The Sultan's Admiral (23 page)

It was now clear to both admirals that neither had any intention of being provoked into a fight under disadvantageous circumstances. This meeting between the two greatest seamen of the period shows Barbarossa as an astute strategist and tactician. Conversely, Andrea Doria (whom the Italians have elevated into one of their principal naval heroes) is revealed as having made the greatest blunder of all—coming too late upon the field. Later events were to show him in an even less favourable light.

On the night of September 26-27, Doria decided to withdraw from his position outside Preveza. He was still rightly concerned at the possibility of being caught on a lee shore, and he had decided to head south: either for the shelter of Vasilico Bay in Levkas; or into the waters between Levkas, Meganisi Island, and the mainland of Greece. There can be no doubt that he expected to be followed. By leaving the Preveza area and swooping southwards (away from the Venetian islands to the north) he was posing a threat to the Sultan’s dominions. Barbarossa could not for a moment afford to let this massive armada get down into the Gulf of Patras or—who could tell?—swing round into the Aegean and attack the Turkish mainland. Doria, indeed, had a large enough fleet even to attempt to invest Constantinople.

Though it is impossible to agree with his designation of Barbarossa as a “pirate,” yet Hamilton Currey commented accurately on his actions during the inconclusive forty-eight hours at Preveza: “It may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of the moral courage of a pirate; but if ever that quality was displayed in its fullest degree it was exhibited by Barbarossa in the Preveza campaign. In his intellectual outlook on all that was passing, both inside and outside of the Gulf of Arta, in this September of 1538, we see Kheir-ed-Din at his best. Ever a fighter, he knew when to give battle and when to refrain, when to sweep headlong upon the foe, but also when to hold back and to baffle by waiting until the psychological moment should arrive. Around him Sinan Rais, Murad Rais, and half a hundred others of their kidney were clamouring; they hurled insults at his head, they heaped opprobrium on ‘the corsair’ … But ‘the corsair’ kept his head, and kept his temper.”

Envious though many of the other commanders must have been of Barbarossa’s rise to fortune, it is doubtful, in view of his appointment as Commander-in-Chief by the Sultan, if they would have dared insult him to his face. But we know from other events in the history of the Ottoman Empire that the struggle for power among the upper echelons was pursued with violence and venom. It was the faction who believed in action at all costs that had forced Barbarossa to allow the useless landing of the janissaries.

On the morning of September 27 the Turks saw that the main body of the enemy had gone and that only a few stragglers were in sight, heading southward past Demata Bay down the long bare coast of Levkas. The order was immediately given for the fleet to up anchor and follow. There was a light northerly breeze blowing-—ideal for Doria’s sailing vessels-—and Barbarossa could not afford to let a moment slip. The penalty for failure in those days was neither a peerage nor a seat on the board of some public company. The Sultan’s executioner was always ready to divorce the head from the shoulders of those who failed to advance their master’s cause.

Once again the narrow strait of Preveza was brilliant with the splendid procession of the Ottoman fleet. They came down in line ahead, galleys and galleots of the Sublime Porte, feathering the shallow water into foam as they rounded the point and headed for the open sea. Actium Point, which had witnessed the ruin of Antony’s hopes and his ignominious flight with Cleopatra, was only destined to record the opening phases in the conflict between Doria and Barbarossa.

Doria and his ships were now strung out in a long line down the western shores of Levkas. While some were just clearing Demata Bay, others were rounding Cape Zuana, and others again were drawing near the islet of Sesola, some ten miles further south. If Doria’s actions during the Preveza campaign must be criticised, it is only fair to point out that he was handling a combined fleet of galleys and sailing vessels—an almost impossible mixture, and one which was later to contribute to the disaster of the Spanish Armada against England. When the wind blew fair, the galleons would sway far ahead while the galleys dropped astern; but when the wind was foul, or if it was calm, the sailing vessels would hang idle and the galleys (in the very conditions for which they were built) were compelled to throw away their advantage and wait for the sailing vessels. This was exactly what happened now.

The fair northerly wind that had enabled Doria to withdraw his ships from Preveza began to falter and fail as the sun rose. Throughout the day, while the sailors worked their sails to catch every errant puff of air off the steep sides of Levkas, the galleys rowed and rested, rested and rowed, striving to maintain their squadron formations and not draw too far ahead of the galleons. Shrill twitterings filled the air (like birds restless at dawn) as the overseers’ and under officers’ silver whistles gave the orders for the manoeuvres.

These sounds were part and parcel of galley life. The slaves’ first duty on joining the oar bench was to learn what every trill or series of pipings denoted. Jean Marteilhe de Bergerac wrote in his memoirs of his life as a French galley slave how “all the manoeuvres and all the tasks that one must undertake are indicated by different tones of the whistle … I remember how on one occasion our crew got hold of a lark and hung him up in a cage. The bird soon learned to copy the different whistles so well that quite often it would imitate them, thus causing us to undertake manoeuvres that had not been ordered. Finally the captain ordered us to get rid of the bird—which we were happy to do, for it wasn’t giving us any rest …”

As it often will in that part of the world, a gentle breeze sprang up towards nightfall. As the land cooled, the sea wind began to draw back again over the stark inland mountains. The lighter sailing vessels of Doria’s fleet were able to make their way a little further southwards. But, for the heavy galleons, this pale night wind was hardly enough to lift the sagging bellies of their salt-stained canvas. It was in this way, and for this reason, that the largest and most powerful ship in the fleet got left many miles behind the others.

A magnificent “battleship” of her period, known as the “Galleon of Venice,” under the command of one of the most able Venetian seamen, Alessandro Condalmiero, could not find enough wind to maintain her way. Condalmiero was in over-all command of all the Venetian sailing ships, and his flagship was reckoned to be the most formidable warship in all the Mediterranean. Like the Great Carrack of Rhodes, the flagship of the Knights of St. John, the Galleon of Venice was built to a tremendous strength, sheathed with plate below, and carried an immense weight of cannon. But her deep draught, her over-all tonnage, and her somewhat cumbersome structure made her far slower than the other galleons, let alone the galleys. It was for this reason that Alessandro Condalmiero’s flagship was last in the line of stragglers as Doria’s fleet made its way slowly southwards towards Cape Dukato, the southern promontory of Levkas.

On the morning of September 28, the wind piped up foul from the south. Andrea Doria was in an uncomfortable situation. He brought his own flagship to anchor just off the islet of Sesola, but the position was useless as an anchorage for the fleet since deep water ran between Sesola and the nearby coast of Levkas. There were no harbours, no islets even, on all that steep coast. Some of the ships had anchored just offshore, others were five miles south of their Admiral off the precipitous white cliff known as Sappho’s Leap (since the poetess was reputed to have jumped from it to her death). Others again were five miles or more north of Sesola, while the Galleon of Venice had still not rounded Cape Zuana, nearly ten miles away. So all the imperial fleet was now scattered in a straggling line up and down the iron-bound shores of Levkas. If Doria’s action in leaving Preveza had been designed to draw Barbarossa out and engage him on the high seas, now was the moment to regroup his fleet, take the south wind under his stern, and head back north to meet the Turks. Yet, inexplicably, Doria did no such thing. He stayed at anchor off Sesola and seems to have made no attempt to regroup or to take any constructive action.

It was at this moment that the Ottoman fleet came into sight, rounding the northern tip of Levkas and hauling out of Demata Bay. Barbarossa’s flagship was in the centre of a great line that curved slightly like a scimitar, Dragut holding the right wing and Salah Rais the left. Dead in their line of advance, formidable, dwarfing the lean galleys with its towering superstructure, lay Condalmiero’s flagship. The light southerly that had checked the progress of the other sailing ships had not reached Cape Zuana. Up here the water was flat calm, not an errant cat’s paw moving over its surface to disturb the ship’s huge shadow.

Condalmiero, as soon as he saw the approach of the Ottoman fleet, sent back a rowing boat to Doria asking for his orders, and requesting that galleys be sent up to assist him in the action that must soon begin. As he was settling down to await the inevitable attack, the boat returned with the message that help would soon be on its way. Barbarossa’s galleys hesitated before this immobile giant. They knew that they could never match her fire power with their light forward guns. The only solution was to attack in individual squadrons, coming in a wave at a time, retiring, reloading, and then returning.

The first squadron of galleys was immediately despatched against Condalmiero. He was a conspicuous figure on the poop of his ship, shining in full armour underneath the Lion Standard of Venice. In the first salvo one shot struck home against the mainmast, which crashed overboard in a tangle of rigging and canvas. Encouraged, the galleys came on as if to ram. They were encouraged, too, by the absence of any return fire from the great ship. Condalmiero had ordered his Venetian gunners to hold back until he gave the word. They were not to waste their fire, but to wait until there could be no doubt of their broadsides striking home.

So she lay there in the water, the great dark Galleon of Venice, with her gunners poised with their slow matches ready, and her upper-deck crew lying low beneath the bulwarks. Condalmiero had further ordered his gunners not to waste their shot by trying for individual targets, but to lay their guns in the line of the approaching vessels and use a ricochet effect against the galleys—rather like a boy skipping stones across the water. He had decided he was more likely to succeed by this method than by asking his gunners to try to drop individual cannon balls upon individual ships. His judgement proved sound. As the first wave of Barbarossa’s galleys came within a few hundred yards of the motionless galleon, every gunport discharged a thunderstorm of flame and death. The new navy—the navy that was to triumph all over the world until the advent of steam, the navy of sail—showed in this first action of the Preveza campaign that it was the broadside with its solid weight of shot that now counted in warfare. Always, prior to this, it had been manoeuvrability and the ultimate act of boarding which gave one side or another the victory. This had been so since classical times. But the fact that sailing ships could now be built large enough to contain an armament about as heavy as that of a shore-based fortress was to change the whole aspect of naval warfare.

The first attack of the Turkish galleys was beaten off with heavy loss of life and considerable damage to the vessels. One of the galleys sank on the spot, several others were disabled, and all the calm blue sea became agitated with struggling men, ruined ships, toppling masts, and shattered discarded oars. The screaming slaves beat their chains against the benches as the shot tore in above their heads or smashed their oar blades to pieces. Wood splinters howled and sprang like vicious knives above and below the raked galleys. Like a pack of dogs, cuffed off and lacerated by a bear’s paws, they withdrew beyond the range of the Galleon of Venice’s guns.

Now Condalmiero began to play his guns with calm and deadly accuracy upon the circling galleys, not wasting shot, but waiting until a galley stopped, or began to turn—so that he and his gunners had a practically immobile target. Barbarossa, who was directing the action, immediately ordered his galleys to attack in squadrons from both port and starboard of the Venetian, but not to come within close range. He hoped that gradually the bow chasers would be able to riddle the great galleon and kill her crew, so that she would either sink or be compelled to surrender.

Meanwhile, where were Andrea Doria’s galleys? He had been told before the action began that help would be required. It was ten miles from the main body of the fleet off Sesola Island to Cape Zuana, so at a striking rate of some four knots it should have been possible to get galleys to Condalmiero’s assistance within two and a half hours at the least. Yet the long day wore on while the Turkish galleys sped in and out from the crippled giant, and no one came to her help. Even though the wind had dropped again and all his fleet of sail was becalmed (that sailing element upon which he and the Emperor had relied to give them an annihilating victory), yet Doria failed to provide the galley support he had promised.

In the afternoon, while the battle raged around the Venetian flagship, the wind settled down to a light breeze from the south. This should have been ideal for Doria to marshal his fleet and sail northward to destroy the Turks. He had overwhelming numbers, far heavier ships, and now he had a fair wind. Yet for over three hours the Genoese Admiral did no more than tack up and down off the coast of Levkas. As Admiral Jurien de la Graviere commented in his assessment of the action in
Doria et Barberousse
: “For far less than this the English shot Admiral Byng in 1756.”

It is on record that both Doria’s senior commanders, Marco Grimani and Vincenzo Capello, went aboard the flagship and implored him to lead the fleet northward and engage the Turks with all his forces. After all, this was why they had combined. This was why they had waited so long at Corfu, so as to have the overwhelming fire power of the sailing galleons to destroy Barbarossa and the Ottoman fleet once and for all. But it was not until late in the afternoon of September 28 that Doria at last got the fleet under way and ordered it to sail northward. Even so, instead of going straight for the Turks, he hauled his line out to seaward as if daring them to follow him and meet him on the high seas, away from the dangerous coast.