Equipment of vessels.With regard to the equipment of the vessels of the ancients, we are told by Thucydides, that there was originally no distinction of Ships’ companies.rank among their crews; but that the same persons were employed indiscriminately in those duties which in later ages were executed by separate orders of men, that is to say, by rowers, mariners, and soldiers. The same men originally filled these three offices; they laid down their arms to labour at the oar, and to do, perhaps, what was necessary in other respects for the management of the vessel they belonged to; but resumed them as often as occasion required, to assault, or defend themselves from, their enemies. At these periods no extraordinary preparations were made for the equipment of ships of war, but the same vessels were thought sufficient to answer the purposes of fighting and transport indiscriminately.
As the arts of navigation and of naval warfare improved, it was found that any one of the occupations we have enumerated was enough to engross the whole time and application of the persons employed in the performance of it; and it then became customary to furnish ships of war with three distinct orders of men; viz., rowers, mariners, and soldiers. The rowers were divided into three classes; those of the upper, the middle, and the lower ranges. Each person had a separate oar, for, except in cases of necessity, one oar was never managed by more than one person; but the labour and pay of the several classes of rowers were not at the same time equal: they who were stationed in the uppermost banks, by reason of their distance from the water, and the consequent length of their oars, underwent more toil and labour than those in the inferior banks, and their pay was on that account greater.
The crew took their rest upon the deck, or upon the seats where they rowed; and the officers only, or persons of more than ordinary rank on board, were permitted to have clothes spread under them; of which the following instance is quoted by the author of the Archæologia from Homer:—
But clothes the men for great Ulysses spread,
And placed an easy pillow for his head;
On these he undisturb’d, securely slept,
Lying upon the stern.
They who could not content themselves with the accommodation here afforded to the son of Laertes, were looked upon as effeminate, and unfit to endure the toils and hardships of war: we find accordingly, that Alcibiades was censured by the Athenians, for having allowed himself the luxury of a “bed hung on cords,” or, in other words, a cot or a hammock.
The class termed mariners were exempt from drudging at the oar, but performed all the other duties of the ship; and in order that every thing might be carried on without tumult or confusion, each had his peculiar office assigned to him, as appears from the Argonautics of Apollonius and Flaccus. We there find one employed in rearing the mast, another in fitting the yards, a third in hoisting the sails, and the rest employed fore and aft in the ship, each in his proper place. Hence, they had different titles to distinguish them, taken from the parts of the ship where they were stationed, and the offices which they were in the habit of performing.
There was a class of men inferior to the rest of the crew, which was not confined to any particular station or duty, but was ready on all occasions to attend the other seamen, and supply them with whatever they wanted.