12-04-2003, 08:37 PM
Hi all,<br>
<br>
I’ve finally found time to write this, but I’m afraid that everybody will have lost interest on this thread by now!<br>
<br>
The Nemi I ship, as reconstructed on paper by the Italian Navy was 71.3 m long and 20 m wide. The ratio is thus 1:3.5, fairly plump for a conventional warship. For example, the reconstructed trieres ‘Olympias’ is 37 m long and 5.5 m wide, i.e. 1:6.7.<br>
Notwithstanding, it is not in the field of the agile and slender light triremes where I’m looking a place for Nemi I, but in that of the sturdy, wide and slow late Hellenistic hyper-galleys. To a certain extent, maybe the ‘ten’ or even more, they were still manoeuvrable enough as to be used in the Classical ramming fight, but their robustness and width were mainly intended to be used as fighting platforms to hold on their upper decks artillery and marines, ready for boarding other ships. If we follow Lucien Basch’s interpretation (why not?) a building recently excavated at Samothrace housed a scaled down copy of Antigonus Gonatas’ flagship, the Isthmia. It was possibly an ‘eighteen’ (But Pausanias just mentions –I,29,1- that she had ‘decks for nine rows of rowers’), with an approximate ratio length-beam of 1:5. The Isthmia’s actual dimensions are unknown, the ship herself being dedicated to the Gods at Delos, but not so clearly housed inside a building. The gigantic ‘forty’ built by Ptolemy IV was 126 m long and 17.1 m wide (according to Athenaeus’ description in Deipn. 5203e-5204c), which gives the 1:7,37 ratio mentioned by Jasper, notwithstanding the description is far from being clear and he ship can be interpreted as two ‘twenties’ joined together to form a catamaran, being the mentioned beam that of each one of the hulls.<br>
<br>
The scanty recovered traces of Nemi I’s former splendour (Marble and mosaic floor and walls revetments, statues, gilt door and window furnitures) recall that of the Syracusia/Alexandria, the gargantuan merchant ship built by Hieron II (again described by Athenaeus Deipn. 5206e-5209b). But the Syracusia possessed three masts and neither of the two Nemi ships had the slightest trace of having had even a single mast. Rowing is, therefore, the only way of propulsion left for them. Incidentally, the ship Nemi II, with her protruding ‘outrigger’, wearing above a substantial building with stone columns, and her four steering oars, two at the bow and two at the stern, brings to mind the palace-ship again built by Ptolemy IV (Deipn. 5204d-5206c) for cruising along the Nile. The ‘Houseboat’ was longer and narrower than Nemi II (91,5x13,7 m against the approx. 70x20 m of Nemi II) and had mast and sail. Again the steering disposition of Nemi II is only one of the possible explanations for her ‘double prow and double stern’, the other one being her configuration like a catamaran.<br>
<br>
The mid-portion of the ship’s ‘cutwater’ bronze casing has survived and has allowed to reconstruct the forward profile of the bow, which resembles that of a warship. Unfortunately, the forepart of the ship (she was sunk with the bow down the slope, contrarily with what I stated on a previous post!) was already damaged in the fifteenth century, during a unsuccessful raising attempt.<br>
Connolly proposes a minimum beam of 12 m for a ‘sixteen’, outrigger excluded. (This is a good place to recall the impracticability of Nemi I did not seem to have ever possessed an outrigger but if we accept those 12 m for the rowers (something more if there were nine per oar), we’ve still got eight meters free to be used as a solid fighting platform. ‘Solid’ in the sense that it could bear much more load than the two side gangways, over the rowers heads. That is my hypothesis for Nemi I, maybe a ‘sixteen’ or an ‘eighteen’ with two levels of rowers.<br>
<br>
The Nemi ships were surely neither intended to be used in any kind of real combat, nor to fulfil any practical mission. Nevertheless, their hulls were perfectly constructed and protected with tarred woollen canvas0 and lead sheet. The result should satisfy the emperor Caligula, who wanted to replicate famous big ships, but we cannot ascertain the degree of exactitude attained or the simplifications or changes made to meet Caligula’s requirements. We can, rather feebly, put forward that the gilt copper roof tile covers and the marble upper deck were fireproof revetments, but the mosaics and marble & glass opera sectilia on the walls can only be seen as lavish extravagances.<br>
The lead pipes recovered from the wreck were, on their turn, fully utilitarian (if they were not also used to water gardens and fill ponds onboard, like in the Syracusia!). There were two bilge pumps, fore and aft, and the water run through piping towards a central reservoir, made of lead faced concrete, and from there, to the port and starboard sides outlets. Bronze valves, of which one was recovered, served to close or open hose pipelines at will.<br>
Remains of at least two revolving circular platforms were found in the bow area, one ca. 60 cm in diameter and the other, ca. one meter. They could withstand considerable weights but the mission they fulfilled remains uncertain. Their position near the bow could suggest rotating emplacements for artillery. Maybe an arrow shooting catapult could be rotated at will without difficulty thanks to its universal joint but it is not clear if stone-shooting ballistae possessed such device and would have greatly benefited from a gyratory base. Evidently, the size of the surviving platforms does not allow for something really big on them.<br>
<br>
Naturally, it comes to mind that no trace of a bronze ram, artillery elements or even something related to oaring or a single oar were recovered from Nemi I when she was excavated. I can only adduce in my support that both ships did not sink by far ‘with all hands’.<br>
Below Nemi I were found the remains of a sunken boat, still loaded with sacked pavement bricks. If looters (‘official’ or ‘unofficial’ ones) were robbing almost valueless clay slabs from the still floating vessel, we can reasonably suppose that she had already been ‘relieved’ from most of her movable metallic fittings.<br>
After the wreckage, there were some recorded attempts of recovering, at least since mid XVth century, and being Nemi I the more shallowly sunk of the pair (5-12 m), she received mostly the ‘attentions’ of the divers. All of them ended in the partial destruction of some part of the ship with the extracted objects finishing in some collection at the best. The unrecorded explorations have been surely much more and we can place many of them in Roman times, when the memory of the sunken ships was still fresh and some superstructures could be still above water level.<br>
<br>
Aitor<br>
<p></p><i></i>
<br>
I’ve finally found time to write this, but I’m afraid that everybody will have lost interest on this thread by now!<br>
<br>
The Nemi I ship, as reconstructed on paper by the Italian Navy was 71.3 m long and 20 m wide. The ratio is thus 1:3.5, fairly plump for a conventional warship. For example, the reconstructed trieres ‘Olympias’ is 37 m long and 5.5 m wide, i.e. 1:6.7.<br>
Notwithstanding, it is not in the field of the agile and slender light triremes where I’m looking a place for Nemi I, but in that of the sturdy, wide and slow late Hellenistic hyper-galleys. To a certain extent, maybe the ‘ten’ or even more, they were still manoeuvrable enough as to be used in the Classical ramming fight, but their robustness and width were mainly intended to be used as fighting platforms to hold on their upper decks artillery and marines, ready for boarding other ships. If we follow Lucien Basch’s interpretation (why not?) a building recently excavated at Samothrace housed a scaled down copy of Antigonus Gonatas’ flagship, the Isthmia. It was possibly an ‘eighteen’ (But Pausanias just mentions –I,29,1- that she had ‘decks for nine rows of rowers’), with an approximate ratio length-beam of 1:5. The Isthmia’s actual dimensions are unknown, the ship herself being dedicated to the Gods at Delos, but not so clearly housed inside a building. The gigantic ‘forty’ built by Ptolemy IV was 126 m long and 17.1 m wide (according to Athenaeus’ description in Deipn. 5203e-5204c), which gives the 1:7,37 ratio mentioned by Jasper, notwithstanding the description is far from being clear and he ship can be interpreted as two ‘twenties’ joined together to form a catamaran, being the mentioned beam that of each one of the hulls.<br>
<br>
The scanty recovered traces of Nemi I’s former splendour (Marble and mosaic floor and walls revetments, statues, gilt door and window furnitures) recall that of the Syracusia/Alexandria, the gargantuan merchant ship built by Hieron II (again described by Athenaeus Deipn. 5206e-5209b). But the Syracusia possessed three masts and neither of the two Nemi ships had the slightest trace of having had even a single mast. Rowing is, therefore, the only way of propulsion left for them. Incidentally, the ship Nemi II, with her protruding ‘outrigger’, wearing above a substantial building with stone columns, and her four steering oars, two at the bow and two at the stern, brings to mind the palace-ship again built by Ptolemy IV (Deipn. 5204d-5206c) for cruising along the Nile. The ‘Houseboat’ was longer and narrower than Nemi II (91,5x13,7 m against the approx. 70x20 m of Nemi II) and had mast and sail. Again the steering disposition of Nemi II is only one of the possible explanations for her ‘double prow and double stern’, the other one being her configuration like a catamaran.<br>
<br>
The mid-portion of the ship’s ‘cutwater’ bronze casing has survived and has allowed to reconstruct the forward profile of the bow, which resembles that of a warship. Unfortunately, the forepart of the ship (she was sunk with the bow down the slope, contrarily with what I stated on a previous post!) was already damaged in the fifteenth century, during a unsuccessful raising attempt.<br>
Connolly proposes a minimum beam of 12 m for a ‘sixteen’, outrigger excluded. (This is a good place to recall the impracticability of Nemi I did not seem to have ever possessed an outrigger but if we accept those 12 m for the rowers (something more if there were nine per oar), we’ve still got eight meters free to be used as a solid fighting platform. ‘Solid’ in the sense that it could bear much more load than the two side gangways, over the rowers heads. That is my hypothesis for Nemi I, maybe a ‘sixteen’ or an ‘eighteen’ with two levels of rowers.<br>
<br>
The Nemi ships were surely neither intended to be used in any kind of real combat, nor to fulfil any practical mission. Nevertheless, their hulls were perfectly constructed and protected with tarred woollen canvas0 and lead sheet. The result should satisfy the emperor Caligula, who wanted to replicate famous big ships, but we cannot ascertain the degree of exactitude attained or the simplifications or changes made to meet Caligula’s requirements. We can, rather feebly, put forward that the gilt copper roof tile covers and the marble upper deck were fireproof revetments, but the mosaics and marble & glass opera sectilia on the walls can only be seen as lavish extravagances.<br>
The lead pipes recovered from the wreck were, on their turn, fully utilitarian (if they were not also used to water gardens and fill ponds onboard, like in the Syracusia!). There were two bilge pumps, fore and aft, and the water run through piping towards a central reservoir, made of lead faced concrete, and from there, to the port and starboard sides outlets. Bronze valves, of which one was recovered, served to close or open hose pipelines at will.<br>
Remains of at least two revolving circular platforms were found in the bow area, one ca. 60 cm in diameter and the other, ca. one meter. They could withstand considerable weights but the mission they fulfilled remains uncertain. Their position near the bow could suggest rotating emplacements for artillery. Maybe an arrow shooting catapult could be rotated at will without difficulty thanks to its universal joint but it is not clear if stone-shooting ballistae possessed such device and would have greatly benefited from a gyratory base. Evidently, the size of the surviving platforms does not allow for something really big on them.<br>
<br>
Naturally, it comes to mind that no trace of a bronze ram, artillery elements or even something related to oaring or a single oar were recovered from Nemi I when she was excavated. I can only adduce in my support that both ships did not sink by far ‘with all hands’.<br>
Below Nemi I were found the remains of a sunken boat, still loaded with sacked pavement bricks. If looters (‘official’ or ‘unofficial’ ones) were robbing almost valueless clay slabs from the still floating vessel, we can reasonably suppose that she had already been ‘relieved’ from most of her movable metallic fittings.<br>
After the wreckage, there were some recorded attempts of recovering, at least since mid XVth century, and being Nemi I the more shallowly sunk of the pair (5-12 m), she received mostly the ‘attentions’ of the divers. All of them ended in the partial destruction of some part of the ship with the extracted objects finishing in some collection at the best. The unrecorded explorations have been surely much more and we can place many of them in Roman times, when the memory of the sunken ships was still fresh and some superstructures could be still above water level.<br>
<br>
Aitor<br>
<p></p><i></i>
It\'s all an accident, an accident of hands. Mine, others, all without mind, from one extreme to another, but neither works nor will ever.
Rolf Steiner
Rolf Steiner
