Ram Sizes at Actium

[Patrick Waterson]

For the fun of it, I thought I'd share this


It's from 1888 and appears to be a section of a ship of the time but with oars sticking out.  Obviously the artist had missed the bits about shipsheds and stepable masts 

One can see at a glance the gross inefficiency and waste of space and the inappropriate hull form - and this was from an era in which the wooden warship had recently been the norm.  It does incidentally highlight one problem about stacking all the oar banks vertically - the oars need to be of different lengths.  For ships up to and including triremes, it would seem they were all the same length, and such considerations as interchangeability and convenience would suggest that polyremes would attempt to retain this feature as much as possible.

ἐνήρης     means  " equipped with oars "   , so it's impossible that   " - ήρης"   means "oars"

I would have thought the opposite: if 'eneres' means 'equipped with oars', then '-eres' should mean 'oars' when used with reference to a ship.  Or was that what you intended to say?

I know the    img posted by  A.C,  I fear that was the basic model of De Lome' ship , I read somewhere
that was a five builted for Napoleon III for searching about Navy used by Cesar against the Celts (Veneti).

Yes, that is it: I thought it looked familiar but could not quite remember what it was.  Well done identifying it, Mariano.

Ah, "torpedo" in italian is "siluro".
 The word torpedo  was created by J.Fulton in 1800 for the USNavy and was a simple  mine.
Derive from a latin scientific word for a electric  fish,

You are of course absolutely correct, as in Motoscafo Armato Siluranti.  My favourite MAS boat captain is Luigi Rizzio, who sank two Austro-Hungarian battleships: the old Wien and the more modern Szent Istvan.  This record has never been equalled.

Before the automotive torpedo, 'torpedo' was indeed used for naval mines. Hence Farragut at New Orleans in 1862: "Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes!" or some variant to that effect ("Damn the torpedoes! Go ahead!" was the version finally selected by the US Navy for its WW1 recruiting posters).

[manomano]

ἐνήρης     means  " equipped with oars "   , so it's impossible that   " - ήρης"   means "oars"

I would have thought the opposite: if 'eneres' means 'equipped with oars', then '-eres' should mean 'oars' when used with reference to a ship.  Or was that what you intended to say?

Sorry, I  copied from my notes the wrong sentence.
The right one is:


εύήρης     means  "  well equipped  "     and after
εύήρετμο  means  "  well rowing "  or "effective oars"   (from  εύ and ἐρετμόν)


 so it's impossible that   " - ήρης"   means "oars"


(Write the right letter in greek is not easy and often the words from on-line  dictionary  are wrong, damned accents). (see photo)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MAS is " Motoscafo antisommergibile" (see photo)
Rizzo was brave and a lucky captain  but the SMS Szent István was badly designed and builted worse .
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But I  like  to return  to the rostrum of the ten.
The rostrum from Haifa is greater than Aegadi ones.
I read that it weighs half a ton.
So comparing its dimension to the support on the wall in the sanctuary I think that the rostrum
of a ten was 1 time and half greater and could weighs almost 2 tons.
But, how effective this weapon was?
I remember a story:
The whaler Essex was sunk by "Moby Dick".
The ship was 27 m. long and 238 tons and the hull was stronger than the hull of an ancient galley
because builted with a different technique.
The sperm whale hit the ship two times and finally sank it.
The whale move at 2-3 kn speed and was long almost as the Essex so I presume a whale of 150 tons.
So an impact at 90 degrees at 2-3 kn also  without a suitable rostrum is fatal.
I presume that at 30 degrees of impact the attacking ship have to move at 7-8 k to make significative damage.
Think about it

[RichT]

I know the    img posted by  A.C,  I fear that was the basic model of De Lome' ship , I read somewhere
that was a five builted for Napoleon III for searching about Navy used by Cesar against the Celts (Veneti).
The ship seems to be used as a practise target for a torpedo.

As a small point of information, I don't think that's correct - the image is not of that ship. Napoleon III's ship (designed by de Lôme and Jal) was a trireme not a quinquereme. According to Boris Rankov there was a suggestion it be used as a torpedo target, but in the event it was just broken up (the design having been unsuccessful). See his excellent article here: http://www.hoplites.org/HAmember/The%20Trireme%20by%20Boris%20Rankov.pdf

(Edited to add) There are various images of this ship online - image search "napoleon III trireme" - including a photo from 1860 of her under construction.

(And further added) Anthony's image is I presume of Graser's quinquereme model - see Rankov p. 8

[Patrick Waterson]

Sorry, I  copied from my notes the wrong sentence.
The right one is:


εύήρης  [eueres]  means  "  well equipped  "     and after
εύήρετμο [eueretmo] means  "  well rowing "  or "effective oars"   (from  εύ and ἐρετμόν)


 so it's impossible that   " - ήρης"   means "oars"

That makes more sense, thank you.  So the -eres in trieres etc. is most probably derived from eresso (to row), as you originally stated.  That seems reasonable.

(Write the right letter in greek is not easy and often the words from on-line  dictionary  are wrong, damned accents). (see photo)

I know what you mean.  The best of research efforts can be let down by an online source.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAS is " Motoscafo antisommergibile" (see photo)
Rizzo was brave and a lucky captain  but the SMS Szent István was badly designed and builted worse .
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Actually MAS originally meant Motobarca Armata SVAN (the builder), then Motobarca Anti-Sommergibile and Motobarca Armata Silurante (some were built for the first, others for the second, purpose) and finally Motoscafo Anti-Sommergibile, which means I managed to get it wrong anyway.  (I have just looked it up in Aldo Fraccaroli's Italian Warships of World War 1, which is a better source than Wikipedia.)

You are right that the SMS Szent Istvan was perhaps the worst-built ship in the KuK Navy (Hungarian national pride having demanded that it be built in a 'Hungarian', or at least non-Austrian, shipyard) and the Tegetthofs were not particularly well designed, but Rizzio managed to make a successful atack and hit with a torpedo when his companion MAS boat failed to do so.  Since this was the second time he had done this sort of thing (the Wien being the first, albeit in port) I like to think he was particularly good at it.

But I  like  to return  to the rostrum of the ten.
The rostrum from Haifa is greater than Aegadi ones.
I read that it weighs half a ton.
So comparing its dimension to the support on the wall in the sanctuary I think that the rostrum
of a ten was 1 time and half greater and could weighs almost 2 tons.
But, how effective this weapon was?
I remember a story:
The whaler Essex was sunk by "Moby Dick".
The ship was 27 m. long and 238 tons and the hull was stronger than the hull of an ancient galley
because builted with a different technique.
The sperm whale hit the ship two times and finally sank it.
The whale move at 2-3 kn speed and was long almost as the Essex so I presume a whale of 150 tons.
So an impact at 90 degrees at 2-3 kn also  without a suitable rostrum is fatal.
I presume that at 30 degrees of impact the attacking ship have to move at 7-8 k to make significative damage.
Think about it

That makes a very interesting comparison.  I would suggest the whale which sank the Essex moved faster than 2-3 knots; sperm whales usually cruise at around 4 knots and can sprint at up to 20 knots.  A whale attacking a target would be moving at 'ram speed' rather than economical cruising speed, so I suggest perhaps 16 knots and possibly as high as 18 to 20 knots although the relative speed would depend upon what Essex was doing at the time and whether the ram was at 90 degrees exactly or angled slightly off centre.

The whale which sank the Essex was estimated at 85 feet (26 metres) long.  A sperm whale of 67 feet (20 metres) length weighs 56 tons (57 metric tons), so would 80-90 tons be a closer weight estimate for the one which sank the Essex?

[RichT]

That makes more sense, thank you.  So the -eres in trieres etc. is most probably derived from eresso (to row), as you originally stated.  That seems reasonable.

No, the -eres means 'equipped with' or some such, as Mariano says, said and, I expect, continues to say.

[manomano]

That makes more sense, thank you.  So the -eres in trieres etc. is most probably derived from eresso (to row), as you originally stated.  That seems reasonable.

No, the -eres means 'equipped with' or some such, as Mariano says, said and, I expect, continues to say.

I write it black on white.

[Patrick Waterson]

No, the -eres means 'equipped with' or some such, as Mariano says, said and, I expect, continues to say.

I write it black on white.

It has finally percolated through my perceptive system that this is what Mariano actually meant. Thank you both.

[Erpingham]

Lome and Jal's trireme, for completeness.

[manomano]

I find this:

http://poliremi.altervista.org/punica/flotte.html

sorry it's in italian

I do not agree with much of the statements in this article but
I report it for correctness.
Someone perhaps will appreciate it.

[Erpingham]

Thisis where I took the jal trireme picture from. My Italian isn't good enough for the text but there are some interesting pictures.  The insola tiberina ship reconstructed as a quinquereme is interesting though more than a little speculative.  Oars on four levels (though as far as I can tell there are no oar ports shown on the original).

[Patrick Waterson]

It is an interesting summary of various interpretations (my Italian, like Anthony's is inadequate for proper reading of the article, but one can deduce some of the intent from the illustrations).

[manomano]

I find a solution for you.
I first have transformed the web pages in pdf, after in txt format.
I enclose the file of the first chapter, there are other three charapters: one on the construction technique
of the ship, the second on artillery  and the last one on naval battles.
Simply open the txt file with word pad ,selected not more than 5000 types and use the on- line service of Google
  for translate.
Sorry, no images in txt ,  In pdf not problem but pages are horizontal.
It won't be perfect but better than a kick in the ass.

[Patrick Waterson]

Thank you, Mariano.  That is very helpful.

[manomano]

The others.....
I find a mode to have  in pdf a A4  vertical standard page but without images and in italian.
It's very simple.........
Obviously its'  possible make much better but copyright preclude me any further change.

[Patrick Waterson]

Thank you: I should be able to take it from there.