Lecture 18: 1571 Lepanto—Last Gasp of the Galleys
x The subsequent battle began in the north when the two galleasses
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A lucky shot holed one of the larger Turkish ships beneath the
waterline near the bow, and it began to sink. As the Turkish galleys,
eager to get to grips with the main line of the Holy League, sped
past the galleasses, they took a heavy beating from the Christians’
guns, disrupting the Turkish formation.x 0HDQZKLOH LQ WKH FHQWHU WKH JDOOHDVVHV KDG RSHQHG ¿UH ZLWK
similar results, and the two lines converged. A long hand-to-hand
struggle followed, as ships ground against one another and their
crews swept back and forth, alternately boarding other vessels and
being boarded themselves.x The SultanaZDVPREEHGE\FRDOLWLRQVKLSV$IWHUKRXUVRI¿JKWLQJ
and three separate attempts, the Sultana was boarded, its crew
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in the center continued for another half hour or so, but the Christian
ships now had the advantage, and large numbers of Turkish galleys
began to surrender.x In the south, the Turkish commander Uluch Ali and the Christian
leader Andrea Doria both eschewed a head-on charge in favor of
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squadrons began to angle away further to the south, creating a gap
between the southern squadrons and the rest of the battle.x Seeing that he could not get around his foe by moving south and
that some of the Christian ships had become detached from the
main group, Uluch Ali turned his ships north and drove for the gap.x Had Ali charged back to the center a bit earlier, he could have had
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already been won by the Holy League, and Christian ships now
began to converge on him from all sides. By midafternoon, the
battle was over.