Quotes About Brigantines

Was it proof of madness in the first corps of sea officers to have, at so critical a period, launched out on the ocean with only two armed merchant ships, two armed brigantines, and one armed sloop, to make war against such a power as Great Britain?

Between them they estimated a fleet of something between 12 and 18 full war galleys composed of a mixture of triremes and biremes, then 70 to 80 smaller fustae, about 25 parandaria – heavy transport barges – and a number of light brigantines and other small message boats, a force of about 140 boats in all. It was an awesome sight to glimpse over the curve of the western horizon.