Agalley slave was aslave rowing in agalley, either aconvicted criminal sentenced to work at the oar (French:galérien), or a kind of human chattel, sometimes aprisoner of war, assigned to the duty of rowing.^[1]

In the ancient Mediterranean, galley rowers were mostly free men, and slaves were used as rowers when manpower was in high demand. In theMiddle Ages and theearly modern period, convicts and prisoners of war often manned galleys, and theBarbary pirates enslaved captives as galley slaves. During the 18th and 19th centuries, pirates in Asia likewise manned their galleys with captives.

Ancient Mediterranean navies relied on professional rowers to man their galleys. Slaves were seldom used except in times of pressing manpower demands or extreme emergency.^[2] In the 5th and 4th centuries BC, Athens generally followed a naval policy of enrolling citizens from the lower classes (thetes),metics (foreigners resident in Athens) and hired foreigners.^[3] In the drawn-outSecond Punic War,Rome andCarthage resorted to slave rowers to some extent, but only in specific cases and often with the promise of freedom after victory was achieved.^[2]

Only in theLate Middle Ages did slaves begin to be increasingly employed as rowers. It also became the custom among the Mediterranean powers to sentence condemned criminals to row in the war-galleys of the state (initially only in time of war). Traces of this practice appear in France as early as 1532, but the first legislative enactment comes in theOrdonnance d'Orléans of 1561. In 1564Charles IX of France forbade the sentencing of prisoners to the galleys for fewer than ten years.Brands of the fleur-de-lis, as well the letters V (forvoleur, meaning thief) and GAL were used to identify the prisoners condemned as galley-slaves.^[4]

Naval forces from both Christian and Muslim countries often turnedprisoners of war into galley-slaves. Thus, at theBattle of Lepanto in 1571, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman Turks.^[5] Lepanto was the last major battle fought between fleets of oar-powered ships, but Mediterranean navies continued to use the ships for some years thereafter.

TheKnights Hospitaller made use ofgalley slaves anddebtors (Italian:buonavoglie) to row their galleys during their rule over theMaltese Islands.^[6]

In 1622, SaintVincent de Paul, as a former slave himself (inTunis), became chaplain to the galleys and ministered to the galley slaves.^[7]

In 1687 the governor ofNew France,Jacques-René de Brisay de Denonville, seized, chained, and shipped 50Iroquois chiefs fromFort Frontenac toMarseille, France, to be used as galley slaves.^[8]

KingLouis XIV of France, who wanted a bigger fleet, ordered that the courts should sentence men to the galleys as often as possible, even in times of peace; he even sought to transform thedeath penalty to sentencing to the galleys for life (and unofficially did so—a letter exists to all French judges, that they should, if possible, sentence men to life in the galleys instead of death).^[9]By the end of the reign of Louis XIV in 1715 the use of the galley for war purposes had practically ceased, but theFrench Navy did not incorporate the corps of the galleys until 1748. From the reign ofHenry IV,Toulon functioned as a naval military port,Marseille having become a merchant port, and served as the headquarters of the galleys and of the convict rowers (galériens). After the incorporation of the galleys, the system sent the majority of these latter toToulon, the others toRochefort and toBrest, where they worked in thearsenal.^{[citation needed]}

Convict rowers also went to a large number of other French and non-French cities:Nice,Le Havre,Nîmes,Lorient,Cherbourg,Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue,La Spezia,Antwerp andCivitavecchia; but Toulon, Brest and Rochefort predominated. At Toulon the convicts remained (in chains) on the galleys, which were moored ashulks in the harbour. Their shore prisons had the namebagnes ("baths"), a name given to such penal establishments first by the Italians (bagno), and allegedly deriving from the prison atConstantinople situated close by or attached to the great baths there.^{[citation needed]}

All French convicts continued to use the namegalérien even after galleys went out of use; only after theFrench Revolution did the new authorities officially change the hated name—with all it signified—toforçat ("forced"). The use of the termgalérien nevertheless continued until 1873, when the lastbagne in France (as opposed to the bagnes relocated toFrench Guiana), the bagne of Toulon, closed definitively. In Spain, the wordgaleote continued in use as late as the early 19th century for a criminal condemned topenal servitude. In Italian the wordgalera is still in use for a prison.^{[citation needed]}

A vivid account of the life of galley-slaves in France appears inJean Marteilhes'sMemoirs of a Protestant, translated byOliver Goldsmith, which describes the experiences of one of theHuguenots who suffered after therevocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.^{[citation needed]}

Madame de Sevigne, a revered French author, wrote from Paris on April 10, 1671 (Letter VII): "I went to walk at Vincennes, en Troche* and by the way met with a string of galley-slaves ; they were going to Marseilles, and will be there in about a month. Nothing could have been surer than this mode of conveyance, but another thought came into my head, which was to go with them myself. There was one Duval among them, who appeared to be a convertible man. You will see them when they come in, and I suppose you would have been agreeably surprised to have seen me in the midst of the crowd of women that accompany them."

Galley-slaves lived in unsavoury conditions, so even though some sentences prescribed a restricted number of years, most rowers would eventually die, even if they survived the conditions, shipwreck and slaughter or torture at the hands of enemies or of pirates. Additionally, nobody ensured that prisoners were freed after completing their sentences. As a result, imprisonment for 10 years could in reality mean imprisonment for life because nobody except the prisoner would either notice or care.^{[citation needed]}

• John Knox
• Piet Pieterszoon Hein
• Dragut
• Jean Parisot de Valette

In North American colonies galleys employedblack slaves as rowers, as did the Portuguese, and the Spanish in Latin America, the French in Canada employedIroquois and otherlocal indigenous tribes as well.American Revolutionary War navies hadrow galleys,negro slaves escaped from galleys frequently, and were searched for byslave catchers, deserted slave search advertisements were routinely posted in the American newspapers during the war, typically offering $8 to $20 reward for bringing an escaped slave back on board.^[10]

TheBarbary pirates of the 16th to 19th centuries used galleyslaves, often captured Europeans from Italy or Spain. TheOttoman Sultan in Istanbul also used galley slaves.^[11]

• Miguel de Cervantes

InSoutheast Asia, from the mid-18th to the late-19th centuries, thelanong andgaray warships of theIranun andBanguingui pirates were crewed entirely with male galley slaves captured from previous raids. Conditions were brutal and it was not uncommon for galley slaves to die on voyages from exhaustion. Slaves were kept bound to their stations and were fed poorly. Slaves who mistimed their strokes werecaned by overseers. Most of the slaves wereTagalogs,Visayans, and "Malays" (includingBugis,Mandarese,Iban, andMakassar). There were also occasional European andChinese captives.^[12]

A short account of his ten years as a galley-slave is given by the characterFarrabesche in "The Village Rector" byHonoré de Balzac. He is sentenced to the galleys as a result of his life as a "chauffeur" (in this case the word refers to a brigand who threatened landowners by roasting them).

In one of his ill-fated adventures,Miguel de Cervantes'sDon Quixote^[13] frees a row of prisoners sent to the galleys, includingGinés de Pasamonte. The prisoners, however, beat him.^[14] (Cervantes himself had been captured in 1575 and served as a galley slave inAlgiers for five years before he was ransomed).^[15]

InThe Sea Hawk,^[16] a 1919 historical fiction novel byRafael Sabatini, as well asthe 1924 film based on the novel, the protagonist, Sir Oliver Tressilian, is sold into galley slavery by a relative.

The Sea Hawk (1940) was originally intended to be a new version of the Sabatini novel, but the studio switched to a story whose protagonist, Geoffrey Thorpe, was loosely based onSir Francis Drake, although Drake was never a galley slave.Howard Koch was working on the script whenwar broke out in Europe, and the final story deliberately draws vivid parallels between Spain and theNazi Reich. The existence of galley slaves and the misery they endure is set up as a metaphor for life under the Reich. When Thorpe (Errol Flynn) liberates a Spanish vessel full of English captives, the freed men row willingly for home to "Strike for the Shores of Dover",^[17] the stirring music of score composerErich Wolfgang Korngold andlyrics by Howard Koch and Jack Scholl. The first verse "Pull on the oars! Freedom is yours! Strike for the shores of Dover!" evoked the recentevacuation from Dunkirk.^[18] The sets in the 1940 film appear historically accurate.

InLew Wallace'snovel,Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Judah is sent to the galleys as a murderer but manages to survive a shipwreck and save the fleet leader, who frees andadopts him. Both films based on the novel—Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) andBen-Hur (1959)—perpetuate the historically inaccurate image of Roman galley slaves.

In the 1943 epic novelThe Long Ships, the protagonist, Orm Tostesson, is captured while raiding in Andalusia and serves as a galley slave for a number of years.

The 1947 French filmMonsieur Vincent shows SaintVincent de Paul taking the place of a weakened slave at his oar.

Steven Saylor'sRoma Sub Rosa series (covering a period from 92 B.C. to 44 B.C ) includes a novelArms of Nemesis, which contains an appalling description of the conditions under which galley slaves lived and worked—assuming that they did exist in Rome at that time (see above).

InMr. Midshipman Hornblower,C. S. Forester writes in detail of an encounter during the 1790s when a becalmed British convoy is attacked off Gibraltar by two of a small number of galleys retained in service by the conservative Spanish navy. The author notes the stench emanating from these galleys due to each carrying two hundred condemned prisoners chained permanently to the rowing benches.

Patrick O'Brian wrote of encounters with galleys in the Mediterranean inMaster and Commander emphasising the galley's speed and manoeuvrability compared to sailing ships when there was little wind.

InVictor Hugo'sLes Misérables,Jean Valjean was a galley prisoner, and was in danger of returning to the galleys. Police inspectorJavert's father was also a galley prisoner.

Robert E. Howard transplanted the institute of galley slavery to his mythicalHyborian Age, depictingConan the Barbarian as organizing a rebellion of galley slaves who kill the crew, take over the ship and make him their captain in one novel (Conan the Conqueror serialized in Weird Tales 1935–1936).

InUrsula K. Le Guin'sEarthsea series, multiple references are made to galley slaves; inThe Farthest Shore specifically, Prince Arren is rescued from captivity, and notes the galley slaves imprisoned with him on the ship.

• Casson, Lionel (1966), "Galley Slaves",Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 97, pp. 35–44
• Graham, A. J. (1992), "Thucydides 7.13.2 and the Crews of Athenian Triremes",Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. 122, pp. 257–270
• Hunt, Peter (2001), "The Slaves and Generals of Arginusae",American Journal of Philology, vol. 122, pp. 359–380
• Libourel, Jan M. (1973), "Galley Slaves in the Second Punic War",Classical Philology, vol. 68, no. 2, pp. 116–119
• Patrick, James (2007), "Renaissance and Reformation",Vol., vol. 7, p. 718
• Ruschenbusch, Eberhard (1979), "Zur Besatzung athenischer Trieren",Historia, vol. 28, pp. 106–110
• Sargent, Rachel L. (1927), "The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare",Classical Philology, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 264–279

• Martin, Meredith and Gillian Weiss (2022),The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Galley Slavery in Louis XIV's France. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute.ISBN 9781606067307
• James, Simon (2001), "The Roman Galley Slave: Ben-Hur and the Birth of a Factoid",Public Archaeology2, 35-49
• Marteilhe, Jean (2010).Galley slave : the autobiography of a Protestant condemned to the French galleys. Barnsley: Seaforth.ISBN 978-1848320703.