When the gang or chain reached the port at which the prisoners were to be confined, they were drafted on board the different galleys. These were for the most part stationed at Toulon, but there were also other galleys in which Huguenots were imprisoned--at Marseilles, Dunkirk, Brest, St. Malo, and Bordeaux. Let us briefly describe the galley of those days. The royal galley was about a hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet broad, and was capable of containing about five hundred men. It had fifty benches for rowers, twenty-five on each side. Between these two rows of benches was the raised middle gallery, commonly called the waist of the ship, four feet high and about three or four feet broad. The oars were fifty feet long, of which thirty-seven feet were outside the ship and thirteen within. Six men worked at each oar, all chained to the same bench. They had to row in unison, otherwise they would be heavily struck by the return rowers both before and behind them. They were under the constant command of the _comite_ or galley-slave-driver, who struck all about him with his long whip in urging them to work. To enable his strokes to _tell_, the men sat naked while they rowed.[48] Their dress was always insufficient, summer and winter--the lower part of their bodies being covered with a short red jacket and a sort of apron, for their manacles prevented them wearing any other dress. [Footnote 48: Le comite ou chef de chiourme, aidé de deux _sous-comites_, allait et venait sans cesse sur le coursier, frappant les forçats à coup de nerfs de boeuf, comme un cocher ses chevaux. Pour rendre les coups plus sensible et pour économiser les vêtements, _les galériens étaient nus_ quand ils ramaient.--ATHANASE COQUEREL FILS. _Les Forçats pour la Foi_, 64.] The chain which bound each rower to his bench was fastened to his leg, and was of such a length as to enable his feet to come and go whilst rowing. At night, the galley-slave slept where he sat--on the bench on which he had been rowing all day. There was no room for him to lie down. He never quitted his bench except for the hospital or the grave; yet some of the Huguenot rowers contrived to live upon their benches for thirty or forty years!