Naval Warfare in the First Punic War

[Hamilcar]

At the onset of the First Punic War Rome has been described as the land superpower, while Carthage has been given this role at sea. It is clear that Rome had a clear advantage on land - centuries of battle against a variety of opponents and in various terrain have honed their armies in all aspects - from organisation, equipment, training of armies and individual soldiers, experience of both armies and commanders to siege methods and logistics. Moreover, the Romans knew the strengths and weaknesses of many troops used by Carthage - Celts, Ligurians, Campanians and Greeks at least. At the same time, Carthage has been involved in land conflicts, but mostly in Sicily and Lybia/Numidia - the conflicts they have been involved were much lower key (with major engagements few and far between) and they have never encountered anything like the Romans. Additionally, their system of recruiting mercenaries to fight meant that they started from scratch with every new batch - they could not improve the equipment, nor the system. Clearly then, the Romans had the better of it, as it showed (interestingly, Polybios credits Hamilcar with being the best commander of the war, on either side, although he achieved little other than maintaining a stalemate for five years - perhaps exactly because this was so difficult to do against superior foes).

At sea it was different. The Romans had no fleet or seamanship to start with, which clearly favoured Carthage with its long tradition of seafaring. However, I am struggling to find any evidence of Carthage being involved in huge marine battles prior to the Punic Wars. Of course, they were known to sink a few ships of competing merchants here and there and their ships were famously involved on the side of the Persian fleet at Salamis, but even these were triremes - different ships to most of those used in the Punic Wars. What this means is that the playing field was much more level on the sea than it was on land, even at the start of the war and the Romans actually had the better trained crews (and a full complement of picked soldiers) at the final and decisive battle of the Aegadi Islands - and that comes straight from Polybios.

Polybios therefore declares Carthage the maritime power, but it would appear that all it took for the Romans was to build a fleet (using a beached Carthaginian ship as a template and putting a corvus on it). It appears that his view is therefore not that well substantiated. Does anyone know of evidence of Punic fleets engaged in large sea battles, of the type fought in the First Punic War?

A parallel with the Peloponnesian Wars is also interesting - Athens was considered a sea power, but that lasted only until Sparta built a fleet using Persian money and defeated the Athenians at Aegospotami - in their very first major maritime clash. Clearly, the Spartans also had allies with maritime tradition, which helped, but again, the Athenian advantage at sea appears to have been purely that of numbers.

Any opinions?

[Jim Webster]

Well there's the battle of Alalia where they were allied to the Etruscans against the Phocians.

There is also some evidence of campaigns fought against the Massilots. Also large fleets took part in Carthaginian campaigns against Sicily

One battle is the battle of Catana (397 BC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Catana_%28397_BC%29

Jim
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[Hamilcar]

Thanks. That is certainly interesting. I suppose we are lacking a lot of data on the Carthaginians, both at sea and on land. As usual, the history was written by and about the victors, while Carthage and its history was systematically destroyed.
The battles you mention are indeed spaced fairly widely - 540 and 397 BC. They are also fairly removed from the Punic Wars - by some 150 years at least and as I see different kinds of ships were used (pentokonteres and triremes) to those in the Punic Wars.
It is also interesting that the density of data on punic naval battles is to some extent comparable to their land engagements - Himera and Crimissus stand out somewhat, though there was a lot more written about Carthage's land operations against the Greeks in the same period. That still suggests that Carthage didn't really have the same level of mastery at sea as assumed. Their seamanship did prevent them losing fleets to storms (something which happened to the Romans on three occasions), but they still seemed to come off worst at sea, with a couple of exceptions (Drepana). At the same time they had no successes on land against romans, with the exception of Bagradas (and there they were led by a foreigner and perhaps more importantly had an overwhelming advantage in cavalry and elephants).

[Jim Webster]

Remember that the Carthaginians were used to moving troops by sea. Virtually all their troop movements were. So they had mastered the logistics of gathering fleets, transporting many thousands of troops quite considerable distances (Spain, Sardinia, Sicily and probably along the North African coast as well) and could do this routinely.
So they could 'project power' in a way that nobody else, except perhaps the Ptolemies, could.
Also they'd been doing it consistently from probably about 500BC until the start of the Punic War. So you knew that if you upset Carthage, they could drop an army on your doorstep and there wasn't much you could do about it.

With regards naval battles, I think there are two things to remember. Firstly the fact that Carthage moved this number of troops about with this sort of regularity and fought so few naval battles probably indicates that other states had a high opinion of the Carthaginian navy.
Pyrrhus fought them, various Syracusian tyrants fought them, but mostly they didn't even attempt to, they just let them land the armies and then tried to defeat the armies.

Some of this is partially due to the difficulty of intercepting naval forces in galley warfare, especially if both sides aren't just following the coast. Some of it will be because the Carthaginian navy was regarded by its enemies as too dangerous to tangle with.
(Think of the Royal Navy. At the height of its power it fought very few battles. Mainly because it was at the height of its power.)

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

Jim has covered pretty much all of the important considerations: there is little for me to add except to note that Phoenicians generally had a long-standing tradition of seamanship, both military and mercantile, and had provided the lion's share of the Achaemenid Persian navy.

Rome before the First Punic War was very similar to Achaemenid Persia in one respect: its fleets consisted of other people's navies.  It was not completely unfamiliar with the idea of shipbuilding or naval fighting, but just as it regarded the flanks of a battle line as the place for allied contingents, until the First Punic War it regarded paddling about on the sea as something for non-Romans.

The big difference was thus that the Romans themselves at the outset of the First Punic War lacked any tradition and experience of naval command.  For the invasion of Africa their fleet was organised into three 'legions' and a fourth contingent termed 'the triarii' - Romans were evidently happier with familiar if inappropriate designations.  Curiously enough, the overall fleet formation was a wedge (Polybius I.26).

Where Roman inexperience in tradition and command showed was in their blithely insouciant landsman's cavalier attitude to the weather (Napoleon was the same, ordering a naval review off Boulogne despite an imminent storm: it nearly wrecked his fleet).  Roman fleet commanders viewed a naval journey as a kind of maritime march, and simply did not appreciate the hazards of storms.  The result was two lost fleets.  Eventually a more realistic attitude percolated in via the fruits of experience.

[Jim Webster]

It's not just an ancient attitude. Consider the German attitude to Operation Sealion where it seems to be regarded by some planning it as a glorified river crossing

Jim

[Duncan Head]

However, I am struggling to find any evidence of Carthage being involved in huge marine battles prior to the Punic Wars.

I'm not sure there were many "huge" naval battles before the First Punic War, though that may depend on your definition of "huge". Typically what battles there were seem to have been a lot smaller:

Meantime the Syracusans, hard pressed by famine and hearing that grain ships were about to make the voyage to Syracuse, manned twenty triremes and, watching the barbarians who were accustomed to lie at anchor off the harbour to catch them off guard, sailed out unseen and coasted along to Megara, where they waited for the approach of the traders. Afterwards, however, when the Carthaginians sailed out against them with thirty ships, they first tried to fight at sea, but were quickly driven to land and leapt from their ships at a certain shrine of Hera. Then a battle took place for the ships; and the Carthaginians, throwing grappling irons into the triremes and with great force dragging them off from the shore, captured ten of them, but the others were saved by men who came to the rescue from the city.

There also seems to have been a lot of running blockades and avoiding battle. For example, in 278 Pyrrhos crossed from Italy to Sicily, landing at Locri unopposed and then marching by land on Syracuse accompanied by his fleet. A Carthaginian army was besieging Syracuse, and a fleet of 100 ships was blockading its harbour. When Pyrrhos arrived 30 of the Carthaginian ships were detached on some unspecified mission, and rather than fighting him, the rest withdrew. Since Diodoros tells us that Pyrrhos then obtained about 140 ships from Syracuse, bringing him up to a total of 200, we can deduce that he had about 60 ships with him. The 70 Carthaginian ships left at Syracuse might have had a slight advantage over this force, but probably feared being caught between Pyrrhos' fleet and a sally by the Syracusan defenders' own ships.

[Hamilcar]

Thanks everyone - interesting points.

After spending the last few days scouring the data on this it seems to me that the the lack of major (and even smaller) naval engagements is a true picture, rather than one given by a roman-biased record (biased because more data was available to subsequent writers from the roman side). Otherwise, writers as Didodoros might have had a bit more to say about them.

Carthage's seamanship was certainly highly regarded, which would have helped others not fight them. At the same time, the romans were as highly regarded on land, yet everyone fought them. I think the difference is probably the effort and resources required to equip a fleet of a size comparable to that of Carthage as opposed to outfitting a land army. For example, the reasonably wealthy Syracuse built a fleet of 200 warships and re-fitted 100 old warships for Dyonisios' campaign against Motya in 397BC. After their defeat at the aforementioned battle of Catana the Syracusans never re-built their war fleet to a comparable size. Additionally, a fleet of a size which could contest the sea against Carthage would be both difficult and expensive to maintain. Anyone wishing to confront Carthage at sea would therefore have to be very wealthy. Rome was, but even they were pushed to the limit - their fourth and final fleet was funded by private citizens. Polybios quotes Rome as having lost approximately 700 ships during the first punic war (plus they have built a fleet of 200 ships for the last battle) - Syracuse could only outfit a total of 300 as above. At the same time, at the beginning of the war Carthage already had a fleet of at least 200 ships.

Whatever the reason, Carthage's fleet my have had known the seas better but clearly didn't have anywhere near the same level of battle experience as the roman legions. They may have started the war as the maritime superpower, but that seems to have been a matter simply of numbers (when it came to battle at least - the Romans clearly didn't understand the danger the weather presented at sea). I'm not even so sure how effective Corvus was at changing this balance in favour of the Romans. It was highlighted and highly praised by Polybios, but was soon abandoned by Romans probably even during the war. Also, while the story of the Romans latching onto Punic ships with corvi is an attractive one it doesn't tell the whole story - that for centuries before the first punic war grappling enemy ships was a key tactic in sea battles - only grappling hooks and such were used rather than corvus. This was especially used by heavier ships to stop smaller and more manoeuvrable ones from running circles around them, before boarding them with their more numerous contingents of marines.

All in all, the sea appears to have been a much more level playing field than land.

[Jim Webster]

Another thing to remember is sheer number of men involved.
If we say as a rule of thumb a quinquereme needed 300 oarsmen and 120 marines, a fleet of 300 ships calls on 90,000 men as oarsmen and 36,000 marines.

When you stop and look at those figures, the fact that Carthaginians didn't often fight in their own army becomes all the more reasonable, they had so many men in the navy. Obviously there appear to have been men from other cities conscripted to serve, and also we know that mercenaries from the field armies were also brought on board ships as marines.

So raising a fleet of two or three hundred ships was not just a major economic issue, paying for the ships, finding that number of men would also be difficult.

At Cannae Rome may have lost about 80,000 men (estimates vary)
But they lost more than that when they lost the fleet they sent to collect the survivors of the African campaign in the First Punic War.

[Patrick Waterson]

Whatever the reason, Carthage's fleet my have had known the seas better but clearly didn't have anywhere near the same level of battle experience as the roman legions. They may have started the war as the maritime superpower, but that seems to have been a matter simply of numbers (when it came to battle at least - the Romans clearly didn't understand the danger the weather presented at sea). I'm not even so sure how effective Corvus was at changing this balance in favour of the Romans. It was highlighted and highly praised by Polybios, but was soon abandoned by Romans probably even during the war. Also, while the story of the Romans latching onto Punic ships with corvi is an attractive one it doesn't tell the whole story - that for centuries before the first punic war grappling enemy ships was a key tactic in sea battles - only grappling hooks and such were used rather than corvus. This was especially used by heavier ships to stop smaller and more manoeuvrable ones from running circles around them, before boarding them with their more numerous contingents of marines.

All in all, the sea appears to have been a much more level playing field than land.

Apparently the trick with the corvus was that it gave the legionaries a ready-made ramp along which to trot in their hobnailed caligae as opposed to having to get a leg over the gunwales (which could be painful if done incorrectly).  Hence once the corvus was dropped on some poor Carthaginian vessel which had tried to ram rather than oar-rake, a flow of legionaries became inevitable.  Also, you could cut grapnels, but you could not cut a corvus.

Sadly for the Carthaginians, they never really caught on to using incendiary weapons at sea.  This could have made a huge difference, as emptying a fire pot onto a just-rammed Roman ship as it dropped its ramp would tend to negate anything the corvus could do.  There would of course still be the problem of disengaging before both ships became a bonfire.

The difficulty with the corvus was that it made the ship unstable in any sort of heavy weather.  Because of the extra upright surface area, one did not need a full-blown storm for corvus-equipped Roman galleys under sail to start keeling over.  It was very much a fair-weather friend.

To add to what Jim has said about the logistics of equipping a fleet, manning one seems to have been a matter of conscripting the non-hoplite classes.  This may be what would enable Rome's senators to regard the loss of a fleet with relative equanimity compared to the loss of several legions - the legions were manned by responsible property-owning citizens and the fleets apparently by lower-order plebeians who at a pinch would not be missed and whose loss might even improve domestic concord.

[Hamilcar]

Apparently the trick with the corvus was that it gave the legionaries a ready-made ramp along which to trot in their hobnailed caligae as opposed to having to get a leg over the gunwales (which could be painful if done incorrectly).  Hence once the corvus was dropped on some poor Carthaginian vessel which had tried to ram rather than oar-rake, a flow of legionaries became inevitable.  Also, you could cut grapnels, but you could not cut a corvus.

Not only that, but according to Polybios it had hand-rails which allowed them to hold on. More importantly, two legionaries could supposedly move abreast, protected by their shields, while those behind them thrust their shields to the side to protect the formation from missiles - a seafaring mini testudo (sea turtle?). All that thanks to stability afforded by the grappling method too.
Still, after the initial surprise in their first encounter Punic commanders and fleets should have got wiser to this trick. And let's not forget that the first encounter between the two fleets resulted in a capture of a number of roman ships at the Lipari islands, so the Carthaginians should have known what to expect - especially as the same commander led them into the first actual battle (this is slight conjecture, as there is nothing saying that the captured ships had been equipped with corvi, however they were a part of the same fleet which used them successfully not long after that).
The favourite punic tactic was to go through the gaps between enemy ships, breaking oars and causing general mayhem, before attacking the less manoeuvrable enemy ships from behind, as they struggled to turn about. This would surely make it more difficult to deploy the corvus. Supposedly, punic ships (and crews) were tactically superior thanks to their speed and training, so they could choose when and how to engage, rather than waiting to be grappled by a corvus - why did they not avoid this (usually many more were captured than sunk)?

[Patrick Waterson]

Still, after the initial surprise in their first encounter Punic commanders and fleets should have got wiser to this trick. And let's not forget that the first encounter between the two fleets resulted in a capture of a number of roman ships at the Lipari islands, so the Carthaginians should have known what to expect - especially as the same commander led them into the first actual battle (this is slight conjecture, as there is nothing saying that the captured ships had been equipped with corvi, however they were a part of the same fleet which used them successfully not long after that).
The favourite Punic tactic was to go through the gaps between enemy ships, breaking oars and causing general mayhem, before attacking the less manoeuvrable enemy ships from behind, as they struggled to turn about. This would surely make it more difficult to deploy the corvus. Supposedly, Punic ships (and crews) were tactically superior thanks to their speed and training, so they could choose when and how to engage, rather than waiting to be grappled by a corvus - why did they not avoid this (usually many more were captured than sunk)?

It is not 100% clear, but the impression I get from Polybius' account is that Roman ships had a corvus at or near each end, with sufficient reach to drop on a Carthaginian ship which they rammed or which rammed them.  Possible exceptions were a bow-to-bow ram (which the heavier Roman vessels would not mind anyway) or a direct bow-to-stern ram, which would inhibit the dropping of a corvus on account of the upcurving structures carried at some ships' rear ends (these might not have been wholly decorative as they could have been there to counterweight the bow ram).  Anything else and the nearest corvus would be swung out and waiting to drop by the time the hopeful Carthaginian rammer arrived.

One would expect the Carthaginians to learn from their experiences; maybe they did think up a counter to the corvus, but if so then it failed to work as well as they thought it would.  I suppose we would order our crews to oar-rake the Roman vessels and then arrange to ram the cripples with three ships against each opponent.  Maybe the Carthaginians did and it was still not enough to overwhelm the legionaries carried on board.

[Erpingham]

If I remember my oar-raking diekplus theory, the way to guard against it was to deploy in more than one line.  The lead attackers come through the first line, smashing up oars but they lose way in doing so and tend to swing towards the direction of the rake.  They are thus swinging beam on and moving slowly between the lines, allowing even a crew of lubbers from the second rank to ram or board.  The oar-raked ships in the front rank still need to be dealt with - they are only crippled - so someone is going to have to close to ram or board and could still fall victim to a deftly-used corvus.  If diekplus was the standard tactic, the Carthaginians might still have tried it as it still played to their strengths (better trained and more manoueverable) but they found it didn't work and had to go back to the drawing board.

[Chuck the Grey]

The ineffectiveness of the Carthaginian Navy in the First Punic War was due to its inability to adapt to the refinement in boarding tactics that the Romans introduced with the Corvus. The Carthaginian Navy appears to have focused its tactics on frontal ramming followed by boarding the enemy ship if feasible. With the Corvus, the Romans were able to lock an enemy ship in position and then provide a more efficient way for the Roman soldiers to board the enemy ship. If I remember correctly, Roman warships carried a larger number of Marines with a greater proportion of heavy infantry than the Carthaginian warships did.

I suppose you could say that the Carthaginian Navy greatest enemy were as their own hubris. Carthaginian admirals expected Roman fleets to fight in the tried-and-true manner used by the Carthaginians. When the Romans introduced new tactics with the use of the Corvus that negated the Carthaginian's superior ship handling abilities, the Carthaginian admirals were at a loss. Carthaginian hubris led them to believe they could easily dominate the Romans on the sea. The lesson is never to underestimate your enemy.

As a side note, the battle of Aegospotami also shows the danger of underestimating your enemy. The Athenian fleet put to sea and offered battle four days in a row to the Spartan fleet. Lysander, the Spartan naval commander, apparently did not even man his ships in response to the Athenian actions. Clearly, Lysander knew that Athenian naval superiority wasn't an illusion and wisely avoided confronting the Athenians at sea. Lysander waited until the Athenian fleet was beached and the crews were widely dispersed to gather food before he made his move. When Lysander was informed that the Athenian ships were on the beach and unmanned, he immediately launched his vessels and attacked the unmanned and beached the Athenian ships capturing or destroying most of them. Aegospotami wasn't a sea battle, but a surprise attack on an unprepared fleet grounded on the beach.

[Hamilcar]

One would expect the Carthaginians to learn from their experiences; maybe they did think up a counter to the corvus, but if so then it failed to work as well as they thought it would.  I suppose we would order our crews to oar-rake the Roman vessels and then arrange to ram the cripples with three ships against each opponent.  Maybe the Carthaginians did and it was still not enough to overwhelm the legionaries carried on board.

With the Corvus, the Romans were able to lock an enemy ship in position and then provide a more efficient way for the Roman soldiers to board the enemy ship. If I remember correctly, Roman warships carried a larger number of Marines with a greater proportion of heavy infantry than the Carthaginian warships did. I suppose you could say that the Carthaginian Navy greatest enemy were as their own hubris. Carthaginian admirals expected Roman fleets to fight in the tried-and-true manner used by the Carthaginians. When the Romans introduced new tactics with the use of the Corvus that negated the Carthaginian's superior ship handling abilities, the Carthaginian admirals were at a loss. Carthaginian hubris led them to believe they could easily dominate the Romans on the sea.

The simplest thing they could have done was to install this wonder weapon on their ships. They did capture some of the roman ships (presumably already armed with the corvus) at the Lipari islands, before the first large battle. They could have used these as a model, if the battle showed such effectiveness of the corvus. If they were still in doubt there, they could have done it after the battle of Cape Ecnomus.

Curiously though, at the battle of Cape Ecnomus the balance of power varied widely. For example, the first and second roman "legions" overwhelmed their opponents rather easily, but the third and fourth were getting the worst against their opponents - until the victorious roman first and second legions turned up to help. I feel that Polybios' account misses some key points...

If I remember my oar-raking diekplus theory, the way to guard against it was to deploy in more than one line.  The lead attackers come through the first line, smashing up oars but they lose way in doing so and tend to swing towards the direction of the rake.  They are thus swinging beam on and moving slowly between the lines, allowing even a crew of lubbers from the second rank to ram or board.  The oar-raked ships in the front rank still need to be dealt with - they are only crippled - so someone is going to have to close to ram or board and could still fall victim to a deftly-used corvus.  If diekplus was the standard tactic, the Carthaginians might still have tried it as it still played to their strengths (better trained and more manoueverable) but they found it didn't work and had to go back to the drawing board.

Polybios describes the fleets deploying in "a line" in several of the battles and even at Cape Ecnomus the different roman legions comprised of single lines of ships. This doesn't make sense to me either, as like you I would deploy a second rank of ships to stop this tactic, especially if I was the less manoeuvrable side (romans). However, like in land battles, the most vulnerable part of a fleet of ships were probably its flanks, which (again like land) lead to them being spread out in as thin a line as possible.

As a side note, the battle of Aegospotami also shows the danger of underestimating your enemy. The Athenian fleet put to sea and offered battle four days in a row to the Spartan fleet. Lysander, the Spartan naval commander, apparently did not even man his ships in response to the Athenian actions. Clearly, Lysander knew that Athenian naval superiority wasn't an illusion and wisely avoided confronting the Athenians at sea. Lysander waited until the Athenian fleet was beached and the crews were widely dispersed to gather food before he made his move. When Lysander was informed that the Athenian ships were on the beach and unmanned, he immediately launched his vessels and attacked the unmanned and beached the Athenian ships capturing or destroying most of them. Aegospotami wasn't a sea battle, but a surprise attack on an unprepared fleet grounded on the beach.

Point taken and a good one it is. Maybe a better example to highlight a contest between trained and untrained fleets were the battles between Athenians and Syracusans in Syracuse's bay during the same war. The Athenians were initially dominant and pinned in the less experienced Syracusans. However, the Syracusan rowers precticed in the bay for a while before eventually giving combat. Again, they were eventually successful against the better (certainly more experienced) Athenians.