SoA Forums

This is a thread for the ships, the crews, the practices and basically what we know about the fleets of our period of study, as per Mark G's suggestion.

Ship sizes, dimensions, layout, effectiveness, carrying capacity, tactics and techniques and anything else useful are all welcome, as are source accounts for and informed scholarship about various actions.  Members' own thoughts, opinions and findings are also encouraged.

While the initial emphasis will probably be on classical ships and navies, all periods and cultures are welcome.

Patrick

One way to start would be to run through a little of what is known (or surmised) about various warships of the classical period.  Members can expand with their own knowledge as desired.

Triakonter - 30-oared ship (15 per side), assumed to be one of the earliest warship configurations.  Open-decked, may have possessed a ram.

Pentekonter - 50-oared ship (25 oarsmen a side), the basis of warfleets prior to the Trojan War (and perhaps for some time afterward).  Open-decked, possessed a ram.  (Wikipedia article: http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Penteconter_%28ship%29 (http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Penteconter_%28ship%29))

Bireme - 120-oared ship (60 oarsmen per side), probably of Phoenician origin, open-decked, possessed ram.  (Wikipedia article here http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Bireme (http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Bireme))

Trireme - 170-oared ship (85 oarsmen per side), possibly of Phoenician origin (although the first trireme navy was fielded by Periander of Corinth c.600 BC).  Decked, possessed a ram.  (Wikipedia article: http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Trireme (http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Trireme))

Athenian triremes had a secret: the hypozomata.  This was two cables running the length of the ship internally, connecting the bow and stern under tension, and provided Athenian triremes with greater resilience, structural integrity and shock-absorbing capability than their counterparts.  It was actually a state secret!

Quadrireme - here we enter unknown, or at least uncertain, territory.  From various hints (including one that a quadrireme crew had less oarsmen than a trireme crew) we might assume 160 oars (80 per side, in decks of 20/20/20/20), making a quadrireme shorter and handier (and lighter) than a trireme.  Fully decked, possessed a ram.  There may have been quadriremes and quadriremes, so a 200-oar configuration (4x25 per side) is possible for some.  Favoured warship of Rhodian navies.

Quinqureme - 300-oared ship (at least in Polybius I.26, giving 150 oarsmen per side in decks of 5x30), conceivably of Phoenician origin, staple warship of Roman and Carthaginian navies.  The Carthaginian design was lighter, faster and sufficiently superior that the Romans did not win the First Punic War until after they had reconstituted their fleet with copies of it.

Polyremes - anything with six or more banks of oars is nowadays denoted as a polyreme, and much often furious discussion is expended upon how well they performed and exactly how many banks of oars they could have possessed.  Plutarch (Life of Demetrius 43) describes the fifteens and sixteens built by Demetrius Poliorketes:

Up to this time no man had seen a ship of fifteen or sixteen banks of oars ... However, in the ships of Demetrius their beauty did not mar their fighting qualities, nor did the magnificence of their equipment rob them of their usefulness, but they had a speed and effectiveness which was more remarkable than their great size.

Speed, effectiveness and great size almost certainly came with great cost, and although polyremes were often used as flagships, the trireme, quadrireme and quinquereme seem to have remained the backbone of Hellenistic and Roman Republican navies.

Patrick

Michael Lahanas' website includes a lot of the background material for those interested..

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/GiantShips.htm

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/war/Trireme.htm
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/war/Trireme2.htm

etc...

Excellent site, Tom, and well worth a look.

Mr Lahnas evidently belongs to the many-men-to-an-oar rather than many-banks-of-oars school of thinking.  Do members have any thoughts about this?

Patrick

I think the problem lies in the fact that some later galleys (later than the ancient period) seem to have had many men to the oar

Jim

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 16, 2012, 08:45:28 PM


Mr Lahnas evidently belongs to the many-men-to-an-oar rather than many-banks-of-oars school of thinking.  Do members have any thoughts about this?

I don't think you will find many people seriously championing the idea that the rating of hellenistic warships was based on the number of levels of oars these days. 

At least once you got past trireme  ;)

Jim

Quote from: Jim Webster on August 18, 2012, 10:27:51 AM
At least once you got past trireme  ;)

Jim

True :)  And lets not even get into Renaissance triremes, which were rowed on one level.

BTW - is this one of those "classical " terminology discussions or are we going to cover other eras and places?

Quote from: Erpingham on August 18, 2012, 10:58:03 AM
BTW - is this one of those "classical " terminology discussions or are we going to cover other eras and places?

Yes.  :)

As mentioned at the beginning of this thread, bring in whatever you like - if it is in period and it floats (or sinks), it is relevant.

Patrick

In terms of oar banks, I can't think of any naval or military academic in the last 100 years that believed that anything larger than a 'three' used a 'one man one oar' design. You get the odd classicist that just sees 'four', 'six', 'ten' etc and blindly says oars.

Anyhow there are surviving Roman ships (well wrecks) with long sweeps that had more than one man each (one of the Pisa ships, one of the Naples ships, and possibly the second Nemi ship) and it was standard practice from the 14th C.

Ship sheds for 4s and 5s appear to have been slightly wider but no longer than those for 3s. Indeed sheds for 3s were reused by some states.

Regards,

Tom..

Quote from: tadamson on August 20, 2012, 12:23:15 PM
In terms of oar banks, I can't think of any naval or military academic in the last 100 years that believed that anything larger than a 'three' used a 'one man one oar' design. You get the odd classicist that just sees 'four', 'six', 'ten' etc and blindly says oars.

Not blindly: Livy XXVIII.30.11 is explicit in the matter.

[11] While between the triremes an indecisive battle controlled by chance was in progress, the Roman quinquereme, whether because she was steadier by reason of her weight or more easily steered as her more numerous banks of oars⁶ [pluribus remorum ordinibus] cleft the whirling waters, sank two triremes and shooting past another swept away the oars on one side.

I include a footnote from an academic within the last 100 years ...  ;)

6 If a quinquereme had but one bank of oars, each oar pulled by five men, as many now incline to believe, it remains unexplained how Livy in comparing a quinquereme in battle with triremes could simply say that the former had more ordines remorum, unless he thought that to be the case. In XXIV. xxxiv. 7 exteriore ordine remorum includes all the oars on one side of a ship but does not tell us whether in a single bank or in five. Certainly the quinquereme, however rowed, was a more impressive sight from the shore than a trireme even to a landlubber; cf. XXIX. xi. 4*. For the whole question see A. Köster, Das antike Seewesen 143 ff.; and in Kromayer- Veith, Heerwesen, etc. 182 f.; 616 f.; W. W. Tarn, Hellenistic Military and Naval Developments 124 ff.; and-in Journal of Hellenic Studies, XXV. 137 ff., 156, 204 ff.; Starr, C.G., Class. Philol. XXXV. 353 ff.; 373.

*Livy XXIX.11.4 reads:
To these [ambassadors] five quinqueremes were assigned, in order that, in a manner suitable to the dignity of the Roman people, they might visit those lands where it was important to gain respect for the Roman name.

The 'academic' is Frank Gardener Moore, Professor Emeritus in Colombia University, 1949 (at least he edited the work).  (Perseus Project link: http://tinyurl.com/9ft86lh (http://tinyurl.com/9ft86lh))

The case is still open.

Incidentally in XXVIII.30.5 Livy notes that a quinquereme is slower than a trireme, or at least the one used by Adherbal was.

Patrick

Guilty as charged 100 was a bit optimistic. ::)

Though the Livy quotes also support the "a 5 was a 3 with extra men on the two upper oars" theory, and ties in with the odd quotes of longer or thicker oars representing those pulled by two men (but could be bigger oars for higher oarsmen in a 1 per 1 arrangement  ??? ).

Some years back Anderson suggested that by Imperial times Roman 3s and 4s were all light, fast two bankers, which ties in with Roman illustrations and mechanical theories.

Sadly, with very little physical evidence we are left with supposition (and the commonly accepted "fact" that with more than 4 or 5 banks, the required oar lengths for upper oars are just too big for practical use - though more than 3 men per oar requires walking the sweeps and also limits the number of banks you can have).

Tom..

It is one of those things that can attract diehard adherents on both sides; my own feeling is that whichever approach needs to explain away least is probably on the right track.

It is a pity that so few engineers are interested in these matters, because some detailed modelling (on a what-can-be-done basis rather than prove-at-any-cost) could put some substance into what are essentially hypotheses hovering around a few fragments of evidence.

Patrick

I would recommend to you Gardiner's The Age of the Galley, which has several articles on the technical aspects of oar systems and construction.  Generally speaking, it can be said that the engineers favour the multiple men to an oar theories, on the grounds of practical difficulty and mechanical issues.

Does Gardiner's book feature the creation of models, or is it limited to engineering theory on paper?

"The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times" (Conway Maritime Press, 1995) deals with everything concerning galleys and galley-like ships and their precursors in the Med; archaeology, theory and reconstruction. It's fully referenced and an amazing textbook on its subject, with many technical discussions. Robert Gardiner is "merely" the editor for a team of 15 other authors in this case. The book is volume two in Conway's monumental twelve-volume "History of the Ship" series.

The relevant notes about it from Amazon's webpage for the 2004 edition, http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Age-Galley-Mediterranean-Pre-classical/dp/0851779557 today are:

"The Age of the Galley charts the development from the earliest paleolithic craft to the classical tireme and its Roman and Byzantine successors. As a warship, the galley survived the coming of the three masted sailing ship, and later chapters are devoted to its mediaeval and Renaissance successors. An unprecedented line-up of over one hundred leading maritime historians and specialists from around the world has been assembled to ensure that the work is informative, authoritative and fully international in it outlook. Essays are also included on related but more general aspects and themes of the period under review such as material resources, battle tactics, shipbuilding, gunnery, exploration or technology."

There's also a useful customer review on the same page.

Note that although Amazon have John Morrison listed as its editor/author, he was actually the Consultant Editor (zoom-in on the cover illustration to find out!). Also, the hundred-plus experts from the blurb refers to the number of authors for the entire History of the Ship series, not just this text...

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 23, 2012, 11:54:16 AM
Does Gardiner's book feature the creation of models, or is it limited to engineering theory on paper?

Depends what you call models.  Can't see any physical models on display but there is evidence of computer modelling, especially the bits on oar mechanics.

If you can get hold of it, do.  You'll find a good selection of topic coverage, use of textual and artistic evidence, engineering studies and some good stuff on logistics.  It goes up to the Renaissance, so you get medieval and Byzantine stuff too.

The wikipedia page on Galleys has a good bibliography too (though the article still needs some work)

Merci beaucoup: physical models was indeed what I meant.  My local library will be getting a visit shortly.  :)

Meanwhile, if I may trouble an owner of the book (or reader with a good memory), what are the volume's contributors' conclusions about the relative efficiency of single-man and multi-man oar systems?  My own simplistic view of the subject would suggest that a multi-man arrangement is not efficient because only the inmost man can pull the full distance, the others adding power for only part of the stroke.

Patrick

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 23, 2012, 08:21:36 PM

Meanwhile, if I may trouble an owner of the book (or reader with a good memory), what are the volume's contributors' conclusions about the relative efficiency of single-man and multi-man oar systems?

Yes, though the mechanics of multiple men-per-oar systems is more thoroughly explored for medieval and renaissance galleys.  The one for classical vessels is more of a set of initial notes.  Both confirm your thought that the second and third men on an oar don't put in as much to the stroke (the difference varies depending on the rowing system).  Shaw, who writes the classical chapter, believes that travelling any distance, the rowing team would have rotated stations.  Shaw gives some consideration to pull/push systems (pushers are less efficient again but may have been needed on some of the larger polyreme oars) and seated v. standing (he thinks classical galleys could use three seated men).  The reasoning (which is around stroke lengths, gearing etc.) I leave someone who understands rowing or naval architecture to explain more fully.:)

As I think I understand Shaw, the trireme gets the most efficiency from its rowers, vessels with double manned oars next and the power per man drops away from there (but with the caveat that a multiman oar team could rotate, giving greater endurance - although your primary set up almost certainly had a experienced lead rower in the No.1 position, as per renaissance galleys).

I think we have to remember that naval engineering is always a balance (more armour, bigger guns, bigger engines, faster ship, more armour, bigger guns, bigger engines.............)

Do you want a ship that does 15 knots for half an hour or a ship that will cover 200 miles in a day?

efficiency is a tricky thing to get a grasp of in this subject, you can be wonderfully efficient and no use as a warship  ;D

Jim

Quote from: Jim Webster on August 24, 2012, 09:17:42 AM

Do you want a ship that does 15 knots for half an hour or a ship that will cover 200 miles in a day?

The ideal Hellenistic warship would do both: the first under oars (for combat) and the second under sail (for distance travel).  If a classical fleet wanted to get from point A to point B the rowers put up their feet and the deck crew put up the sails*.  Once you were at point B and about to fight, the deck crew put the masts and sails on shore and the rowers put their blades in the water.

*The hemiola and trihemiola were exceptions, being designed specifically to use oar and sail simultaneously, giving them a slight speed edge in most situations.  They were much prized for reconnaissance, and also much used by pirates.

Thanks, Anthony, for outlining Shaw's conclusions.  Very helpful.  :)

One reason why I am less than happy with hypotheses about multi-oar arrangements and oarsmen relieving one another in different positions (hmmm ...) is that oarsmen, as I understand it, were really only active in a fight, and trying to shift positions in the middle of a fight is not a recipe for good control of the ship.  Naturally, if the wind failed while undertaking strategic travel, the oarsmen would have to put their backs into it, but they would only need 'one-third power' available for cruising, so a trireme could have one bank rowing while the others rested with oars shipped, then change banks after a certain time interval and thus keep going indefinitely.  Multi-man oar systems cannot do this except by shipping every second oar, which constrains the stroke of those ahead and behind, or by rowing with the forward or aft oars only, which makes the ship take the water at an angle and increases drag.

While instinct is not the most conclusive of arguments, my instinct is that Hellenistic designers went for maximum efficiency, not second best.  One man per oar is most efficient, and design effort would, I feel, have focussed on getting as many oar banks into/onto a ship as could be managed in order to avoid becoming tangled up in the law of diminishing returns that seems to be the bane of multi-man oar systems.  It seems to me that the real bar to accepting the one-man-one-oar principle is not architectural but conceptual: until one can successfully visualise how the oar banks were organised, it is hard to envisage how multiple banks could have been arranged.  (In this connection one recalls that the late John Coates, the man behind Olympias' rowing arrangements, was confidently told by many academics that his understanding of the trireme as a three-banker could not work in practice - or so it says on the Trireme Trust website.  It is a pity he never managed to apply his skill and knowledge to reconstructing a quinquereme.)

It may be worth noting that in Polybius I.20, the Romans, who were quite familiar with triremes, were unable to envisage how to construct a quinquereme until an example fell into their hands.  This ship was copied and served as the pattern for every Roman quinquereme until late in the First Punic War when a significantly faster quinquereme fell into Roman hands, and copying that gave them a warship which won the war at the battle of Aegusa (Aegates Islands).

Polybius I.21 tells us that the Romans set up a special rowing school for quinquereme crews:

"They made the men sit on rower's benches on dry land, in the same order as they would sit on the benches in actual vessels: in the midst of them they stationed the Celeustes, and trained them to get back and draw in their hands all together in time, and then to swing forward and throw them out again, and to begin and cease these movements at the word of the Celeustes."

This implies (at least to me) that each man was responsible for his own oar, and the idea was to avoid getting them tangled.  What also seems to be implied is that rowing a quinquereme is a more precise and demanding process than rowing a trireme.

All of which suggests to me that there was more to a quinquereme than just a trireme with longer oars and deeper benches on the top row.  ;)

Patrick

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 24, 2012, 11:48:45 AM


One reason why I am less than happy with hypotheses about multi-oar arrangements and oarsmen relieving one another in different positions (hmmm ...) is that oarsmen, as I understand it, were really only active in a fight, and trying to shift positions in the middle of a fight is not a recipe for good control of the ship. 

Naturally, if the wind failed while undertaking strategic travel, the oarsmen would have to put their backs into it, but they would only need 'one-third power' available for cruising, so a trireme could have one bank rowing while the others rested with oars shipped, then change banks after a certain time interval and thus keep going indefinitely.  Multi-man oar systems cannot do this except by shipping every second oar, which constrains the stroke of those ahead and behind, or by rowing with the forward or aft oars only, which makes the ship take the water at an angle and increases drag.

While instinct is not the most conclusive of arguments, my instinct is that Hellenistic designers went for maximum efficiency, not second best.  One man per oar is most efficient, and design effort would, I feel, have focussed on getting as many oar banks into/onto a ship as could be managed in order to avoid becoming tangled up in the law of diminishing returns that seems to be the bane of multi-man oar systems. 

Patrick

Firstly - rotation of oarsmen.  This is hypothetical - there doesn't seem to have been any evidence quoted.  However, he is describing arrangements for long range cruising under oars.  This was perhaps more common than you allow - galleys had a fairly basic sailing rig - in winds to light or strong or in the wrong direction, or the current was a problem (going up the Dardanelles for example) they used oars. 

Secondly, oarsmen may have rotated a bank at a time as you suggest.  They may have used quarter rowing like a renaissance galley - the oars were divided into two pairs of quarters, fore and aft.  The pairs took it in turns to row.  I don't understand your point about multi-rower oars not being able to row by the level.   The oar system on a three level quinquereme would be the same as a standard trireme - the oars would be longer, the hull wider and taller but it's rowing system would be the same.

I think you have missed Jim's point on efficiency.  You are assuming only one measure of efficiency - the amount of the oarsman's strength used in the stroke.  The taller a ship gets, the longer the oars have to be if the oarsman is to maintain a sitting position.  The longer the oar the heavier and harder to wield it is.  Longer oars and taller ships add weight.  Height shifts the centre of balance, which makes the vessel more prone to roll and rolling plays havoc with a smooth efficient rythm, as oars coming clear of the water mess things up.  Also, what was the ship for?  Agile, with a tight turning circle and fabulous burst speed or a steady platform to put marines and engines on?  So, I am tempted to agree they would go for the most efficient design, only I'm with Jim that they are juggling a lot more factors and making appropriate design compromises along the way.

While it is true that the taller a ship gets, the longer the oars have to be if the oarsman is to maintain a sitting position, this is only part of the story.

Consider this picture:

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/war/images/TriremePlan2.jpg (http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/war/images/TriremePlan2.jpg)

Note how the oars of the trireme are all the same length.  This miracle of geometry is achieved by placing the benches ever nearer the hull of the ship, and providing an outrigger for the top row of oars.  I shall extend my cervical-spine-supported anatomy to the extent of suggesting that this principle would have guided Hellenistic shipbuilders, so that what we should look for in polyremes is cunning outrigger arrangements that leave the oars all the same length.

With that in mind, spot what is wrong with this arrangement:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Penteres.png (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Penteres.png)

Correct: instead of being staggered outward, the benches are directly superimposed, and the hull is too wide, too deep and too tall.

Now imagine the hull reduced to about half the cross-section in the illustration (in both dimensions) and the benches staggered as per the trireme.  What immediately emerges is that the lowest row of oars reach out the greatest distance: the oars of the upper banks meet the water inboard of those of the lowest bank.  The higher the row, the closer the oar-blade to the hull.

This brings its own law of diminishing returns: when an oar is held at a significant angle, it becomes harder to operate effectively.  Hence, beyond a certain number of banks one has to go outwards and upwards.  Outwards is preferable.  When one goes upwards the rule about keeping all oars the same length goes out of the window, as correctly observed.

From http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/GiantShips.htm (http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/GiantShips.htm):
The Leontophoros of Lysimachos was a "eight" (probably around 100 metre long ship) with 100 men rowing each file and therefore 800 men from each side, and with 1200 fighters on the deck and 2 commanders for the fighters.

This suggests to me a wide deck (bearing in mind previous discussions about how many Persians can dance on the deck of a trireme), as one might expect if covering an extensive outrigger arrangement.

Interestingly enough, the 'forty' of Ptolemy Philopator had the same 3:4 troop-to-rower ratio as Lysimachus' Leontophoros.  From the same site:

Athenaeus gives us a detailed description of a very large warship, built by Ptolemy Philopator (c. 244– - 205 BC). It was 130m (420 feet) long, 18m (57 feet) wide, and 22m (72 feet) high to the top of her gunwale. From the top of its sternpost to the water line was 24m (79.5 feet). In comparison the length of the Titanic was 243 m and the largest Oil Tanker around 485 m. It had four steering oars 14m (45 feet) long. It had 40 tiers of oars. The oars on the uppermost tier were 18m (57 feet) long. The oars were counter-balanced with lead to make them easier to handle though its size alone would impress and the broad deck would make a excellent weapons platform. It had a double bow and a double stern and carried seven rams, of which one was the leader and the others were of gradually reducing size. It had 12 under-girders 275m (900 feet) long. The ship was manned by 400 sailors to handle the rigging and the sails, 4000 rowers and 2850 men in arms for a total of 7250 men.

Note the 57-foot oars for the topmost oar bank, as long as the ship was wide.  This ship pushed the absolute limits of polyreme construction, and was more of a vanity piece, being moved, as Plutarch tells us, 'only with difficulty and danger'.  The sixteen, or perhaps the twenty, seems to have been the largest battle-capable warship.

The question is: how far is it practicable to go outwards adding rows of benches and outrigger supports before one has to go up?

Patrick

Patrick, I am always impressed by your powers of lateral thinking :)  I don't think I've ever seen the argument that you extended the rowers outwards before. 

Not being a naval architect, I can't answer your question.  What I can do is is raise the issue of evidence.  We do have a number of sculpted depictions of hellenistic and Roman warships which show the form of the outrigger.  It does not seem to fit the idea of of a tall overhang.  Another problem is none of the many illustrations we have of warships seems to feature anything with more than three tiers of oars.  Admittedly, we have no illustrations of ships with three oar levels saying "This is a five, six, eight etc." (AFAIK we have only one picture of a ship rated higher than three where it is written on it what it is - a Roman four - and it doesn't show the oar arrangement).  It is therefore possible that no-one ever chose to illustrate big ships. 

Overall, however, I think the current interpretation of multiple rowers to the oar best seems to fit the evidence available.

Thank you, Anthony.  :)

If for a moment we look at the matter onomasiologically*, would not the classical Greeks and Romans have referred to a trireme as a trireme because it had three banks of oars (as opposed to two or four)?  Given that starting-point, would they not have distinguished a three-bank, five-bench vessel as something like a 'pentatrieres' rather than as a 'penteres', and referred to triremes with multi-man oar banks throughout as something like 'hypertrieres'?

*I am sure we all remember this means starting with a concept and looking at how it is expressed in words.

Painting myself into my own little corner ;), I shall hold with one man, one oar until either we find an original source reference to multi-oar polyremes or find incidental evidence that unambiguously points that way.  So far, I have encountered none (although in fairness it has not yet been a long journey).

It is quite possible that big ships were illustrated, but bearing in mind how few representations of the trireme have survived (this being the most common form of warship for most of the classical period) it is perhaps unsurprising that we lack depictions of the larger vessels.  We might still encounter useful evidence if a villa from the Augustan period belonging to, say, Agrippa turns up with floor mosaics of Actium, for example.  Coinage is frustratingly ambiguous, not least because die engravers undoubtedly had their own views about the amount of work involved.

Changing the subject slightly, I shall sneak in a word about ramming tactics (yes, ramming was an art in itself).  Mediaeval dromons tended to mount the ram high, above the waterline, prizes apparently being more desirable than kills.  In the classical era, the ram went below the waterline and made a hole in the part of the hull that lets in water.  Rhodians used to dig the bow in deeper just before a ram, backing water with their forward oars in order to make the bow dip just prior to impact.  While effective, this could be taken too far.

At the Battle of Chios in 201 BC (Polybius XVI.3) King Philip V of Macedon was using a dekeres as his flagship, and happened to ram a Rhodian trihemiola (sail-and-oar trireme), dealing it a fatal blow.  So far so good, but when his ship tried to back away, it found itself stuck - the dead trihemiola simply would not shift.  The problem seems to have been that the ram of the dekeres had smashed through the trihemiola's keel, so the two ends of the ship pressed in upon the keel and would not let go.  Philip's embarrassed flagship was sunk by two delighted quinqueremes, which happily rammed this helpless target of a lifetime without getting stuck themselves.  Fortunately for Philip he had left the fight to his admiral, Democrates, and so survived to lose to the Romans on land at Cynoscephalae four years later.

Patrick

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 25, 2012, 11:29:01 AM


Painting myself into my own little corner ;), I shall hold with one man, one oar until either we find an original source reference to multi-oar polyremes or find incidental evidence that unambiguously points that way.  So far, I have encountered none (although in fairness it has not yet been a long journey).

I do recommend you read a bit of Morrison and Coates work - there are enough classical references to keep you very happy.   However (spoiler alert) they do come down on the idea that the rating is based on the number of files of oarsmen.  This allows them to explain the hemiolia (one & a half) and triehemiolia (two & a half) as having one or two full files running fore-aft, with a half file in the centre of the ship.  You get a slightly more cumbersome (IMO) explanation if you use the number of men per half-room argument.  Anyway, I'll let you research some more and we can switch to ramming tactics :)

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 25, 2012, 11:29:01 AM

If for a moment we look at the matter onomasiologically*, would not the classical Greeks and Romans have referred to a trireme as a trireme because it had three banks of oars (as opposed to two or four)?  Given that starting-point, would they not have distinguished a three-bank, five-bench vessel as something like a 'pentatrieres' rather than as a 'penteres', and referred to triremes with multi-man oar banks throughout as something like 'hypertrieres'?

My experience is, for reasons of callow youth, restricted to latter-day armaments industries, but I wouldn't feel confident in assuming the naming scheme necessarily made perfect sense. I would not be greatly surprised if it turned out that the "three" in trireme and "five" in quinquereme counted somewhat different things.

I'd agree with this, we have to remember that names evolve and are obvious to those who are there at the time.
Also we have names which don't fit into the scheme because they have a different source, Lembus and Liburna for example

Jim

I note incidentally that the (somewhat confusing) WP page on Hellenistic warships cites Morrison 2004¹ for the claim that "It is known from references from both the Second Punic War and the battle of Mylae that the quadrireme had two levels of oarsmen". Anyone with the thing at hand to tell us what the ancient sources are?

1. Morrison, John S. (2004). "Hellenistic Oared Warships, 399–31 BC", p7. In Gardiner, Robert. Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels since pre-Classical Times. Conway Maritime Press. pp. 66–77. ISBN 978-0-85177-955-3

It will be interesting to see how the claim in Morrison (in Gardiner) turns out, as I am unaware of any such reference in the Battle of Mylae (264 BC).  (Polybius I.23)

As for Gaius Duilius, he no sooner heard of the disaster which had befallen the commander of the navy than handing over his legions to the military Tribunes he transferred himself to the fleet. There he learnt that the enemy was plundering the territory of Mylae, and at once sailed to attack him with the whole fleet. No sooner did the Carthaginians sight him than with joy and alacrity they put to sea with a hundred and thirty sail, feeling supreme contempt for the Roman ignorance of seamanship. Accordingly they all sailed with their prows directed straight at their enemy: they did not think the engagement worth even the trouble of ranging their ships in any order, but advanced as though to seize a booty exposed for their acceptance. Their commander was that same Hannibal who had withdrawn his forces from Agrigentum by a secret night movement, and he was on board a galley with seven banks of oars which had once belonged to King Pyrrhus. When they neared the enemy, and saw the "crows" raised aloft on the prows of the several ships, the Carthaginians were for a time in a state of perplexity; for they were quite strangers to such contrivances as these engines. Feeling, however, a complete contempt for their opponents, those on board the ships that were in the van of the squadron charged without flinching. But as soon as they came to close quarters their ships were invariably tightly grappled by these machines; the enemy boarded by means of the "crows," and engaged them on their decks; and in the end some of the Carthaginians were cut down, while others surrendered in bewildered terror at the battle in which they found themselves engaged, which eventually became exactly like a land fight. The result was that they lost the first thirty ships engaged, crews and all. Among them was captured the commander's ship also, though Hannibal himself by an unexpected piece of luck and an act of great daring effected his escape in the ship's boat. The rest of the Carthaginian squadron were sailing up with the view of charging; but as they were coming near they saw what had happened to the ships which were sailing in the front, and accordingly sheered off and avoided the blows of the engines. Yet trusting to their speed, they managed by a manœuvre to sail round and charge the enemy, some on their broadside and others on their stern, expecting by that method to avoid danger. But the engines swung round to meet them in every direction, and dropped down upon them so infallibly, that no ships could come to close quarters without being grappled. Eventually the Carthaginians turned and fled, bewildered at the novelty of the occurrence, and with a loss of fifty ships.

Can anyone see any mention of a quadrireme?  The only ship I see specified is the hepteres [seven-banker] the Carthaginians had acquired from Pyrrhus.

Patrick

Technically, shouldn't we be treating hepteres as seven-? as the discussion is about whether it was oar banks or rowers (or whatever)

We can if you like, Jim, though I would hate to have to write an article full of four-?s and five-?s and nine-?s and ten-?s; I feel we would soon all be at six-?es and seven-?s.  ;)

Patrick

You don't need the question-marks - is it Morrison who just refers to "fours", "fives", and so on? It avoids any assumptions about exactly what the number refers to.

This is because the reference is to the Battle of Mylae (36BC)

The reference is Appian Civil Wars 5, 106 (which Patrick will doubtless have to hand).  He'll be even more pleased that it revolves around Greek grammar.  What happens is Agrippa's flagship - rate unknown - hits the ship of one Papias (which is assumed to be a four).  Papias' ship rapidly floods.  The lower deck oarsmen (thalamioi) are trapped and drown but the other oarsmen (hoi heteroi) break through the deck and escape.  Apparently, others here specifically means others of two groups, not others of many, so she was a two tier ship.

The other reference is Livy20.25, 2-8 but as far as I can tell all this says is Roman fives were taller than Carthaginian fours, which could be for a number of reasons.

Thanks, Anthony.

Although the battle is 5.106, the actual incident is 5.107:

[107] Agrippa bore down directly upon Papias and struck his ship under the bow, shattering it and breaking a hole in the keel. The men in the towers were shaken down, the water rushed into the ship, and all the oarsmen on the lower benches were cut off. The others broke through the deck and escaped by swimming.

In Greek, 'hoi heteroi' (hoi d'heteroi in the text, which is simply inserting de, 'but', to give 'but the others ...') simply means 'the others': it can mean 'one of two groups', but does not always have the sense of two equal groups (see Perseus lexicon entry, 'heteros' http://tinyurl.com/cmjwlr4 (http://tinyurl.com/cmjwlr4)).  I think adducing only two banks of oarsmen stretches the concept a bit far: if one wished to stretch with equal facility and less special pleading in the other direction, one could posit two banks of oarsmen being included in the word 'thalamiai', which in origin signifies the men within the 'thalamos', the lower part of the ship.  The Perseus translator has evidently already thought of this.

However nothing in the text identifies the ship as a quadrireme.  I looked back through the text in case a passing reference was made, but there seems to be nothing.

Curiously, Appian has Demochares in charge of the Pompeian contingent in 105 and Pappias in 106.

I am a bit puzzled about the Livy Book 20 reference, as Book 20 is one of the missing books.

Patrick

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 26, 2012, 12:13:00 PM
Thanks, Anthony.


I am a bit puzzled about the Livy Book 20 reference, as Book 20 is one of the missing books.

Patrick

A quick cross reference in another book by Morrison to the same incident seems to refer to Livy Book 30 .26. 6.  Does this make any more sense? 

Unfortunately not.  Livy is mentioning that despite flooding food was cheap, because a great quantity of grain had been sent from Spain,

and Marcus Valerius Falto and Marcus Fabius Buteo, the curule aediles, distributed this to the populace by precincts at four asses a peck.

If this has been mistaken for a reference to quadriremes, it argues rather poor attention on Morrison's part!

In XXX.26.2-4 Livy is telling us about envoys sent to Philip of Macedon in three quinqueremes to complain about his sending 4,000 troops to help the Carthaginians, but that is as close to the sea as this chapter in Livy gets.

Patrick

A source that may have some bearing on the matter is Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, XIX.23.

"Biremes (biremis) are ships having a double bank of oars (remus).  Triremes (triremis) and quadriremes (quadriremis) have three and four banks.  The penteris and hexeris have five and six banks respectively."

Location: http://tinyurl.com/9m9e9bf (http://tinyurl.com/9m9e9bf)

Would anyone be in a position to check Isidore's Latin?

Patrick

Thanks to the wonders of Google and The Latin Library (http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/):

QuoteBiremes autem naves sunt habentes remorum ordinem geminum. Triremes et quadriremes trium et quattuor ordinum. Sic et penteres et (h)exeres, quinos vel senos ordines habentes.

Thanks, Andreas.  :)

Crucially, Isidore uses 'ordines remorum' (banks of oars).  This agrees with Livy's 'pluribus ordinibus remorum' (more banks of oars) in XXVIII.30.11, which puts Isidore in the one-man-one-oar camp.  He was writing in the 6th-7th century AD, presumably long after the last polyreme had been broken up for firewood, but before the multi-man-oared mediaeval galleys came into existence.

We may exclude the possibility that Isidore or Livy are referring to benches of oarsmen: 'oarsman' is 'remex, remigius', while 'oar' is 'remus, remi', and 'remorum' is the genitive plural of 'remus', not 'remex' (the latter would be 'remigum'). 

This looks like two classical authorities unambiguously declaring in favour of polyremes having multiple banks of oars - and none against.  I think we could be on to something here.

Patrick

How good was Isidore's latin. I ask because some of the later authors were apparently pretty poor
Also is it possible he was just lifting stuff he'd read from Livy (or some other source) ?

Jim

Isidore actually defined Latin for his generation (his 'Etymologiae' consists largely of Latin etymology).  From what I have seen, and I was fully prepared to be unimpressed, he is surprisingly good at it.

Patrick

I was just wondering, the other thing I'd wonder about was his sources.

Jim

Quote from: Jim Webster on September 06, 2012, 11:03:53 AM
Also is it possible he was just lifting stuff he'd read from Livy (or some other source) ?

As Patrick says, he was writing long after n-remes went out of use, so if he had reliable information he must've got it from earlier authors (archaeology basically not existing in his day).

Alternatively, he might simply have concluded that a triremis "must" mean a ship with three banks of oars, based on the constituent stems. This would be quite in keeping with his general methodology, as I understand it.

Or maybe he read somewhere that, say, a trireme had three banks, and adroitly leapt to the conclusion that a quadrireme must have four, and so on. This would be logical enough, but as I wrote earlier I'm loth to take for granted that logic is necessarily applicable in numerical naming schemes - I've been involved in a few where the significance of the number changed along the way.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on September 06, 2012, 10:46:43 AM
Thanks, Andreas.  :)

Crucially, Isidore uses 'ordines remorum' (banks of oars).  This agrees with Livy's 'pluribus ordinibus remorum' (more banks of oars) in XXVIII.30.11, which puts Isidore in the one-man-one-oar camp.  He was writing in the 6th-7th century AD, presumably long after the last polyreme had been broken up for firewood, but before the multi-man-oared mediaeval galleys came into existence.

We may exclude the possibility that Isidore or Livy are referring to benches of oarsmen: 'oarsman' is 'remex, remigius', while 'oar' is 'remus, remi', and 'remorum' is the genitive plural of 'remus', not 'remex' (the latter would be 'remigum'). 

This looks like two classical authorities unambiguously declaring in favour of polyremes having multiple banks of oars - and none against.  I think we could be on to something here.

Patrick

Whilst I agree with Patrick that ordines remorum (row, lines or types of oars; banks is a modern term) shows that these authors  see a 5 with 5 identifiable sets of oars etc...  Isidore certainly never saw a polyreme and may well be using Livy (or others) as the source of his definition. Most historians agree that Livy was not a military man, he is noted for mistakes in military terminology etc.  It is entirely possible that he is repeating assumptions that have been made by people who never saw the polyremes. vis a '5' must be called that because it had 5 lines of oars.

I am, naturally, biased by the engineering  - 5 or more banks of oars is physically extremely difficult to do and 7+ mechanically impossible (the ratio between length of oar, position of pivot point, sweep distances and the power one man can provide are the killer factors) .  There have been designs that stagger the banks but you end up with almost the same number of oars as a 3 the same length.

Tom..

Then again, Livy was writing at a time when polyremes were still very much part of living memory (Actium and all that) and Roman numerical usage tended to be simple and straightforward - getting clever with their number system was challenging to say the least (they eventually had to adopt Greek 'numerals' because of this).

And if Isidore had stated that a quinquereme had five men to an oar, would there be quite the same reservations about accepting his evidence?  ;)

The engineering side was sufficiently daunting for the Romans to (like us) be unable to work out how to build a quinquereme until they had one in their hot little hands, so there may have been an as yet unrealised twist to the architecture which, once mastered, made polyreme construction not only possible but achievable on an industrial scale.

Patrick

It seems that all warships could be built on an 'industrial' scale.
The speed with which various people turned out very large number of ships seems to tell us that.
I think one problem isn't the speed of building but the sourcing of timber. It is interesting that the Carthaginians had timber available in store at the start of the Third Punic War

If you build with green timber you end up with a heavier boat (because the sap is still in it) and also one whose timbers will warp as it ages.
They were comparatively 'short term' expedients, but after the campaigning season if you had a quiet winter you could dry them out and probably do a lot of 'rebuilding'

Jim

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on September 06, 2012, 05:29:02 PM
Roman numerical usage tended to be simple and straightforward - getting clever with their number system was challenging to say the least (they eventually had to adopt Greek 'numerals' because of this).

Hm? I presume you mean "numeral" in the mathematical rather than the linguistic sense, but then I don't see why you'd need them at all to come up with perversities like eighty-man centuriae.

Ah, but the 80-man century was not the 'century' - it was a later derivation.

The 'century' as a military formation seems to arise only with the Polybian legion: I have not found any mention in Livy of the century as a Roman subunit prior to the formation of the Polybian legion (10 maniples each of hastati, principes and triarii as opposed to the earlier 15-maniple organisation that Livy details as existing in 340 BC).

The Polybian legion has two establishments: 'normal' (4,200 infantry and 200 or 300 cavalry) and 'emergency' (5,000 infantry and 300 cavalry).  In a 5,000-strong legion (which rapidly became the norm rather than the exception), the maniples of hastati and principes were raised to a strength of 160 heavy infantry and 40 velites - so the two subunits of the maniple were each one 'centuria' - 100 men - strong.  This seems to have been the origin of the term 'century' for a legionary subunit (although Livy mentions 'centurions' earlier - possibly anachronistically).  This 'century' consisted of 80 heavy infantry and 20 velites.

The 'Marian' legionary reorganisation removed the velites from the century, which then became an 80-man basic unit, perhaps with 20 'ferentarii' initially attached.  The 80-man 'century' (sans ferentarii) survived into the Empire period, presumably because everyone was used to the term, but the original nomenclature was entirely consistent with its numeric content.

Polyreme designations would similarly have been founded on exact numerical correspondence, but nobody would have removed oar banks as part of a fleet reorganisation.  :)

Patrick
P.S. - Greek 'numerals' were actually represented by letters, and were much handier than the Roman system.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on September 06, 2012, 09:14:58 PM
Ah, but the 80-man century was not the 'century' - it was a later derivation.

So was the quinquereme, both the ship and the word.

Assume for a moment that the 2-2-1 reconstruction is correct. What would you call it? If ancient engineers were like modern ones, they very well might call it a quinquereme by analogy with the trireme, even if that made a mockery of the original reason for calling a trireme a trireme. Both are "numerically exact", they just don't count the same thing.

I'm still completely in the dark, BTW, why you think the properties of the Roman or Greek numerals would matter at all here. You simply don't need numerals (in the mathematical sense) to number stuff, whether you number them according to a consistent scheme or not.

quinquereme was a latinisation of penteres (a five'er)
trireme is a lantinisation of trieres (three oar, literally three'er) it is ALSO a Latin term for a three bank ship

The Greek naval terminology starts with triaconter (a thirty) and penteconter (a fifty). Both single bank un-decked craft.
Then they use dieres (two'er or upper) for the 2 banked ships developed by the Phoneticians etc.
Then the great trieres is developed and rules the waves.

The Carthaginians (or possibly Syracuse but Western Med) then develop the tetreres (4) and penteres (5)
I'm sure that there is a reference to tetreres having 2 banks of oars (but it might be later Roman paintings of early battles) and at Mylae the Roman 5's were able to drop their 'crows' onto Hannibal's flagship which was a 7. At this time 3's were the fastest, 4's almost as fast but 5's were noticeably heavier and slower.

Syracruse developed the 6 and 7, Hellenistic engineers then built 8s 9s and 10s (but in tiny numbers).
Hellenistic fleets seem to have been 5s and 6s for 'line of battle', 3s and 4s for scouting/cruising and a few big ships as flagships. (the Ptolomy's though went to extremes)

The Rhodians then developed the triēmiolia (three less a half).  and so it goes on

I do love 'Phoneticians'!  ;)

Quote from: tadamson on September 06, 2012, 11:37:57 PM

I'm sure that there is a reference to tetreres having 2 banks of oars (but it might be later Roman paintings of early battles) and at Mylae the Roman 5's were able to drop their 'crows' onto Hannibal's flagship which was a 7. At this time 3's were the fastest, 4's almost as fast but 5's were noticeably heavier and slower.

We noted, investigated and dismissed the 'two-bank quadrireme' earlier in this thread - it was pure wishful thinking unsupported by anything in the original source.

It is unsurprising that a quinquereme could drop its corvus onto the deck of a hepteres, if one considers the description of a corvus (Polybius I.22):

Their mechanism was this. A round pole was placed in the prow, about twenty-four feet high, and with a diameter of four palms. The pole itself had a pulley on the top, and a gangway made with cross planks nailed together, four feet wide and thirty-six feet long, was made to swing round it. Now the hole in the gangway was oval shaped, and went round the pole twelve feet from one end of the gangway, which had also a wooden railing running down each side of it to the height of a man's knee. At the extremity of this gangway was fastened an iron spike like a miller's pestle, sharpened at its lower end and fitted with a ring at its upper end. The whole thing looked like the machines for braising corn. To this ring the rope was fastened with which, when the ships collided, they hauled up the "crows," by means of the pulley at the top of the pole, and dropped them down upon the deck of the enemy's ship, sometimes over the prow, sometimes swinging them round when the ships collided broadsides. And as soon as the "crows" were fixed in the planks of the decks and grappled the ships together, if the ships were alongside of each other, the men leaped on board anywhere along the side, but if they were prow to prow, they used the "crow" itself for boarding, and advanced over it two abreast.

In order to move the corvus on its pivot, it would have to be clear of the deck by several feet, which would allow it to drop onto the deck of a taller vessel and still be approximately level.

The idea that quinqueremes as a class were 'noticeably heavier and slower' than triremes is not borne out by the fact that Carthaginians used quinqueremes, not triremes, as fast blockade runners at the siege of Lilybaeum (Polybius I.46-47).  The first Roman quinqueremes were indeed heavier and slower, not least for the reasons Jim mentioned earlier, but for the final battle of the war the Romans built a fleet all modelled on the fast quinquereme they had captured during the siege of Lilybaeum (Polybius I.59).

And we might wish to remember Demetrius' fifteens and sixteens:

Up to this time no man had seen a ship of fifteen or sixteen banks of oars ... However, in the ships of Demetrius their beauty did not mar their fighting qualities, nor did the magnificence of their equipment rob them of their usefulness, but they had a speed and effectiveness which was more remarkable than their great size. - Plutarch, Demetrius, 43.

I put that last bit in bold because up to now readers seem to have missed it.  Larger did not necessarily mean slower.

Patrick

We should put up the whole bit, it does include the famed 40.....

43 1 But while Demetrius lay most dangerously sick at Pella, he almost lost Macedonia; for Pyrrhus swiftly overran it and advanced as far as Edessa. As soon, however, as Demetrius had somewhat recovered his strength he easily drove Pyrrhus out of the country, and then came to a kind of agreement with him, being unwilling that continual collisions and local conflicts with this opponent should defeat his set purpose. 9102 And his purpose was nothing less than the recovery of all the realm that had been subject to his father. Moreover, his preparations were fully commensurate with his hopes and undertakings. He had already gathered an army which numbered ninety-eight thousand foot, and besides, nearly twelve thousand horsemen. 3 At the same time, moreover, he had laid the keels for a fleet of five hundred ships, some of which were in Piraeus, some at Corinth, some at Chalcis, and some at Pella. And he would visit all these places in person, showing what was to be done and aiding in the plans, while all men wondered, not only at the multitude, but also at the magnitude of the works. 4 Up to this time no man had seen a ship of p109fifteen or sixteen banks of oars. At a later time, it is true, Ptolemy Philopator built one of forty banks of oars, which had a length of two hundred and eighty cubits, and a height, to the top of her stern, of forty-eight; she was manned by four hundred sailors, who did no rowing, and by four thousand rowers, and besides these she had room, on her gangways and decks, for nearly three thousand men-at‑arms. But this ship was merely for show; and since she differed little from a stationary edifice on land, being meant for exhibition and not for use, she was moved only with difficulty and danger. 5 However, in the ships of Demetrius their beauty did not mar their fighting qualities, nor did the magnificence of their equipment rob them of their usefulness, but they had a speed and effectiveness which was more remarkable than their great size.


It's worth pointing out that speed comes from a power to weight ratio and mechanically the 'multiple men per oar' model should produce faster boats.  :-)

The corvus thing is interesting.  In the middle ages Italian 2 bank galleys were some 2-3m higher than Turkish single bank galleys (all multiple men per oar) even using the 'expanded Olympus' banks each bank adds about 1.2m  so a 7 might only be 3m higher than a 5.

But since we have mentioned the subject of the building of ships, let us speak (for it is worth hearing of) of the ships which were built also by Ptolemaeus Philopator, which are mentioned by the same Callixeinus in the first book of his Account of Alexandria, where he speaks as follows:- "Philopator built a ship with forty ranks of rowers, being two hundred and eighty cubits long and thirty-eight cubits from one side to the other; and in height up to the gunwale it was forty-eight cubits; and from the highest part of the stern to the water-line was fifty-three cubits; and it had four rudders, each thirty cubits long; and oars for the thranitae, the largest thirty-eight cubits in length, which, from having lead in their handles, and because they were very heavy in the part inside the ship, being accurately balanced, were, in spite of their bulk, very handy to use. And the ship had two heads and two sterns, and seven beaks, one of which was longer than all the rest, and the others were of smaller size; and some of them were fixed to the ears of the ship; and it had twelve undergirths to support the keel, and each was six hundred cubits in length. And it was well proportioned to a most extraordinary degree; and all the appointments of the vessel were admirable, for it had figures of animals on it not less than twelve cubits in size, both at the head and at the stern, and every part of it was inlaid and ornamented with figures in wax; and the space between the oars down to the very keel had a running pattern of ivy-leaves and thyrsi; and there was great store of every kind of equipment to supply all parts of the ship that might require any. And when it put to sea it held more than four thousand rowers, and four hundred supernumeraries; and on the deck were three thousand marines, or at least two thousand eight hundred and fifty. And besides all these there was another large body of men under the decks, and a vast quantity of provisions and supplies. And the vessel was launched originally from a sort of framework, which they say was erected and made out of the wood of fifty ships of five ranks of oars; and it was launched by the multitude with great acclamations and blowing of trumpets. But after that a Phoenician devised a new method of launching it, having dug a trench under it, equal to the ship itself in length, which he dug close to the harbour. And in the trench he built props of solid stone five cubits deep, and across them he laid beams crosswise, running the whole width of the trench, at four cubits distance from one another; and then making a channel from the sea he filled all the space which he had excavated with water, out of which he easily brought the ship by the aid of whatever men happened to be at hand; then closing the entrance which had been originally made, he drained the water off again by means of engines; and when this had been done the vessel rested securely on the before-mentioned cross-beams. - Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 37 (http://www.attalus.org/old/athenaeus5b.html (http://www.attalus.org/old/athenaeus5b.html))

The '40' was the largest of the polyremes, and the only one I know of for which we possess actual measurements.  Taking a cubit as 18", we get a length of 420 feet, beam of 57 feet and height of probably 45 feet from deck to keel (judging by the rudder measurements).  We are not told what the ship drew (very rough guess = c.5'), but the immediate conclusion is that 40 banks of oars took about 40 feet of height.

The trireme Olympias, by comparison, is 121' long, with 18' beam and drawing 4' of water, with 170 rowers.  Adding 37 banks of oars added just under 40' to the beam and, surprisingly, 300' to the length.  This suggests that a way had been found to stagger the oarsmen so that each bank of oars took up only 1' of height, but needed 1' on the beam and several additional feet of length.  Conclusion?  The oarsmen were not sitting: they were practically lying down.  This may be one of the keys to the whole polyreme business.

The 'multiple men per oar model should produce faster boats', but does it?  Putting more than one man on an oar results in lost power (only the man at the end is fully efficient) and requires a wider beam, which does nothing for hydrodynamic performance.  The benefit side of the cost-benefit equation assumes that the one-man-per-oar ship will be constructed along the same lines as the multi-man oared ship.  However, the heavy emphasis in Greek sources on internal cable reinforcement for warship structure suggests very light scantlings indeed, with concomitant weight savings, while the narrow 'greyhound' beam and great length of Hellenistic warships maximise possible speed.  My own impression, for what it is worth, is that the one-man-one-oar configuration was more effective.

Patrick

Patrick, has your copy of Age of the galley come through from the library yet?  It does give lots more examples, which you would find interesting.

But, to pick up on some of these points, can we say Patrick has rejected the two-tier four.  The evidence is accepted by some well informed scholars.

Secondly, some scholars believe that there was a shift of meaning of what we call a bank of oars around the time the five was invented (fives come before fours).  They propose that the terminology in Greek and Latin refers to files of oarsmen. 

On another specific point, the Isthmia, Antigonis Gonatos' flagship, thought to be a nine, is described as triarmenos,
which Morrison believed meant three-decked.  I mention this to allow Patrick to consider possible alternative meanings.

I really would recommend a reading of some of the relatively modern works (1980s and later - the Olympias era) to see some of the arguments.  But I don't think they can be conclusive on the basis of current evidence.  I think in particular, the literary evidence is open to a lot of interpretations and you need to move away to look at other evidence, like the absence of images of ships with more than three levels of oars, or the arguments of naval architects about the practicalities of oar-powered skyscrapers.

We have already looked at this imaginary two-tier quadrireme.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 26, 2012, 12:13:00 PM

[107] Agrippa bore down directly upon Papias and struck his ship under the bow, shattering it and breaking a hole in the keel. The men in the towers were shaken down, the water rushed into the ship, and all the oarsmen on the lower benches were cut off. The others broke through the deck and escaped by swimming.

In Greek, 'hoi heteroi' (hoi d'heteroi in the text, which is simply inserting de, 'but', to give 'but the others ...') simply means 'the others': it can mean 'one of two groups', but does not always have the sense of two equal groups (see Perseus lexicon entry, 'heteros' http://tinyurl.com/cmjwlr4 (http://tinyurl.com/cmjwlr4)).  I think adducing only two banks of oarsmen stretches the concept a bit far: if one wished to stretch with equal facility and less special pleading in the other direction, one could posit two banks of oarsmen being included in the word 'thalamiai', which in origin signifies the men within the 'thalamos', the lower part of the ship.  The Perseus translator has evidently already thought of this.

However nothing in the text identifies the ship as a quadrireme.  I looked back through the text in case a passing reference was made, but there seems to be nothing.

To reiterate, where is the evidence that this ship is a quadrireme?  Where is the evidence that specifies it as having two banks of oars?  What actual evidence is there to accept?  Please tell me!

You will forgive a mild case of scepticism about scholars who, with considerable latitude in interpretation, conjure two oar banks from the above and arbitrarily assume the vessel to be a quadrireme, and who similarly believe (without adducing evidence) in a shift of meaning, who believe that the Isthmia was a 'nine', and believe that triarmenos might mean three-decked.

Triarmenos, at least according to my Greek dictionary, means 'possessing three sails'.  Please tell me something Morrison can get right, and then I might consider it worth parting with £4 for an inter-library loan.

Patrick

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on September 07, 2012, 09:30:23 PM

To reiterate, where is the evidence that this ship is a quadrireme?  Where is the evidence that specifies it as having two banks of oars?  What actual evidence is there to accept?  Please tell me!

You will forgive a mild case of scepticism about scholars who, with considerable latitude in interpretation, conjure two oar banks from the above and arbitrarily assume the vessel to be a quadrireme, and who similarly believe (without adducing evidence) in a shift of meaning, who believe that the Isthmia was a 'nine', and believe that triarmenos might mean three-decked.

Triarmenos, at least according to my Greek dictionary, means 'possessing three sails'.  Please tell me something Morrison can get right, and then I might consider it worth parting with £4 for an inter-library loan.

Patrick

The problem we are having is that I, a person not familiar with the sources and knowing relatively little about the mechanics of oared propulsion, is trying to pass you bits of information in an e-mail about complicated arguments by classical scholars and naval architects.  Hence, you think Morrisons arguments are rubbish, because you haven't read them, only short excerpts, which I have not necessarily relayed correctly.  Hence my suggestion that you track down these arguments at source.  You are not a man to condemn one of the major scholars on a subject without having read him - I know this from previous discussions.

And, of course, there is your "primacy of sources" approach, which is going to clash with people who come at the problem from an engineering or physiological approach (i.e. start with what is physically possible/plausible and interpret the sources accordingly) - many of those who have thrown their hat into this particular ring are such people.

Actually the reasons I think Morrison's arguments are rubbish are because from what has been relayed it seems he cannot read his sources correctly and mistranslates Greek, but I accept your point and shall live in hope that the book will be suitably informative (a near certainty) and not a concatenation of scholarly misconceptions (currently an open question).

And despite your modest disclaimer you actually make a very good job of cutting through to the essentials of a subject.

The perspective of current engineering may not be entirely reliable because of certain a priori assumptions; I would be more confident if those contributing were Hellenistic engineers, but we shall see.  One remembers such gems as the attempt in a TV documentary to recreate Archimedes' 'claw' - it became evident that the 'engineer' had not the faintest idea what the device was, let alone how to replicate it (an Italian engineer briefly interviewed on the same programme had a much better idea, and he really should have been the one doing the project).

Patrick

In true classical fashion, I had an idea while soaking in the bath.  Morrisons 1980 book Long Ships and Round Ships was serialised in Slingshot (strange but true).  Anyone with the CD should be able to turn up the relevant articles.  Granted, it is early Morrison but it does show the start of some of these discussions and does not cost £4 for an interlibrary loan (which is mighty cheap - ours are £5.80)

Quote from: Erpingham on September 08, 2012, 06:16:52 PM
In true classical fashion, I had an idea while soaking in the bath.

They say the old ways are the best.  :)

Thanks for that, Anthony.  As soon as my current backlog is cleared the Slingshot DVD will be back in the computer.

Patrick

To be honest, Morrison is not the greatest of authors available.  I'd start with Rodgers, the good Admiral may have written a long time ago but he does cover the sources very well.
Try:
Lionel Caisson's "Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World"
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; New Ed edition (1 Dec 1995)
ISBN-10: 0801851300
ISBN-13: 978-0801851308

And for Medieval
John Prior's "Geography, Technology, and War: Studies in the Maritime History of the Mediterranean, 649-1571"
Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1st Paperback Ed edition (14 May 1992) 
ISBN-10: 0521428920
ISBN-13: 978-0521428927

As for the engineering arguments, the killer is that as you add extra banks of oars they have to be longer each time.  On a 'one man per oar' banks beyond 4/5 are too long for one man to actually pull it through the water from a sitting position.

Given the archaeology of Roman boats with multiple men per oar, the textual evidence of 5's fitting in sheds built for 3's  etc I have to admit that I can't see anything above a 4 having a one man per oar design.

Quote from: tadamson on September 10, 2012, 01:25:38 AM

As for the engineering arguments, the killer is that as you add extra banks of oars they have to be longer each time.  On a 'one man per oar' banks beyond 4/5 are too long for one man to actually pull it through the water from a sitting position.

Given the archaeology of Roman boats with multiple men per oar, the textual evidence of 5's fitting in sheds built for 3's  etc I have to admit that I can't see anything above a 4 having a one man per oar design.

Thanks, Tom.  Rodgers, Caisson and Prior are on my list.

I am not so sure that extra banks of oars have to be longer, provided the extra banks of rowers slope outward as well as upward.

Interestingly enough, it would seem (from Age of the Galley) that the majority of mediaeval galleys were one man per oar versions (albeit multiple rowers sat on the same bench), with multi-man oars being a comparatively late development and suffering from several serious problems that were never entirely resolved, notably rower inefficiency and the fact that losing one man on a bench of three disabled the entire oar (some galley captains refused to sail without a spare man for each multi-man oar).  Given Morrison's estimate that one oarsman per oar is 90% efficient and two oarsmen per oar works out at 67% efficient, one can see why few mediaeval designers ever went beyond three men per oar.

Having had a brief and partial read around the subject, it looks as if the two major geometric constraints on rower effectiveness are the Blade-In-Water line (which must not be too low or too high relative to the shoulders) and the thole line (where the oar pivots - about waist level).   Nothing in between these points seems to matter much, so one could have oarsmen who are almost (but not quite) prone.  This might do much to explain why the Ptolemaic 'forty' seems to have been about 40-45 feet high rather than 120 feet high, and might also make the standard polyreme more comprehensible, besides allowing a quinquereme to fit in a standard trireme shed.

It also would allow one to get away with many more oar banks before oar length becomes a problem (as it evidently had with the 'forty').

Patrick

You might be confusing efficiency and speed.
Yes the efficiency per man falls the more men you have on an oar, but the boat goes faster because there is still more energy being put into the system (even after efficiency losses).

Similarly just going 'out' rather than 'up' doesn't help much, because you are still higher, so you still end up needing to row standing up.
Also you become more unstable because your keel width/hull width in the water doesn't increase, you're just supporting a bigger mushroom on the same sized stalk.

Jim

Efficiency is going to enter the equation in the power:weight ratio, which is also (hydrodynamic considerations being equal) the basic determinant of speed.  And while an oar with two or three men on it will indeed transmit more power per oar than a one-man oar, this is of little help if one has significantly fewer oars.  300 men heaving away at 100 three-man oars are indeed putting in more energy per oar than 300 men with 300 one-man oars, but much more of that energy is being wasted and the propulsive power is more like 146 'man units' against 270.  Hence the multi-man-oar ship has to pack as many rowers on half the displacement just to stay competitive.

Going 'out' means one does not have to go 'up' quite so far with each tier of oarsmen, so one can pack in more tiers before one's oarsmen have to adopt compromising positions.  There is another trick one can use, as did many mediaeval galleys, and that is to arrange multi-man benches in herringbone fashion, giving each man his own individual oar - known as a zenzile - as opposed to the unsatisfactory multiple men to an oar arrangement (known as a scaloccio).

Confucius he say size of mushroom matters little provided weight of stalk is sufficient (make of that what you will  ;)).  One does note an increased beam on the one polyreme for which we have measurements, so it seems that Hellenistic engineers were well aware of how far they could go.

Patrick

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on September 10, 2012, 04:57:40 PM
There is another trick one can use, as did many mediaeval galleys, and that is to arrange multi-man benches in herringbone fashion, giving each man his own individual oar - known as a zenzile - as opposed to the unsatisfactory multiple men to an oar arrangement (known as a scaloccio).


Patrick

It should be pointed out alla scaloccio was so unsatisfactory that it progressively replaced alla zenzile in the second half of the 16th century :)  However, the primary reason was alla zenzile needed more skilled rowers (which may or may not be significant in classical times).

On multi men per oar, the oar length and consequent weight need to be considered.  The higher the vessel, the longer the oars.  At a certain point there has to be a trade off between oar length and the ability of one man to move that oar at a useful strike rate.

On semi-recumbent oarsmen, I think that the upper body needs to be fairly upright to work an effective stroke.  So would a low angle oarsmen have an efficient, maintainable stroke?  Could he apply his full power or would he have a shortened reach over a sitting oarsman?  I suspect this needs some CAD software to sort out.

Also remember, as tadamson said,  they reused ship sheds so the ships didn't get that much taller or wider
Jim

Tom pointed out that quinqueremes were housed in trireme sheds, indicating that dimensions of those types were compatible if not identical.  One reason why larger polyremes did not take the Mediterranean world entirely by storm might be that investment in rebuilding all the ship sheds may not have been viewed with great enthusiasm.  Then there is the matter of crews ...

Yes, Anthony, the popularity of alla scaloccio did increase, apparently more or less in line with the increased popularity of using fettered convicts and prisoners of war rather than low-paid citizenry to man the galleys.  This naturally made exchanging positions in an extended voyage a somewhat unlikely exercise except for Houdini types, but it does underline your point about being the system of choice for when skilled oarsmen are at a premium.  Since it seems to have been - as far as I can deduce - Hellenistic practice to train entire crews simultaneously, taking as many men as were needed, I do not think skilled rowers were a limiting factor, and I cannot think of any references to individual crews being topped up with novices or spiced up with experts.  If you could not get the rowers, you settled for smaller ships or fewer larger ones (Philip V's navy, with its mix of polyremes and lembi, may be a case in point).

My impression is that in a near-recumbent position the legs can help the stroke (if correct this may require us to redo a bit of arithmetic about just how much power a human can provide).  One does need to raise the body a bit on recovery, but finding out how high may simply require a session on a rowing machine rather than reverting to CAD.  (I have never entirely trusted CAD since the first generation of submarines designed on it all leaked at depth - Collins, Upholder, you name it, it leaked.)

Patrick

Possibly worth mentioning in the context of polyremes is this passage from Memnon's History of Heracleia:

"When he heard what had happened, Antigonus the son of Demetrius tried to cross over to Macedonia with an army and a fleet, in order to forestall Ptolemaeus; and Ptolemaeus went to confront him with Lysimachus' fleet.  In this fleet were some ships which had been sent from Heracleia, six-bankers and five-bankers and transports and one eight-banker called the lion-bearer, of extraordinary size and beauty. It had 100 rowers on each line, so there were 800 men on each side, making a total of 1,600 rowers. There were also 1,200 soldiers on the decks, and 2 steersmen.  When battle was joined, the victory went to Ptolemaeus who routed the fleet of Antigonus, with the ships from Heracleia fighting most bravely of all; and of the ships from Heracleia, the prize went to the eight-banker "lion-bearer"."

Memnon, History of Heracleia, 8.4-6 (http://www.attalus.org/translate/memnon1.html (http://www.attalus.org/translate/memnon1.html))

I have not found a Greek text for this, but the "100 rowers on each line, so there were 800 men per side" looks very much as if eight distinct oar banks are meant.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on June 04, 2013, 10:33:55 AM

Memnon, History of Heracleia, 8.4-6 (http://www.attalus.org/translate/memnon1.html (http://www.attalus.org/translate/memnon1.html))

I have not found a Greek text for this, but the "100 rowers on each line, so there were 800 men per side" looks very much as if eight distinct oar banks are meant.

I'm not sure it will really change anything.  You know from reading Age of Galleys that some would define the eight rows as being from outside to the inside, rather than one above the other.  We would be back to interpretations of what words translated "line", "file", "bank" might mean.

We can at least be certain that it does not mean eight men to an oar.  One can fit three men to an oar with some loss of efficiency, but eight???

Whatever the 'lines' were, this octoreme had eight of them. ;)

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on September 10, 2012, 11:48:50 AM

Quote from: tadamson on September 10, 2012, 01:25:38 AM

Interestingly enough, it would seem (from Age of the Galley) that the majority of mediaeval galleys were one man per oar versions (albeit multiple rowers sat on the same bench), with multi-man oars being a comparatively late development and suffering from several serious problems that were never entirely resolved, notably rower inefficiency and the fact that losing one man on a bench of three disabled the entire oar (some galley captains refused to sail without a spare man for each multi-man oar).  Given Morrison's estimate that one oarsman per oar is 90% efficient and two oarsmen per oar works out at 67% efficient, one can see why few mediaeval designers ever went beyond three men per oar.

WRT efficiency of oarsmen, this is one of the subjects that was explored during the Olympias sea trials.  In particular the effect of lowest bank of oarsmen (or more commonly oarswomen due to it being the most cramped position and, hence, requiring the smallest rowers) and their contribution to the overall performance of the craft were explicitly examined.  FWIW, it was found that the lowest bank added the least to the craft's overall speed, although this was largely attributed to the lack of room that prevented these rowers from developing their full stroke.  (Incidentally, Morrison reckons the space problem was because they selected the wrong-sized cubit when designing their reconstruction.)

I hope everyone includes the Olympias trials monographs in their list of required reading on this subject.  They really are enlightening and include many practical topics such as speed, turning circle, crew training, etc.

With regard to the discussion on sources, the one name I seem to miss is Morrison's collaborator Coates, who was a naval architect.  Coates made the point that whilst many of the ancient texts could be interpreted in a number of different ways, from a practical engineering standpoint there is generally only one sensible solution.

Hope this helps,
Nick

Quote from: NickHarbud on June 07, 2013, 10:01:50 AM

I hope everyone includes the Olympias trials monographs in their list of required reading on this subject.  They really are enlightening and include many practical topics such as speed, turning circle, crew training, etc.

With regard to the discussion on sources, the one name I seem to miss is Morrison's collaborator Coates, who was a naval architect.  Coates made the point that whilst many of the ancient texts could be interpreted in a number of different ways, from a practical engineering standpoint there is generally only one sensible solution.

Hope this helps,
Nick

Thanks, Nick.

The documentation relating to the Olympias' trials is held by the Trireme Trust and requires application for access http://tinyurl.com/k46frk4 (http://tinyurl.com/k46frk4) but some of the essentials can be found here: http://www.soue.org.uk/souenews/issue5/jenkinlect.html (http://www.soue.org.uk/souenews/issue5/jenkinlect.html)

The late John Coates was indeed a career naval architect (he led the design of the County-class guided missile destroyers and eventually became Chief Naval Architect) and his dedication to the Olympias project resolved once and for all the question of whether a trireme had three banks of oars as indicated by sources and proposed by Morrison and furthermore how the design could be made to function.

Olympias was of necessity a bit of a botched job, as is not infrequent when pioneering uncharted territory.  It did however establish the practicability of trireme design, construction and operation, even if questionable cubits and bronze nails in place of effective measurements and wooden dowels put something of a crimp on its handling and performance.  We can regard it as a benchmark for the lowest level of trireme capability rather than a true indicator of trireme performance, proof of concept rather than a paragon of replication, but also as a huge advance in our knowledge.

Somehow I feel we are unlikely to get a skilled and dedicated team willing and able to recreate the Leophorus ('lion-bearer').  With 100 men per 'line', which I understand to be an oar bank, this octoreme would be three times as long as a trireme - and finding, let alone training, 1,600 oarspersons would tax the resources of the modern world.

Still, in a world where individuals are prepared to build a new Titanic, there is hope.

The Oxbow monograph on the Olympias trials is available on Amazon, although the price is slightly eye-watering.  (I found my copy in a second hand bookshop for a more reasonable £9.)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Trireme-Project-Operational-Archaeology/dp/0946897581/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1370604832&sr=8-7&keywords=trireme

One wonders whether there has been any attempt to apply the interpretation/design principles used on Olympias to other ancient vessels?

A worthy thought.  I am not sure they are well enough studied and understood: Coates himself wanted another try to iron out all the mistakes that cropped up the first time round, but unfortunately he had no successor and the concerted effort of design and study seems to have dissipated rather than progressed - at least that is my impression.

Does anyone know if any serious attempts have been made to apply the methodology to other classical ship types?  Ancient Egyptian ships have been analysed, especially since Thor Heyerdahl's Ra, but apart from the Phoenicia Project http://www.phoenicia.org.uk/ (http://www.phoenicia.org.uk/) I know of no other attempts to recreate realistic designs of viable period vessels.

One problem is that while information about triremes was sketchy, information on the larger types is practically nonexistent.  Olympias had certain definite parameters: shipyard size, crew numbers, names for the oarsmen on the various banks, reliefs and representations giving an impression of layout and construction.  Because we can only guess at the layout and configuration of the multi-bank ships, my impression is that nobody has felt emboldened to try, although one could extend the parameters of the Olympias design as a starting-point to see at what point the equations begin to part company with feasibility and then think of ways to bring them back into the realm of the viable (the hypozomata was quite a welcome surprise, halving as it did the hogging forces on the ship).

The real problem may be that such theoretical development requires a highly skilled naval architect with time on his hands and whose findings are accepted as law if matters are not to dissolve in a crossfire of opposing entrenched preconceptions, and even then can progress only a short way before requiring the decisive test of being put into practice. 

I realise its been some years, but wanted to point out there is a chaper on the Olimpias in a book "Sailing into the Past Replica Ships and Seamanship"

I have an article coming up (I think) on my naval rules in the next Slingshot.

Quote from: eques on August 03, 2016, 01:36:11 PM
I have an article coming up (I think) on my naval rules in the next Slingshot.

Can you offer a rules into of some sort? I don't have any rules for Ancient/Middle Ages naval wargaming other than the very basic part of the old H&R 5mm rules.

In particular I'd live to know how you treat the Norse viking crewing numbers. IMHO the longboats had to have two crews to keep rowing. Unless the one crew rested every 30 minutes, but that would mean having little to any control  over heading? I think particlarly where there was no wind, and the sailing was against the current/tide, as for example in coastal waters.

Or do I have it wrong? Perhaps there was already an article somewhere in Slingshot, but I only just received my 45 years collection.

Cheers

Quote from: Gibor on August 06, 2016, 07:13:59 AM

Quote from: eques on August 03, 2016, 01:36:11 PM
I have an article coming up (I think) on my naval rules in the next Slingshot.

In particular I'd live to know how you treat the Norse viking crewing numbers. IMHO the longboats had to have two crews to keep rowing. Unless the one crew rested every 30 minutes, but that would mean having little to any control  over heading? I think particlarly where there was no wind, and the sailing was against the current/tide, as for example in coastal waters.

How about two half crews?  A late medieval/renaissance galley travelling a distance under oars split its crew in half and each crew rowed and rested over a similar period.  They could do this all day.  So, unless we consider Vikings particularly weedy, is there any reason they couldn't do the same?  Incidentally, a Renaissance crew were thought to have two hours of whole crew rowing in them before they needed to switch to shifts.

Quote from: Gibor on August 06, 2016, 07:13:59 AM

Quote from: eques on August 03, 2016, 01:36:11 PM
I have an article coming up (I think) on my naval rules in the next Slingshot.

Can you offer a rules into of some sort? I don't have any rules for Ancient/Middle Ages naval wargaming other than the very basic part of the old H&R 5mm rules.

In particular I'd live to know how you treat the Norse viking crewing numbers. IMHO the longboats had to have two crews to keep rowing. Unless the one crew rested every 30 minutes, but that would mean having little to any control  over heading? I think particlarly where there was no wind, and the sailing was against the current/tide, as for example in coastal waters.

Or do I have it wrong? Perhaps there was already an article somewhere in Slingshot, but I only just received my 45 years collection.

Cheers

Hi Greg

My rules only cover the classical period but anyway do not go into the technical detail of how the ships are moved - they just assume the ships move roughly where they want to using whatever method suits them best.

The rules are based around a PIP system, meaning you can move about a third of your ships per turn.  On spending a PiP the ship can do one of: Move, Shoot, Ram or Grapple, and each turn does not last very long (2 or 3 minutes)

Ship stats are Crew, Hull, Movement and Turning Circle (90 or 45 degrees)

Movement allowance reduces by a centimetre for every Crew or Hull point lost.  If either Hull or Crew are reduced to zero the ship is knocked out of the game.

The full rules are provided in the article,  but if anything is unclear please do ask me on the forum or PM me.

Harry