This ignores the multitude of navy destroying battles Rome had in the First Punic War before gaining enough shipbuilding experience to compete, though even then

This ignores the multitude of navy destroying battles Rome had in the First Punic War before gaining enough shipbuilding experience to compete, though even then their naval skills were so much worse they competed by developing a way to turn it into a land battle. Lepanto was the opposite, the end of over a millennium of armies fighting at sea and the emergence of a new form of naval supremacy.