Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

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the beak, the line of the parodus or outside gangway, the
wickerwork cancelli,1 the shields ranged in order along the
side of the bulwark, and the heads of a typical crew on
deck (the Trpupevs looking out in front in the forecastle, an
iTTLfiaTrjs, two chiefs by the mast, and, aft, the KeAencrr^s
and KvfiepvrjTrjs). The supporting timbers of the deck
are just indicated. The mast and yard and fore and
back stays, with the double steering paddle, complete the
picture.
But, although there can be little doubt that the
Phoenicians, after the Egyptians, led the way in the
development of the shipwright’s art, yet the informa¬
tion that we can gather concerning them is so meagre
that we must go to other sources for the description of
the ancient ship. The Phoenicians at an early date con¬
structed merchant vessels capable of carrying large car¬
goes, and of traversing the length and breadth of the
Mediterranean, perhaps even of trading to the far Cassi-
terides and of circumnavigating Africa. They in all
probability (if not the Egyptians) invented the bireme
and trireme, solving the problem by which increased oar-
power and consequently speed could be obtained without
any great increase in the length of the vessel.
It is, however, to the Greeks that we must turn for any
detailed account of these inventions. The Homeric vessels
were aphract and not even decked throughout their entire
length. They carried crews averaging from fifty to a
hundred and twenty men, who, we are expressly told by
Thucydides, all took part in the labour of rowing, except
perhaps the chiefs. The galleys do not appear to have
been armed as yet with the beak, though later poets attri¬
bute this feature to the Homeric vessel. But they had
great poles used in fighting, and the term employed to
describe these (vav/xa^a) implies a knowledge of naval
warfare. The general characteristics are indicated by the
epithets in use throughout the Iliad and the Odyssey.
The Homeric ship is sharp (flo?)) and swift (w/<eta); it is
hollow (kolKt), yXacf)vprj, //.eyaK^r^s), black, vermilion-cheeked
(p.L\.T07rdpr]o<;), dark-prowed (KvavoTrpcppos), curved (Kopwvts,
dp-ffneXio-crd), well-timbered (ivacreXp.os'), with many thwarts
(TroXv^vyo's, eKaTo&yos). The stems and sterns are high,
upraised, and resemble the horns of oxen (opOoKpalpad).
They present a type parallel in the history of the shipping
of the Mediterranean with that of the vikings’ vessels of
the North Sea.
On the vases, the earliest of which may date between
700 and 600 b.c., we find the bireme with the bows finished
off into a beak shaped as the head of some sea monster,
and an elevated forecastle with a bulwark evidently as a
means of defence. The craft portrayed in some instances
are evidently pirate vessels, and exhibit a striking contrast
to the trader, the broad ship of burden (^oprts eipeld),
which they are overhauling. The trireme, which was
developed from the bireme and became the Greek ship
of war (the long ship, mus pjmpd, navis longa, par excel¬
lence), dates, so far as Greek use is concerned, from about
700 b.c. according to Thucydides, having been first built
at Corinth by Aminocles. The earliest sea-fight that the
same author knew of he places at a somewhat later date,
—664 b.c., more than ten centuries later than some of
those portrayed in the Egyptian tomb paintings.
The trireme was the war ship of Athens during her
prime, and, though succeeded and in a measure superseded
by the larger rates,—quadrireme, quinquereme, and so on,
up to vessels of sixteen banks of oars (inhabilis prope
magnitudinis),—yet, as containing in itself the principle of
which the larger rates merely exhibited an expansion, a
difference in degree and not in kind, has, ever since the
revival of letters, concentrated upon itself the attention of
1 See Rawlinson, Ancient Monarchies, vol. ii. p. 176.
I P
the learned who were interested in such matters. The
literature connected with the question of ancient ships, if
collected, would fill a small library, and the greater part
of it turns upon the construction of the trireme and the
disposition of the rowers therein.
During the present century much light has been thrown
upon the disputed points by the discovery (1834) at the
Piraeus of some records of the Athenian dockyard super¬
intendents, which have been published and admirably
elucidated by Boeckh. Further researches carried out by
his pupil Dr Graser, who united a practical knowledge
of ships and shipbuilding with all the scholarship and
industry and acumen necessary for such a task, have
cleared up most of the difficulties which beset the problem,
and enable us to describe with tolerable certainty the
details of construction and the disposition of the rowers in
the ancient ship of war.
One point it is necessary to insist on at the outset, because upon
it depends the right understanding of the problem to be solved.
The ancients did not employ more than one man to an oar. The
method employed in mediaeval galleys is entirely alien to the ancient
system. M. Jal, Admiral Fincati, Admiral Jurien de la Graviere,
and a host of other authorities have all been led to erroneous views
by neglect of the ancient texts which overwhelmingly establish this
as an axiom of the ancient marine—“one oar one man.”
The distinction between “aphract” and “cataphract” vessels
must not be overlooked in a description of the ancient vessels.
The words, meaning “unfenced” and “fenced,” refer to the
bulwarks which covered the upper tier of rowers from attack. In
the aphract vessels these side plankings were absent and the upper
tier of rowers was exposed to view from the side. Both classes of
vessels had upper and lower decks, but the aphract class carried
their decks on a lower level than the cataphract. The system of
side planking with a view to the protection of the rowers dates from
a very early period, as may be seen in some of the Egyptian repre¬
sentations, but among the Greeks it does not seem to have been
adopted till long after the Homeric period. The Thasians are
credited with the introduction of the improvement.
In describing the trireme it will be convenient to deal first with
the disposition of the rowers and subsequently with the con¬
struction of the vessel itself. The object of arranging the oars in
banks was to economize horizontal space and to obtain an increase
in the number of oars without having to lengthen the vessel.
We. know from Vitruvius that the “ interscalmium, ” or space
horizontally measured from oar to oar, was 2 cubits. This is
exactly borne out by the proportions of an Attic aphract trireme,
as shown on a fragment of a bas-relief found in the Acropolis.
The rowers in all classes of banked vessels sat in the same vertical
plane, the seats ascending in a line obliquely towards the stern of
the vessel. Thus in a trireme the thranite, or oarsman of the
highest bank, was nearest the stern of the set of three to which
he belonged. Next behind him and somewhat below him sat his
zygito, or oarsman of the second bank; and next below and
behind the zygite sat. the thalamite, or oarsman of the lowest
bank. The vertical distance between these seats was 2 feet, the
horizontal distance about 1 foot. The horizontal distance, it is
well to repeat, between each seat in the same bank was 3 feet
(the seat itself about 9 inches broad). Each man had a resting
place for his feet, somewhat wide apart, fixed to the bench of the
man on the row next below and in front of him. In rowing, the
upper hand, as is shown in most of the representations which
remain, was held with the palm turned inwards towards the body.
This is accounted for by the angle at which the oar was worked.
The lowest rank used the shortest oars, and the difference of the
length of the oars on board was caused by the curvature of the
ship’s side. Thus, looked at from within, the rowers amidship
seemed to be using the longest oars, but outside the vessel, as we
are expressly told, all the oar-blades of the same bank took the water
in the same longitudinal line. The lowest or thalamite oar-ports
were 3 feet, the zygite 4^ feet, the thranite 54 feet above the water.
Each oar-port was protected by an ascoma or leather bag, which fitted
over, the oar, closing the aperture against the wash of the sea with¬
out impeding the action of the oar. The oar was tied by a thong,
against which it was probably rowed, which itself was attached to
a thowl (aKaX/ios). The port-hole was probably oval in shape (the
Egyptian and Assyrian pictures show an oblong). We know that
it was large enough for a man’s head to be thrust through it.
The benches on which the rowers sat ran from the vessel’s
side to timbers which, inclined at an angle of about 64° towards
the ship’s stern, reached from the lower to the upper deck.
These timbers were, according to Graser, called the diaphragmata.
In the trireme each diaphragma supported three, in the quin¬
quereme five, in the octireme eight, and in the famous tessera-