attempts were made to supplement sails with oars. But oars and sails were incompatible. They were often, seen together in early times, but with progress the use of one became more and more irreconcilable with the use of the other. The Tudor galleasse, though possessing in our northern waters many advantages over the galley type, had the defects inherent in the compromise, and gave place in a short time to the high-charged “great ship” propelled by sails alone. The sailing ship was by that time strong and powerful enough to risk the one-in-a-hundred chance of being attacked by oared galleys in a stark calm. It was only when the first steam vessels plied English waters that the old weakness became apparent again. It was then seriously urged that the ship-of-the-line should carry oars once more, against the attack of small steamers converging on her from a weakly defended quarter. [Illustration: SHIP AND GALLEY (From Tartagliá’s _Arte of Shooting_, English Ed., A.D. 1588.)] § The oar was in many ways an objectionable form of power. It was very vulnerable, its presence made manœuvring at close quarters risky and difficult; and apart from the necessity, on which the galley service was based, of a large supply of slave-labour for working them, oars and the rowers absorbed a large proportion of the available inboard space, to the detriment both of artillery and merchandise. Many attempts were therefore made, not only to substitute animals for men, for the work of propulsion, but to apply power in a manner more suitable than by the primitive method of levers: oars or sweeps. The paddlewheel was thought of at a very early date; a Roman army is said to have been transported into Sicily by boats propelled by wheels moved by oxen, and in many old military treatises the substitution of wheels for oars is mentioned.[131] In 1588 Ramelli, engineer-in-ordinary to the French king, published a book in which was sketched an amphibious vehicle propelled by hand-worked paddlewheels: “une sorte de canot automobile blindé et percé de meurtrières pour les arquesbusiers.” In 1619 Torelli, Governor of Malta, fitted a ship with paddles, and in it passed through the Straits of Messina against the tide. But Richelieu, to whom he offered his invention, was not impressed with its value.[132] Before this, Blasco de Garoy, a Spanish captain, had exhibited to the Emperor Charles V, in 1543, an engine by which ships of the largest size could be propelled in a calm: an arrangement of hand-operated paddlewheels.