page_title: Catalan navy
section_title: The crossbowmen "in table"
hierarchical_section_title: Catalan navy / Catalan galleys fleet / The crossbowmen "in table"
caption_attribution_description: Tavola Strozzi, view of the city of Naples in Italy from the sea, 1470. (Alfonso V of Aragon naval victory on John of Anjou). Museo di San Martino, Naples, Italy.
context_page_description: The Catalan navy - with Catalan ships, Catalan admirals and Catalan crew - under the direct or indirect orders of the counts of Barcelona, represented a reality recognized by the entire Mediterranean from its origins to Fernando the Catholic. In later times ships built and manned on the Catalan coasts, under the authority of non-Catalan kings, for example the kings of Naples, carried out some important events.
  Similarly, the navies of the kingdoms of Mallorca and Valencia had their own entity and could be studied separately
context_section_description: Crossbowmen were the most important offensive forces aboard a traditional galley. And they coexisted for many years with the arcabusseros and artillerymen. Ramon Muntaner was a supporter of professional crossbowmen, only recruited to act as crossbowmen (crossbowmen hired on the table to be agreed; hence the name "on board").  
  It was mandatory that every sailor with crossbowman duties in the galleys, had to have two crossbows with two feet and another one with a strap (that had a strap to arm it), three hundred pins, a steel helmet, a stitching (it could be the union of weight and point: heavy-point) or breastplate and sword or saber. The same armament had to be carried by crossbowmen ex officio in smaller ships. 
  The galleys were the same. Normal galleys only carried two rowers per bank: a dovecote and a postic. The galleys with third parties went with a third rower in each bank: the thirdol. They were faster but the number of professional crossbowmen was smaller.
  Some foreign scholars have wanted to translate (without justification or success) the "table" by a type of castle or protection reinforcement that only the Catalan galleys wore.
caption: Tavola Strozzi . Flota de Galceran de Requesens y Joan de Soler volviendo a Nápoles después de su victoria en Ischia
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