As I recall, Lepanto was like a land battle on water. The Turkish soldiers were mostly archers. They hammered the Christian fleet at first, but once the Christian galleys closed and boarded the Turkish light infantry was cut to pieces by the heavily armored Christians. They also freed thousands of Christian galley slaves.
In his excellent book “What Went Wrong”, Bernard Lewis talked about the differences in the way Islam approached issues of peace (and in this example below, war) and how they hamstrung themselves in the process.
There was an account in the written archives of the Ottoman Empire of a conversation between two Islamic military experts examining the hulk of one of the Christian vessels that had run aground on the shore.
The Christian vessels were clearly superior in every way, but instead of mining them for intelligence and incorporating the features into their own vessels, they had to discuss and get approval (fatwa?) to use any improvements, because they had been created by infidels.
Could they use infidel inventions and technology without damning themselves?
It was related to the reason they fell so far behind in many things because of this self-imposed handicap. For a period of 200 years, while the Europeans were madly translating things from every single language they could encounter into their own languages, Islam had one (yes, a single book) translated from a European language, and it was a medical tome on venereal diseases.
Their rationale was that it was fine to do this because they viewed venereal diseases as Frankish diseases, so that made it okay in Islam to engage Frankish cures.
Crazy.
The Venetians also had several Gallasses and Friggata in their fleet which were the forerunners of galleons and frigatges. While still having oars they were mainly propelled by sail and carried full broadsides of cannon rather than only 2 or three in the bow.
They were able to sink several of the larger Ottoman galleys before they could engage the Papal/Venetian/Austrian forces which changed the flow of the battle. It was the first time ships using broadsides were used to defeat galleys
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“As I recall, Lepanto was like a land battle on water. ....”
Quite true. As was true of most naval engagements of the day. It was the traditional (as in “since ancient times”) approach, and a feasible one. Also, pretty much the only way to do it.
The 16th century was a period of change in land and naval warfare, as the production, deployment, and use of firearms spread more fully.
The English victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 - 17 years after Lepanto - was helped along by the English use of the (then-revolutionary) tactic of firing directly at enemy vessels with heavy guns, mounted on smaller (more maneuverable) vessels in larger numbers, in better-standardized bore dimensions. Short range by modern standards, but it enabled the English to stand off safely from the Spanish vessels, which contained large numbers of land troops - to swarm enemy vessels, not merely invade England.
Set the pattern for some three centuries of naval combat.