How far did the Romans actually trade and explore?

[Radivena]

The Vikings were quite smart understanding how to use in Cordierite connection with navigation.

I'm sorry that I didn't thought of explaining how this strange mineral works before. I bet there's more people wondering about the same thing. Thanks for asking One applaud for you...

Nevertheless I'm going away on vacation, so I won't be able to take part at this forum for some days. I wish everyone good luck with further discussions on the limits of Roman trade and exploration :!:

[Endre Fodstad]

Is the Atlantic any harder a crossing?

No, Atlantic crossing in summer is easy.

Yes. In modern ships, with charts, compasses a knowledge of exactly where you are going.

Let's not go over the top here. Early trans-atlantic voyages, before the charts and crossing patterns were established, were extremely hard, and often fatal for large parts of the crews of the pioneering ships, in ships of far better quality and with far better equipement than either vikings or romans had access to. The norse discovery of america was made possible by the relatively short open-ocean distances; iceland to greenland, greenland to newfoundland.

There certainly is no (non-crackpot) evidence for roman (or phoenician, let's not open that can) discoveries of america. Following the well-established monsoon winds to and from India is quite a different matter from navigating unknown waters in the atlantic.

[conon394]

Endre Fodstad

in ships of far better quality and with far better equipement than either vikings or romans had access to

Exactly how were the 3 ships of Columbus far better than Roman sailing ships?

[Titus Martius]

Yes. In modern ships, with charts, compasses a knowledge of exactly where you are going.

Let's not go over the top here. Early trans-atlantic voyages, before the charts and crossing patterns were established, were extremely hard, and often fatal for large parts of the crews of the pioneering ships, in ships of far better quality and with far better equipement than either vikings or romans had access to. The norse discovery of america was made possible by the relatively short open-ocean distances; iceland to greenland, greenland to newfoundland.

There certainly is no (non-crackpot) evidence for roman (or phoenician, let's not open that can) discoveries of america. Following the well-established monsoon winds to and from India is quite a different matter from navigating unknown waters in the atlantic.

I must insist that crossing the Atlantic in summer is easy, thousands voyages were done in small wooden boats and ships. We are not talking about navigation from and to known places but generally about the possibility of crossing the ocean.

There was little difference in quality between roman ships and Columbus' ones.

[Endre Fodstad]

For ocean voyages?

Real combination rigging, considerably improved reinforcement of the rigging, ratline ladders for better (or at least safer) crew access to the rigging and of course, no or very few sailors inclined to sail to windward (as opposed to sailing before the wind and sailing side to the wind), which turned out to be pretty important in the start and landing phases of the first atlantic voyages (we have not evidence one way or the other for lateen-rigged ships sailing to windward in roman antiquity, but we have 15th century evidence for arab traders sailing the monsoon route to India and back not knowing how, or even wanting to - although they theorethically could have - there is a large, and frequently ignored by overenthusiastic historians, gap between having a possibility of an action and actually performing the action). Also, straight vertical high-rising sternposts and central rudders, the employment of deadwood between the afterhull and the sternpost rudder (very important due to the elimination of turbulence caused by water turning around the hull, which drastically improved the durability of the sternpost rudder while maintaining manouverability). The deep keel as opposed to the center-board more common in antiquity and the early middle ages.

Of course, Columbus' fleet consisted of two different types of ship (two caravels and a carrack), and the Santa Maria (the náo or carrack) ran aground during the journey, while the caravels barely survived a storm on the way back, so it was, in many ways, a close call.

Compasses instead of only the polar star and sun dial-diptyches for determining absolute north (which works best if you have rutters, as the norse explorers did, since the discovery of newfoundland was an accident). Unknown wind patterns (the known wind patterns was what the Indian ocean voyages possible). Weaker hulls for riding out storms - even the hardiest monsoon route ships of later times (15th century until today), themselves developments of the best oceangoing vessels built in the 1-3rd cents for monsoon sailing were less durable than the atlantic merchants ships evolved from a combination of mediterranean and atlantic building practices plus some new tricks - primarily the lightening of hulls (for example by the use of clinker building imported from nordic shipbuilding traditions of the above-waterline hulls to reduce weight, and the use of the skeleton-first method of shipbuilding, the common method for western navies until wooden sailers went out of use, in the below-waterline areas as opposed to shell-first and mortice-and-tenon joining common until the high middle ages in the mediterranean, which was continued in Indian ocean dhows until today. The exception here were 16-17th century dutch ships and some scandinavian ships, which used a modified variant of the shell-first method combined with clinking, which got around the problems of the time it took to built ships with the mortise-and-tenon method and alsoutilizing newer forms of hull shape construction) while simultaneously maintaining strength, and more streamlined hulls, especially well suited for riding out storms. A period of 1000-1500 years of development of the art of atlantic sailing and in building hulls will create some improvements, especially since the ancient world's trading in the atlantic was (relatively) limited. Note, of course, that a lot of these improvements primarily were about the ease of building - mortise and tenon joining being extremely time-consuming, and when it was replaced by other methods in itself decreased costs of building ships and made it more economically viable to send them off on voyages of exploration.

Of course, theorethically, a roman ship could have been blown over the atlantic if it was really lucky (or unlucky, from the sailors' point of view). Also, there is a lot we don't know about the excavated wrecks (there have been excavated only about 20 carracks and caravels from spain and portugal so far) - a prime example of how wrong archaeology can go when reconstructing the capabilities of ships (this admittedly in the opposite direction, since scandinavian archaeology has a long tradition of underplaying the capabilities of its finds) is the assumption that the Oseberg ship was not capable of open ocean voyages, which is now being challenged due to a full computer scanning of the hull and extensive seaworthiness tests of models - although, of course, the only way to know for sure is to build the entire thing in 1:1 and try it out. I have seen a lot of theorizing from historians of technology on roman (and early medieval, and high medieval) wrecks but few thorough studies of the capability of the vessels excavated.

Shipbuilding technology increased incrementally thorough world history - just as the romans (and/or their subjects) adapted and improved upon vessels, so did the later medieval people (byzantines, muslims and latins) and people of the early modern period. The real big western shakeup was the combination of cravel and clinker-building that happened sometime in the 9th, 10th or 11th century and the abandonment of the mortise-and-tenon/hull-first methods in the high middle ages in favor of the hull-first method (which might also have been in use earlier, but probably not very widely), after and during which improvement kept going, although in several different lines as the dutch methods. It would be odd indeed if something had not happened in a thousand years.

So "far better"? Yes, for ocean voyages over the atlantic and into the unknown. For mediterranean sailing (or the monsoon winds route), roman or romano-indian vessels more than sufficed.

Of course, if there is any real evidence of roman ships having all these features, I'll stand corrected. But to the best of my knowledge, that is not the case. (Note also that this post is mostly from memory)

The next to last (and of course besides the question) is exactly why the romans would want to attempt the voyage at all - although our sources on roman population is rather scarce, they never lacked for land to settle people, their overland asian trade was not being disrupted on the scale it was in the 15th century, and the indian trade was booming, at least until the 4th century AD, when the empire (s) had bigger problems to deal with.

There is of course also the problem of precedence: the sponsoring of maritime exploration was well established in 1492, with the genoese attempting to develop portolan charts for the west african coast as early as the 1320s/1330s (unsuccessfully, at least we have no mention of the expedition returning). I am not aware of any such state-sponsored maritime exploration attempts in the atlantic in roman times (although I would be happy to be enlightened), and it seems somewhat unlikely that private enterprise could be expected to take such risks.

[Endre Fodstad]

There was little difference in quality between roman ships and Columbus' ones.

For the purposes they were built for, no. But few if any roman ships were built for deep ocean atlantic sailing.

[Titus Martius]

For ocean voyages?....

Salve Endre,
the main question was: Were roman ships able to cross the Atlantic? The answer is YES, roman ships could cross the ocean. And of course, nobody said romans reached Americas.

Sailing ship can use NE trade winds to Americas which are stretched literally from the North to South pole, nobody can miss such a great piece of land :lol: Such a voyage would be, of course, a guess navigation, but same was with Columbus, too.

I have seen a lot of theorizing from historians...

I can give some practical answer, please find below my father statement:

Dear Endre,
as a marine captain with sailing ships experience I can guarantee I am able to cross the ocean on roman ship replica without modern navigational aids. Just give me a ship and we can make a deal My opinion is that people underestimate sailing capabilities of small wooden boats and ships.

[Endre Fodstad]

Hello there Titus!

Well - the question I was responding to was primarily that atlantic summer crossings would be "easy" without any prior knowledge of anything and in ships that, while certainly excellent for their period, were definitely less seaworthy than the later transoceanic vessels.

Dear Endre,
as a marine captain with sailing ships experience I can guarantee I am able to cross the ocean on roman ship replica without modern navigational aids. Just give me a ship and we can make a deal My opinion is that people underestimate sailing capabilities of small wooden boats and ships.

Very impressive. He has actually sailed a roman sailing ship (Which one? I know of no larger reconstructions tested in open atlantic waters) in open ocean with no modern navigational aids and no knowledge whatsoever of the wind currents, streams and where he is going, or any skill at tacking (he'd have to erase it from his memory, then)? Because that is pretty much the only way he could guarantee such a thing. And he'd need no ship from me then

Pretty amazing voyages are possibly in small ships - just look at what Thor Heyerdahl was capable of with the Kon-Tiki. Of course it is possible. It is possible for one man on a piece of driftwood to be blown across the atlantic and survive - but likely, it is not.

[Titus Martius]

Very impressive. He has actually sailed a roman sailing ship

Dear Endre, nobody said that roman replica sailed the ocean.

Roman voyager would make same guess navigation due to west as Columbus made.

As you said the ocean was crossed on rafts, so it is obvious it could be crossed by romans.


I must finish this discussion since I have to prepare myself for roman re-enactment event today.

Thanks for sharing different ideas and points of view! :wink:

+laudes

[Endre Fodstad]

Roman voyager would make same guess navigation due to west as Columbus made.

As you said the ocean was crossed on rafts, so it is obvious it could be crossed by romans

Of course he could. He would have a tougher job than the genoese explorer, though, and there is no evidence any ever did.

As I once told some medieval reenactor friends of mine: yes, they could have made and used hand-and-a-half longswords in 1260 in the same manner they did in 1360, but there is no evidence of it, and technically speaking, they could have forged machineguns as well - but again, there is no evidence of it.

Thanks for sharing different ideas and points of view! :wink:

No problem. Some skepticism is always healthy.

[Ebusitanus]

I see really no reason not to think that in 500 years of Roman merchant shipping around the Atlantic european and african coast that some vessel might have got lost and reached the americas and even returned. This is not to mean there was anything like a trade route or something. But outright dismissing even the posibility of an accidental contact is IMHO being to dogmatic.

[Endre Fodstad]

Of course it could have happened. We just don't have any real evidence it did. See above.

[D B Campbell]

I see really no reason not to think that in 500 years of Roman merchant shipping around the Atlantic european and african coast that some vessel might have got lost and reached the americas and even returned.

As chronicled in this well-known book.

[Primitivus]

Because of lack in open sea navigation techniques I don't think they would been able to make the journey without unrealistic amounts of luck.

And, once made, they could only--with even vaster amounts of luck--repeat the process. I suspect that if any Romans ever traveled to the "New World," it was by accident and they never made it home to share their tale.

[rkmvca1]

I see really no reason not to think that in 500 years of Roman merchant shipping around the Atlantic european and african coast that some vessel might have got lost and reached the americas and even returned. This is not to mean there was anything like a trade route or something. But outright dismissing even the posibility of an accidental contact is IMHO being to dogmatic.

I agree, and would almost be surprised to hear that in all the years that they traded with the Azores and the Canaries, _no_ Roman ship was blown across the South Atlantic.

What's more surprising is that no one in this thread has brought up the whole "Roman Amphorae in Brazil" controversy. There is a nice summary here. It seems there may actually be something to it, although of course the characters involved are not above reproach, etc etc. A bit more here

rich klein