PRISONERS OF WAR.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 274, 11 May 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

PRISONERS OF WAR.

THE LIVING DEATH OF THE OLD=TIME GALLEY h_ u _ , SLAVE.

rpHE (Moitc(rranean galley of olden ■*• time was a long and very narrow ship of tho true racing build, undecked save at bow and ."tern, where two poops towered up, and single-masted; for t relied much less on its sails than on its fifty-two great oars. To make the galley travel still more qtiVkly, the bows were greased, and on oritx-al occasions tho soldiers were forbidden to walk about lest they should disturb the trim of the bessel, and thereby lessen its speed. It was the torpedo-catcher of those times, the fastest craft afloat, and unsurpassed for making attacks upon merchant men and men-of-war caught napping, but unseaworthy to tho "last degree, and incapable of weathering a storm —the lour that accompanied the Armada all foundered in the Hay of Biscay. Their open build rendered them perfectly helpless in the face of a well-directed fire, so by Franco and Spam they were only used as c-ruis-ers: but nothing else was .so well suited to Algerian piracy. A privateer must lie fast, but she need not lie heavily armed. The most successful cruiser of this century ha-s been tho Alabama, which was sunk by a gun-boat. In the so-called Christian countries the galleys were recruited from the prisons. Bernardo, for instance, the brother of Beatrice Oncd, was condemned for the murder of h ; s father to "be sent to the galleys for ever, so that life may bo a torment, a.nd death a release.'' FLOATING HELLS.

Tho justice of those days drew no distinction between crimes. A man i-en-teneed to two years' imprisonment would, if transferred to tire galleys, bo still rowting in them hj, dozen years after. The mere vagrant sat s'de by side with tho desperado, tho Protestant by the pickpocket; libellers of the Court, Mohammedan prisoners, sailors guilty of smoking at forbidden times.jill were hurried off to these floating hells. Tho French peasants, always poorer than n Church rat, and often starving, were compelled by law to buy so many pounds of salt a year at an exorbitant price. They smuggled it in, and woro sent to the galleys. ()nce, however, the French King met with a rebuff. Ho could torture his own subjects at his pleasure, but when he treacherously seized ,a number of Iroquois. Indians, and shipped them into the galleys, their comrades in Canada made matters so unpleasant that the captives had to l>e released.

TWENTY HOURS' ROWING

tho Moors, on their side, filled the beiHiea with Chrishtian victims exclusively. When Barbarossa., tho greatest of the Corsairs, became tho ally of Francis 1., and wintered in Toulon harbour, tho slaves died of fever by hundred's within sight of their own countrymen, but no Christian burial was allowed them, and the gaps, in the benches were filled up by nightly raids p.mong tho neighbouring villages. Half a century afterwards, when the Turks were routed at Lepanto, 15,000 poor wretches were set at liberty, and as Don John bon.rded the floating torture ehaml>ors they raised a feeble "Hu hu, hu!"

FOOD AND CLOTHING

In preparation for galley-life the captive's head and l>eard were shaved; he was stripped of his clothes, and a red cotton shirt and some breevhes were tossed to h'm. This was but a nominal covering, worn into shreds long before it was replaced. A piece of cork was then fastened round hii neck, which lie was frequently ordered to put into his mouth to ensure «ilence. His daily fare consisted of twelve ounces of b's>niit and a spoonful of green stuff, and under the bench stood z water-can containing vinegar and water, with a few drops of oil on the surface. When the ship was not in motion and tho wind not too violent, a sail was stretched over the heads of the c new: but this was a rare luxury, and as a rulo the tramontane winds swept through their shreds of clothing, the rain drenched their naked skins, and, worst of all, th> southern sun beat down upon, their shaven and unprotected head*.

Old writers speak of the horrible, musty odou'r|i flint n\n\\ aiVoss the water from these galleys, and the fact is scarcely surprising. Imagine 200 men cooped up in a narrow, filthy spice, and rowing hard for hours at a time Hi a sweltering heat. In their uhains they ate and in their chain.-' they slept. The seas breaking over the bulwarks brused and maimed them, and in the words of a great pcet who has dosoril>ed the life: "The salt made the oar-handles liko shark skin, our knees were cut to the lame, and our lips to the gums with salt cracks.'' The only hospital was a den about three feet high in the hold, but even into this the sufferer was only admitted after a spell of truly

Turkish doctoring. "I have eeen," says Edmund Webbe, a galley-slave in 1583, "when some of ray follows were so weak tluvt they could not row hy reason of s'ekness and faintness, the Turks lay upon thorn as upon horses mid heat thorn in such sort as oftentimes they died.'' BRUTALISING PUNISHMENTS.

Down the centre of, the vessel ran % platform six feet wide, on a level with the shoulders of the oarsmen. On tinstho boatswains, in all the bravery of padded and embroidered clothes and feathered cups, walked up and down with cowhide whips in their hands. At first they used "stolidly" to smite the poor fellows with a bastinado, or give tiiem a prod in the naked flesh with a goad, until a Royal Order commanded j them to use whips " in order that the men's arms may not l>e broken or disabled.'' With thojo whips every order was enforced, and when it was desired to improve upon tho normal rate, of twentv-six strokes a minute, the dreaded whistle shrieked through the ship a signal to uuicken up. "They heard tho blast of the whistle," says an old chronicler, "through all the swish of tho water, through the rattle and rumpus and kHcs. and cuffs that they got, through t!io rudder's wash and the dismal clank of the chain." Oscasiomilly the men. brutalised heyond all conception by this, persecution, took a savage and sudden revenge. Any boatswain careless enough to bo on the platform at night within re:u-h of the slave* was dragged down, Iwaten to death with the chains, and flung overboard. Cervantes gives us an instance of a much higher personage than a Iwatswam meeting with .1 very similar reward. On tho galley La Presu the slavei were so cruelly treated by Barbarossa's son that they seized him a,s ho was walking l>etwcon tliem on the deck, calling out to them to row hard and passing him on from hand to hand gave him *uch blows that before ho got back to the masthead he vraa dead. The only wonder is that theso outbreaks wero so rare.

"Think," says Jean MortcHle do Bergerac, a slave in 1701, "think of six men chained to a bench by the anklo standing up with one foot on the stretcher, the other on the 'Vuch in front ,and holding nn immensely heavy oar, thirty-five to forty feet long. In order to put the whole of their weight into the sroke, they throw their bodies , back on to the groaning Wenches. Think of them sometimes pulling for ten, twelve, or even twenty hours without a moment's rest. Tho boatswain in such a stress, puts a piece of bread steeped in wino to tho wretched rower's mouth to stop fa'nting, and then tjio captain shouts the orders to redouble the lash. If a slave falls exhausted upon his oar, which often chants, he is flogged until ho is taken for dead, and then pitched unceremoniously into the sea." To such a life even a sea-fight, with all its hail of iron from arquebus and musket, came as a relief. The. slaves rowed up to tho enemy, clapped their oars into her as grappling-irons, and held her fast. Boiling oil, molten lead, stinkpots, and hand-grenades might fall upon the:r miserable heads, but push olf they dare not. The hardihood and skilful seamansh'p cf the English were usually too much kr the cunning of theso suake-I'ke craft, and our tailors rarely fell into tho dutdies of the pirates; but some of our countrymen were bound to captured by the not more humane Spaniards, during Queen Bess's long struggle with l'li'lip 11., and two black-letter days in particular darken the records of those tunes. At the beginning of her reign, when we were at war with France and at peace wth Spain, eight merchant ships were lying under Gibraltar, when a French ship canio to Anchor and was boarded by eight "familiars/' This so lired tho merchants that they attacked the ship. Just then a Spanish fleet sailed in, the merchants were overpowered, and the crews, to the numb'r of 2-10 men, wero sent te the galleys. There the treatment was so brutal that after nine months only ninety were left alive. A few years later Hawkins, in one of hVj expeditions to the West Indies, losif H!s largest .ship, (and, biting *o nveivrowded with her crew, set a hundred of them on shore in Florida. When the Spanish " rs-a-sin" heard of this, they were seized, feme were burnt in an auto-da-fe, an dthe rest were sent to tho galley-.. But their old captain, he'ng in no mind to desert his men in their extremity, so worked ujkiii tun credulity of Philip that bo was able to obtain their reJea.se as the price of Ins own pretended desertion to SjKun.