Old Traditions: Long Vessels and Broad Vessels.--The Dromon.--The Galéasse.--The Coque.--Caracks and Galleons.--Francis I.’s Great Carack.--Caravelles.--The Importance of a Fleet.--Hired Fleets.--Poop Guards.--Naval Laws.--Seaport Tribunals.--Navigation in the open Seas.--The Boussole.--Armament of Men-of-War.--Towers and Ballistic Engines.--Artillery.--Naval Strategy.--Decorations and Magnificent Appointments of Vessels.--Sails and Flags.--The Galley of Don Juan of Austria.--Sailors’ Superstitions.--Discipline and Punishments. Ships from the most remote ages have been divided into two classes, namely, long vessels, those propelled by the oar, or by the wind, sometimes by the two combined, and vessels of greater beam, which trusted to their sails alone. The Middle Ages conformed to these traditions; they possessed galleys which answered to the long vessels of antiquity, and ships which corresponded to the larger class. The galleys of the Middle Ages, like the long vessels of antiquity, may be divided into several varieties. The large galley (Fig. 68), strong in build and swift in sailing, had received from the Greeks the significant name of _dromon_ (runner). In the fifth century Theodoric had a thousand dromons constructed for the defence of the Italian coasts and for the transport of corn; in the ninth, the Emperor Leo the Philosopher, in the military precepts he gave to his son, recommended the construction of dromons with two tiers of oars, five-and-twenty in each tier on each side. For the flag-ship (if we may use the term) of the commander of the fleet, he recommended the construction of a much larger dromon with a hundred oars in each tier, similar to those that used to be built in Pamphylia, and which, for that reason, were known as _pamphiles_. The fleet was to be accompanied by smaller dromons, with a single tier of oars, for the purpose of carrying despatches, and to act as scouts. These bore more particularly the name of _galleys_. For more than three hundred years the construction and rigging of ships underwent no change (Fig. 69); in the twelfth century the dromon was still the principal type of the class of ships propelled by oars. Next came the galley, smaller than the dromon, but fitted, like it, with two tiers of oars, and lastly, the _galion_ or _galéide_ (termed later the _galiot_), a much smaller vessel than the galley. [Illustration: Fig. 68.--Poop of an Ancient Galley.--From Pompeian Paintings collected in the Bourbon Museum, Naples.]