Galleys were not meant to fight against sailing-ships armed with heavy batteries and had never beaten them, even by boarding, except when in overwhelming force. Galleys were too low in the water, too fragile, too vulnerable to gunfire, and carried too few guns. The Portuguese had demonstrated the combat superiority of the sailing-ship in the series of victories of their armed merchantmen over the war galleys of the Turks and Egyptians in the early decades of the century. … Though they could almost always escape from sailing-ships by dodging behind shoals, or rowing away into the eye of the wind, galleys were for fighting other galleys.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 221