Quadriremes

[Jim Webster]

Interesting about ship sheds
Whilst the Piraeus has rather narrow (under 5.5m) nearer 6m appears to be more standard, even in Carthage had at least two that were 7.1 and 8m wide

Also on Rhodes (Empoiro) there were some 8.5m to 9m and 9.5m to 10m   Roman Shipsheds by David Blackman

But the narrow (5.5m to 6m) appear to be the standard

And of course, Athens' naval peak had passed by the time the quadrireme and quinquereme came along.  It is possible that legacy infrastructure limited scope for adoption - for a modern period equivalent, the French Navy was seriously hampered for decades in its designs for capital ships in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because they had fallen seriously behind the UK and Germany in terms of naval infrastructure, and money spent on modernising infrastructure was money unavailable for ships.

Just been pondering.
We have examples of rams from memorials where it's possible to get some idea of ram size by the stonework left behind.
But almost by definition these were selected to be spectacular.
Rams found at sea, especially those from Carthaginian and Roman battle sites are 'more random'.
And an awful of of those seem to be Quadriremes.

The other guide to the size of ships is ship sheds.
The vast majority of these are geared up to triremes, but it is postulated (and I agree with it) that Quadriremes could fit in the same ship shed. Indeed due to the capital invested there is an obvious pressure to make the new warship (Quadrireme) fit the same ship shed.

Now Polybius for one states that the Romans built Quinqueremes (in vast numbers). Firstly do we find many larger rams on battle sites? And if quinqueremes were so much better than Quadriremes and Triremes then either the Romans were genuinely inept, or the Carthaginians had a lot of Quinqueremes as well, but wintered them outside because they didn't have the ship sheds for them. (Or there were ship sheds we haven't found, but I cannot imagine us missing a hundred or more)
Or Quinqueremes would also fit inside the same ship sheds? Two banks of oars, two men on the bottom ones, three men on the top?

Then the handful of much larger ship sheds were for the occasional really large ship, or alternatively they were handy for building ships under cover because it gave people room to work.

[DBS]

Whilst once again emphasising the dangers in extrapolating from later periods back some eighteen or nineteen centuries, I am minded that it was certainly possible for 16th century Mediterranean galleys to increase the number of oarsmen squeezed onto a bench when using multiple rowers per oar.  Don Garcia de Toledo in the 1560s recommended trying to find an extra 20 oarsmen for standard Spanish "triremes" which normally had a rowing gang of some 164.  He had two reasons - one was redundancy for sick or injured rowers during a campaign, the other was that a squadron commander could temporarily strip out the extra men to man selected galleys rowing four by four instead of three by three, especially if there was a need for a fast or higher endurance detachment.

I simply wonder whether there was any such latitude in ancient designs?  Was a quadrireme always a quadrireme, or sometimes a trireme when short of men, or potentially a quinquereme when the manpower could be found?  Renaissance galleys started with three oarsmen all pulling individual oars, but by the time of Lepanto had moved to multiple oarsmen on a single oar.  As Guilmartin points out, the Venetians (who had the best oarsmen and the fastest galleys) were the last to adopt this method, but the Spanish and to some extent the Ottomans did so more readily as it needed only one good rower per oar, to control the stroke, and facilitated the use of slaves or pressed men in the rowing gangs.  Notwithstanding the famous story of the 1st Punic Romans practising their rowing ashore, one wonders whether such considerations favoured the reported selection of the quinquereme as the main design, rather than an inherent superiority?

[Jim Webster]

Just to follow up David's point, triremes did move with just one bank of oarsmen (top bank I think) when the boats just needed to be moved.
When galleys were being used as transports, for infantry or for horses, they seem to have reduced the number of men rowing to make room
Horse transports might be modified triremes or specially built vessels.

[Nick Harbud]

Now Polybius for one states that the Romans built Quinqueremes (in vast numbers). Firstly do we find many larger rams on battle sites? And if quinqueremes were so much better than Quadriremes and Triremes then either the Romans were genuinely inept, or the Carthaginians had a lot of Quinqueremes as well, but wintered them outside because they didn't have the ship sheds for them.

According to most historians, the Romans were pretty inept when it came to building warships.  Indeed, they only got better once they started copying captured Carthaginian vessels.

Ship sheds and other naval infrastructure were vital if one wanted to continue having a navy.  Every hour spent in the water tended to damage the galleys.  Firstly, the wood absorbed water that made the whole vessel heavier and less manoeuvrable.  Hauling the ship out of water allowed the wood to dry out.  Secondly, until the use of copper to sheath hull bottoms, all wooden ships in salt water suffered attack by shipworms.  Hauling the ship out of water does not kill the worms, but does slow down the damage.

[Jim Webster]

Now Polybius for one states that the Romans built Quinqueremes (in vast numbers). Firstly do we find many larger rams on battle sites? And if quinqueremes were so much better than Quadriremes and Triremes then either the Romans were genuinely inept, or the Carthaginians had a lot of Quinqueremes as well, but wintered them outside because they didn't have the ship sheds for them.

According to most historians, the Romans were pretty inept when it came to building warships.  Indeed, they only got better once they started copying captured Carthaginian vessels.

Ship sheds and other naval infrastructure were vital if one wanted to continue having a navy.  Every hour spent in the water tended to damage the galleys.  Firstly, the wood absorbed water that made the whole vessel heavier and less manoeuvrable.  Hauling the ship out of water allowed the wood to dry out.  Secondly, until the use of copper to sheath hull bottoms, all wooden ships in salt water suffered attack by shipworms.  Hauling the ship out of water does not kill the worms, but does slow down the damage.

Apparently it was thought that the weight of copper sheathing was too big a disadvantage, but pitch was applied liberally instead. Drying out over winter would allow the hull to be cleaned, damaged planks removed and a fresh coat of pitch to be applied, to dry wood. So I agree that ship sheds are vital to the state with serious naval ambitions.

That's why I'm beginning to wonder if Quinqueremes could fit in a standard ship shed?    

[Erpingham]

Was a quadrireme always a quadrireme, or sometimes a trireme when short of men, or potentially a quinquereme when the manpower could be found?

Certainly, looking at some of the Athenian records from the Lamian War, a period of transition to heavier ships, the Athenians are quite clear they have triremes and quadriremes, not a hybrid form.  They seem to keep a much larger proportion of their quadrireme fleet "at sea" (which seems to mean on operations as opposed to in the sheds, rather than literally floating) than the triremes.  Presumably, they crewed these as a priority, then the best of their triremes and left the rest in reserve or under repair.

[Nick Harbud]

I would suggest that quins could fit in a standard ship shed, but it might depend upon what one considers to be standard.  To determine the limitations in this area, it might be best to consult with an architect regarding longest practical spans for ancient wooden roofs.  I mean modern roof truss design can easily span 18m, but ancient designs may have been more limited.  The hammer beam roof in Westminster Hall is nearly 21m.  Alternatively, simply hauling the boats onto dry land might be acceptable. 

Of course, what happened with the larger polyremes is another matter, but there were relatively few of these.  However, the location of large ship sheds could have been a factor in their deployment.  To take a 20^th century example, the objective of the World War 2 raid on St Nazaire was to disable the Normandie dry dock, which was the only one on the Atlantic seaboard capable of taking the largest German warships.

[Jim Webster]

Roof span is interesting  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353021946_Large_span_timber_roofs_in_Italy_between_the_16th_and_19th_centuries

"The trusses of the central nave of S. Domenico, erected a century later, in 1727, follow the Palladian scheme, with a span of approximately 16 meters (Figure 6). In this case the builders decided to reduce the span by means of masonry corbels.

Actually looking at this, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364755111_Historic_timber_roofs_in_Belgium_overview_of_materials_and_structures_1150-1960   to roof might contain more timbers than the ship you haul under it 

The Wiki is interesting giving ancient examples  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Greek_and_Roman_roofs

I don't think architecture was going to limit the size of ship sheds as such.
I did wonder about just hauling them out onto a beach. There are issues. By definition galleys are designed to do this. So that isn't a problem.
The problems are when it comes to working. In a ship shed you can work on both sides simultaneously, whereas with galleys pulled up onto a beach unless you're spending a lot of time and money on props, you'll have to just to one side, let the pitch dry, then roll her over onto the other side. So it'll take a lot more space.
Working conditions would not be as good
Also security. Historically these places were walled off and guarded, if only because you have large amounts of pitch soaked dry timber in one place. 

[DBS]

At the back end of the 16th century, the Venetians maintained in commission a fleet of about 29 galleys, divided into small regional squadrons, and of these about four or five would be laid up for repair at any one time.  They could very rapidly expand this force from new build or galleys held in reserve - at Lepanto they fielded some 106 from Venice proper and their satellites - but I suspect these reserve ships were the main beneficiaries of sheds.

The other big question that I have never seen properly addressed for ancient fleets is food.  16th century galley fleets lived off biscuit, as the only thing that could survive being kept on sodden ships.  The Venetians and Ottomans each had a very senior official who was the Superintendent of the Biscuit.  The Spanish did not, but concessions on grain often formed an important part of the contracts they let with mercenary squadrons such as the Genoese Dorias.

Now, I have never seen any discussion of whether biscuit as such was available to ancient navies, but if not, it begs the question what did they take to sea?  If one looks at some of the great ancient naval powers, they tended to have a good supply of grain - Carthage certainly did, the Ptolemies (incl Antony and Cleo) certainly did, Sextus Pompeius when running out of Sicily probably did (the Spanish in 1564 eventually combined the posts of Captain General of the Sea and Viceroy of Sicily as the latter was of critical economic importance to the fleet).  The Athenians did not have such grain security, but then we are told that they were paranoid about their grain supplies from the Black Sea.  It is usually assumed that this was to feed Athens, but perhaps also was essential for the maintenance of the fleet at its imperial peak?  Of course, biscuit requires not just grain but also ovens: these were the two big concerns of the Venetian and Ottoman officials...

[Imperial Dave]

Hard tack

[DBS]

Hard tack

Absolutely.  Ever had the joy of eating Biscuits AB?  Still in UK military ration packs, but essentially the same thing as ships' biscuit minus the added protein of the weevils.  I am four decades out of date, but certainly we still had large sealed tins of Biscuit AB on ships in the 1980s as emergency rations; in best RN style, when our emergency tins finally passed their ten year expiry date, we were expected to eat them for several days rather than be allowed simply to bin them.  The mark of a veteran soldier was his expertise in making them vaguely palatable...  some of my army mates even liked them, perverts.

[Erpingham]

Hard tack

Bucellatum is the Roman word, I think.  Certainly available to the army and presumably to the fleet. Don't know about Greeks. 

[Imperial Dave]

Virtually indestructible or spoilable...but also hard to eat

[Jim Webster]

given the amount of time Greek galley crews seem to spend foraging it does strike me that some participants didn't  plan this too well

From what I've been told/read the sensible way to eat hard tack is to break it up in fresh water and cook it as a porridge rather than try and eat the biscuit

Certainly for armies in the Hellenic and Hellenistic period you hear more of distributing flour or grain (and men having access to mills) rather than issuing hard tack
 

[Jim Webster]

Just going back to fitting ships into ship sheds. Having a third bank of oars meant that the trireme had its top row of oarsmen working from outriggers which overhung the hull by a couple of feet on either side

So Olympias had a beam of 5.5m which was at the outrigger
There is a discussion if the Olympias final report, The Dimensions of the Ancient Trireme: and it points out that the ship sheds excavated were designed to be pretty 'snug' as the last thing they wanted is the ship toppling and damaging itself.

If 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.