Hospitaller Work, Crafts and Port Life in Rhodes and Malta

Under Hospitaller rule, work linked fortified towns and rural communities to busy harbours and a naval fleet. The Order governed Rhodes from 1310 to 1522, then Malta from 1530 to 1798. Although the settings and periods differed, both regimes needed people to provision communities, build and repair defences, make equipment, maintain ships and serve households. Skilled paid workers and hired crews worked alongside local residents, convicted rowers and people held in slavery.

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Rural work and the town’s crafts

Agricultural work formed one part of life beyond the harbours. In Hospitaller Malta, enslaved men in the countryside were assigned agricultural labour, while enslaved women were more often made to cook, clean and serve. Free farming households also cultivated crops and supplied the island’s markets. The evidence also places enslaved people in domestic service in towns, including in the households of the Order and private owners.

Urban crafts served both everyday needs and the Order’s military and maritime operations. Enslaved workers were used in the production of armaments at the Order’s foundry and in maintaining weapons in the Palace Armoury. Other recorded tasks included making cloth for sails and building ships. These jobs sat alongside work by skilled people hired through contractors. For major construction, enslaved labourers were commonly assigned tasks such as clearing and carting rubble, while skilled workers carried out the building itself.

The scale of coerced labour in the towns is visible in a record from 1635: as many as 600 enslaved people worked as artisans or labourers in Valletta and Senglea together. Paid workers supplied skilled services alongside this coerced workforce. Cotton linked free rural and household work to exports, especially in the eighteenth century. Small farmers grew it; wives and other family members spun the fibres into thread. Middlemen bought the thread for export or passed it to households specialising in weaving. Spinning turned loose fibre into yarn, while weaving interlaced threads into cloth. Town and village workshops also included bakers, millers, smiths and bootmakers. Guild statutes approved by the grand master provided for elected officers to oversee trades such as tailoring, carpentry and goldsmithing.

Building and maintaining the islands

Fortifications and public works created recurring demand for labour. At Fort St. Angelo, enslaved people were ordered to carry out repairs in 1547. After the 1565 siege, several hundred Muslim captives were put to work on the construction of Valletta, including digging the defensive ditch. Enslaved labour was also used on the Wignacourt Aqueduct, built between 1610 and 1615 to carry water towards Valletta. Such projects relied on different kinds of work: heavy excavation and the removal of spoil could be assigned to coerced labourers, while skilled construction was undertaken by workers hired for the task.

Naval building and repair were concentrated around the Grand Harbour. Shipyards were located at Kalkara, and an arsenal, where ships and equipment could be prepared and maintained, was established at Birgu in 1597. Plans for a Valletta arsenal and a separate naval basin were not completed as intended. The basin project stopped, and the area became known as the Manderaggio. Facilities around Birgu also included storehouses, workshops, a naval bakery and accommodation for workers and soldiers. These were workplaces as well as military installations: ships needed supplies, equipment and repairs before they could sail.

The harbour as a workplace

The Order’s navy operated from Rhodes before moving its base to Malta. In Malta, Birgu served as its headquarters until Valletta became the Order’s capital in 1571. Galleys were the fleet’s principal vessels until the seventeenth century, though it also used other kinds of ships. A galley required large numbers of rowers as well as sailors, officers and fighting men. Port workers also loaded and unloaded ships, while other workers made sailcloth, built vessels or prepared provisions.

Not everyone aboard a galley had the same status. Some rowers were enslaved people owned by the Order; others were convicts or buonavoglia, Christian volunteers who entered contracts with the Order’s treasury in return for money advanced to them. Free Maltese rowers were also employed, particularly when the fleet lacked enough men. The Order had managers responsible for the clothing and food of publicly owned galley slaves, but those provisions did not make their service voluntary or remove the harshness of their conditions.

Crews also included members of the Order and people hired from port towns. The Order’s officers commanded ships, while sailors and soldiers could be recruited locally or hired as experienced fighters. Its galley fleet performed military patrols and took part in naval campaigns, but maritime work also included corso, authorized raiding against enemy shipping. The Order issued letters of marque that permitted privately owned ships to capture vessels in its name. Maltese and other European captains and crews took part. Naval service, port employment and privateering therefore overlapped, though they were not the same kind of work.

As the fleet expanded, its needs shaped harbour employment. A ship’s readiness depended on more than its crew: it required a place to berth, stores, provisions, weapons and maintenance. The Order’s naval facilities brought these tasks together at the Grand Harbour, while shipyards and workshops supplied the vessels themselves. In the 1680s the navy was at its height; its dockyard and naval activity began to decline after about 1740.

Service, markets and social life

Work for the Order also extended into hospitals, palaces and official food services. Enslaved people were assigned duties in the Sacra Infermeria, the Order’s hospital, and in the official bakeries. The Grand Master’s household employed both free workers and enslaved servants. Outside the Order’s establishments, private households also used enslaved labour, while free employees and skilled contractors filled other roles.

Slavery was a source of coerced labour, and public sale connected captivity with the labour market. In Valletta, enslaved people were sold at auction in Piazza San Giorgio, the square in front of the Grand Master’s Palace. Some enslaved people were also allowed, under restrictions, to earn small sums: records describe enslaved barbers and people selling goods or drinks. Such activity did not change their legal status or make their work free.

Some places of work also provided settings for shared meals and social contact. On Rhodes, knights from the same langue, or group based on geographic and linguistic origin, lived in communal buildings called auberges, where they met and ate together. In Malta, taverns around the Grand Harbour served as gathering places for enslaved people when they were not working. Workplaces and communal dining therefore also connected people socially within their occupational and institutional groups.

Changing demands on workers

The balance of work shifted over time. On Rhodes, the Order’s island base required a fleet and defences, while the town’s harbour also received merchant ships. In Malta, the failed Ottoman siege of 1565 was followed by the building of Valletta and generations of work on the Grand Harbour’s fortifications and naval facilities. The fleet’s needs were especially strong in the seventeenth century, but its decline after about 1740 reduced the scale of some maritime activity. The Order’s navy ceased to exist after the French occupation in 1798, ending an institutional source of naval, dockyard and shipboard work.