounds and fired projectiles weighing from 10 to 14 pounds.
They were flanked, in turn, by a second pair of cannons which were
smaller still, typically firing a five to eight pound ball and weighing
from as little as 800 to as much as 1,500 pounds. One or more of
these side piecesthe name of the innermost pair in Ottoman
Turkish, ayka topu, meant just thatmight have been a cannon of
about the same overall weight or perhaps a bit less, designed to fire
a cannonball of cut stone weighing about twice as much as its castiron equivalent.#22 We are, of course, speaking in generalities in
order to give an overall idea of what an ordinary Mediterranean war
galley of 1571 was like. This is, to a degree, artificial.
Standardization, except to a limited extent in Venetian practice, was
nonexistent and there was enormous variation in weaponry from
one galley to the next. Spanish cannon, on the whole, were longer
and heavier than the norm; Venetian guns were shorter, lighter, and

fired larger projectiles, both in absolute terms and per pound of

barrel weight.#23 Their technically superior artillery probably
enabled the Venetians to dispense with a third pair of still smaller
flanking pieces, frequently carried on ordinary galleys of the western
Mediterranean, so as to lighten the ship with improved tactical
mobility the benefit.#24
The cannon which we have described constituted the war
galley's main battery. All were fixed to fire forward and could be
trained in azimuth only by turning the ship. They were
supplemented by numbers of small swivel guns, mostly mounted in
the bows, though some were also mounted at the stern and along
the sides of the ship.#25
Before turning to the way in which regional social and economic
factors affected galley design, we must dispose of several less
crucial points of a more narrowly technical nature to set the stage
for our tactical analysis.
The first of these is the galeass. It has been represented in the
western naval tradition as an awkward hybrid, a sailing warship with
oars. In fact, it was exactly what its namegaleaza in Spanish,galee
grosse in Venetoimplies, a big galley. The six Christian galeasses
which fought at Lepantothe Muslims had nonewere Venetian
merchant galleys which had been laid up in the Arsenal some years
previously when rising operating costs, the consequence of a large
crew, had made them economically non-viable.#26 When hostilities
broke out, the Arsenal took advantage of their large and stable hulls,
the product of merchant origins, to fit them out with a heavy
artillery armament (while Venice had an adequate supply of good
cannon, the Spanish, by contrast, seem to have been short of
artillery).#27 Each galeass probably carried four or five full cannons,
equivalent to an ordinary galley's main centerline bow gun, plus
enough lesser cannon to have provided the secondary and tertiary
armament for five galleys, and then some.#28 This is beside the
main point. Suffice it to say that the "large galleys" performed
better under sail than ordinary galleys; this was of little tactical
significance. They were considerably harder to row, which was.
While considerably slower under oarsthey taxed their ciurmi badly
they could, if competently handled, maneuver effectively in
support of a fleet of galleys. They were competently handled at
Lepanto.

Next we have the smaller relatives of the ordinary galley, notably

the galiot. Galiots typically had eighteen banks of oars; ordinary
galleys typically had 24 banks by 1570, and larger than ordinary
galleys, or bastardas, could have as many as 35. Quicker, handier,
and more maneuverable than the galley, the galiot was more lightly
armed. Riding lower in the water, it was at a considerable
disadvantage in a formal, head on clash between opposing
squadrons in line abreast. Galiots were highly effective in a melee
and ideal for raiding, particularly inshore, amphibious operations.
With their modest logistic and manpower requirements, they were
much favored by the lightly populated North African corsairing
principalities.
Both
sides
used
still
smaller
oared
warships, fragatas and bergantins, to feed reinforcements into the
main battle line as well as for scouting and to protect the
unengaged flanks and sterns of galleys locked up in the line of
battle.
Finally we have the ordinary galley's big brother, the lantern
galley. A characteristically Mediterranean concept, the lantern galley
was an exceptionally well armed galley, formally recognized as
such.#29 Often, but not always, larger than ordinary galleys, lantern
galleys were named for their larger and elaborate stern lanterns, the
Mediterranean symbol of tactical superiority and combat
leadership par excellence. The equivalent term in broadside sailing
warfare was "flagship," yet the two concepts are quite dissimilar.
The nearest equivalent to "flagship" in Mediterranean terminology is
not lantern galley, but capitanaroughly, the leader's shipor real,
a royal capitana. Each squadron and national contingent at Lepanto,
however small, had its own capitana. Each such squadron also had
a patrona, a vice capitana. Plainly, we are dealing with a concept
quite different from that of flagship: The basic distinction inherent in
the idea of a flagship is one of command. By contrast, the idea
behind the lantern galley was leadership. An exceptionally well
found and heavily armed galley, the lantern galley served as a focal
point for tactical decision. Most lantern galleys at Lepanto were not
flagships; most of the Christian capitanas and patronas, at least,
were not lantern galleys. Based on solid evidence, we know that
there were 25 or 26 lantern galleys among the 206 or so Christian
galleys at Lepanto. Based on circumstantial, but nevertheless
persuasive evidence, there were a bare minimum of 21 Muslim
lantern galleys in the force of some 230 galleys and 70 galiots, and
perhaps as many as 25 or 30.#30

As we have indicated, the lantern galley was, by definition,

superior in tactical power to an ordinary galley. This superiority was
the product of a characteristically Mediterranean tradeoff: the
lantern galley's greater weight of men and metal made her harder
to row, whether the hull was actually larger than that of an ordinary
galley or not. This meant a potential reduction in speed under oars;
but such a reduction would have been tactically unacceptable.
Speed was required for tactical reasons, to maintain place in a line
abreast, if for no other reason. The lantern galley therefore required
more oarsmen. But more oarsmen meant more weight and more
weight called for still more oarsmen, a vicious circle which could not
be broken.#31
The lantern galley represented a deliberate and conscious
sacrifice in efficiency to achieve increased combat effectiveness at a
necessarily limited number of tactically critical focal points. It is
worth noting that the Venetians, whose ciurmi were mostly free and
salaried, had by far the lowest proportion of lantern galleys of any
national contingent, only seven out of 108 as opposed to 14 out of
75 among the galleys of Spain and her Italian clients.#32 With free
oarsmen who were armed and expected to fight, there was less
tactical benefit to be gained from a larger fighting complement.
Having dealt with the various categories of warships on each
side, we must now address the all important issue of regional
variations in design and armament. Here, we are concerned almost
exclusively with the ordinary galley. National differences between
lantern galleys were unquestionably less than the corresponding
differences between ordinary galleys.#33 In any case, the main
issue with respect to lantern galleys is how many there were and
where. Differences in the design and armament of galiots were also
relatively unimportant. North African galiots tended to be better
armed and larger than their Christian opposites, and Muslim galiots
of as many as 21 rowing banks were common.#34 But aside from
confusing Christian observers as to the size of the Muslim forcea
large Algerian or Tunisian galiot looked like an ordinary galley at a
distance and was often reported as suchthis had little bearing on
the issue.
Mediterranean war galleys fell, according to their design
characteristics, into three basic categories: First, the galleys of Spain
and her Italian client states (and many as 25 Or 30 of France, with
which we are not concerned; for convenience, and because they
were basically similar, these are all termed western galleys),

Venetian galleys, and Muslim galleys.#35 Although much sweat and

verbiage could be expended in an attempt to delineate precisely the
characteristics of each group, the outlines are clear.
The ordinary Spanish, Maltese, Sicilian, Genoese, or Papal galley
was an infantry assault craft. In the 1520s and >30s, Spanish
galleys had been much like any others, but as the wage/price spiral
attacked the Mediterranean world from West to East, the Spanish
were forced progressively to abandon free, salaried oarsmen in
favor of cheaper slaves and convicts.#36 The attendant loss in
combat effectiveness and propulsive efficiencyand there can be
no doubt that it was just that#37was counteracted by embarking
increasing numbers of Spanish regular infantry. Her client states
followed her lead for the same economic reasons.
Spain's strategic posture in the Mediterranean was basically
defensive. Her Muslim enemies attacked her port cities and raided
her coasts; Spain reacted. The great expense of keeping a wellarmed galley constantly in readiness during the campaigning season
from late March through mid-October to combat the elusive and
unpredictable Muslim raiders acted to keep the Spanish standing
fleet small.#38 The lack of numbers was balanced by a galley for
galley superiority in raw combat power. The galleys of Spain and her
allies carried more and better specialized fighting men than any
others. The weight of mensome of whom had to be reserved to
guard the servile ciurmimade Spanish galleys harder to row, a
problem exacerbated by the fact that Spanish cannon were
generally longer and heavier than the equivalent products of the
Venetian arsenal or the Ottoman Tophane.#39 Further exacerbating
the problem were constructional differences: The galleys of Spain
and her Italian clients had acquired, by 1571, a permanent raised
structure above the bow artillery, the arrumbada.#40 This served as
a platform from which covering fire could be directed to cover the
assault of infantry onto the low-lying deck of an enemy galley. It was
highly effective tactically. It also added weight, and added weight
was the antithesis of speed under oars, speed which had to be
developed at all costs in the crunch of battle.
The Spanish and their allies accepted these deficiencies and
played to their strong suit. By packing the rowing benches with
slaves and convictsSpanish galleys at Lepanto had 200 oarsmen
for 24 banks of oarsacceleration and dash speed were maintained.
The cost was in sustained rowing speed, in which Spanish galleys

were admittedly inferior to those of their friends and enemies

alike.#41
The strategic posture of Venice, like that of Spain, was defensive.
Here, the similarities ended. Venice depended more on diplomacy
and on an extended chain of fortified ports to defend her commerce
than on her small standing squadrons of galleys. Unlike Spain, she
had no large force of first class regular infantry which could be used
afloat and on land indifferently. What Venice did have was a small,
but adequate, class of merchant sailors, fishermen, and coastal
villagers who could be called upon to pull an oar in time of war.
Skilled oarsmen and mariners, they were tough customers who
could take care of themselves in a fightif not exhausted from
rowing.
Where Spain's normal maritime posture was a wartime footing
and her instrument a small force of: hard core regulars, Venice stood
ready to shut down peaceful commerce in time of war in order to
mobilize a sizeable force of ready reservists. This force of
oarsman/sailor/soldiers was underwritten by the unmatched
technical resources of the Venetian Arsenal. Using a small but highly
skilled permanent workforce, the Arsenal built, stored, and
maintained a large fleet of galleys, laid up in ordinary against the
day on which war would break out. As a result, the tiny Venetian
peacetime fleet could be expanded overnight into a formidable
force, totally out of proportion to Venice's modest demographic
resources.
Where the Spanish galley was little more than transportation for
Spanish infantry, the Venetian galley was a combat assault
transport, designed to bring men and supplies into a besieged port
city, unopposed if possible, opposed if necessary. The emphasis was
on speed under oars, an emphasis made necessary by Venice's lack
of specialized fighting manpower and made possible by her
continued use of free, fighting oarsmen. An important contributory
factor was the lightness and excellence of Venetian ordnance. The
result was an emphasis on speed under oars and gunneryand
Venetian gunners were the class of the Mediterranean.#42 Where a
head-on boarding fight was the preferred option for the Spanish
galley captain and his squadron commander, it was the last resort
for their Venetian opposites. This orientation was reflected in
constructional details: Where the Spanish galley had a heavy
permanent fighting platform above the main battery, the Venetian
galley had a much lighter, removable one. It was not that the

Venetians were unwilling or unable to have at it hand-to-hand; they

could and didupon occasion with gusto. It was simply that they
were acutely aware of their shortage of manpower and felt, with
considerable justification, that there were usually better ways to
skin the tactical cat.
Where Venice and the Habsburg Empire were on the defensive in
the sixteenth century Mediterranean, the House of Osman was on
the attack. This, and the social and economic conditions prevailing
in the Ottoman domainsfor the wage/price spiral was less
advanced than in the western Mediterraneangave the Turkish
galley its unique characteristics.#43 If the Spanish galley was an
infantry assault craft and the Venetian galley a tactical assault
transport, the Turkish galley was an armed strategic landing craft.
Not as fast under oars as a Venetian galley, though probably a bit
more maneuverable, the Turkish galley was a better sailing vessel.
This was no accident. The dominant tactical function of the Venetian
galley was the relief or resupply of a besieged fortified port; that of
the Turkish galley was to transport men, munitions, guns, and
supplies to the site of a siege and to protect them from interference
once there. Designed for a strategic role which was palpably
offensive, its tactical function was almost purely defensive. Most of
its offensive punch stemmed, almost incidentally, from the
characteristics of Ottoman society. The Turks and their North African
allies were unique among European military establishments in
possessing a sizeable corps of skilled archers who wielded their
composite, recurved bows with awesome efficiency, a direct product
of the delayed impact of the wage/price spiral in the East. Badly
outclassing ordinary small arms in both range and precision, Turkish
archery was particularly effective in a free-swinging melee where
the flanks of hostile galleys were exposed. Like the Venetians, the
Turks relied heavily on free oarsmen. While a conscripted Anatolian
villager could hardly be considered the equal of a hardened Spanish
infantryman, he at least did not need to be guarded in combat.
Muslim capitanas and lantern galleys were apparently rowed mainly
by volunteer Arabs, hard core light infantrymen who could be
trusted to give a reasonable account of themselves in a close fight.
The Janissaries, of whom there were a fair number at Lepanto, took
a back seat to no one in skill or ferocity. In place of the Venetian
removable fighting platform and the Spanish arrumbada, Turkish
galleys seem to have had a low, permanent platform which covered
only the forward portions of the bow guns, leaving the breeches
exposed.

Lower in the water than the Christian galleys of the western

Mediterranean, the Turkish galley had better sustained the speed
under oars and was considerably more maneuverable. Muslim
galleys drew less water than either Venetian or Western galleys, a
fact of considerable importance at Lepanto.
With these characteristics in mind, we can turn to the order of
battle with increased insight, addressing the opposing plans of
attack. It is plain that to both Don John and Ali Pasha the center
squadrons which they commanded personally were the centers of
gravity of the opposing forces. For Don John, this represented
tactical opportunity; for Ali Pasha, it was an unavoidable necessity, a
mandate for a defensive holding action which would have to
succeed so that the battle could be won elsewhere.
It was unquestionably plain to both sides that if the Christian
center could maintain a solid and unbroken line, it would be able to
grind down and eventually overcome anything the Muslims could
put against it. This was clear from the inherent characteristics of the
opposing galleys as well as from historical precedent.#44 Christian
galleys in general and Western galleys in particular had a significant
tactical edge in a formal, head-on clash. Here, their greater weight
of men and metal and their specialized raised fighting platforms
would
tell;
the
musketeers
and
swivel
gunners
atop
the arrumbadas of the Western galleys, in particular, would enjoy
the luxury of being able to deliver plunging fire down onto the lower
Muslim decks, protected from Muslim archery by temporary
ramparts of wood and cordage, without having to worry about their
exposed flanks.
For the Muslims, the problem was almost insuperable. A melee,
of course, was their forte. Give them a chance to catch the Christian
fleet in disorder and they would have it for breakfast, as they had a
Prevesa in 1538 when the great Barbarossa outmaneuvered Andrea
Doria the Elder in a brilliant game of logistic bluff#45 and at Djerba
in 1560 when Piali Pasha had caught the younger Doria with his
pants down. But against a commander of Don John's competence,
this was nothing to bank on. Any partial engagement would surely
tilt toward the heavier Christian galleys so long as they held
formation. It was therefore all or nothing. Mezzinzade Ali Pasha
would have to plan for a full, frontal clash knowing that his center
would fight at a serious disadvantage.

Don John, for his part, clearly signaled his intention of fighting
only in a well ordered line by ordering the projecting "spurs" cut off
the bows of the Christian galleys so that their cannon could be
depressed to bear down on the lower lying Muslim craft at the
shortest possible range.#46 The "spurs," used to break down the
enemy rowing frame and then serve as a boarding bridge in a flank
attack, clearly had little value in the sort of fight which he had in
mind.
The Muslims, of course, would do everything in their power to
turn the flanks of the Christian center. In the event, they briefly
succeeded. But this was nothing to count on. Competently handled
flanking squadrons could be expected to frustrate any such attempt
undertaken by anything more than the odd galiot, something which
the Christian reserve could take care of handily.
To get at the Christian center, therefore, Mezzinzade Ali Pasha
would first have to dispose of the Christian wings. This meant that
he would have to suck them out of position, to turn their flanks, or
to maneuver them so badly as to destroy their tactical integrity and
produce a meleefor the Muslim squadrons would suffer the same
tactical disadvantages in a head on clash on the wings as they
would in the center, He would have to quickly eliminate at least one
Christian wing as a tactical factor, for his center could not be
expected to hold for long.
With this in mind, his basic plan is clear. He knew that he would
take grievous losses in the center, yet he had to give his wings a
solid base on which to maneuver. He possessed, in addition, an
advantage over Don John in that he could allow his wings to run on a
comparatively loose rein. The powers of maneuver of the Muslim
flanking squadrons were undoubtedly superior to their Christian
opposites, even if the Venetian galleys were individually faster. So
Mezzinzade Ali Pasha backed up the galleys of his center with no
less than 32 galiots to feed in reinforcementsattrition fillers in the
antiseptic terminology of modern war. These would give the center a
degree of organic close-in, flank protection in addition to that
provided by the small reserve squadron so that the wings could run
more freely still.
Ali Pasha then gave his wings their marching orders: Mehmet
Suluk on the right would take advantage of the shallow draft of the
Muslim galleys to work close inshore around the Christian flank. This
was the key to the Muslim plan. If Barbarigo, commanding the

Christian Left, left him any inshore room at all, he could quickly force
numbers of galleys into the Christian rear. Since a galley was
effectively helpless if attacked from the flank or rear (under such
circumstances a galiot could take the measure of a first class galley,
and often did) this would break the Christian line.
Uluch Ali on the left, with unlimited searoom, was given the
preponderant force, at least thirty galleys more than he could put on
line. He must have intended to work them around the Christian
seaward flank in a loose gaggle. At the very least, this would force
Doria to play an exceedingly cautious game; at best, it would pull
him out of the fight altogether and unleash the better part of Uluch
Ali's squadron into the Christian rear. The Christian reserve would
then have to be dealt with, of course, but by that point the chances
for confusiona factor which would work to the Muslim advantage
would be great. A bit of miscalculation or a premature decision to
commit the Christian reserve, and he would be home free, whether
or not Mehmet Suluk had run his gambit successfully on the right.
The tactical opportunities inherent in the Muslim dispositions
were at least as evident to Don John as they are to us. In evaluating
the way in which he planned to deal with them, we are blessed with
a revealing piece of evidence: Don John's surviving order of march of
9 September (the order of march and order of battle were nearly the
same).#47 This document enables us to reconstruct his tactical
rationale with confidence. The order in question covers only 188
galleys, some 18 less than were present on the day of battle, the
most notable omission being Gian Andrea Doria's squadron,#48 but
they detail the exact position of each galley in the Christian line.
Better still, they give us the identity and location of the Christian
lantern galleys.
We noted earlier the disproportionate number of Venetian galleys
on the left. Based on the raw numbers, this could be interpreted as
an attempt to keep the Venetian galleys where there relative lack of
tactical power would do the least harm or as an attempt to place
them where their greater speed would do the most good. On the
face of things, the first alternative makes more sense. The Venetian
galleys would be maneuvering in formation with numbers of the
slower Western galleys and would presumably have to conform to
their speed. More to the point; why the left?
Clearly, Barbarigo's boys knew that they would have to do some
fast stepping to keep Mehmet Suluk from turning them inside out.

But was their problem qualitatively different or quantitatively worse

than that faced by Doria's squadron on the offshore flank! There is
no answer without reference to the human factor, to the detailed
differences in design and armament between the galleys of the
various Mediterranean nations on which we have spent so many
paragraphs andthanks to Don John's order of 9 Septemberto the
uniquely Mediterranean tactical concepts embodied in the lantern
galley.
The order of battle 9 September provides us with the key to the
puzzle. When we analyze the Christian dispositions in detailand
we are able to extrapolate the order of battle of 7 October with
considerable confidencea whole new picture emerges. The
deliberate weighting of the Christian right and center with heavier,
slower, Western galleys implied by the raw numbers turns out to be
only the tip of the iceberg. There was, in fact, an even more
pronounced internal weighting of both the center and the left which
the numbers alone cannot show. This is strikingly evident in the
remarkably asymmetrical dispositions of Barbarigo's squadron,
which, significantly, seem to have changed least in composition
between 9 September and the battle. The raw numbers tell us that
only 12 of the 98 western galleys in the Christian fleet were
assigned to the left; in round figures this amounted to one out of
eight in a squadron which contained a fourth of the galleys in the
Christian fleet. More striking still is the fact that only four of the 25
or 26 lantern galleys in the Christian fleet fought on the left. Three
of the four, moreover, were Venetian, and there were only seven
Venetian lantern galleys in all. Since we might reasonably assume
that Venetian lantern galleys rowed better than their Western
equivalents, the picture emerges of a deliberate emphasis on speed
and maneuverability on the left at all costs. The 9 September order
lists 50 galleys in Barbarigo's squadron; all but 11 of them were
Venetian (the ratio was out of 53 on the day of battle).#49 Only
three of the eleven western galleys were in the left, inshore half of
the squadron; no less than six of the eleven were among the first
sixteen galleys on the right, and the sole western lantern galley in
Barbarigo's squadron was fourth from the right. Barbarigo led his
squadron from the extreme left end of his line. The overwhelming
suspicion arises that the left side of Barbarigo's squadron was
specifically selected for its ability to maneuver better and faster
than any other part of the Christian fleetas in fact it dida full
month before the battle was joined.

In contrast to the left, the internal arrangement of the Christian

right was generally symmetrical. In the order of 9 September,
Hector Spinola in the Capitana of Genoa led the right from the exact
center of his line, an arrangement probably followed by Gian Andrea
Doris when he took over the squadron (Spinola moved to the center
where he fought at Don John's immediate right). Twenty-two of
Spinola's forty-seven galleys were Venetian (the proportion was
twenty-five out of fifty-three on the day of battle), divided relatively
evenly between the left and right halves of the squadron, ten on the
left and twelve on the right. Of his five lantern galleys, one was on
the extreme right flank, two were at the extreme left, and one was
seven places left of his own lantern galley in the center. This
arrangement may represent a slight weighting of the line to the left
and a slight emphasis on mobility to the right. Then again, it may
not. The lantern galleys on the extreme flanks, for instance, were
almost surely heavily manned with carefully picked oarsmen so that
they could maneuver with the more easily propelled ordinary galleys
near them. Though costly in terms of manpower and therefore
something which could be done only at a few carefully chosen
points, this was a characteristically Mediterranean arrangement
which we know to have been a standard tactic. On the whole, the
order of battle of the Christian right was a balanced one.
The Christian center, however, was unbalanced in much the
same way as the left, something which does not emerge from the
raw numbers. Based on the order of 9 September and on what we
know of the battle itself, Don John elected to lead from the exact
center of his own squadron. Clearly, he had every intention of
making the center of his "main battle" the tactical focal point of the
entire action. He disposed his lantern galleys accordingly: No less
than ten of the thirteen lantern galleys assigned to the center by his
order of 9 September were in a tight grouping around hisReal (the
figure was probably eleven of fourteen on the day of battle). Only
two of these, however, Sebastian Venier in the Capitana of Venice
and another Venetian lantern galley, were to the left of the Real. The
other seven were to the right, interspersed with an ordinary
Venetian galley and one of the Pope.
The weighting of tactical power to the right and mobility to the
left which these dispositions suggest becomes even more apparent
when we consider the distribution of ordinary galleys in the Christian
Center. No less than twenty of the twenty-eight Venetian galleys in
the Center were in the left half of the squadron (the proportion may
have been as much as twenty-three out of thirty-one; the document

is illegible in spots).#50 At least twelve and perhaps thirteen of the

last fifteen galleys on the left flank were Venetian, the two certain
exceptions being the Patrona of Sicily, a lantern galley, and another
Spanish lantern galley at the extreme end of the line.
What conclusions can we draw from the apparent dissymmetry in
the Christian dispositions? First of all, it is apparent that they relate
in some way to the proximity of the shore to the left flank. While the
Christian left and center assumed imbalanced orders of battle of a
similar nature, those of the right and the Reserve (which we have
not previously mentioned, but which was, if anything, more
symmetrical than that of the right)#51 were basically symmetrical.
Those squadrons which were expected to fight out of touch with the
shoreline, then, had symmetrical orders of battle.
It is plain that Don John and Mezzinzade Ali Pasha alike intended to
march and to fight with their inshore flanks close to the shoreline.
This was to protect communications with their logistic support:
sailing vessels packed with men, munitions, and provisions,
particularly important to the Christian fleet, and the shore itself for
all important water. Galley fleets always operated on a short logistic
tether, an inescapable product of the galley's small displacement
and large complement. The problem became more serious as the
scale of manning grew and the size of fleets increased.#52 The
huge size of the fleets in the campaign of 1571 must have imposed
severe logistic constraints. Neither fleet could afford to blunder
around at sea, seeking some ephemeral tactical advantage at the
risk of being cut off from supply ships or the shore by an enemy in
an unassailable position along the beach. Both fleets were bound to
the shore logistically and based their tactical plans and maneuvers
upon it. Lepanto is more properly termed an amphibious campaign
and battle than a naval one.
Hence the two opposing fleets were forced to work their way
cautiously along the shore toward each other, the Christians from
the north, the Muslims from the south. The movements of such
sizeable forces would have been difficult to conceal and there is
every reason to believe that the two commanders possessed
excellent intelligence. In a technical sense, Lepanto may have been
a meeting engagementthere is no evidence that either
commander deliberately selected the location of the battlebut in
fact, Lepanto was fought remarkably close to plan on both sides.
When the Christian advance guard rounded Point Scropha at the
northwestern entrance to the Gulf of Corinth early on the morning of

7 October to sight the Muslim fleet up the Gulf to the East, both
sides were well prepared.
There is evidence that the inshore squadrons of both fleets were
well in advance of their respective centers and offshore squadrons,
the opposing forces advancing in staggered echelon with the
seaward flanks refused. This may have been by deliberate tactical
design; advancing the inshore squadrons may have given the
centers better inshore flank protection and enabled them, in turn, to
better support their inshore covering forces. It may have been an
unavoidable result of the time and place of engagement; the
curvature of the shore dictated that the Christian right and center,
in particular, had a considerably greater distance to cover between
initial sighting and engagement. This view is supported by the fact
that all of the Christian galeasses, which Don John had intended to
deploy ahead of the Christian line to disorder the onrushing Muslim
galleys, did not get into position. The two galeasses assigned to the
Left clearly got into position ahead of Barbarigo's galleys and did
considerable damage to Mehmet Suluk; the two galeasses assigned
to the Center seem to have engaged with some effect as well. But
the two galeasses assigned to cover Doria's line were well to the
rear when the action began; it is unclear as to whether or not they
ever engaged. Conversely, one of the two galeasses on the left,
probably that of Agostin Bragadino, actually managed to reenter the
battle after having initially engaged the Muslim galleys as they
swept past to attack the Christian left.
Be that as it may, the battle unfolded much as Don John had
intended and as Mezzinzade Ali Pasha had feared. Both
commanders had planned well; both had thoroughly prepared their
forces; both had delegated authority wisely. In the event, the
performance of certain of their subordinate commanders was
nothing short of brilliant. The performance of the Christian left under
Agostin Barbarigo, who died leading his forces at what we must
assume, for lack of evidence to the contrary, to have been the
critical tactical focal point, was particularly noteworthy. In Mehmet
Suluk's defense, it must be said that he played an unexpectedly bad
hand unexpectedly well; the inshore fight seems to have been a
close one. Laurels must also go to Don Alvaro de Bazan, who
committed the Christian Reserve at precisely the right time, using
the characteristically Spanish tactical caution on which Don John
must have depended. Uluch Ali Pasha, in perhaps the most brilliant
maneuvering of the day, nearly salvaged victory from the ashes of
defeat. For his part, Don John commanded wisely and fought well.

The fact that he delegated the more spectacular maneuvering roles

to seasoned and experienced subordinatesfor he was a relatively
inexperienced marinerspeaks well for him. Mezzinzade Ali Pasha
erred only in accepting battle at all, and there is evidence that he
was under Imperial orders to engage. There is also evidence that he
underestimated the size of the force arrayed against him. In the
final analysis, his only real hope for victory was in bringing about a
loss of tactical cohesion on the Christian side. Galley warfare was an
explosive, all-or-nothing business and serious ruptures in the
Christian ranks could have brought victory to the Muslims almost to
the last act. He nearly succeeded.
In understanding Lepanto, it is necessary to emphasize the
deliberate slowness with which large fleets of galleys maneuvered.
While individual galleys could make good a flank speed of 7 to 72
knots for varying periods of time, usually a maximum of about 20
minutes, the effort required left the ciurma incapable of much of
anything else.#53 This could be fatal, particularly to the Venetian or
Muslim galley which relied on the fighting power of its free oarsmen
to compensate for a lack of specialized fighting men in the crunch of
a head-on encounter. A cruise speed of 22 or 3 knots was relatively
economical of human effort, but this already modest speed was
further reduced by the demands of formation keeping. It must be
noted in passing that the option of engaging under sail was not a
viable one, wind or no wind. Galleys were poor sailers to begin with;
the precise maneuvering needed for boarding tactics could be
accomplished only under oars and it was impossible to maintain a
tactically viable formation under sail. Finally, and of overwhelming
importance, a galley with its mast stepped and its large lateen yard
set was horribly vulnerable to artillery fire; a single lucky shot could
cut a key piece of rigging and bring the yard and sail down, crushing
half the ciurma and totally disabling a galley with a single blow.
Thus, although the opposing fleets had sighted each other shortly
after dawn, it was around noon before the first shots were
exchanged. This was on the inshore flank where Mehmet Suluk's
galleys, probably maintaining line for as long as possible to conceal
their intentions, encountered the two Venetian galeasses covering
Barbarigo's squadron. The heavy artillery of the galeasses seems to
have done considerable damage to the Muslim squadron which
continued past them, breaking for the shallow inshore waters to
work their way around and into the Christian rear. They very nearly
succeeded. The fight was confused and bitter in spots, approaching
the melee that the Muslims desired so ardently. They were

frustrated when Barbarigo managed, under difficulties which we can

only imagine, to pivot his entire squadron door-like, pulling his left
flank backwards to change his front by nearly 90 degrees and pin
the Muslims against the shore like so many pinned
butterflys.#54 Barbarigo died in the struggle and Christian losses
were heavyMuslim archery seems to have been particularly telling
in the early stages of the fightbut the result was the near total
annihilation of the Muslim right. This was achieved only through the
ability of the galleys of the Christian left to maneuver effectively as
a formation under conditions of extreme difficulty. The galleys on
the inshore end of the line would have had to back water, using
their bow artillery as best they could to cover their retrograde
movement, conserving their powers of combat and maneuver as
best they could while waiting for their commander to determine
whenand ifthey could go over to the attack. Military history
attests to few maneuvers more intrinsically difficult than a
retrograde movement under fire. That they succeeded in pulling it
off speaks well for them, and for the skill and foresight of the
Christian command in disposing their forces in such a way as to
make the maneuver possible.
The Christian center came to grips with the Muslims perhaps a half
hour later than the initial contact on the inshore flank and probably
with the issue still in doubt there. Again, the Venetian galeasses
seem to have disordered and inflicted loss on the onrushing Muslim
galleys as they passed. There is no evidence of disintegration of the
Muslim formation, so Mezzinzade Ali Pasha's forces must have
reformed ranks in the brief moments before contact, using
reinforcing galiots to fill gaps in the line. The fight was particularly
bitter in the center, focusing on Ali Pasha's Sultana and the
Christian Real, with individual Muslim galleys and galiots attempting
to force their way through small gaps in the Christian line to outflank
it internally.#55 In the event, the Christians managed to hold their
ranks and bear the Muslims down with greater weight. A boarding
party from Don John's Real, covered by arrow fire and musketry from
Venier's galley to the left, eventually won the decks of Ali Pasha's
galley and brought back his head, but it required three renewed
assaults backed by manpower from the Patrona of Spain tied up to
the Real's stern for just that purpose. Mezzinzade Ali Pasha died in
vain, but it was a near thing.
It was a near thing, for as the centers locked up in mortal combat,
the offshore squadrons entered into a deadly contest, a contest
which Uluch Ali won. Just what happened and how is unclear; it is

plain, however, that Uluch Ali Pasha and Gian Andrea Doria engaged
in extended maneuvering, with the net result that the Christian right
became badly separated from the center. In Doria's defense, there is
no evidence that his offshore flank was turned. There is, however,
evidence that his squadron had become fragmented and that the
battle on the offshore flank had lost cohesion.#56 For reasons at
which we can only guess, numbers of Christian galleys broke
formation and headed for the main fight in the center. They may
have been led by captains who perceived that Doria was
treasonously holding them out of combat; they may have been led
by captains who perceived that Doria had been completely
outmaneuvered to the point that it was too late for the niceties of
formation tactics and moved, accepting the disadvantages of a
melee with the Muslims to do something, anything, before it was too
late. In either case, Uluch Ali, observing the widening gap between
the bulk of the Christian right and center turned inward and shot the
gap between them, slamming into the exhausted right flank of the
Christian center with deadly effect.
For a brief period the issue was in doubt: the Capitana of the Knights
of St. John of Malta was overrun and several galleys were captured.
Disaster was averted by the timely arrival of the reserve under Don
Alvaro de Bazan. Observing the collapse of the Muslim center before
his eyes and seeing the telltale traces in the distance of the fiasco
on the inshore flank, Uluch Ali gathered his remaining forces,
evacuated his prize crews from the overrun Christian galleys, and
ran for it down the gulf. He got away with perhaps 30 galleys, the
largest intact Muslim force to escape from the battle.
And so the battle of Lepanto was over. Don John had won because
he had made better use of the tactical characteristics and
capabilities of the ships and men available to him than had
Mezzinzade Ali Pasha. Those characteristics and capabilities were
dictated by a whole galaxy of socioeconomic pressures and
influences.
This leads to a concluding assertion: That both employment tactics
and weapons system design are driven directly by socioeconomic
factors, whether this is explicitly recognized or not. This is an easy
assertion to make, but a difficult one to sustain with any degree of
scholarly rigor. That we have been able to do so in the case of
Lepanto owes much to the unique characteristics of early modern
Mediterranean warfare at sea, characteristics which therefore

deserve a closer analytical look if we intend to extrapolate them into

the future.
The economic component of socioeconomic factors presents few
problems. Begin by positing a positive correlation between the
effectiveness of weapons systems and their cost. This correlation
holds as well for the weapons of today as it does for those of the
sixteenth century; it holdsthough this point is often ignoredfor
costs of maintenance and operation as well as for the cost of
procurement. Barring sudden and dramatic technological
breakthroughs, more effective weapons will generally impose a
greater fiscal burden.
Such relationships apply generally to most societies and to most
military establishments throughout history and fit well within a
Mahanian analytical framework. Cost affects the number of weapons
that can be produced and a tradeoff develops between quantity and
quality. The tradeoff point is determined by the relationship between
tactical effectiveness and costs, except where tradition or some
other irrational factor intrudes.#57 This is a fairly obvious idea
which has been worked to death by modern defense analysts, if not
by historians. The phrases "cost effectiveness" and "more bang for a
buck" come immediately to mind.
The social dimension is, however, harder to come to grips with,
though it is arguably at least as important if a good deal less
obvious. It is fairly easy to demonstrate that changes in the quality
of military manpower affect tactical effectiveness; Mahan himself
did so with considerable effect, for example in his comparative
analysis of French and English naval leadership.#58 It is another
matter entirely to be able to establish a causal relationship between
social conditions and development and selection of either weapons
or tactics. The uniquely human nation of galley warfare has enabled
us to do both. To pick an obvious point in recapitulation, the fact
that wages and prices were relatively lower in the eastern than in
the western Mediterranean made free ciurmi a practical proposition
for both Venice and the Ottoman Empire. This, in turn, made Eastern
galleys more mobile and Eastern tactics more fluid. Spain, on the
other hand, was forced to adopt a heavier, less mobile, galley
because of a heavy dependence upon slave and convict oarsmen.
This, in turn, increased her dependence on increasingly smaller
numbers of necessarily more effective, and more costly, regular
infantry with important tactical consequences. This sort of analysis, I
would argue, is not Mahanian in nature.

We could go on at length, but I will conclude by suggesting that all

weapon systems, past and present, have been designed and built
with a set of assumptions in mind concerning the capabilities and
limitations of the intended users. These assumptions exist in the
mind of the designer, either implicitly or explicitly whether he be
designing tanks, ships, aircraft, or small arms. They are more visible
than usual in the case of the galleys which fought at Lepanto due to
the severe design constrictions imposed by the materials and power
source available to the designers. With wood as the only structural
material and human muscle as the only tactical propulsion, Turkish,
Venetian, and Spanish designers were forced into the same
technical box; the subtle differences between their products can
therefore be attributed to social factors. The impact of
socioeconomic factors on weapons system design is generally
gradual, subtle, and masked by more obvious factors such as
changes in the fiscal environment or in the availability of critical
supplies; this does not mean that it is unimportant. Human factors
dictate the effectiveness and the design of our weapons today as
surely as they dictated the design and the effectiveness of the
weapons of five centuries ago. Before we permit the systems
analysts to factor the human element out of weapons systems
design altogether, we owe ourselves another look at the sixteenth
century Mediterranean and at Lepanto.

Addendum: Following presentation of this paper, the author

discovered that figures for the strength and composition of the
Ottoman left wing and center had been exchanged, an error which
also appears in the analysis of the battle in his earlier published
work, Gunpowder and Galleys. Correction of the error suggests that
the Ottoman left, with 61 galleys and 32 galiots, was weighted for
speed and tactical mobility rather than for sheer combat power, a
suggestion which fits the basic thrust of the tactical analysis above
better than the earlier erroneous assumption. Correction of the error
further indicates that the Ottoman center entered battle with a
"second echelon" of 25 galleys backing the 62 galleys of the first
rank. This use of a pre-committed reserve to make up for
anticipated attrition similarly reinforces the above conclusions
concerning Mezzinzade Ali Pasha's tactical concept, making his
reliance upon the speed and agility of the Muslim galleys even more
evident.

New Aspects of Naval History: Selected Papers Presented at the

Fourth Naval History Symposium, United States Naval Academy 2526 October 1979. Edited by Craig L. Symonds. Annapolis, Maryland:
the United States Naval Institute, 1981. pp. 41-65
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FOOTNOTES
[1]Geoffrey Symcox, The Crisis of French Seapower, 1688-1679:
from the Guerre d'Escadre to the Guerre de Course (The Hague,
1974), Shows the limitations of an uncritical application of Mahan's
conceptual framework to periods of armed conflict at sea other than
that from which it was derived. The following, pp. 227-8,
summarizes his position: "Mahan's vision of mighty fleets in
climactic combat drew heavily on nineteenth century ideas of
the 'strategy of annihilation,' and more specifically on Jomini's
codification of the Napoleonic art of war ... both Jomini's and
Mahan's theories were grounded in too narrow a period of history;
the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the era of Nelson,
Mahan's hero ... Mahan in fact deduced his principles from the
Nelsonian age and then extrapolated them to other periods ..." A
discussion of problems arising from the application of Mahanian
orthodoxy to Mediterranean warfare at sea in the sixteenth century
(something which Mahan himself, to his credit, considered invalid) is
in John F. Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology
and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (London,
1974), Ch. 1. "The Mahanians' Fallacy," pp, 221-33.
[2]Guilmartin, pp. 16-22.
[3]Guilmartin, pp. 26-34. Most of the galleys provided by Spain's
lesser Italian allies served under contractual arrangements of a
commercial nature.
[4]Andrew C. Hess, The Forgotten Frontier, A History of the Sixteenth
Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago, 1978), particularly pp. 9091.
[5](Paris, 1972). Though not primarily concerned with tactics,
Lesure's excellent book contains an extended account of the battle,
in Part 2, "L'affrontement," Ch. I "Le 7 octobre," pp. 115-47. Lesure
makes extensive use of quotes from primary source documents
which are of considerable value in themselves.

[6]For an overall appreciation of the Venetian strategic posture as

they saw it at the time, see Alberto Tenenti, Christoforo da Canal: la
Marine Vnitienne avant Lpante (Paris, 1967), p. 117. The
Venetians hoped, by eliminating the Ottoman fleet, to lessen the
threat to their coastal recruiting grounds and fortified ports along
the Dalmatian coast and in the Greek Archipelago. The potential of
the combined Ottoman naval force for large scale raiding and siege
warfare was the real Venetian target, not "control of the sea."
[7]For an analysis of the impact of economic factors on
Mediterranean galley fleets in general, see Guilmartin, pp. 105-22.
[8]See Robert S. Lopez, "Market Expansion: the
Genoa," Journal of Economic History, Vol. XXIV (1964).

Case

of

[9]William H. McNeill, Venice, the Hinge of Europe 1091-I797

(Chicago, >974) pp. 134-37 See particularly p. 135, n. 26, Citing
information from Halil Inalcik. The Ottoman/Genoese tin trade was
probably curtailed if not eliminated following the seizure of Chios
from the Genoese syndicate controlling the trade in 1566, but the
Genoese proclivity for trading on similar terms with Turk and
Christian in war and peace alike is well documented.
[10]Guilmartin, pp. 32-33. In addition, these contracts incorporated
trade and tax concessions, granted by the Spanish Crown. If we
prorate Doria's capitana and patrona (flagship and vice flagship, see
note 17, below) at a galley and a half each, as the 1571 contract
did, then lost export taxes on Sicilian wheat increased the cost to
Spain of each galley by 7 percent. Rental charges for loaned convict
oarsmen similarly increased the cost to Spain of each galley by 6
percent and Doria's personal salary, also covered by the contract,
raised the cost of each galley another 5 percent.
[11]"Ghazi," The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, B. Lewis, C.
Pellat and S. Schlacht eds. (London, 1960), p. 1043. Ghazi is an
Arabic word designating those who took part in raids for the faith. It
was also used as a title of respect and had a more permanent
connotation
than
the
Christian
equivalent, "crusader." The ghazi psychology and mode of operation
at sea was, however, more Mediterranean than exclusively Muslim;
the Knights of St. John of Malta were essentially Christian ghazis.
[12]There is agreement among the authorities regarding the general
composition of the Christian fleet, but confusion concerning the
precise numbers of galleys in each contingent. The allied force

varied in size and composition from day to day as late arrivals

appeared and as the odd galley dropped out for repairs or was
detached for scouting or despatch duty. Lesure, Lpante, p. 115,
using different sources from those upon which I have principally
relied, gives a total of 208 galleys in the Christian fleet. FranciscoFelipe Olesa Muido, La Organizacin. Naval de las Estados
Mediterraneos y en Especial de Espaa Durante los Siglos XVI y
XVII (Madrid, 1968),Vol 1, p. 37l, deals intelligently with this
problem. I have followed the figures given by Roger C.
Anderson, Naval Wars in the Levant, 1559-1853 (Princeton, 1953), p.
38, as the best single reconciliation of a mass of conflicting data. He
is generally substantiated by the various pertinent documents in the
collection of the Museo Naval, Madrid, for example dto. 325 in
the Coleccin Sanz de Barutell (Simancas), Art. 4, Vol. 2,
titled "Relacin de las Galeras, Naos y Fragatas que huvo en la
Armada de su Magestad. . ." See also Baron Purgstall von
Hammer, Histoire de L'Empire Ottoman, J.J. Hellert, trans. (Paris,
1835-41), p. 424, and Althea Weil, The Navy of Venice (London,
1910), p. 263.
[13]Contemporary Spanish usage was Batalla for the center, a term
plainly derived from "main battle," the traditional medieval term.
Cuerno Izquierda and Cuerno Derecha were used for the left and
right wings, cuerno meaning both "wing," in a military context,
and "horn." The reserve squadron was called the Socorro, or "relief."
[14] Guilmartin, pp. 201-03.
[15]For the composition of the Muslim fleet, I have followed the
estimate given by Rosell Cayetano, Historia del Combate Naval de
Lepanto (Madrid, 1853), P. 99, cited in Olesa Muido, Vol. I, p. 371.
Lesure, p. 115, arrives at the same totals by a different route. The
published source closest to the event from the Muslim side with
which I am familiar, that of the Romanian millet official Dimetrius
Cantemir, The History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman
Empire, N. Tindal trans. (London, 1734), gives a strength of from 270
to 170 "ships ... depending on the source." Not all of the 230 galleys
and 70 galiots listed by Rosell Cayetano took part in the battle.
[16]Uluch Ali had a long and distinguished corsairing career and
assumed command of the Ottoman fleet the year after Lepanto. He
got his start as a galley captain under the great Khaireddin
Barbarossa and in 1560 made the initial sighting of the Christian
fleet which led to the overwhelming Muslim victory of Djerba.

[17]Capitana designated the galley of the leader of a national

contingent or a squadron; patrona designated the galley of the
second in command. Capitana and patrona were commonly used as
titles, eg. La Capitana de Napoles: the galley of the commander of
the Neapolitan squadron. Real was used to designate a
royal capitana as was done by Don John as the designated agent of
the King of Spain.
[18]In contemporary Mediterranean documents, the term is
generally applied first to the rowing arrangements and propulsive
strength of a galley, then to fighting manpower and armament. A
galley might, for example, be described as being "armed with 192
oarsmen to row four by four from poop to prow," another way of
saying that it was a 24-bank galley designed to seat four oarsmen
per bench and eight per bank.
[19]The Venetian word for the rowing gang, pronounced "che oor
me," plural ciurmi. I have used the Venetian since there is no English
equivalent and the Spanish chusma has every evidence of being an
Italian loan word like so many other castilian nautical terms.
[20]There was some variation in these figures, but within a narrow
range. See. R.C. Anderson, Oared Fighting Ships (London, 1962), pp.
567-68. Olesa Muido, Ch. III, "El Buque," pp. 169-279, has an
overwhelmingly comprehensive discussion of the construction of
galleys. Bjrn Landstrm, The Ship (New York, 1961), pp. 127-39
gives a brilliantly effective graphic summation of most of what is
known about the developmental history of the Mediterranean war
galley.
[21]Guilmartin, "The Early Provision of Artillery Armament on
Mediterranean War Galleys," The Mariner's Mirror, Vol. 59, No. 3
(August 1973), gives the background for the derivation of these
figures. See also Gunpowder and Galleys, pp. 207-12 particularly
Figures 7 and 9.
[22]"Stone throwers" were tactically more efficient than cannon
firing cast iron cannonballs; see, for example, Michael
Strachan, "Sampson's Fight with Maltese Galleys, 1628," The
Mariner's Mirror, Vol. 55, No. 3 (August 1969), pp. 281-90. The high
labor costs involved in cutting precision stone cannonballs
eventually rendered the stone throwers obsolete, first in the nations
of the North Atlantic and then, progressively, in the nations to the
south and east. See Sir Henry Brackenbury, "Ancient Cannon in
Europe," Part II, Journal of the Royal Artillery Institution, V (1865-66,

pp. 8-9, for the enormous labor costs involved, even at a very early
date.
[23]This Statement is based on the measurement and analysis of
numbers of surviving cannon in the collections of the Museo del
Ejercito, Madrid; the Museo Militar, Lisbon; the Museo Storico
Navale, Venice; and the Askeri Musesi, Istanbul; as well on data from
the Venetian admiral Christoforo da Canal, cited in Olesa Muido,
Vol. I, pp. 297-315, and Luis Collado, Platica Manual de
Artilleria (Milan, 1592), fol. 8. Note that long cannon were not longrange cannon. The inherent limitations of black powder placed an
absolute limit on muzzle velocity which was attained with relatively
short barrel lengths of 12-18 times the bore diameter. Practical
limits of accuracy attainable with smooth bores and spherical
projectiles held the maximum effective range of naval cannon to
about 500 yards in any case.
[24]This Statement is an educated guess based on the conclusions
of the analysis described in note 23, above, notably the fact that da
Canal does not mention such tertiary armament, and on the
established Venetian preference for lighter cannon throwing a larger
ball than their Spanish or Ottoman equivalents.
[25]Guilmartin, Gunpowder
and
Galleys,
Appendix
6, "The
Classification and Arrangement of Ordnance on Sixteenth Century
Galleys," pp, 295-303.
[26]See Landstrm, pp. 134ff, and Anderson, Oared Fighting Ships,
which contains an entire chapter on the technical development of
the galeass. The Ottomans knew how to build such ships, which they
called a maona, but either lacked the guns to arm them or failed to
see the opportunity. J. R. Hale, "Armies, Navies and the Art of
War," New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, Ch. XVI, provides
interesting speculation on its origins.
[27]See Venier's report to the Venetian Senate, "Relazione
presentata il 29 December 1571 del Clarissimo Ser Sebastian Venier
.. ." opusculo 3000, Archivo di Stato Veneziano, Venice. On 28
September, Don John requested six pieces of ordnance apparently
for projected siege operations ashore, from Venier, who reluctantly
complied.
[28]This is based on analysis of the armament of the four NeapoIitan
galeasses which sailed with the Spanish Armada of 1588 in Michael
Lewis, Armada Guns (London, 1961), p. 138. The Venetian galeasses

at Lepanto were at least as well armed. Lesure, Lpante, p. 116,

gives them credit for 22 "heavy cannon" each.
[29]The contemporary Spanish term was galera de fanal, or
simply fanal in the shorthand of official listings. Interestingly, the
ability to recognize and correctly identify individual lantern galleys is
assumed in contemporary Spanish listings. The distinctive insignia
of ordinary galleys, in contrast, are described in great detail.
[30]The number of Christian lantern galleys was extracted from dto.
4 in Documents de Lepanto, Manuscrito 1693 (an extensive
collection of documents), in the Museo Naval, Madrid, with
adjustment for the known addition of at least one lantern galley,
that of Gian Andrea Doria, between 9 September, the date of the
document in question, and 7 October, the day of battle. The
estimate of the number of Muslim lantern galleys is based on
analysis of the numbers of Muslim galleys and pieces of artillery
included in the formal division of spoils after the battle described
in Gunpowder and Galleys, p. 232; this is roughly confirmed by a
contemporary Venetian woodcut of the battle by G. B. Camocio,
reproduced opposite p. 730 in Charles W. C. Oman, A History of the
Art of War in the XVIth Century (London, 1937).
[31]Based on the results of tests with an exceptionally large
Venetian galley in 1529, cited in Anderson, Oared Fighting Ships, p.
67, an increase in displacement of 50 percent required double the
size of the ciurma if there was to be no sacrifice in dash speed.
[32]This differs from the figure of four cited in Gunpowder and
Galleys, p. 244, n. 1. Continued analysis of dto. 4, Documentos de
Lepanto, mss. 1693, cited in note 30 above, leads me to conclude
that I misinterpreted the designation of two Venetian lantern
galleys, erroneously identifying them as ordinary galleys.
[33]This is because the lantern galley pressed against the intrinsic
limits of human propulsive energy even harder than the ordinary
galley. With less room for technical compromise, there was less
room for regional variation. See Guilmartin, pp. 115-28 and
Appendix 4, "Computation of the Speed of Sixteenth Century Galleys
Under Oars," p. 392.
[34]See, for example, dto. 7 in Vol. X of the Coleccin Navarrete,
Museo Naval, Madrid, "Relacin de los Navios y Artilleria de
Franceses, Yngleses, y Portugeses, Turcos y Moros que don lbaro
Bazan Marques de Santa Cruz ... ha ganado ... desde 8 de Diciembre

de 1554, hasta fin de Diciembre de 1583," and Coleccin Sanz de

Barutell (Simancas) Art. 6, dto. 45, fol. 117-118. These two
documents detail between them some nine Muslim galiots, all of
them probably North African. Two were of 21 banks, two were of 20
banks (one of these is estimated based on the number of liberated
Christian oarsmen), one of 19 banks, two of 18, one of 17, and one
of 16 banks.
[35]North African galleys may have constituted a separate class, but
there is insufficient evidence on which to base such a
categorization. In light of the North African preference for large
galiots, the point is largely a moot one.
[36]Figures 11-14, Gunpowder and Galleys, p. 222-25). The change
in question was accompanied by the change in rowing systems
discussed in note 32 above.
[37]Both Venice and the Ottomans retained free ciurmi on
their capitanas and patronas after they were forced by economic
pressures to adopt largely servile ciurmi on ordinary galleys. The
first regularly sanctioned use of convicts as oarsmen on Venetian
galleys did not occur until 1549. re Tenenti, Cristoforo da Canal, pp.
83, 85. See Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice (Berkeley,
1967), pp. 124-25, for Cristoforo da Canal's backhanded testimony
to the tactical effectiveness of free oarsmen c. 1587 (he was mainly
concerned
with
their
higher
cost).
Ismail
Uzuncarsili,
Osmanli Devletenin Merkez ve Bahriye Teskilati (Ankara, 1948), p.
482, cites a squadron of 41 Ottoman galleys in 1556 of which
the capitana and two others were rowed by 'Azabs, salaried
volunteer light infantrymen, three were rowed by slaves, and the
remaining 36 were rowed by salaried mercenary Greek oarsmen.
[38]The Spanish galley fleet in the Mediterranean (a misnomer: we
are actually talking about a number of squadrons which were totally
independent except when banded together for a major campaign)
never seems to have consisted of more than 60 or so galleys.
[39]This point is made expressly by Luis Collado, Platica Manual de
Artilleria (Milan, 1592), fol. 8. Collado, a professional Spanish
artillerist, made no bones about his preference for German and
Venetian guns.
[40]See Olesa Muido, Vol. I, p. 138. Guilmartin, p. 208ff contains a
comparative analysis of the various types of bow structure.

[41]This point is made by a contemporary Spanish naval

commander of great experience and competence, Don Garcia de
Toledo, author of the relief of Malta in 1565, in a document of about
1568 whose title translates as"Discourse on what a galley needs to
navigate well armed, both with ciurma and other people." Coleccin
Navarrete, vol. XII, dto. 83, fol. 309ff.
[42]There is evidence that Venetian gunners preferred to engage in
a dead calm so that the lack of motion of the galley's hull would
allow them to judge the fall of their shot more closely, re. Tenenti,
Piracy, p. 79. This would have made little difference to the ordinary
gunner and implies an ability to hit, under exceptional conditions, at
ranges of as much as 700 to 1000 yards with some consistency
despite the inherent inaccuracy of smooth bore cannon firing a
spherical projectile.
[43]"Turkish," in this context, is shorthand for "Muslim." To the
Spanish, the galleys of the Ottoman central establishment and the
galleys of the North African ghazi principalities alike were
simply "Turcos."
[44]To cite a notable example, Andrea Doria the Elder, at the head
of 39 galleys, was surprised while traveling along the Italian coast in
1557 by no less than 103 Muslim galleys. Though hard pressed, his
force got off with a loss of only seven galleys.
[45]Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys, pp. 42-56.
[46]Collado, Platica Manual, fol. 50.
[47]Documentos de Lepanto, mss. 1693, dto. 4.
[48]Curiously, however, Hector Spinola in the Capitana of Genoa
the only Genoese galley listedwas present, in command of the
right. Was there a political split within the Genoese contingent with
Spinola supporting Don John and Collona and the lesser Genoese
captains backing Doria? We simply do not know. Agostin Barbarigo,
the Venetian commander of the Left, is not listed either.
[49]Reference note 12, above, for totals on the day of battle. The 9
September order, Documentos de Lepanto, mss. 1693, dto. 4, is our
primary guide for the identity and disposition of individual galleys;
dto. 14 in the same collection details the assignment of fighting
manpower to specific galleys.

[50]The order of 9 September is written in a cryptic officialese; it is

occasionally less than clear in style and format and is illegible in
spots. The identification of certain galleys is therefore uncertain. For
example, the identity of several ordinary galleys as Venetian was
established based on the fact that the names of western galleys are
given first leg. Gitana de Napoles, Gypsy of Naples; Santiago de la
Religion, Saint James of the Knights of St. John of Malta;
and Vigilancia de Sicilia, the Vigilance of Sicily) whereas in the case
of ordinary Venetian galleys, the name of the galley's captain is
given first (eg. Dominici Pisani de Venicia, Jorge Gallota de Venecia,
etc.). This practice is not observed with respect to lantern galleys,
however, and the identification of several of the Venetian galleys as
lantern galleys seems to have been either uncertain or an
afterthought.
[51]The Reserve consisted of 29 galleys in the 9 September order:
10 Venetian and 19 western, in no particular order. By the day of
battle, the Venetian proportion of the Reserve had risen from 10 out
of 29 to 16 out of 33.
[52]Guilmartin, 269ff.
[53]Guilmartin, Fig. 10, p. 199.
[54]Lesure, Lepante, pp. 129-33, quoting the account of Girolamo
Diedo, a Venetian participant in the battle.
[55]I
have
used
extracts
from
Venier's
official
report, opusculo 3000, Archivo di Stato Venetiano, the Spanish
account entitled "Relacion delo que hizo la Armada de la Liga
Christiana desde los trienta de Setiembre 1571 hasta diet de
Octobre," Documentos de Lepanto, mss. 1693, and Lesure, Lpante,
pp. 133-47, for the fight in the center and on the right.
[56]Lesure, pp. 137-39.
[57]Note, however, that tradition is not always irrational; the
retention of the highly effective composite recurved bow by the
Turksused with devastating effect on the hosts of Peter the Great
of Russia as late as the Battle of the Pruth in 1711is an excellent
case in point.
[58]Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Seapower Upon History
1660-1783 (Boston, 1890), pp. 127-29.

Lepanto: The Battle that Saved Christendom?

Prepared for the Centre d'tudes d'Histoire de la
Dfense Conference
Autour de Lpante: Guerre et Gostratgie en Mditerrane
au Tournant des XVIe et XVIIe Siecles
Paris
22-24 October 2001
1st Revision, 28 October 2001
John F. Guilmartin, Jr.
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio

That the battle of Lepanto was a major milestone in world history

there can be no doubt. Just how, why, and with what implications is
another matter. In the immediate aftermath of victory, there was no
doubt within the bosom of Christendom: the fleet of the Holy League
under the inspired leadership of Don Juan of Austria had delivered
Christendom from an Ottoman menace that threatened to overrun
Europe. But the passage of time, the diminution of the Turkish
menace, the movement of Europe's strategic center of gravity from
the Mediterrnean to the Atlantic, and the emergence of new theories
of warfare at sea eroded the perceptions of the moment. Later, the
rise of the Mahanian school of Anglo-American naval history and the
tendency to disparage the political utility of war in the wake of the
slaughter of 1914-1918 combined to reduce the perceived
importance of Lepanto. By the late 1960s when I began my
research on Lepanto, historiansmy reference is mostly to the
Anglo-Americans rather than the French and certainly not the
Spanish!saw the battle tactically as a brainless slugging match
and strategically, at best, as a missed opportunity for
Christendom.1 In the 1970s I argued that this tactical inerpretation
was utterly wrong indeed, aside from recognizing the hard-fought

nature of the battle, the exact opposite of reality. 2 Here I will argue
that the strategic verdict is incorrect as well.
I will begin with a brief overview of strategic objectives and
resources with the intention of assessing just how high the stakes
were in the autumn of 1571, both as seen at the time by the
opposing powers andto the extent that such a thing is possiblein
objective reality. Next, I will address the battle itself, considering
the probability that things might have turned out differently.
Specifically, I will assess the Muslim chances of victory and try to
envision just what that victory might have looked like. Finally, I will
address the short and long-term consequences of Lepanto, both
actual and potential.
The events surrounding Sultan Selim II's decision to commit his
empire to war with Venice over Cyprus are uncontroversial and
require no detailed recounting. Frustrated in their attempt to take
Malta in 1565, the Turks retained the initiative. Nevertheless, they
had sustained serious damage and needed several years to rebuild
and make good their losses, particularly in oarsmen and 'azabs. 3
The decision to strike at Cyprus rather than to drive westward,
attacking Spain in isolation (by Spain, I mean the Spanish Habsburg
Empire and its Italian clients, notably Genoa and the Papal States)
requires explanation. The usual hypothesis is that Selim and his
advisors regarded Cyprus, rich in land and tax revenues and close to
their logistical bases, as a particularly tempting target and reasoned
that the numbers of galleys Venice would add to the fleet arrayed
against them would be offset by the greater distance from Christian
bases. This logic was no doubt buttressed by confidence that the
inter-allied frictions that had split the Christian alliance of 1537-40
would again work to the Turks' advantage. Finally, Spain's
effectiveness on the defensive in 1565 argued against a renewed
strike at Malta, all the moreso in that the great siege's outcome
demonstrated that Spain and her allies had begun to make good the
damage to their fleet sustained at Djerba in 1560.
All of this makes perfect sense and is surely more right than
wrong, but there is another possibility to consider: might the
Ottomans have hoped that by forcing an alliance between Spain and

Venice they could precipitate a decisive fleet engagement in which

they could eliminate both enemy fleets at once, clearing the board
of opposition? I am not arguing that this was the only objective
envisioned, or one considered easily attained. I am arguing, rather,
that it might have been considered a possibility to be anticipated
and exploited, and indeed probably was. It is important to
remember in this context that galley fights, once joined, tended to
extreme outcomes unless the losing side could take refuge against a
friendly shore.4 Djerba had demonstrated on a large scale what a
host of lesser galley fights had already shown, that winners tended
to come off with very light losses while losers were nearly
obliterated.
On the face of it, the idea seems most un-Mediterranean. As I
have argued elsewhere, Mediterranean galley fleets rarely sought
battle for its own sake, and with good reason. 5 Unlike the fleets of
ships-of-the-line basic to Mahanian interpretations, galley fleets,
however victorious, could not blockade their enemies' ports and
thus bring them to heel economically. Ordinarily, the strategic utility
of galley fleets lay in the seizure or defense of fortified ports and in
the war of economic attrition waged against enemy coasts and
commerce. But the post-1565 Mediterranean was at least briefly
different, or so I believe. Consider that fleets of war galleys had
grown steadily in size since the general adoption of powerful main
centerline bow guns in the 1510s, a growth closely associated with
the expansion of the Ottoman and Spanish empires. 6 Consider, too,
that galleys and galley fleets had grown exponentially in cost from
the 1550s, particularly in the west. The result was immensely
powerful and horribly expensive galley fleets, inherently defensive
for the Spanish and inherently offensive for the Turks. Venice was a
special case in that she could minimize expenses by keeping the
bulk of her galleys laid up in time of peace, to be propelled by free
oarsmen who cost nothing until mobilized.
The operational characteristics of galleys and galley fleets during
the period of our concern were not static, but were continually
evolving. A major area of change was the progressive increase in
costs just mentioned, due partly to an increase in the numbers of
galleys in commission and partly to growth in the size of galleys and

their complements. An important consequence of the increase in

size of galley fleets, of individual galleys, and of their complements
was a diminution in strategic radius of action. Since complements
increased more rapidly than hull sizethe need for additional
oarsmen to drive the larger hulls was the driving factorthe
inevitable result was less stowage space per man for provisions, and
above all water. We can only speculate about the degree to which
the actors in our drama were aware of these changes, but in light of
their generally high levels of tactical, operational, and strategic
competence they surely understood their long term strategic
ramifications. For the Turks, it would have been logical to conclude
that their galley fleet was near the apex of its tactical power and
strategic utility.
The consequences of Khaireddin Barbarossa's victory at Prevesa
in 1538 gave clear indications of what that utility might be.
Tactically, Prevesa was anything but a crushing victory; indeed, in
terms of numbers of men and vessels lost, it was little more than a
skirmish. Strategically, it was decisive. By forcing Venice from the
Christian alliance, it gave the Turks a favorable balance of power, a
balance made more favorable still by the Turks' on-again, off-again
alliance with France. Ottoman galley fleets and squadrons routinely
cruised the western Mediterranean in the 1540s and '50s, raiding as
far west as the Balerics and effectively linking the Ottomans' North
African dependencies to Constantinople. Still, Venice remained
strong and a potential threat, if only defensively. Of equal
importance, the Spanish still possessed powerful galley squadrons
and reserves of superb professional infantry. If the Spanish could
not prevent systemic raiding wherever the Turks chose to raid,
they couldeven in the aftermath of a crippling loss of skilled
manpower at Djerbafrustrate attempts at territorial conquest
the very point of the siege of Malta. It surely did not escape the
notice of Muslim, or for that matter Christian, observers that the
strategic balance would have been more favorable still to the Turks
had either the Spanish or Venetian galley fleet been eliminated.
At this point, a few words on the resources needed to create and
sustain galley fleets are in order. In comparative evaluations of
naval forces, modern analysts and historians tend to focus on
numbers of combatant vessels, their size and their firepower,

followed by the adequacy of their logistical support. Only then do

they turn to human resources, and when they do the focus is
generally on the abilities of senior commanders. Occasionally,
qualitative differences in the abilities of ordinary seamen, and of the
way in which they were organized and led are invoked. 7 This
orientation is both logical and justified in dealing with fleets of gunarmed sailing warships and has served naval historians well in
dealing with naval wars and campaigns from the Invincible Armada
of 1588 on. For sixteenth century Mediterranean galley fleets it
fails.
The reason is straightforward, though seldom commented upon:
in galley warfare, hulls were cheap and men dear. The critical node
was the dependence of war galleys and galley fleets on a limited
supply of skilled technicians. Call them "experts" or use the Spanish
term oficiales; they were the pilots, rowing masters, masters-atarms, gunners, boatswains and their mates, coopers, caulkers,
carpenters, surgeons, and skilled seamen needed to make a war
galley work. In the case of Venice, in 1570 still heavily dependent
on triremes alla senzile which could only be rowed by skilled free
oarsmen, oarsmen could be added to the list. With that important
exception, the other manpower requirements of galley warfare were
more easily satisfied given the necessary money and political will.
Oarsmen could be conscripted, recruited or taken as slaves; men-atarms and soldiers could be embarked in time of need; but without
skilled experts their services would be of little avail.
Why was this and what is our evidence? The answer to the first
part of this question revolves around the fact that the early modern
Mediterranean War galley was an extreme design, intended to bring
a large centerline gun, plus substantially smaller flanking pieces and
a heavy complement of fighting men, into combat in the relatively
benign seas and sailing conditions of the Mediterranean spring and
summer. It was supremely well designed for this purpose, but at the
expense of seaworthiness and ease of operation. Virtually
everything involved in operating a Mediterranean war galley was
manpower intensive, andparticularly when conditions were less
than optimumheavily dependent on skilled manpower. A
comparison with cannon-armed sailing warships is instructive. The
latter were designed first and foremost for seaworthiness and then,

though not necessarily in this order, for carrying capacity, speed

and maneuverability under sail, and effectivenss as a gun platform.
No one performance characteristic was dominant and gains in any
one necessarily entailed sacrifices in the others. By contrast, the
war galley was designed to maximize dash speed under oars
essential to survival in combatwhile carrying the requisite load of
offensive ordnance and fighting manpower. Everything else came in
the margins: seaworthiness was problematic except under the most
benign conditions; carrying capacity, both in absolute terms and
relative to the number of men aboard, was minimal; speed and
maneuverability under sail were constrained by the long, narrow hull
needed for maximium speed under oars. The operation of any
vehicle built to an extreme design, be it a classical Greek trireme or
a modern fighter aircraft, is demanding of operator skill, and that is
only one side of the coin. The other is that such designs are
inherently unforgiving of operator error when pressed close to their
limits, and almost by definition that occurs more frequently with
extreme designs.
The key point is that experts were in limited supply. In contrast
to the Atlantic, where rich fisheries bred a seemingly endless supply
of skilled mariners who could be, and were, put to work aboard
warships in time of need, the Mediterranean, with its greater salinity
and lack of offshore banks had a much lower density of edible
marine life and no long range fisheries at all, inedible sponges being
the only exception.8 The question is one of scale.
Fernand Braudel estimated that at the time of Lepanto a total of
some 500-600 galleys was operating in the Mediterranean. 9
Braudel's estimateand I cannot imagine a better sourceis, at
least to me, thoroughly credible. It carries with it two implications:
First, the scale of Mediterranean warfare at sea in the age of the
galley was resource-limited in a way that the scale of Atlantic
warfare in the age of the galleon and ship-of-the-line was not.
Whatever their fiscal resources and access to raw manpowerand
here I go beyond Braudelthe Mediterranean powers could put only
so many galleys in commission. The ultimate limiting factor was not
timber, money, or raw manpower, though all of those were
important; rather, it was experts. Second, the level of resources

committed at Lepanto was prodigious. Comparing Braudel's

estimate with the number of galleys that engaged at Lepantosome
206 ordinary Christian galleys on line before battle was joined plus
as many as seventeen that arrived later against 230 Muslim
ordinary galleysmakes the point emphatically. Although the
sources vary by a few galleys one way or the other, particularly on
the Christian side, they are in general agreement. 10 Applying the
high and low figures to Braudel's estimate indicates that somewhere
between 70% and 90% of all Mediterranean war galleys in existance
met at Lepantoand the totals do not include the big North African
galiots that were nearly as large as a galley.11
Clearly, then, for both sides the stakes for 1571 were high
indeed, as they were in fact for the war as a whole, for nearly the
same number of galleys were mobilized in 1570 as in 1571.
This brings us to the question of the Turks' strategy. If, in fact,
their primary goal was territorial conquest, history should have
suggested to them that all they needed to do was to frustrate
attempts to relieve Famagustaby the autumn of 1570 the only
remaining Venetian position on Cyprusand avoid a major
confrontation with the Christian fleet. Denied the opportunity to
inflict a sharp defeat on the Turks in order to secure a more
favorable peace, the Venetians would surely, as in 1539, lose
patience with their allies. Under severe economic pressure with
their access to the spice trade blocked, Venice would then conclude
a separate peace. Recall that Christian losses at Prevesa were
minor; what split the alliance was Venetian realization that there
was no further hope of bringing Barbarossa to battle.
That, however, is not what the Turks did. They sent their fleet
west in full force the following spring. Moreover, after touching
briefly at Cyprus to drop off reinforcements for the siege of
Famagusta, Mezzenzade Ali Pasha received unequivocal orders
from Sultan Selim II to engage the Christian fleet in battle. 12 The
logical supposition is that Selim II's objectives encompassed more
than Cyprus alone.

The next question is twofold. Did the Turks have a reasonable

chance of defeating the fleet of the Holy League at Lepanto and
what would that victory have looked like? Analysis of the battle
suggests that the answer to the former question is yes. It was a
close-run thing, and little imagination is required to identify turning
points that might have turned the other way. What if Barbarigo, the
heroic Venetian commander of the Christian Left, had been less
effective in holding his inshore flankwhich he barely did, and at
the cost of his lifeand pivoting his line to pin the Turkish Right
against the shore? What if lvaro de Bazn had overreacted to
Barbarigo's predicament, sending to his aid the galleys that he
would later need to counter Uluj Ali's attack on the Christian
Center? What if the Christian Left and Center had not held their
formations with rock-like steadiness? In those cases where the
Chistian line abreast formation faltered or was broken, the more
agile Muslim galleys and galiots wrought havoc. As it turned out,
they did so on a relatively small scale: on the extreme Christian Left
at the beginning of the fight and in the seam between the Center
and Right at the end. In both cases the Christians contained the
chaos, but only by remarkable competence and fortitude and, in the
second case, by Bazn's foresight as well.
The alternative scenarios listed above are dependent only upon
human decisions made during the course of the battle. Others,
dependent on factors external to or predating the battle, are not
hard to imagine. The six Venetian galleasses made a major
contribution to Christian victory and their presence in the line of
battle was an improbable thing. Galleasses and galleys performed
very differently as sailing vessels and under oars and cooperation
between the two was extraordinarily difficult to achieve; indeed,
Lepanto is virtually the only significant example of close and
successful tactical cooperation between galleasses and galleys. 13 If,
in the days before the battle, sea and wind conditions had differed
appreciably from those that prevailed it is most unlikely that four of
the six galleasses would have been at their assigned places before
the opposing fleets met and the other two close enough to weigh in
before battle's end. Without the galleasses and their heavy
ordnance, particularly on the inshore flank but in the center as well,
Christian victory would have been highly problematical. Don Juan's

decision to spilt the various national contingents was a major

contributor to victory, as was his weighting of the Left with Venetian
galleys under a Venetian commander.
These bold and
unprecedented decisions played a major role Christian victory.
In sum, Christian victory depended not only upon extraordinary
competence but on a healthy measure of luck as well and the
outcome was anything but a sure thing, quite the contrary in fact. I
could list a host of other, less probably, alternative scenarios that
would have worked to the Turks' advantage, but those laid out
above are sufficient for the purpose at hand. The question, then, is
What would a Muslim victory have looked like?
War is an uncertain business. Anything can happen and often
does, but the preponderance of the evidence suggests that a Muslim
victory would almost certainly have been just as crushing as that
which the Christians actually won. If anything, it would likely have
been worse, for the comparatively ponderous Western galleys would
have found it very difficult to escape a lost battle, as in fact some
thirty galleys under Uluj Ali did.
Muslim losses at Lepanto were enormous, in vessels, guns and
men. But, as I have argued elsewhere, the most crippling loss was
in experts.14 We know that these men were an essential and
virtually irreplacable component of Mediterranean power at sea and
were recognized as such.15 We know this for a fact, for the
victorious allies took the extraordinary measure of identifying them
and having them killed, even in the aftermath of victory. 16 And in
fact, although the Turks were able to put an enormous number of
galleys to sea in the following years, they assiduously avoided
combat with the Christian fleetand with good reason, for the lack
of experts rendered their galleys uncertain tactical instruments.
And the damage was permanent. To be sure, Uluj Ali wrought
prodigies as Kapudan Pasha, facing off the allied fleet in 1572 and
retaking Tunis from the Spanish in 1574. But the recapture of Tunis
was Ottoman seapower's last gasp; the Constantinople-based galley
fleet fell into decay in the aftermath of Uluj Ali's triumphant return
and never regenerated.

What might such damage have meant for the Christians? It is

impossible to paint a rosy scenario. Recall that Don Juanwith at
least the implicit support of his superiors and no objections of note
from his subordinateshad committed everything to a single throw
of the dice. On the day of battle, the total Venetian reserves
comprised fourteen ordinary galleys and two galeasses in the upper
Adriatic. Had Venice lost almost the almost all of her experts at
Lepanto, little would have stood between Venice and the victorious
Turks the following year. Venice was well fortified, to be sure, and
would no doubt resisted capture, but what of her commercial and
political future without a viable galley fleet? The Turks benefited
from Venetian trade, and would no doubt have allowed its
continuance on their terms, perhaps with Venice reduced to
effective dependency in the manner of Ragusa.
And with Venice neutralized, what might the Turks then have
done? They would have waited a year or two to build up their
strength, but time was on their side. It took more than five years to
regenerate a corps of experts as the Spanish had learned after
Djerba, and had Lepanto gone the other way the loss of Christian
experts would have made the loss at Djerba seem insignificant.
Crete would have been an obvious target, a conquest that would
have cut even more deeply into Venetian strength. A renewed
attempt at Malta would likely have been in the cards as well, a new
siege mounted with far less concern for an aggressive Spanish relief
than in 1565. And with Malta in Turkish hands, the western
Mediterranean would have been subjected to a contagion of Muslim
raiders. The Balerics would have been at risk and the prospect of
rendering meaningful aid to the Spanish Moriscos entirely feasible.
In fact, of course, no such things occurred. Christian galleys
cruised the Levant with impunity in the years that followed, and on
into the 1640s, mirroring the Muslim advantage that accrued after
Prevesa. Spain's attention turned north, a shift in strategic priorities
made possible by the neutralization of the Turkish menace at
Lepanto, and Venice remained commercially and militarily viable for
another two centuries.

Did Lepanto save Christendom? It depends, of course, on what

you mean by "save!" Venice would probably have preserved her
independence, albeit on the Sultan's terms, and a reversal of the
Spanish reconquista seems most unlikely. Clearly, howeverand I
leave the details to your imaginationTurkish victory at Lepanto
would have been a catastrophe of the first magnitude for
Christendom and Europe would have followed a historical trajectory
strikingly different from that which obtained.
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FOOTNOTES
1

Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the

Sixteenth Century (Princeton, New Jersey: umpublished Princeton
University dissertation, 1971).
2

Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean

Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1974).
3

I am assuming that losses in timariot sipahis and Janissaries,

although serious, could have been made good by the promotion of
soldiers from lower positions in the Ottoman military hierarchy to fill
the vacancies.
4

Prevesa was a special case in that the numerically superior

Christians were dispersed, mostly out of reach of Barbarossa's
galleys. One might argue, and I would, that Prevesa was not a
battle at all, but a partial pursuit of a withdrawing force.
5

See my arguments in Gunpowder and Galleys (Cambridge, 1974),

Chapter 1, "The Mahanians' Fallacy." Historians who have argued
that the commanders of galley fleets should have sought decisive
battle have generally done so based on the faulty premise that
decisive galley fleet victories can produce command of the sea in
the classic Mahanian sense.
6

For the correlation between the growth of the Ottoman and

Spanish empires and the ascendency of the main centerline bow
gun armed galley see Jan Glete, Warfare at Sea, 1500-1650:
Maritime Conflicts and the Transformation of Europe (London and
New York: Routledge, 2000).
7

The English advantage over the Spanish in this respect has

frequently been commented upon, particularly in reference to the
Armada of 1588. The Spanish mariner occupied a much lower place
in the social hierarchy than his English opposite, and was
commanded by officers who were soldiers first and sailors second, if
at all.

The point is Fernand Braudel's, from The Mediterranean and the

Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols., Sin Reynolds, tr.
(New York: Harper and Row, 1973).
9

Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World , Vol. II,

841.
10

Rosell Cayetano, Historia del Combate Naval de Lepanto (Madrid,

1853), cited in Francisco Felipe Olesa Muido, La Organizacin Naval
de los Estados Mediterraneos y en Particular de Espaa Durante los
Siglos XVI y XVII(Madrid: Editorial Naval, 1968), Vol. I, 371; Michel
Lesure, Lpante: la crise de l'empire ottoman (Paris: Julliard, 1972),
115. Rosell Cayetano has only 216 of the 230 Muslim galleys and
64 of 70 galiots engaged. My best estimate is in Gslleons and
Galleys (London: Cassell & Company, in press), Table, p. 141.
11

At issue is how Braudel defined galley in making his estimate. I

have assumed that he meant an ordinary galley or larger, that is a
galley with at least 18 banks of oars and six oarsmen to the bank.
In fact, at the time of Lepanto, with the exception of the Venetians,
the majority of whose galleys were triremes alla sensile with twentyfour banks of oars and six oarsmen to the bank, galleys generally
had twenty-four banks or more, rowed a scaloccio, with four men to
an oar and eight to a bank.
12

Halil Inalcik, "Lepanto in the Ottoman Documents," Gino Bezoni,

ed., Il Mediterraneo Nella Seconda Meta del '500 Alla Luce di
Lepanto (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1974), Civilta Veneziana
Studi 30, 186-87.
13

The only others of which I am aware involve the standoffs of 1572

in which the Christians managed to get the galleasses on line, along
with armed sailing vessels, and in which the Turks declined to
engage. This suggests that the galleasseass success at Lepanto
was a product of tactical surprise and that had the Turks understood
their capabilities they might have declined battle.
14

The precise numbers of experts killed and captured is a matter of

speculation. The Christians captured in excess of 3,486 Turks; the
number is that mentioned in communiques detailing the distribution
of booty among the victors and thus surely understates the total,
Lesure, Lepante, 145. Of these, the vast majority would have been
experts, timariots, janissaries and naval archers, the latter
functionally falling in the same category as experts since their skills
required a lifetime of experience. The only other sizeable category
of Turks subject to capture was conscript oarsmen, and these would
surely have been enslaved and pressed into service on the spot,
unrecorded; as simple villagers, they had no ramsom value.
15

The benchmark for comparison is the Spanish loss of oficiales

expertsat Djerba where the Spanish and their allies lost 28-30

galleys and 600 oficiales and 2,400 sailor-arquebusiers. This woks

out to an average of some 20 experts and 80 sailor-arquebusiers per
galley; Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys, 123-34. If we assume
that the proportion of experts to others among the 3,486 Turkish
captives was the same as that which prevailed for the Spanish at
Djerba and consider that the Christians captured 117 galleys and 17
galiots at Lepanto, we get an average of only five to six experts per
galley captured. But in light of the ferocity of the battle, the ratio of
killed to captured must have been high, surely at least thee or four
to one, so the total loss would have been much higher. Note, too,
that an additonal eighty to ninety Turkish galleys were sunk or
destroyed, their experts presumably with them. If Djerba hurt
Spain, Lepanto crippled the Turks.
16

Lesure, Lepante, 151-52, for the Venetians; M. Brunetti and E.

Vitale, eds., Corrispondenza da Madrid dell'ambascitore Leonardo
Don, 2 vols. (Rome and Venice, 1963), Vol. I, 409-11, for the
Spanish and for Venetian and Spanish communication on the
subject.
LTC John "Joe" F. Guilmartin was a potential VHPA member who died
after his tour in Vietnam on 03/10/2016 at the age of 75.5
Columbus, OH
Date of Birth 09/18/1940
Served in the U.S. Air Force
Served in Vietnam with 38 ARRS DET 5 in 67-68, 40 ARRS in 75
This information was provided by Jim Burns, Sammie Williams
More detail on this person: John F. "Joe" Guilmartin, PhD, passed
away suddenly at Riverside Hospital, Columbus, OH, on March 10,
2016, surrounded by his Family. The son of John Francis Guilmartin,
Sr., and Katherine Douglas Guilmartin, he was born on September
18th, 1940.
He grew up in San Antonio, Texas, where he attended Texas Military
Institute, graduating in 1957.
The following year he was appointed to the US Air Force Academy
by then Senator Lyndon Johnson, earning his undergraduate degree
in Aerospace Engineering and graduating in the Class of 1962, "The
Red Tag Bastards."
He graduated from US Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training in 1963
and from the Air Force Helicopter School in 1964. The bulk of his
operational career, he served as a helicopter pilot with the Air
Rescue Service, including two Southeast Asia tours based in
Thailand. During the first, in 1965-66, he logged some 130 combat
missions over Laos and North Vietnam as an HH-3E "Jolly Green"
helicopter pilot charged with rescuing American aviators shot down
in enemy territory. During his second tour, in 1975, he flew HH-53C
"Super Jolly Greens" including participation in Operation Frequent

Wind, the 29-30 April Saigon Evacuation, flying from the attack
carrier USS Midway. His crew and wingmen took out some 500
evacuees in twelve sorties and fired the last American shots of the
Vietnam War, suppressing enemy anti-aircraft fire on their final runin. Between Southeast Asia tours, he attended Princeton University
under Air Force sponsorship, earning his MA and PhD in History in
1968 and 1971 respectively, before serving on the History Faculty of
the US Air Force Academy during 1970-74. The balance of his Air
Force career was in Air Rescue Service Flying and Staff assignments,
followed by a tour at Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, where
he was Editor of the Air University Review, the professional journal
of the US Air Force. He retired from active duty in 1983 as a Lt.
Colonel and senior pilot. His decorations include the Legion of Merit,
two Silver Stars and the Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters.
Following retirement, he served on the faculties of the Naval War
College, Newport, Rhode Island, and Rice University, Houston, Texas,
where he also served as Director of The Space Shuttle History
Project working under a Rice University contract with the Lyndon B.
Johnson Space Center. He joined the Ohio State University History
Department in 1987 where he remained until his death. While at
Ohio State, he supervised 26 doctoral students through to
completion of the PhD. He published widely on military history,
medieval and early modern naval history, airpower history and the
history of the Vietnam War. During these years, he held the Charles
Lindberg Chair at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.,
was a guest lecturer and Visiting Professor at West Point, and took
part in and presented papers and lectures with the International
Commission of Military Historians in locations all over the world for
many years. Dr. Guilmartin recently received the prestigious
Goodpaster Prize, awarded by the American Veteran's Institute and
The Bradley Foundation, as "Outstanding Soldier-Scholar," amongst
many other awards and honors. Additionally, the Joe Guilmartin
Scholarship for World War II Study Abroad was graciously funded in
his name for OSU students by admirers of his teachings. He is
survived by his beloved wife, Hannelore; by daughters, Lore
Guilmartin and Eugenia Guilmartin, Colonel US Army; and by stepdaughter, Karla Vick and step-son Kurt Vick; and grandchildren,
Haley and Ranon Varney.

https://history.osu.edu/news/professor-joe-guilmartins-obituary