Ancient naval battle rises above the waves

[Gunthamund Hasding]

"The year was 241BC and on the 10th of March a massive naval battle took place off the coast of Sicily between the Romans and Carthaginians. The defeat of the Carthaginians brought about an end to the First Punic War and set the Roman Republic on its militaristic path to establishing an Empire"

some links:
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/...-the-waves

http://rpmnautical.org/battlelandscape.html

very intsresting you can see an helmet as well, I wander how many pieces of equipment were found: "Bronze helmets, amphora, weapons and most importantly ancient bronze battle rams are being recorded"

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Saw this a few weeks ago. Not the First Roman Naval Battle found (We knew where the Battle of Salamis took place 220 years ago) but certainly an important one.

[Ildar]

http://www.romanarmytalk.com/17-roman-mi...found.html (2005)
http://www.romanarmytalk.com/17-roman-mi...rsala.html (2006)
http://www.romanarmytalk.com/17-roman-mi...attle.html (2012)
http://www.romanarmytalk.com/17-roman-mi...ation.html (2012)
http://www.romanarmytalk.com/17-roman-mi...oject.html (2013)

[M. Demetrius]

Was Salamis Roman?

[Sean Manning]

very interesting you can see an helmet as well, I wander how many pieces of equipment were found: "Bronze helmets, amphora, weapons and most importantly ancient bronze battle rams are being recorded"

Last January, the team representatives at the AIA conference said ten rams, eight helmets, and about 400 pots. The find is a real puzzle, because the rams were cast onto the ship timbers, and no ancient technology could break the ram off. Each ram must represent a whole warship which went to the bottom, but wooden ships without a dense cargo should not do that.

[Gunthamund Hasding]

very interesting you can see an helmet as well, I wander how many pieces of equipment were found: "Bronze helmets, amphora, weapons and most importantly ancient bronze battle rams are being recorded"

Last January, the team representatives at the AIA conference said ten rams, eight helmets, and about 400 pots. The find is a real puzzle, because the rams were cast onto the ship timbers, and no ancient technology could break the ram off. Each ram must represent a whole warship which went to the bottom, but wooden ships without a dense cargo should not do that.

unless they would have an hole in them
I suppose this are sunk ships during the fight, Do we know how many ships were sunk on each side?

Another interesting fact might be that the ships would represnt both fighting sides so Roman as well as Carthaginian materials could be found

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Was Salamis Roman?

No but you get my point right?

[Sean Manning]

very interesting you can see an helmet as well, I wander how many pieces of equipment were found: "Bronze helmets, amphora, weapons and most importantly ancient bronze battle rams are being recorded"

Last January, the team representatives at the AIA conference said ten rams, eight helmets, and about 400 pots. The find is a real puzzle, because the rams were cast onto the ship timbers, and no ancient technology could break the ram off. Each ram must represent a whole warship which went to the bottom, but wooden ships without a dense cargo should not do that.

unless they would have an hole in them

Not even then. To sink, a body must be more dense than seawater, but both pinewood and human bodies are less dense. An ancient warship carried very little metal, stone, or pottery which could pull a wooden ship to the bottom of the sea. So far the archaeologists have not found large amounts of dense objects on these ships, and why .they sank to the bottom instead of floating around just under the surface like driftwood is a mystery.

The main literary source for this battle is Polybius 1.59-62.

[Gunthamund Hasding]

I got your point Sean thanks for clarifying, maybe we don#t know why they sunk bt vlear enough is that they did (we found the remanis) and I personally think that is exciting because we really can learn studying them

Thank you for the source you provided I read the chapters and unfortunatelly no word about the Roman ships sunk or damaged

For Chartago:
"So that immediately on engaging they had the worst in many parts of the battle and were soon routed, 50 ships being sunk and 70 captured with their crews"

what is also interesting is that he puts the number of captives very high:
"As for the Roman consul, he sailed away to Lilybaeum and the legions, and there occupied himself with the disposal of the captured ships and men, a business of some magnitude, as the prisoners made in the battle numbered very nearly ten thousand."

this is again intersting if they got 9k people form 70 ships captured we would have crews of 128 per ship, if we consider that half of the sunken ships crews were also taken we would have a crew number of 95

Does anyone know about how many crewmwn were in an Carthaginian ship?

[M. Demetrius]

M.Dem wrote: Was Salamis Roman?
MMFA replied: No but you get my point right?

Yes, of course.

@Gunthamund, do you mean crew or crew + sea soldiers/Marines?

[M.VAL.BRUTUS]

Well, I think we can assume that a ship so badly damaged as to be considered "sunk" would not hold together for long in the ocean. So even if the ships, rather the remains of the sips, were floating around as driftwood, eventually they would become water logged, and begin to come apart futher in the water. This would allow for the heavy ram, with the metal cast around the timber to sink to the bottom, while the rest of the ship drifted away to wash up on the shore of some distant island...

[M. Demetrius]

Well, a ship that was leaking enough water as to be unnavigable might hold together, mostly, but eventually, everything that was connected to the ram would sink to the bottom. Lots of scraps would float around and end up on the shore in different places, driven by currents and wind.

Ballast and any heavier-than-water cargo would drive the wreck to the bottom, Maybe that's why we often see the general hull and ribs on the bottom, but not the deck and other above water structure. Shipwrecks then and now would be terrible for those on board. :-( .

[Gunthamund Hasding]

[i]M.Dem wrote:
@Gunthamund, do you mean crew or crew + sea soldiers/Marines?

well of couse a ship im battle would have marines on them too

[Sean Manning]

Banning modern trawling gear altogether might not be such a bad thing, since overfishing is rapidly wrecking our ability to harvest anything from the sea.

Well, I think we can assume that a ship so badly damaged as to be considered "sunk" would not hold together for long in the ocean. So even if the ships, rather the remains of the sips, were floating around as driftwood, eventually they would become water logged, and begin to come apart futher in the water. This would allow for the heavy ram, with the metal cast around the timber to sink to the bottom, while the rest of the ship drifted away to wash up on the shore of some distant island...

Well, ancient naval battles were fought close to shore, the winner tried to salvage the wrecks, and wood takes a long time to soften and rot in the water. Yet these third-century wrecks are found at more or less the site of a third-century naval battle.

But in general, see this article by the Italian and American excavators. It doesn't entirely help my case, but they are the experts; I would only add that previous attempts to find rams at sites of great naval battles have failed and that this tended to give credence to the 'swamping not sinking' theory.