Medieval Naval Warfare 1000-1500

Susan Rose

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781134553105
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

How were medieval navies organised, and how did powerful rulers use them? Medieval Naval Warfare, 1000-1500 provides a wealth of information about the strategy and tactics of these early fleets and the extent to which the possibilities of sea power were understood and exploited. This fascinating account brings vividly to life the dangers and diffic

CHAPTER ONE

Dockyards and administration: the logistics of medieval fleets

Wooden ships are graceful, beautiful objects. The first sight of the Viking ships preserved in the Oslo museum is breathtaking. The little fifteenth century ex-voto model from Portugal, now in the Prins Hendrik museum in Rotterdam, may be slightly battered but even so the form of the hull is full and satisfying. Wooden ships, however, are also complex to build, requiring many skilled craftsmen, and are highly perishable especially when afloat. No fleet, no vessel could stay long in a seaworthy condition in our period without the support of some form of repair slip or dock. To build ships required not only access to the necessary raw materials, suitable timber, hemp for cordage and sails, iron for nails and other fittings, but also a pool of workmen with experience in the craft of the shipwright. Beyond this there was also a need for ancillary supplies and tradesmen. Galleys sometimes with crews of well over 100 men needed large quantities of food and drink especially biscotti, a form of hard baked bread which supplied many of the calories needed by men expected to row for long periods. Any ship, but especially one preparing for war at sea, needed arms for its protection and for attack. How did medieval states deal with these problems? Did rulers largely depend on the resources established by the maritime trading community or did something approaching the modern concept of a naval dockyard emerge by the end of our period?

The Mediterranean

Since the Mediterranean had known extensive seaborne commerce and naval warfare on a fairly large scale both in ancient times and in the period before AD 1000, it is not surprising that the idea of a centrally provided facility for the building and maintenance of ships mainly intended for war, was well accepted during our period. The derivation of the term ‘arsenal’, (usually in this region meaning shipyard rather than munitions or arms store) from the Arabic dar al-sina’a meaning ‘house of work’ is widely accepted. It is also often suggested that the earliest dockyards originated in the areas conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century. More probably the Byzantine facilities at Clysma and Alexandria were taken over by their Arab conquerors but the term they used spread throughout the area because of the power of their navy at this period. Certainly in papyrus letters from this date and into the ninth century there are many references to some sort of docking facilities available to ships in many ports on the Egyptian and Syrian coasts. Damietta was fortified and the anchorages at Acre and Tyre were protected by chains.¹

There were also, of course, dockyards or ship building and repair facilities in the later Byzantine Empire particularly in the immediate vicinity of Constantinople itself. Very little is known about their organisation or their working methods. Chroniclers are not usually interested in this kind of administrative information and more mundane institutional sources have not survived. By the late eleventh century the Byzantine authorities seem to have relied largely on the Venetians to provide the naval element in their forces. Lewis and Runyan attribute much of the later failure of the Greeks to maintain their hold on the Empire in the face of the expanding power of the Latin West to their reliance on Italian mercenary ships and crews.² We should, however, be careful of overstating the extent of the decline of Greek seafaring skills. Michael Paleologus rebuilt and fortified the dockyard at Kondoskalion after the restoration of the Greek Empire. Even if the navy of the Empire was of little strategic importance compared with its land forces in the period before the fall of Constantinople, the shipyards and the shipwrights in the neighbourhood of the city were subsequently of great value to the victorious Ottomans. It is these yards and these skilled workmen who are usually credited with providing the expertise which allowed the emergence of the Sultan as a major player in war at sea by the 1470s. Bayazid I had, however, begun the building of dockyard facilities for the Ottoman fleet at Gallipoli in 1390, which by 1397 could provide a safe anchorage for about 60 ships with adjoining storehouses. After the fall of Constantinople, Mahomet II probably took over the former Genoese galley repair yard on the Golden Horn which was developed in the sixteenth century into the major Ottoman naval base.³ The only important shipbuilding facility established by a Muslim ruler in the period of the Crusades is that built in the early thirteenth century by Ala al-Din Kayqubad in Alanya on the southwest coast of Anatolia. This seems to have had facilities for at least five galleys with ship-sheds and a fortified entrance.⁴

We are on much firmer ground if we consider the way in which the Italian city states, particularly Venice, dealt with these problems. In the early fourteenth century Dante had used a vivid picture of shipwrights working in the Arsenale of Venice, as the official base of the Venetian State fleet was known, as a simile for the crowded lower depths of Hell.⁵ By the seventeenth century it was one of the best known and most admired industrial enterprises in Europe exciting the wonder of visitors and the envy of rulers, described as ‘the most worthy [of] notice of all that is in Venice,’ by an English observer in 1620.⁶ Its precise origins are obscure; a date as early as 1104 has been rejected by Concina.⁷ Martino da Canal, in his chronicle written between 1262–75, links the first intervention by the Venetian state in shipbuilding with the contract concluded by the republic with would-be crusaders in 1204. Concina found mention of an ‘arsana’ at Venice in 1206 but it is clear that for much of the thirteenth century the building of all types of ships took place in many small yards all over the city. The building of galleys in particular was not confined to a state-run yard. By the end of the century, however, when Venice was engaged in a bitter naval war with Genoa, the need to build and equip large numbers of vessels suitable for use in war was urgent. There were also difficulties in ensuring adequate supplies of timber of the right type and quality, hemp for cordage and sailcloth. In 1302 the Arsenale was placed on a much firmer footing by the Doge and Council with a monopoly of the building of galleys. It was closely associated with the neighbouring Tana, a ropewalk dedicated to supplying the needs of the galleys built in the Arsenale. A ‘house of canvas’ a sail loft where canvas was also made followed between 1304–7. At this date it was not, of course, the complex organisation that so impressed its later visitors but it had a dedicated skilled workforce the Arsenalotti, who lived in the area immediately surrounding the Arsenale itself and thus formed a distinct elite group among the artisans of Venice. In the early fourteenth century c.1325, the original basin of the Darsena Arsenale Vecchio was linked to the much more extensive, newly built Darsena Arsenale Nuovo. This could accommodate a large number of galleys either being built or refitted. It was planned that at least 25 should be kept ready to put to sea. In the immediate aftermath of the loss of Negroponte in 1470, when the Venetians were very alarmed by the number of ships that the Turks could put to sea, the Arsenale was again enlarged. The Darsena Nuovissima was built with a full range of covered berths and auxiliary buildings.⁸ These included armouries, foundries and powder mills for explosives. The whole complex was surrounded by walls while the entrance from the Bacino di San Marco along the Rio dell Arsenale, was guarded and adorned by two towers bearing the Lion of St Mark built in 1460 in the latest Renaissance style.⁹ The Tana was outside the walls, as were the Forni Pubblici where the essential biscotti were baked, but the whole quarter of the Arsenalotti was almost, by the end of the fifteenth century, a city of its own. On the plan of Venice engraved by Jacopo Barbari in 1500, the Arsenale is a prominent and unmistakable feature.

As well as controlling the building of galleys, whether intended for war or for trade, as a state monopoly, the Serenissima as the Venetian republic was known, was also aware of the need to ensure constant supplies of the raw materials needed in the shipyards. Timber had always come for both the communal and private boatyards from the so-called ‘imperial’ (communal) forests in Istria and Dalmatia. In 1464 the Senate set up the Provveditori sopra le legne e boschi whose duty was to ensure the supply of timber, especially oak, for the Arsenale. Certain forests were reserved for its use especially near Trevigno. Later on in the sixteenth century this was further developed with the specialist cultivation of trees to produce knees, the shaped curved timbers needed for the frames to support deck timbers. In the same way, at the end of the fifteenth century, the government of Venice intervened to control the supply of hemp for the Tana. This had largely been grown around Bologna but in 1476 Michele di Budrio was lured from Bologna to teach the inhabitants of Montagnana on the Venetian terra firma the best way to grow the crop. The bulk of this, once the cultivation was established, was then destined for the workshops of the Tana.¹⁰

Apart from the extensive facilities in Venice itself the republic also established repair yards, supply depots and even shipbuilding yards in its colonies in the Adriatic and eastern Mediterranean. All were generally known as ‘arsenale’ even if on a much smaller scale. The most important was that at Candia which was capable of building galleys from scratch and which had increasing importance in the fifteenth century in the face of the growing threat of Turkish seapower. The others including those at Corfu, Zante, Zara and Retimo held supplies and could perform repairs but little is known of the detail of their organisation. In the same way there are references to facilities known by some variant of ‘arsenal’, (arsene, drassanes, tarsianatus, tersana) in many other Mediterranean ports. In some the area formerly occupied by the arsenal is known and there are occasionally some surviving remains of the buildings. Accounts relating to the building of galleys and other ships, usually for the ruler concerned, can also be found. It is, however, very hard to get any clear picture of the operation of these shipyards over a period of time or the nature of their workforce. It is probably the case that, given the perishable nature of wooden ships, most ports of any size had facilities of some sort for the repair and even the building of ships. War fleets often benefited from these facilities or rulers established state dockyards in much the same part of the port. There were certainly yards of this kind in Sicily, at Palermo and Messina. That at Messina which may have had as many as ten galley sheds, was used by Charles of Anjou in the later thirteenth century when he pursued an active policy of galley building both here and at Marseille.¹¹ In the western Mediterranean both Pisa and Genoa, great rivals for the domination of the trade routes of the area, also had shipyards described as arsenals. In Pisa some sort of communal facility seems to have existed. The earliest mention of a ‘tersana’ dates from 1200 with officials from the Opera della Tersana in charge of the yard and the building of galleys. Later in the same century a wall was built around the yard with a tower and a chapel, but by 1325 when Pisa had not only been decisively defeated by the Genoese at the battle of Meloria (1284) but had also lost its position in Sardinia, their naval power (and the arsenal) was in decline. The survival of some fragments of the wall is probably due to the use made of Pisan naval expertise by the Florentines in the fifteenth century.¹² The galley sheds drawn in 1685 by Edward Dummer, an English visitor to the newly-renamed Grand Duchy of Tuscany, give some idea of the extent of these later facilities.¹³

More is known about the situation in Genoa. As Lane has pointed out, however, the attitudes of the two most important maritime states, Venice and Genoa, to the operation of galleys were fundamentally different. In Genoa the galleys were owned ‘by the managers of their mercantile voyages’ and hired by the government when needed for naval expeditions, while in Venice the galleys were owned by the state and ‘rented for mercantile uses when they were not needed for war’.¹⁴ The same differences seem to have applied to the operation of a...