The precise difference between the two kinds of rowing vessels thus distinguished by name, the writer has not been able to ascertain.

The gondola was a flat-bottomed boat, and inferior in nautical qualities--speed, handiness, and seaworthiness--to the galleys, which probably were keeled.

The latter certainly carried sails, and may have been capable of beating to windward.

Arnold preferred them, and stopped the building of gondolas.
"The galleys," he wrote, "are quick moving, which will give us a great advantage in the open lake." The complements of the galleys were eighty men, of the gondolas forty-five; from which, and from their batteries, it may be inferred that the latter were between one third and one half the size of the former.

The armaments of the two were alike in character, but those of the gondolas much lighter.