During the period at which Athens reached her prime the trireme, or three-banked ship, was the most popular. As a matter of fact, its popularity was so great that its name was often given to all ships of the same general type whether they were designed with two, three, four, five, or even more banks of oars.
These many-oared ships reached a very high state of perfection during the supremacy of Greece, and the most careful calculations were made in order to utilize every available inch by packing the rowers as closely together as was possible without preventing them from properly performing their tasks.
The rowers, as I have suggested, sat in tiers, those on each side usually being all in the same vertical plane, and the benches they used ran from the inner side of the hull to upright timbers which were erected between decks, slanting toward the stern. That is, in a ship with three banks of oars, three seats were attached to each of these slanting timbers and the footrests of the rower occupying the topmost seat were on either side of the man who occupied the second seat in the next group of three. The vertical distance between these seats was two feet. The horizontal distance was one foot. The distance between seats in the same bank was three feet.
I have gone into some detail in describing this arrangement, for rowers—and from the later days of Greece on they were generally slave rowers—were the motive power of ships for three thousand years or more, and for more than a thousand years the many-banked ship was supreme.
A BIRCH-BARK CANOE
In many parts of the world savage people have learned to build light frames over which they have stretched the best material available to them. The Indians of North America commonly utilize birch bark.
Imagine these toiling galley slaves, chained in hundreds to the crowded rowing benches, straining at the heavy oars. Tossed by the seas, they labour unceasingly, stroke on stroke, to the sound of a mallet falling in never-changing cadence on a block of wood. Hour on hour they strain, heartened occasionally by a few minutes’ rest. Their eyes are all but blinded by the sweat from their grimy brows. Their hands are calloused, their bodies misshapen from long toil on the rowers’ benches. Above them, on the wind-swept deck, they hear the clank of armed men, the slap of sandalled feet. A lookout calls to the officer in command—hurried steps—momentary silence—shouts and the sound of feet. A messenger appears in the stifling space below. The sharp clap of the mallet on the block increases its cadence. Faster and faster swing the oars. Furious and more furious is the pace. A whip in the hands of a brutal guard falls here and there on the naked backs of the helpless, straining forms. Their strength is waning, their breath is coming fast. A man collapses from the strain and pitches from his elevated seat, half suspended by the chain around his leg, his oar trailing and useless. From beyond their wooden walls they hear the muffled clank of the oars of the approaching enemy.
Cries from on deck, and suddenly a crash. Broken oars are driven here and there. Screams and oaths and orders and a great upheaval. Water enters in a score of places. More screams—more oaths—cries for help to a score of pagan gods—the water covers all. A great last sigh and one more ship is gone: it is just a tiny incident in the history of ships.
As I have said, the Greeks developed marine architecture to a very high point, and the bireme and trireme with which they began were the first of a long series of developments until ultimately ships of five, of eight, of even sixteen banks of oars are said to have been in use, and there is a story, which probably was a figment of someone’s imagination, of a vessel of forty banks! Such a ship may possibly have been suggested—may conceivably have been built—but it seems certain that she could never have been successful or practical.