Bit of research I'm doing for something I have in the works. I've done some reading on Hellenic era ships - triremes and the like..and how they developed through the roman period.

Is anyone on the boards by chance an ancient naval history buff? A few questions I'm having trouble working out.

1) What exactly is a "round ship?" I keep reading references to them, but I haven't actually found any statistics on any particularly class of ship that would be considered so to figure out exactly what the difference is between that and what would be considered a "warship" (trireme,etc)

2) How capable were ships in this era of sea-voyage? It's frequently written about keeping in eyesight of land for navigation, etc. Are these types of galleys not ocean-worthy, or is it simply a lack of navigational tools?

3) On a similar note, it's mentioned that they frequently landed at night to camp and provision. At what point were ships designed for longer voyages with the intention of keeping the men aboard with stored foodstuffs and water for long periods of time? Were ships designed differently to account for this, or was it simply a matter of having the crew sleep wherever they might, and filling the cargo hold with supplies?

4) At what point did full sailing-ships (read: those that were meant to sail by full wind power, rather than having a contingent of oarsmen aboard) begin to show up? Were these ships at any point contemporaries with the galley-style ship, or a later invention? Aside from crew needs, what advantages would one have over the other?

I know this is likely a long shot, but hopefully someone here might know something.

_________________
"They must find it difficult...
Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority"
-Gerald Massey

My naval fascination really lies within the Golden Age of Piracy and the Napoleonic period, but Ian has some books like "Naval Warfare Under Oar" and something like that. Perhaps he can shed some light.

On the sail development, I've found this to be very true:
This is partially to answer your question #2. I think it's not the case that the vessels aren't ocean-worthy in the terms of hull construction. They simply don't have the advanced rigging, which makes them much more dependent on the wind direction than the later ships. As a result, long voyages aren't just that feasible.

On the galleys, I haven't come across any hard historical references, but supposedly some of them were in the service up until the 1800s. There's a short story about galleys in Mr. Midshipman Hornwblower.

As for the advantages, as I get it, oars aren't a match for the sail in the terms of speed. So, if the ship can take advantage of the wind, even a light breeze should help to outrun oars with ease. However, in the calm, the sail is completely useless and oars have lost nothing in their value. In fact, the best possible chance a becalmed sailing ship can do to escape from a galley is putting boats out and have the crew tug the ship away, but it's hard work as the galley is purposefully build for oars and has a larger mand-and-oar-power, even that tactic is a delaying one at best. Pray for the wind (or sink the galleys with your broadside). In short, in the age of sail, the galleys are a good way to harass becalmed ships, so, they're likely to be positioned in places that have frequent calms or where ships progress tend to be very slow due the prevailing winds/currents.

_________________
"Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I've found. Whores seldom sink, and when they are boarded by pirates, why, the pirates pay good coin like everyone else."
- Lord Petyr Baelish, A Game of Thrones

Hi all,

KazianG,

I know that the Roman Navy, upto at least the late 1st century, were using Triemes or similar ships, while the Grain Fleet, used sailing ships.

I did a search on round ships and they appear to have been shallow draft late 19th century warships. I will ask one of my friends if he knows anymore on this.

Simon

Ah, nice to smell the salt air on this thread!



It isn't round ship v warship as much as it is sailing ship v oared ship.

Oared ships are narrow and shallow. There is a ship on Trajan's Column, a coastal bireme. Rodgers (in Naval Warfare Under Oars) gives it the following estimates:

Length: 60' long
Beam: 12.5'
Draft: 2.75'
Displacement: 30 tons
Top Speed: 6.4 knots (11.8 kph)
Crew: 88

Sailing ships by comparison are wider at the beam and have greater displacement. I guess this makes them look round when compared to an oared vessel. It also makes them more seaworthy in that they can handle larger seas.



The sailing ships of the era were certainly capable of sailing out of sight of land. Oared vessels too for that matter. It was simply more dangerous for the oared vessel if they encountered a storm.



You simply couldn't sleep 88 men on a vessel the size mentioned above. Maybe you could but you'd only do it if you had to. Sailing ships are a different matter -- smaller crew.



I guess you could say that "full wind power" comes with multi-masted ships. 1100 in China, later in the west.

Oared war vessels were in use into the 16th century. In fact it is the wars between Spain and England that sees the tactical shift from dependency on oared vessels to dependency on sailing ships for naval warfare. The Spanish Armada sees this dramatic shift. The Spanish ships were large and designed for boarding operations. The English ships were new and designed as a firing platform for canon. When the English destroyed the armada the Spanish changed to the English type of warship.

So, to answer your question, oared vessels and sailing ships coexisted for millenia. It ended with the development of the broadside as a naval tactic. Keep in mind that the Venetians were developing and building new oared warship designs in the Renaissance.

You might want to research the Olympias, a trireme reconstructed in 1987. It was built in an effort to determine seaworthiness and other practical aspects. One of the interesting feats they accomplished was to demonstrate that the trireme could go from dead in the water to top speed in under twenty seconds (around 8 knots). The trireme had a sail and was capable of having the oars and sail deployed simultaneously.

Regards,

_________________
Ian Plumb
Illustrations for Gamers
Lyonpaedia
Griffin Grove Gaming
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Then the speed difference with the sailing ships aren't as big as I was led to believe. Quick google search claims that the ships of Columbus had a top speed of 8 knots. According to Seamanship in the Age of Sail, a small wooden barque would need at a rough estimate... 4-6 force wind by the Beaufort scale to sail at 6 knots (4 if the sailing direction is favoured by the wind, 6 if it's not but the wind is still usable). Of course, there are other more speed-effective sailing ships around and I wonder for how long this galley could keep such speed up!

_________________
"Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I've found. Whores seldom sink, and when they are boarded by pirates, why, the pirates pay good coin like everyone else."
- Lord Petyr Baelish, A Game of Thrones

In the Olympias trireme trials one of the crews maintained the top speed for a distance of two kilometers, rowing at 38 strokes per minute.

Biremes and triremes remained useful as long as the main tactic in naval warfare remained to board the enemy ship and overpower it in melee combat. Under those circumstances these ships had their place because they carried a lot of men in a small space, and in low wind/low sea conditions they were faster and more maneuverable than a sailing ship.

I'm not sure how my players would go with the notion of a 15th century Venetian setting where they captain and crew a ship at the very pinnacle of bireme development!

Regards,

_________________
Ian Plumb
Illustrations for Gamers
Lyonpaedia
Griffin Grove Gaming
Kraftworks for Kids School Holiday Program

So – a fast and timely answer.

Others and especially Ian have already written a lot of true stuff about why oared ships had to spend the nights beached and why sailing ships didn’t, and also about their capabilities to operate away from the shores, and how sleek oared ships were simply not built to weather off rough waters (which is by the way why they were used in the Mediterranean right up into at least the 17th century – rather sheltered waters). I am just going to add data culled from recorded real travel times from the Mediterranean in antiquity:

With favourable winds throughout, an overall average travel speed of 4,5 to 6 knots was sustainable, in some cases recorded in literature exactly because of their singular speed over as much as nine days. One famous voyage from Alexandria in Egypt to about Rome in Italy (roughly 1000 nautical miles) did thus take 9 days, for an average travel speed of 4,6 knots. The long-distance journey with the highest recorded average travel speed was a run from near Rome to Corinth in Greece – 670 nautical miles in 4,5 days, for an average travel speed of 6,2 knots.

On the other hand, voyages under unfavourable conditions could take many times longer. There are no records of famously slow voyages, but the slowest voyage recorded had an average travel speed of just 0,9 knots, and many other unfavourable ones tally to average travel speds of 1 to 2 knots.

What these times do not reflect is that with completely unfavourable winds, ships without oars could not travel at all. Sailing into the wind was impossible, and a sailed ship might easily have to lie in port for a week or longer before being able to embark on its journey. With sailed ships on long journeys away from coastal waters it was also not rare that they ended up somewhere else than they wanted to go. If a wind became very unfavourable during a journey and the ship could not run to a nearby port to wait for the winds to become once again favourable, it had to run more or less before the wind, which could take it far off course.

That’s why oared ships were preferable – they would get reliable to where one wanted to go, if not under sail than under oar. Also, please note that oarsmen on Greek warships were invariable free men, and well trained in rowing and rather decently paid. Slave oarsmen were only used from the later Roman Republic (about 150/100 BC) onwards. But for freighters, oared ships were uneconomical – the invariably slender shape of oared ships meant that little hold could be taken on, part of which would have been taken up by provisions for the oarsmen. And then there would have been the salaries of the oarsmen, or the cost of slave oarsmen to consider…

Sailed ships were rather often shipwrecked – as many as one in four (!) ailed journeys ended in shipwreck (but these numbers remained true right up to the early 14th century). Still, in spite of their simple rigging, Roman and Hellenistic freighters could be very large. The smallest freighters carried about 60 tons, and it seems that the average freighter of the Roman Empire had a capacity of 300 to 350 tons. A freighter famous for its size had a capacity of 1200 tons, and another recorded large (though not singularly so) sailing ship carried no less than 600 passengers from Palestine to Italy (no doubt in little comfort).

Finally it should be said that the winter was considered unsafe for naval voyages even in the comparatively calm Mediterranean. No voyages were undertaken between mid-November and early March.

The standard monograph giving an overview over seamanship in ancient times is (luckily for you) in English, Lionel Casson’s excellent, very accessible, scholarly and rather unexpensive Ships and Seamanship int the Ancient World.

_________________
My real name is Michael; use it, if you like.

here's a secondary and curious question:

How would one "stat" such vessels -- and is there even a vehicular combat/handling/etc system in place in any fashion.. or is it assumed that if an appropriate skill roll made is the whole of it?

_________________
"They must find it difficult...
Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority"
-Gerald Massey

There is no ready-made vehicular system of any sort in place - though Ian has tantalizingly hinted of ideas of his to treat every important ship very much akin to an individual NPC.

Apart from that I would emphsize the unreliability of ancient sailed travelling speeds. Travel speeds under sail of about 3,5 knots might be assumed as a theoretical average, but if the duration of the voyage were not dramatically important, I would introduce a huge variation based on just a random roll. First of all a roll to determine how soon there are favourable winds to be able to embark, and then a random roll (probably somehow with bell-shaped results slanted towards the average) to see whether averade speed on this voyage is actually as little as 20% the theoretical average or as much as 200% of it, probably with another roll thrown in to see whether winds change so dramatically as to drive the ship into an entirely undesired direction, and another one whether shipwreck threatens.

That would of course only be my course if I just wanted to know how long a voyage takes. If the voyage was not just A to B, but an actual, important part of the story itself, wind speeds and strenghts would with me be subject to both the referee's story requirements and the player's Drama expenditure.

_________________
My real name is Michael; use it, if you like.

Nothing official, but there's some discussion here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=375

Our vision is that in EoS, ships would have their own character sheets and some kind of attributes to represent them, but that's a looooooooooooooong way ahead of our current proogress.

_________________
"Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I've found. Whores seldom sink, and when they are boarded by pirates, why, the pirates pay good coin like everyone else."
- Lord Petyr Baelish, A Game of Thrones

I saw you update that - I'll go comb through it in a bit and see if i cant glean some manner of understanding or insight from the discussion.

_________________
"They must find it difficult...
Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority"
-Gerald Massey

Maybe a word (quite a few, actually) is in order about ancient oared warships.

At first, Greek warships were in form and function not dissimiliar to Viking longships, and the naval battles were fought as boarding actions. During the 6th century BC, technical progress allowed to stack 3 rows of oar ports more or less on top of each other, resulting in more oars per unit of hull length and thus more speed. The age oft he trireme dawned.

Now the almost fragilely slender trireme was by and large nothing else but an oar-powered, reusable torpedo. When in position to ram, it sprinted with a short burst of speed of 7 to maybe as much as 8 knots, punched a huge gaping whole in the enemy and immediately backed oars. The about a dozen marine soldiers carried by a trireme were on board almost exlusively to prevent the trireme from being boarded in the moment of ramming. They would crowd into the narrow bow and fight off any boarding attempt by the rammed enemy ship.

As the violent dead stop a ship experiences in ramming would break the mast oft he rammer and send it crashing down, triremes would always take down their mast before going into battle. With a mast, they could not ram.

That the masts were stowed on land is one oft he reasons that all ancient naval battles were fought in sight of land, the other being that ancient oared fleets hugged the shores. They did so, because they tried on the march to outright avoid the open waters. For one, the slender triremes were notoriously bad at weathering off storms and preferred to run beach in the face of one, and that sleeping on board was an incredibly cramped and uncomfortable affair avoided whenever possible, and that triremes had not the holds to carry enough provisions, especially water, for ist necessarily huge crews for extended voyages away from land.

Before a battle, opposing fleets would thus run beach, take down their masts and then row out into battle formations. The absence of boarding actions and the proximity of land meant that many crewmen of rammed ships would be able to reach the coast alive – tough luck if it was a hostile one, though.

From the late 4th century BC onwards a new naval doctrine developed alongside that of pure ramming warfare and soon became dominant. The galleys became longer and somewhat less slender and thus not only quite stable firing platforms for artillery but also able to carry more marine soldiers. Artillery was thus introduced to naval warfare for the first time, and boarding actions became once again viable, which in turn led to ships being built with higher freebords, to give an advantage in boarding. During this period, ships were at first less specialised – while still able to ram, they were clumsier at it than triremes, but were now also had other options.

During the 3rd to 1st centuries BC warfleets did fort he first time in history consist of various types of ships. Huge, lumbering dreadnoughts unable to ram properly but packing a lot of firepower and hundreds of soldiers were fielded alongside smaller, multi-purpose ships. The actual make-up of a nation’s warfleet depended upon ist preferences – some relied heavily on the dreadnoughts, whereas others, especially those with a great nautical tradition, used primarily faster ships and ramming warfare; the island republic of Rhodes would be a prime example oft he latter, and Ptolemaic Egypt of the former.

During the Roman Empire, the dreadnoughts were discontinued – with the Mediterranean having become a Roman lake, there were no more large naval battles and no more enemies warranting such huge ships. Instead, the Imperial fleet was made up of multi-purpose ships able to ram, board and shoot alike, but excelling at nothing.

_________________
My real name is Michael; use it, if you like.

I'm going to need to do some heavy research in the era, I fear. I had an interest in adding some naval/piratical elements to the antichthon setting, and the variety in the During the 3rd century+ sounds a good bet. The question will be figuring out how to handle ship classifications, characteristics, etc.

Any ideas for a spectacular source for information on this period? The variety of which would allow me to take at least minutely educated guesses on how to handle such a thing in context of a game? The idea of treating each ship as a unique vessel/character is actually very appealing. I'm just going to need to work out a great deal of information beforehand.

Any magic for me, Gettir? *big shiny eyes*

Also - How far back in history did the idea of naming a ship go? Would people of this period have the same sort of.. connection.. to their vessels that is so romanticized today?

_________________
"They must find it difficult...
Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority"
-Gerald Massey

Last things first: I don’t know exactly how far the practice of naming ships and probably also identifying with them goes back, but there is definitely evidence of the former as early as the 5th century BC, and the latter, even though not to be shown conclusively from surviving evidence, seems only all too human and should in my opinion be expected.

I don’t believe that there is a book in existence that would conclusively answer all of your questions. I one again point to Lionel Casson; Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World as the still best general overview; it is both scholarly and accessible, and covers the subject to very considerable depth.

For info on triremes Ian has already pointed out the scholarly reconstruction of the trireme “Olympias” published here: J. Morrison & J. Coates; The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship.

For the Hellenistic period that seems to interest you the most, I unfortunately have no first hand-knowledge of an overview in English. I can however give you a quick breakdown of probable ship and crew sizes:

Tetrere: Latin quadrireme. Two banks of oars, two men per oar, total length 38 m, total width (includes protruding oar case) 7 m. 25 oars per bank (200 oarsmen), ca. 15 sailors, up to 100 marines. Can carry two fighting towers.

Pentere: Latin quinquereme. Three banks of oars, two men per oar for the two topmost banks, one for the lowest, total length 45 m, total width (includes protruding oar case) 8 m. 30 oars per bank (300 oarsmen), ca. 18 sailors, up to 120 marines. Can carry two fighting towers.

These two were the all-purpose ships of the Imperial Roman navy. The following larger ships fell out of use around the birth of Christ.

Hexere: Three banks of oars, two men per oar, total length possibly 54 m, total width (includes protruding oar case) possibly 11 m. 40 oars per bank (480 oarsmen), ca. 20 sailors, up to 170 marines. Can carry two or four fighting towers.

Heptere: Three banks of oars, three men per oar in the uppermost bank two men per oar in the lower two banks, total length possibly around 60 m, total width (includes protruding oar case) possibly 12 to 13 m. 40 to 45 oars per bank (around 590 oarsmen), ca. 20 to 25 sailors, up to 200 marines. Can carry four fighting towers.

These two ship types were the largest that had still any degree of ramming capability. Evidence for the even larger ones is sketchy, and reconstructions, especially concerning the arrangements of oarsmen, vary widely. The one halfway decently known type of huge warship is the

Ennere: Three banks of oars, three men per oar, total length probably 66 m, total width (without oar case, as it is broad enough not to ned one) probably 19 m. 35 oars per bank (630 oarsmen), ca. 25 to 30 sailors, probably up to 400 marines. Carries multiple fighting towers.
This ship is neither fast nor maneuverable, but mainly a powerful and stable firing and fighting platform.

Even larger ships have existed, but were neither common nor – it seems – especially effective. Their were quite probably a mixture of experimental crafts and prestigious flagships, and details of their actual looks and measurements very unclear.

Edit:

If oared ships are going to feature heavily in your campaign you should realize that they handle very differently from sailing ships. An oared ship can easily stay in the same spot indefinitely, it can, by either just banking oars or actually backing them, come to a dead stop quite quickly, it can go backwards, and it can, by having the oars of one side going forward and of the other going backwards, turn on the spot. With a good crew of oarsmen especially the smaller, less massive galleys were extremely nimble in the water.

_________________
My real name is Michael; use it, if you like.