Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

From a Vase in the British Museum, found at Vulci.

GREEK WAR GALLEYS.

From a Vase in the British Museum found at Vulci.

Cancelli, or shields of basket work, were placed along the sides of the ships at such a height that the heads of those on board are just visible. The cancelli bore a striking resemblance to the circular basket-work boats still to be found on the upper Euphrates; this supports the supposition that the cancelli may have been used for other purposes, particularly if they were made comparatively watertight, as the function of a shield was not only to protect a warrior in battle, but to help to keep him dry when on shipboard by being disposed along the sides to prevent the spray from entering the ships. A forecastle was constructed upon these ships, and upon each forecastle a look-out man was stationed; and when these structures came to be built of larger dimensions they served to accommodate a number of fighting men who, from their superior position, could throw their missiles with greater effect. The forecastle had the further advantage of serving as a stronghold in the event of an attempt being made to capture the ship by boarding it.

Following the Phœnicians, the Greeks are thought to have begun to build their own warships about 700 B.C., perhaps earlier, but it was about that time that the first three-banked warship was launched at Corinth. The three-banked ships were for many years the largest in existence. During the fourth century B.C. shipbuilding was practised extensively, four-banked ships being built at Chalcedon, five-banked at Salamis, and six-banked ships at Syracuse. Ships of ten banks, according to Pliny, were ordered by Alexander the Great, and about 300 B.C. ships having twelve banks are said to have been built for Ptolemy, and fifteen-banked ships for Demetrios, for a battle near Cyprus.

Ptolemy Philopater, who ruled in Egypt from 222 to 204 B.C., is alleged to have had a forty-banked ship of a length of 280 cubits or, reckoning the cubit at 18 inches, of 420 feet, and a beam of 57 feet.

While increasing the size and number of oars, it would, nevertheless, be impossible to augment to any appreciable extent the speed at which these ships could be rowed, and the more unwieldy would they become, and the more difficult would it be to keep steering way upon them. Again, the assertions of the historians are so contradictory that it is a thankless task to attempt to reconcile all their stories, especially as they depended much upon hearsay for their information. For that reason, therefore, a great deal that has been recorded as to the early ships and their numerous banks of oars is not to be accepted without careful inquiry and verification.

It has never been established beyond question what is meant by banks of oars, or whether the Greek text has been interpreted correctly when it is taken to express forty superimposed banks of oars. From constructional reasons it may be assumed that a ship having forty superimposed banks of oars never existed, and it is very doubtful whether ships having more than a fourth of that number of banks passed beyond the imaginations of their inventors. In any case they were soon dispensed with, and in course of time it was found that the best results were obtained with galleys having two or three banks of oars.

It is not definitely known how the rowers were disposed in the ships of anything over seven or eight banks. If any vessels had forty banks of oars, the upper rows must have been of an absolutely unwieldy length. Assuming the oars to have been weighted with lead so that the inborne and outborne portions were equally balanced, they must nevertheless have been exceedingly difficult to row even by a number of men, and it was impossible for any rowers to have moved these great oars at the same speed as the men at the lower banks moved their lighter and shorter ones. That some such difficulty was experienced, even in biremes and triremes, is shown by the arrangement of the oars, whereby all in a bank were not of equal length, but were graded so that those nearer the ends of the banks were longer in order that all the blades might enter the water in a straight line. Each row above must have had its own line in the water a little farther away from the side of the ship than the row beneath it, or the blades would have interfered with each other and the rowers thrown into hopeless confusion. The tremendous amount of lead that would have to be carried to counterbalance the outborne portions of several hundred oars would add materially to the dead weight to be propelled, and, much of it being placed high above the water, the stability of the vessel would be lessened.