Moreover experiments made by the Venetians in 1316 had shown that four rowers to a bench could be employed still more advantageously. And where the galleys could be used on inland waters, and could be made more bulky, Sanudo would even recommend five to a bench, or have gangs of rowers on two decks with either three or four men to the bench on each deck. [Sidenote: Change of System in the 16th century.] 26. This system of grouping the oars, and putting only one man to an oar, continued down to the 16th century, during the first half of which came in the more modern system of using great oars, equally spaced, and requiring from four to seven men each to ply them, in the manner which endured till late in the last century, when galleys became altogether obsolete. Captain Pantero Pantera, the author of a work on Naval Tactics (1616), says he had heard, from veterans who had commanded galleys equipped in the antiquated fashion, that _three_ men to a bench, with separate oars, answered better than three men to one great oar, but four men to one great oar (he says) were certainly more efficient than four men with separate oars. The new-fashioned great oars, he tells us, were styled _Remi di Scaloccio_, the old grouped oars _Remi a Zenzile_,—terms the etymology of which I cannot explain.[5] It may be doubted whether the four-banked and five-banked galleys, of which Marino Sanudo speaks, really then came into practical use. A great five-banked galley on this system, built in 1529 in the Venice Arsenal by Vettor Fausto, was the subject of so much talk and excitement, that it must evidently have been something quite new and unheard of.[6] So late as 1567 indeed the King of Spain built at Barcelona a galley of thirty-six benches to the side, and seven men to the bench, with a separate oar to each in the old fashion. But it proved a failure.[7] Down to the introduction of the great oars the usual system appears to have been three oars to a bench for the larger galleys, and two oars for lighter ones. The _fuste_ or lighter galleys of the Venetians, even to about the middle of the 16th century, had their oars in pairs from the stern to the mast, and single oars only from the mast forward.[8] [Sidenote: Some details of the 13th century Galleys.] 27. Returning then to the three-banked and two-banked galleys of the latter part of the 13th century, the number of benches on each side seems to have run from twenty-five to twenty-eight, at least as I interpret Sanudo’s calculations. The 100-oared vessels often mentioned (_e.g._ by _Muntaner_, p. 419) were probably two-banked vessels with twenty-five benches to a side. [Illustration]