The Athenians used leather or skin aprons or covers over the oar holes to prevent the water entering, the oar passing through a hole in the leather, and the apron was bound to the oar in such a way as to be watertight. This contrivance was widely adopted later. The oar ports were constructed between the ribs, but the oars instead of being rowed against the ribs were pulled against thongs fastened to the next rib, thus minimising the strain upon the ship’s structure and preventing the oars being lost overboard. One man one oar was apparently the general rule at that time.
In his most painstaking study of “Ancient Ships” Mr. Cecil Torr has gone very closely into the subject of the oar equipment of the galleys. An Athenian three-banked ship would carry two hundred oars, of which thirty were worked from the upper decking, sixty-two on the upper bank, and fifty-four to each of the lower. The earliest two-banked ships had eighteen rowers. An Athenian four-banked ship might carry two hundred and sixty-six oars. The Roman and Carthaginian five-banked ships in use about 256 B.C. had three hundred rowers besides the combatants. The statement is made by an early historian that in 280 B.C. the Heraclean fleet on the Black Sea included an eight-banked ship with a hundred rowers on each file, or one thousand six hundred rowers in all. As usually the fighting men carried exceeded the rowers in number, the ship must have had close upon three thousand five hundred men aboard.
Warships of all the early Eastern nations were strengthened by cables passed longitudinally round them in order to keep the timbers in place and prevent them from being started under the strain occasioned by the shock of ramming. Egyptian ships of about 1200 B.C. had cables stretched from stem to stern and passing over the top of the mast and other posts, but this contrivance was to prevent the vessel from drooping at the ends, a weakness known as “hogging.” The shock to the ramming vessel was scarcely less severe than that to the vessel receiving the blow. To take up the strain and add to the power of the blow the bows were strengthened by means of waling pieces which supported the ram proper. The Greek ships were built with the keel, the stempost, and the lower pair of waling pieces converging to hold the ram, while higher up the stem was a smaller ram which in its turn was buttressed by another pair of waling planks. The catheads, or beams projecting from the bows on either side by which the anchors were raised, were so placed on a level with the gangway and gunwale that they would sweep the upper works of an enemy’s ship and smash its gangway and hurl into the sea or the hold all the fighting men upon it. Ships of more than three banks are believed to have carried another ram level with the catheads, and to have had a ram for every pair of additional waling beams. The ram heads were generally of bronze and weighed 170 lb. or more.
“AN ANCIENT BIREME, FROM BASIUS, HAVING ONE TIER OF OARS ONLY.”
“ONE OF THE ANCIENT LIBURNI, OR GALLEYS, HAVING A SINGLE TIER
OF OARS, ACCORDING TO BASIUS.”
AN ANCIENT TRIREME, ACCORDING TO BASIUS.
From Charnock’s “History of the Marine Architecture of all Nations.”