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Quote from: Jim Webster on September 06, 2024, 07:35:38 PMIf the quadriremes and quinqueremes didn't have outriggers (only two banks of oars) then they could have a wider hull than a trireme but still fit into the ship shed. 

One problem with this is that Hellenistic, Punic and Roman ships are often shown in art as having outriggers.  It is possible that art only tends to show triremes and other smaller vessels and the larger ships are not illustrated but it doesn't seem likely.  So, perhaps early outrigger-less types existed to fit in existing trireme sheds but not sure one can assume that that was the norm later.

Quote from: Erpingham on September 07, 2024, 01:05:32 PMOne problem with this is that Hellenistic, Punic and Roman ships are often shown in art as having outriggers.

Artists are generally neither naval architects not professional oarsmen.  So what do they know?

Certainly there were earlier triaconters, penteconters and biremes that lacked an outrigger, but this is to be expected as it is only required when one has three oarbanks.  The arguments for galleys with three oarbanks requiring an outrigger are detailed in Morrison & Coates 'The Athenian Trireme'. 

I feel that this is one of those cases where those arguing something different really have no idea of the practicalities.

Quote from: Nick Harbud on September 07, 2024, 02:02:50 PMArtists are generally neither naval architects not professional oarsmen.  So what do they know?

Well, they did have the advantage of living in the same world as the real life prototypes, whereas we don't.  And it is an odd shift to say that art of the trireme era was sufficiently accurate that we can base reconstructions on it but after that it was fantasy.

Anthony, your arguement sounds very 1960s, if not a little Watersonian.  I mean, simply considering various artistic representations, one can come up with several different oar arrangements.  R.C. Anderson 'Oared Fighting Ships', published in 1962, describes many of them.  However, as Coates points out, although several different interpretations of the ancient archaeological, artistic and literary evidence are possible, in nearly all cases there is only a single practical solution. 

For galleys with three oarbanks, the practical solution requires an outrigger.  If you believe quads, quins and larger polyremes had an outrigger, you have to find evidence of larger ship sheds or other facilities to maintain them.  Otherwise, to meet the requirements of a wider hull in the same size ship shed, you have to dispense with the outrigger and use two oarbanks.

Quote from: Nick Harbud on September 07, 2024, 04:52:36 PMAnthony, your arguement sounds very 1960s, if not a little Watersonian. 

I am not in the slightest convinced by this line of argument.  Firstly, Patrick's view on ancient ships from quads upwards can be seen elsewhere on this forum.  He clung stubbornly to the Victorian notion that the number of oar banks equalled the number of levels of oars, and there was never more than one man per oar.  I, however, am simply talking about a current mainstream view (not 60s) that possible constructions of quadriremes and quinqueremes used out riggers in at least some designs.  Otherwise we must account for the evidence.  A great many (hundreds) of ancient imagines of warships on coins, sculptures, paintings show ships with outriggers.  This is especially true for the Hellenistic and Republican Roman periods. There are some ways in which your argument can be squared with the evidence, which I've hinted at above e.g.
1. it was conventional across the Mediterranean only to show smaller warships in art. So what we are seeing a triremes and smaller with outriggers and we lack the non-outrigger fours, fives and above which made up the main-line warships pretending to be their bigger cousins.  Thus the Isola Tiberina ship would not be a life size quinquereme but a super-sized trireme, which would also explain why it is too big for the Egadi rams. 
2. Another explanation might be most ships remained triremes and the ancient historians exaggerated the role of other types (Patrick really would disagree with that).
3. we have got the wrong end of the stick and fours and fives were trireme-like in size and appearance and the Egadi rams really are from fours and fives.

To me, the most straightforward explanation is the mainstream one - at least some of the art does represent fours and fives or bigger, that at least some of these vessels were outrigger equipped and some were on three levels, and that the size of the Egadi rams remains a mystery.
 

With regard to outriggers it is a fair point

A quick google turned up the following from that source of all madness, Wiki

Based on iconographic evidence from coins, Morrison and Coates have determined that the Punic triremes in the 5th and early 4th centuries BC were largely similar to their Greek counterparts, most likely including an outrigger.[22] From the mid-4th century, however, at about the time the quinquereme was introduced in Phoenicia, there is evidence of ships without outriggers. This would have necessitated a different oar arrangement, with the middle level placed more inwards, as well as a different construction of the hull, with side-decks attached to it. From the middle of the 3rd century BC onwards, Carthaginian "fives" display a separate "oar box" that contained the rowers and that was attached to the main hull. This development of the earlier model entailed further modifications, meaning that the rowers would be located above deck, and essentially on the same level.[23][24] This would allow the hull to be strengthened, and have increased carrying capacity in consumable supplies, as well as improve the ventilation conditions of the rowers, an especially important factor in maintaining their stamina, and thereby improving the ship's maintainable speed.[25] It is unclear however whether this design was applied to heavier warships, and although the Romans copied the Punic model for their quinqueremes, there is ample iconographic evidence of outrigger-equipped warships used until the late imperial period.


But it does give a source,
Coates, John F. (1995). "The Naval Architecture and Oar Systems of Ancient Galleys". In Morrison, John S.; Gardiner, Robert (eds.). The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times. London: Conway Maritime Press. pp. 127–141. ISBN 0-85177-554-3.

Having discovered this is available from Oxfam for £16 I decided to invest 

Quote from: Jim Webster on September 07, 2024, 07:54:42 PMHaving discovered this is available from Oxfam for £16 I decided to invest 

It's a good book and it covers more than just classical stuff - there's a lot on medieval ships too.

Quote from: Erpingham on September 07, 2024, 11:03:27 PM

Quote from: Jim Webster on September 07, 2024, 07:54:42 PMHaving discovered this is available from Oxfam for £16 I decided to invest

It's a good book and it covers more than just classical stuff - there's a lot on medieval ships too.

Yes I decided given the names involved it was worth going for a longer view 

Could the outriggers have been removable for storage in a shed?

Quote from: Cantabrigian on September 08, 2024, 11:09:59 AMCould the outriggers have been removable for storage in a shed?

I suspect not.  They seem to be an integral part of the ships structure.  I suspect they must be to support the forces involved.

We're perhaps assuming one design here.
Take Athens or Carthage (or other established naval powers.)
They would have a large number of ships stored in the ship sheds. At the start of the campaigning season (or in case of need) a set number of ships would be fitted out and launched. So a fleet of sixty ships might be sent, but over a hundred more could be left safe, dry, and available, in the ship sheds.

For a high proportion of the time most ships would spend most of their time in the sheds, available if needed.
So when a new ship type came along, quadriremes or quinqueremes, it was of great importance that they too would fit in the sheds. So when Carthage or Athens got the idea of quadriremes, somebody was out with a tape measure making sure they'd fit.
For Carthage, the introduction of quinqueremes was probably similar, fitting into the sheds, if possible, was important. So we get quinqueremes without outriggers. They fit.

But then the Romans start getting serious about naval developments. If they want to know about quinqueremes then they don't need Carthage, they've got their ally Syracuse or their ally Tarentum, who understand ship design and building.
Rome has had small fleets, some of the ships might have been theirs, but they were probably allied ships and allied ship sheds. Rome doesn't have a huge capital investment in columns and fancy stonework

So when they decide to build ships, they just build a ridiculous number of quinqueremes (probably, but the evidence of lost rams indicates that they might not even have been a majority type)
They can build them any damn width they like, because there are no ship sheds, and having your upper oarsmen in an outrigger might have advantages it that they get more fresh air so might be more efficient.
Obviously when the fleet sailed somebody could turn to the architect and ask, "So now should we build some ship sheds?"
The answer was probably along the lines of, "Do you think he'll fetch any home?"
With Roman strategy, and fleets constantly at war, pretty much every ship they had was at sea. There was no reserve tucked away safely in case it was needed. It was always needed.
I suspect the attitude was along the lines of, "If he fetches any home, we can haul them up on the beach and winter them there, service them, replace stuff, and build some more so we have a fleet to send out next spring."

I wonder how many Roman ships (or even Carthaginian ships) during the first Punic war were old enough to have been worried by ship worm? Both sides were burning through them so quickly.

Once the war is over and things have settled down, then you could contemplate putting up a few ship sheds, but you've already got the ships so you can build the sheds to fit if you want any.

Let us not forget that the motivation for building quads and quins with their wider hulls had nothing to do with accommodating extra oarsmen, but everything to do with a need for a stable vessel that could transport 120 marines (or an equivalent mass of equipment) on its deck and have a similar manoeuvrabilty to existing triremes.  They could not be trireme size and achieve this objective.

Now supposing one asked two separate shipwrights to come up with designs that met these specifications for a larger vessel.  One develops a ship without an outrigger that can use existing shipsheds, whilst the other develops a design with outriggers that requires new shipsheds to be built.  Bearing in mind that the shipsheds cost more than the ships to build, the business case for the latter design is somewhat shaky to say the least.

Regarding the relative merits of using permanent slipways and shipsheds rather than simply beaching galleys, John Coates wrote a paper 'On Slipping and Launching Triremes from the Piraeus Shipsheds and from Beaches' published in Trireme Olympias: The Final Report.  In summary, hauling out a big vessel like a trireme (let alone a quad or quin) was a major exercise made a lot easier with a permanent slipway and shipshed.  Coates concludes that it would be hard to see that a trireme would ever be beached, except out of necessity.

Regarding the frequency that a trireme or other galley needed to be taken out of water, there is a paper in the same book by Paul Lipke 'Triremes and Shipworm' that is worth looking at.  He notes that modern wooden hulls can be reduced to worthlessness in a couple of months.  Infestation can occur rapidly in any season and at any time the hull is more or less stationary.  He includes a couple of pictures of worm damaged planking removed from Olympias.  It is all fairly gruesome stuff.

With modern coatings, vessels may remain immersed for up to 6 months, but traditional coatings, such as tar and pitch, need renewal much more frequently.  To minimise infestation it is best to haul out the hull every few days to kill off shipworms that are just becoming attached.  If the time between haul-outs lengthens to a couple of weeks or more, then a longer period in high temperature and bright sunlight is needed to be an effective defence.  Longer immersions could require the ship to be out of water for months and include replacement of worm damaged timbers.  So, yes, good fleet infrastructure is a must if one wishes to continue having a fleet.

Finally, my views on Anthony's three points about 7 posts ago.  As noted above, I reject the argument that quads and quins were the same size as triremes, and my arguments for the larger vessels not having outriggers are also noted above.  Should we consider that the majority of galleys at Aegates were triremes rather than the larger vessels?  Only if we assume that a vessel with a maximum complement of 20-50 marines is better than one with 120, which would rather undermine any reason for developing the larger vessels in the first place and deploying them in large numbers.  When it comes to artistic depictions, I tend to treat them all with some scepticism.  They might be accurate, but then they often depict the subject in a conventional style or according to the whims of the guy paying the artist.  (I recently watched one of those antiques programmes on the TV which included a picture of Lake Windemere with a completely fictitious folly on one of its islands, simply there because the artist was painting in an Italianate style.)

 

Hi Nick
I went and read Launching Triremes from the Piraeus Shipsheds and from Beaches (I downloaded the report but haven't had time to read it, with other stuff keeping pestering me  )

I can see the issue. I must admit that if I had to overwinter a force of quinqueremes my first thought might be to build 'boat trailers' which would go out under the ship and you then then haul it up onto the beach. All you need is enough oxen 
The problem comes with both the size and cost of trailers because you'd need one per ship and whilst you might be able to take the wheels off it's probably not worth the bother. Indeed it has struck me that, frankly, it might get to the stage where it's cheaper, if you don't have the proper ship sheds, to accept a high level of losses and build new ships every spring 

Quote from: Jim Webster on September 08, 2024, 01:55:31 PMBut then the Romans start getting serious about naval developments. If they want to know about quinqueremes then they don't need Carthage, they've got their ally Syracuse or their ally Tarentum, who understand ship design and building.

Only thing is that the very distinct tale that they modelled their new quinqueremes on a very fast blockade runner which they had finally captured.  Now, one can question the veracity, but there presumably must be a kernel of truth in there.  It is often forgotten that during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the French ships were often regarded to be superior designs to those of the Royal Navy; they just did not know how to get the best out of them after the Revolutionary purges...  The RN was not at all backward in using such ships that they captured and incorporating their finer points in new builds.

Quote from: Nick Harbud on September 08, 2024, 05:10:20 PMLet us not forget that the motivation for building quads and quins with their wider hulls had nothing to do with accommodating extra oarsmen, but everything to do with a need for a stable vessel that could transport 120 marines (or an equivalent mass of equipment) on its deck and have a similar manoeuvrabilty to existing triremes

We do not know that; it is simply an inference from the fact that quinqueremes could carry rather more fighting men than the triremes of Salamis were said to have embarked.  Was the form driven by an increased function, or were the extra men simply an exploitation of a design adopted for other reasons?  And how often did the larger ships actually embark so many men?  If you know you are going to fight a big battle close by, then yes, fine.  If, like the Romans at Ecnomus, you are en route for an amphibious invasion of Africa, then yes.  But so many "marines" has almost doubled your food and water burden on a class of warship which really, really hurts to meet the demands of just its oarsmen.