Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

The later rams varied considerably in shape. The triple ram was sometimes made with the teeth pointing slightly downward, while others had an upward tilt. The lowest ram often extended farther forward than those above, the idea being that it would inflict severe injury about or below the water line, and that the upper rams, besides causing damage, would push the stricken vessel off the lower ram and let her sink without the assailant being dragged down by the head with her.

The build of the ships rendered it necessary that an engagement should be fought on a calm sea, and daylight was preferred in order that the combatants could see what they were doing. As the fleets approached one another the commanders of the different vessels decided upon their individual opponents. Much skilful manœuvring ensued to ram the enemy or avoid a blow. The slaves strained at the oars while their taskmasters ran between the files of rowers and, with unmerciful blows from heavy sticks and whips, stimulated them to still greater exertions if possible.

Poor slaves, mostly prisoners of war, their prospects were gloomy in the extreme! If their ship were rammed some of them were sure to be injured, and if she sank they went down with her, fastened to their places and having no chance of escape. If the oars were disabled in the collision between the ships the rowers were bound to receive violent blows from the inboard end of the oars, or to be cruelly pierced by splinters of wreckage. Showers of missiles from the opposing ship fell upon the helpless wretches. In later years, when the terrible Greek fire was added to the means of attack and defence, it contributed the prospect of being burnt alive to the other horrors of their situation. Victory meant no rejoicings for them. The wounded were of little account and could be dispensed with when slaves were to be had for the capturing, and it was easy to put them overboard to die the more quickly. Those who survived the battle unhurt or not too severely injured to recover rapidly, were retained. If their ship were vanquished they might look forward to greater cruelties as a punishment for their share of the defeat. If they belonged to the victors, they had only more battles, the torturing whips of their drivers, and insufficient food as their portion in life. Death came as a welcome relief to the slaves of victor and vanquished; in it lay their only hope of peace.

When the Roman navy was at its best the ships were painted a colour which matched the waves, and the hulls were made as watertight as possible with tar. Occasionally in the later Roman ships layers of tarred cloth were placed outside the outer planking, and the hull was then lead-sheathed. Bronze nails and wooden pegs were used in fastening the timbers together, and some ships were so built that they could be taken to pieces and transported overland if necessary. Ships of three, four and five banks were even conveyed from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates.

The facility with which the Liburnians handled the two-banked ships in their Adriatic campaign induced the Romans to adopt these vessels as models for their own two-banked ships, and in course of time they adopted the name of liburna for all war-vessels of from one to five banks.

If some of the historians may be believed, anything that could be piled upon the ancient ship and did not capsize it was permissible. One is said to have had a tower at the stern and another at the prow. Another bore “a large tower of masonry with a great gate. Here appear some vases, probably filled with combustibles.” Another libernus has a mast or yard, suspended perpendicularly by the side of the forward tower, and having at each end a crossbeam. Yet another libernus, besides carrying a protector for the helm at the stern, is said to have had six round towers; the largest, of embattled masonry, was at the prow, two others, also of masonry, surmounted by domes, and connected by a bridge, were near the stern, and the other three were nearer the fore part of the ship, were roofed, and two of them had windows.

Shipping in the Mediterranean extended with extraordinary rapidity in the recovery after the stagnation caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and the relapse into semi-barbarism which followed the successful invasion of Italy by the wild tribesmen of the North. The advent and rise of the Moslem power caused a series of struggles in which every state was in a more or less constant condition of warfare against its neighbour, and the Crusades served but to add fuel to the fire of internecine and religious conflict. Some immense ships are stated to have been employed up to and at the fall of Constantinople. The early centuries of the Christian era saw the evolution of a flat, shallow vessel, fitted with one or two masts carrying sails, from which the lateen rig developed, equipped with a long ram above the water line, with two or at most three banks of oars. It appears from illustrations that some of these boats carried a superstructure extending beyond the beam on either side. War vessels of this type became common throughout the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, and remained in use long after the introduction of firearms.

Before the discovery of Greek fire, flaring missiles of some kind had been devised. Frontinus mentions fire-ships, or hulls carrying combustibles and allowed to drift with wind and tide upon the enemy’s ships: stinkpots, to nauseate the enemy, though how the others escaped the smells except by keeping to windward does not appear; and Evelyn adds, “Nay, snake pots, and false colours.” The Greek fire, however, was the most terrible of the weapons employed at that time. By some means by which a fair amount of power was exerted, the liquid was squirted—or vomited, to use one historian’s phrase—through copper pipes upon an enemy’s ship, and as the liquid had the peculiar property of igniting upon exposure to the air and was inextinguishable by water, it was a most formidable engine of destruction. Small vases filled with the liquid and sealed airtight were used as hand grenades and flung at opposing ships and, breaking, set them on fire. Heavy arrows carrying balls of flax soaked in the liquid were used both in land and sea warfare, as also were hand-flung javelins similarly equipped, and the flights of these masses of inextinguishable flames must have been equally demoralising to the combatants against whom they were directed and destructive to the ships and inflammable buildings upon which they fell. This composition is thought to have been invented in the seventh century; the first occasion on which it was employed on an extensive scale was in the great battle between the fleets of Constantine and the Saracens, when the latter, through its agency, lost practically their whole fleet and thirty thousand men killed. After that both sides used Greek fire whenever possible.

Up to the introduction of gunpowder and artillery the methods of fighting varied but little. The sea-fights of the Crusades were conducted on the lines which had been recognised as the best for a couple of thousand years or more, viz., ram the enemy and board him. Greek fire added this rule: Burn him also if you can.

The countries along the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean had attained a high degree of civilisation when the inhabitants of Western Europe and the British Islands were still more or less savage. What may be regarded as circumstantial evidence in support of the contention that the Phœnicians voyaged to Cornwall and Ireland is the similarity which exists in shape between the wicker shields, such as the Phœnicians are known to have used, and the wicker coracles which the Britons employed at the time of the invasion by Julius Cæsar. There must have been considerable intercourse between the Phœnicians and the dwellers in the valley of the Euphrates before the latter conquered the former; but whether the dwellers in Nineveh, or those by the sea, invented wicker boats, or whether both derived their knowledge of wicker boats from other sources, are points of no immediate importance. But what is of interest is that the British wicker coracles were covered with hides to make them watertight, that they had keels and gunwales, and that they were small enough to be used as shields if necessary, their dimensions being rather over 4 feet in length, with a breadth of about 3 feet, and a depth of a trifle over 12 inches. They were big enough to carry one man of average size. There are on the Euphrates to this day boats or rafts of proportionate dimensions, up to a maximum length of 40 or 50 feet over all, which are constructed with a light framework of wicker and timber, over which skins are stretched to keep them watertight. These boats, when laden, drift down the river with the current, and, on reaching their destination, their cargo and skins are sold and the framework is made up into a package and returned upon the back of an ass to the port of departure. These cargo boats have been humorously referred to at a meeting of the Institute of Marine Engineers as of “one ass-power.”