Mass/weight of a triere

[P. Lilius Frugius Simius]

P. Lilius T. Martio sal!

Avete!

You are, of course, perfectly right. Not only the hull was reinforced by the wales to help absorb the impact, but I am sure the whole of the ship's prown was reinforces as well at the skeleton level (probably the beams where specially attached in order to make the prown sturdy and resistent.

The point here is that a full speed crash was probably the wrong thing to do, and a perfect way to suffer almost as much damage as your enemy itself (impact damage aside, the time you'd need to detach yourself from the sinking, enemy vessel, must have been long enough for the toxotai and epibatai and a good deal of rowers among the thranites and even zygites orders (upper and middle levels) to assault on the attacking vessel and give more headaches than were probably worth.

Of course, as you point out and clearly show on our beloves Olympias, a ramming ship was prepared to resist the stress associated to the ramming itself, (which is logical if you just think about it).

Thanks for the tip (no pun intended)!

vale!