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Cassell History of Warfare
Galleons and Galleys
The turn of the 16th century saw the start of a revolution in sea warfare--one long in the making but, once begun, remarkably swift. The driving force: gunpowder. The principal agents: galleys (long, low boats propelled principally by oars) and galleons (heavy, square rigged sailing ships). Suddenly, Europe, formerly on a technological par with India and China, dominated the waters. They crossed the Atlantic, reached America, and became world powers. A beautifully written account of the age conveys exactly how a country like Portugal could establish outposts from South America to the Pacific, how Christian fleets wrested control of the Mediterranean from the Ottoman Empire, and why the "invincible" Spanish armada met with disaster in its attempt to invade England. A vivid page-turner.
- GenresHistoryMilitary History
224 pages, Hardcover
First published March 28, 2002
32 people want to read
About the author
John F. Guilmartin Jr.
14 books1 followerA specialist in the history of early modern Europe, John Francis Guilmartin was professor of history at the Ohio State University, where he taught from 1987 until his death. He earned his BS degree in aerospace engineering at the United States Air Force Academy and an MA (1969) and PhD (1971) in history at Princeton University. An officer in the United States Air Force, Guilmartin served on the faculty of the History Department at the Air Force Academy from 1970-74 and was later the editor of the Air University Review at the Air University in Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. After his retirement from the Air Force, he served on the faculties of the Naval War College and at Rice University where he also directed the space shuttle history project at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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March 20, 2026
This was a poor choice of a title for this book. While it accurately describes John Guilmartin’s focus on the transition in naval warfare between medieval galleys and the seafaring galleons during the early modern era, it is far too easily confused with his earlier work Gunpowder and Galleys, which describes the transformation of maritime combat in the 16th century Mediterranean. This is unfortunate, for this book is not a warmed-over rehash of his previous study, but an extremely informative overview of warship designs and naval battles from the late Middle Ages to the age of the ship-of-the-line.
The single most important factor driving this change, as Guilmartin explains, was the introduction of gunpowder to naval warfare. Until then, naval battles were fought largely as an extension of land warfare, with crews aboard floating platforms shooting arrows at one another as they closed to engage in melee combat. Sinking the ships aboard which they fought required either fire or ramming, both of which were difficult to employ in battle. Though the knowledge of gunpowder reached Europe by the early 13th century, it took another three centuries for shipwrights and gun-founders to figure out how to combine heavy gunpowder ordnance with waterborne transport, which posed challenges very different from the employment of such weapons on land.
What they eventually produced was the cannon-armed Mediterranean war galley. Guilmartin spends considerable space explaining the shipbuilding designs of the era and the thinking behind various design choices. Before the advent of heavy gunpowder ordnance in naval warfare, narrow oared warships enjoyed important advantages: faster and more maneuverable, they could bring men into action more swiftly than the sailing vessels of the era, which often struggled against adverse winds. This relationship changed with the advent of hull-smashing heavy gunpowder ordnance aboard ships in the early 16th century. With the development of a recoil system, center-line bow guns quickly became standard aboard war galleys, redefining naval warfare in the Mediterranean.
Yet the gun-armed galleys proved a dead end in naval warfare. This was due to the increase in what Guilmartin terms the “manning density” of the new warships, which now required disproportionately larger crews of oarsmen in order to maintain the speed of these heavier vessels. These crews, in turn, increased demands on water and rations, which restricted their radius from shore. While the famous battle of Lepanto in 1571 saw hundreds of galleys employed in what Guilmartin regards as one of the decisive naval clashes in history, this proved the last hurrah for these warships, as the resources required to mount such a fleet were so enormous as to be unsustainable. The economics of 16th century warfare demanded a different approach.
That approach came in the form of the galleon – ships dependent predominantly if not exclusively on wind power for propulsion. While this limited their maneuverability, this was a small price to pay for their improved capabilities. Their combination of seaworthiness and effectiveness as a gun platform offered heavier firepower on vessels capable of transoceanic voyages. These ships soon became the building blocks for the global maritime empires European nations were building in the 15th and 16th centuries. Galleons proved flexible enough to be employed in a considerable variety of roles, from protecting convoys of ships carrying trading goods to raiding enemies at sea – and, most famously, defending home waters against invasion by their foes.
The galleon’s tenure was short, as the designs and tactics they inspired soon led to their evolution into the ship-of-the-line, which would dominate naval warfare for the next two centuries. Guilmartin’s book provides a good explanation of this transition, one aided by a generous number of diagrams and illustrations. Interwoven into his analysis is the story of European nations vying for global hegemony, which proved an important driver of naval warfare and which was often determined by naval operations. When combined with effective descriptions of the major naval battles of the period, it serves as a valuable book for an underappreciated yet important era in the history of naval warfare.
The single most important factor driving this change, as Guilmartin explains, was the introduction of gunpowder to naval warfare. Until then, naval battles were fought largely as an extension of land warfare, with crews aboard floating platforms shooting arrows at one another as they closed to engage in melee combat. Sinking the ships aboard which they fought required either fire or ramming, both of which were difficult to employ in battle. Though the knowledge of gunpowder reached Europe by the early 13th century, it took another three centuries for shipwrights and gun-founders to figure out how to combine heavy gunpowder ordnance with waterborne transport, which posed challenges very different from the employment of such weapons on land.
What they eventually produced was the cannon-armed Mediterranean war galley. Guilmartin spends considerable space explaining the shipbuilding designs of the era and the thinking behind various design choices. Before the advent of heavy gunpowder ordnance in naval warfare, narrow oared warships enjoyed important advantages: faster and more maneuverable, they could bring men into action more swiftly than the sailing vessels of the era, which often struggled against adverse winds. This relationship changed with the advent of hull-smashing heavy gunpowder ordnance aboard ships in the early 16th century. With the development of a recoil system, center-line bow guns quickly became standard aboard war galleys, redefining naval warfare in the Mediterranean.
Yet the gun-armed galleys proved a dead end in naval warfare. This was due to the increase in what Guilmartin terms the “manning density” of the new warships, which now required disproportionately larger crews of oarsmen in order to maintain the speed of these heavier vessels. These crews, in turn, increased demands on water and rations, which restricted their radius from shore. While the famous battle of Lepanto in 1571 saw hundreds of galleys employed in what Guilmartin regards as one of the decisive naval clashes in history, this proved the last hurrah for these warships, as the resources required to mount such a fleet were so enormous as to be unsustainable. The economics of 16th century warfare demanded a different approach.
That approach came in the form of the galleon – ships dependent predominantly if not exclusively on wind power for propulsion. While this limited their maneuverability, this was a small price to pay for their improved capabilities. Their combination of seaworthiness and effectiveness as a gun platform offered heavier firepower on vessels capable of transoceanic voyages. These ships soon became the building blocks for the global maritime empires European nations were building in the 15th and 16th centuries. Galleons proved flexible enough to be employed in a considerable variety of roles, from protecting convoys of ships carrying trading goods to raiding enemies at sea – and, most famously, defending home waters against invasion by their foes.
The galleon’s tenure was short, as the designs and tactics they inspired soon led to their evolution into the ship-of-the-line, which would dominate naval warfare for the next two centuries. Guilmartin’s book provides a good explanation of this transition, one aided by a generous number of diagrams and illustrations. Interwoven into his analysis is the story of European nations vying for global hegemony, which proved an important driver of naval warfare and which was often determined by naval operations. When combined with effective descriptions of the major naval battles of the period, it serves as a valuable book for an underappreciated yet important era in the history of naval warfare.
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