Carthage, that great enemy of Rome, was a city of traders—a city that depended on the sea for its wealth and, to a large extent, even for its sustenance. Rome, on the other hand, grew to considerable size without venturing on the sea. When she did first turn her attention to the water, as her continued expansion forced her to do, she found that Carthage crossed her course whichever way she turned. The result was war.
But war between two cities separated by the width of the Mediterranean had to be fought largely on the sea, and Rome, inexperienced as a sea-going nation, was put to a severe test.
By chance, however, a Carthaginian quinquireme—that is, a five-banked ship—battered by storm and abandoned by her crew, drifted ashore on the sunny coast of Italy, and the Romans, quick to see the importance of the happening, hauled her high and dry, measured her, and learned from her battered hull the lessons they needed to know of ship construction.
AN OUTRIGGER CANOE
Sometimes these canoes have an outrigger on each side, and sometimes they carry sails.
They built on dry land sets of rowers’ seats, and while they taught rowers to pull their oars in unison in these unique training benches, they set to work with the energy that marked Rome out for great success. Sixty days after they had felled the trees, they had a fleet of quinquiremes afloat and manned.
Promptly they turned the prows of this new fleet toward the Carthaginians—and were defeated.
But with the indomitable will that characterized the Romans for two thousand years, they went to work again, and built a new fleet and a more powerful one. This time some inventive Roman devised a kind of hinged gangplank, which could be dropped upon the deck of an enemy ship, maintaining its hold by a heavy metal barb which would penetrate the decks. Across this bridge the Roman soldiers could rush, and by this means could turn a naval battle into what was very nearly the same to these land-trained soldiers as a battle on dry land, where hard blows with sword and spear determined the result.
With this new apparatus the Romans, under Duilius, in 260 B. C., gained a victory at Mylæ, off the coast of Sicily, and after three wars, covering, with intervals between, 118 years, drove the Carthaginians from the sea and razed their beautiful city to the ground.