Galley labor exposed the limits of early-modern state finance

Paid rowers required wages, food, and water on the scale of a major military establishment. Renaissance France, Spain, the North African states, and the Knights of St John often lacked the usable funds to sustain that system. Convicts and prisoners therefore looked cheaper even though they produced an unreliable and dangerous source of propulsion. The comparison with Rome makes the wider administrative point: a state can possess resources yet lack the capacity to deploy them effectively.