Trireme construction

[Anonymous]

Where did the wood come from to build such huge ships?<br>
<p></p><i></i>

[aitor iriarte]

Well, in ancient times there were much more wooded aras than today and, when locally available timber was not suited, they simply imported it.<br>
At 'Deipnosophistae' there is an interesting accout of how Hieron got the timbers for the Syracusia before the description.<br>
<br>
Aitor <p></p><i></i>

[Anonymous]

Excuse me please. I break thread.<br>
This question always interested me.<br>
Who were rowers: slaves or free? Did they take part in hand-to-hand fight? Why historians of antiquity do not concentrate attention on it?<br>
<p></p><i></i>

[aitor iriarte]

Eerrr...<br>
There are surely people here more acquainted with the subject but, at least in Greek times, rowers were free men.<br>
The actual boarding and fighting were carried by armed marines on the upper deck. Rowers were the ship's highly trained 'engine' and were needed in the complex ramming and row-breaking techniques. Specially the triremes fought almost exclusively by ramming, their cargo capacity for a decent boarding party being rather small.<br>
<br>
Aitor <p></p><i></i>

[Praefectusclassis]

Aitor is right. With incidental exceptions - but then they were always freed beforehand - slaves did not serve in crews of ancient warships. Galleyslaves (as punishment) were an invention of the 15th century.<br>
Apparently later, Byzantine, rowing systems allowed one of two rowers on a single oar to release his hold and join the fight. Before that time, there were marines for that job. The Athenians used very few, only ten to fifteen archers and hoplites per trireme. In later periods and other types of ship, this number could rise considerably. <p></p><i></i>

[Anonymous]

The Greek navy reconstructed an Ancient trireme in 2000<br>
Her name is "Olympias".<br>
All photos that i have caome from greek news papers but I guess google can lead to picture links.<br>
The reconstruction was done with the most trational techniques.<br>
Regards<br>
<p></p><i></i>

[Anonymous]

More about the ship and photos in:<br>
www.hellenicnavy.gr/index_en.asp <p></p><i></i>

[Anonymous]

Hi<br>
<br>
Read Polybius' description of the Roman oarsmen in the First Punic War. Any of the books on the Peleponisian War also talk about paying and training oarsmen. Interesting note though is that oarsmen tended to predominently come from the lower class.<br>
<br>
Slainte<br>
Jeff I.<br>
<p></p><i></i>

[Anonymous]

I wonder whether the question is "Are triremes easy to build?" - i.e. not technically difficult. I don't think they are very difficult. We know that Viking longships were built without plans and were, in terms of their seaworthiness and mobility, much superior to the trireme, which doesn't seem to have been conceived primarily as a seagoing vessel but rather as a kind of manned missile, just seaworthy enough to keep the crew safe in favourable conditions. Even if you insist that triremes are as good as longships, that does not necessarily make them harder to build - and replica longships have been built by groups of amateurs. Most of you will know that the Greeks built a replica Trireme some years ago, which was then rowed mainly by non-Greek, specialist oarsmen. So, if you were wondering whether building one is a possibility, the answer is "Yes." All you need is money and carpenters.<br>
Paul <p></p><i></i>

[Matthew Amt]

I know a fellow who went to Greece to row on the Olympias a few years ago. Sounds like a fascinating vacation!<br>
<br>
But I think the reconstruction is incorrect on a couple points. In his book "The Ship", Bjorn Landstrom concludes that the upper 2 rows of oarsmen were actually on the same seat, the inner man's oar going out through a lower port than the outer man's. The lowest tier of rowers sat below and between the upper two. It makes a very compact arrangement and greatly reduces the height and bulk of the ship. Now, I'm not sure how much 3-dimensional testing has been done with this arrangement! It seems to work in his cross-sectional illustrations, but no idea if it works in real life.<br>
<br>
Secondly, there is an old article from Scientific American that shows very clearly that the Greeks used a "sliding seat" method of rowing, similar to early modern racing shells. The bench or seat was actually fixed in place, but the rower had a leather pad strapped to his backside on which he slid back and forth with each stroke. (There is a Greek writer who berates his countrymen for going ashore and hitting the bars with their rowing pads still tied to their butts!) This greatly increases the length of the stroke, and allows the legs to do much of the work. THAT gives you some speed! On modern racing shells, the seat itself slides on rollers, but same net effect. Note that the Romans did NOT use this method, they just sat there and rowed as on the modern Olympias. So the whole sliding seat method was lost to history until the 19th century.<br>
<br>
Also note that this may make Landstrom's rower arrangement unworkable, but again I don't know for sure.<br>
<br>
Rowers in Classical Greece and Republican Rome were typically from the lower classes because those men were too poor to equip themselves as heavy infantry. Greek hoplites and Roman legionaries (at that time) were drawn from the landed men since they could afford the necessary armor and weapons. The Roman system was very strict regarding the requirements for each specific class on the income scale. The lower classes filled in as light infantry or rowers when necessary.<br>
<br>
Row, row, row! Khairete,<br>
<br>
Matthew <p></p><i></i>

[Felix]

The Greek navy reconstructed an Ancient trireme in 2000<br>
Her name is "Olympias". <br>
All photos that i have caome from greek news papers but I guess google can lead to picture links.<br>
The reconstruction was done with the most trational techniques.<br>
Regards<br>


<p></p><i></i>

There is a book written for, and about, this project. "The Athenian Trireme" by Morrison, Coates and Rankov. I have to get around to reading it, though (too many other books!) :?

[Antonius Lucretius]

As far as ancient shipbuilding techniques are concerned, we are still somewhat hooked on the 19th century school of thoughts which considered that ancient ships were clumsy, unmanageable and barely seaworthy affairs.
The same school of thoughts also gave us the legend of the roman horse- strangling collar and of the roman four wheeled cart without a swiveling front axle..
Fortunately, since then, things advanced somewhat, thanks to experimentation and some careful observations.
First: steering. The steering oar system, as has been since demonstrated by experimentation, is as efficient, if not more, than the modern system. The shape of the paddle blades, added to the long steering handles providing a lot of leverage, gave a sort of power steering effect which allowed indeed, as stated in the ancient texts, a single man to steer a ship of considerable size. Also: by pushing both bars forward the paddles can be used as brakes, something you can't do with a modern ship.
Second: sailing. The lateen sail, allowing to sail upwind, existed then. Maybe not in its "modern" form, but given the very complex rigging observed on reliefs like the Ostia cargo ship, it is easy to realize that a square sail could be folded and turned into a lateen sail. Some reliefs actually show lateen sails.
Besides, the amount of grain needed to feed the Romans and the general volume of commerce at that times implies necessarily that navigation was a year round affair and that ships we able to sail upwind.
Come to think of it, the Ostia grain ship compares very favourably with Christopher Columbus' "Santa Maria" of fourteen centuries later. Actually the Ostia ship was probably bigger.
Now, on to warships: the trireme was a masterpiece of technology and of the art --it's an art-- of shipbuilding. Its shell-first construction allowed for extremely quick building. In the War of the Gauls, Caesar explains that he had a whole fleet of what were probably two banked galleys --or maybe triremes-- built in about a month.
However the differences were considerable whether you went to this shipbuilder or that shipbuilder. Like the difference between a formula One racing car and a four door sedan. They're both cars..
The galleys Caesar built were certainly quickly built affairs, but the athenian messenger ship --a trireme called the Paralian-- was obviously a very well crafted ship featuring very finely calculated waterlines and capable of impressive speed.
Rough and unrefined as she is, the reconstructed trieres Olympias was able to reach a dash speed of eleven knots.. Imagine what a master naval carpenter was able to achieve.
Experiments with Olympias also show that the oars were also a result of some serious R and D. not only on their shape, but also on their weight and the way they were balanced.
Refinements.. Refinements..
As time passed, the trireme gave birth to other types, the system of rowing changed, with more than one man per oar, and so on, until the appearance of the hellenistic dreadnoughts.
The problem was thus: how to pack as many rowers as you can in a hull. When the maximum reasonable lenght was achieved, the solution was to pack the same number of oarsmen into a shorter, thus wider, hull. That gave a ship as powerful, but more maneuverable, due to its shorter beam lenght.
It seems that this is what happened during the great naval contests between the hellenistic kingdoms. the arms race lead to bigger and bigger ships, capable of carrying a lot of artillery, then to big, but more maneuverable ships.
The Nemi galley may be not a reconstruction of one of those hellenistic dreadnoughts but, according to some scholars, one of those original battleships brought back to Rome as a trophy, like it was customary at the time.
Looking at the Nemi galley's waterline, especially from the front, I can't help but notice that she looks pretty much like one of those single hull sailboats used for transoceanic racing. Minus the keel of course. The flat bottom allowed for a shallow draught, hence good turing ability and the width made it a more stable firing platform.
According to some scholars it is possible that such a ship was able to U-turn on a little more that its lenght.. A warship, and a efficient one, I think.