Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome do Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part two in our series on the ore powered galleys
Speaker 3: of the ancient World. Now, if you haven't heard part
Speaker 3: one yet, you might want to go listen to that first.
Speaker 3: But in the previous episode we talked about Ptolemy, the
Speaker 3: fourth of Egypt's great war ship, which allegedly was built
Speaker 3: in the third century BCE. We have no physical remains,
Speaker 3: only historical descriptions, but Rob what were some good details
Speaker 3: on that. It allegedly had like thousands of people manning it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just an unreasonable amount of oars and oars men,
Speaker 2: but would have been essentially an ancient world aircraft carrier,
Speaker 2: though of course not for aircraft, but for at least troops,
Speaker 2: if not maybe siege equipment. The general consensus has often
Speaker 2: been that this is not a practical war vessel, but
Speaker 2: just a way of showing off. So we talked a
Speaker 2: little bit about that, and my intention is to eventually
Speaker 2: come back to it and look at some more scholarship
Speaker 2: about it. Once we finished talking about all of the
Speaker 2: operational war vessels of the ancient world in the Mediterranean.
Speaker 3: Yes, we will have to return to the big one,
Speaker 3: but also last time we talked about the difference between
Speaker 3: paddling and rowing, and thus the difference between paddles and ores.
Speaker 3: You paddle with a paddle and you row with an ore,
Speaker 3: the main difference being that an ore is locked or
Speaker 3: pinned to the boat's hull itself some way, and you
Speaker 3: typically row facing backwards while you paddle facing forwards. We
Speaker 3: also talked about some prehistoric evidence of the use of
Speaker 3: wooden paddles for water transport in Stone Age Northern Europe,
Speaker 3: including one eight to nine thousand year old paddle, and
Speaker 3: we also talked to some of the pressures leading to
Speaker 3: the development of different mechanisms for powering watercraft in the
Speaker 3: ancient Mediterranean, like wind versus human powered propulsion. And we're
Speaker 3: back with part two to continue the discussion today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we started getting into in the last episode,
Speaker 2: the ancient Mediterranean was this vast inland sea ringed by
Speaker 2: coastal lands that both did various powerful and established civilizations
Speaker 2: as well as emergent powers. Coastal cultures largely contained to
Speaker 2: this inland sea developed means to travel and exploit these waters.
Speaker 2: But the development of wind power was a huge game changer,
Speaker 2: allowing for greater use of the sea for transportation despite
Speaker 2: the unpredictable nature of Mediterranean winds. So with all of
Speaker 2: this we get the establishment of greater trade routes between
Speaker 2: these various powers, and islands like Crete also become more
Speaker 2: and more important given all this traffic. But this also
Speaker 2: means that you know, especially out of ancient Egypt and
Speaker 2: out of Ancia in Mesopotamia, again you have the emergence
Speaker 2: of all these marine trade routes and this ends up
Speaker 2: spilling over into conflict as well, conflict over these trade
Speaker 2: routes and around these trade routes, and we get like
Speaker 2: a couple of key developments in maritime conflict technology. The
Speaker 2: first one is pretty obvious and simple, and that is, okay,
Speaker 2: if you have a ship that can carry cargo, it
Speaker 2: can also carry troops. And so the first warships were
Speaker 2: basically just cargo ships carrying armed forces, and we have
Speaker 2: various accounts of this. Ancient Egyptian record speak of this
Speaker 2: as far back as twenty four to fifty BCE. That's
Speaker 2: when the pharaoh Sahure that means he who is close
Speaker 2: to Ray the god used a cargo fleet to carry
Speaker 2: an army to the Levantine coast. This would be the
Speaker 2: earliest of multiple examples of the ancient Egyptians using seapower
Speaker 2: to transport troops. These would have been big, lumbering troop
Speaker 2: movements by sea. So the flip side of the coin
Speaker 2: here is you would also see the use of sail
Speaker 2: and or driven rovers, so small faster vessels. They could
Speaker 2: be used to do things like deliver a message, gather intel,
Speaker 2: also attack coastal targets or even unprotected vessels.
Speaker 3: A theme I've noticed before, which is that sometimes the
Speaker 3: line between naval warfare and piracy is quite thin.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, absolutely, it depends on who's doing the analysis,
Speaker 2: and we'll have more examples of that as we go here.
Speaker 2: One of my sources in this that I cided in
Speaker 2: the last episode is the book The Ancient Mariners by
Speaker 2: Lionel Cassen, who is one of the one of the
Speaker 2: key authorities of the twentieth century on ancient Mediterranean sea
Speaker 2: powers and so forth, and he wrote that these vessels
Speaker 2: were likely that these rovers, these smaller faster vessels were
Speaker 2: likely as old as the big cargo ships, but our
Speaker 2: written records of their usage and conflict only goes back
Speaker 2: to like the fourteenth century BC. But they're quite telling.
Speaker 2: We get this idea of fleets of sea rovers utilized
Speaker 2: to disrupt cross sea communication and maritime trade, as well
Speaker 2: as to eventually enforced blockades. Syrian naval units were thus
Speaker 2: able to disrupt the link between Egypt and Biblos, and
Speaker 2: you also had full fledged sea powers like the Minoans
Speaker 2: and then the Mycenians who were able to hold their
Speaker 2: own and then some against powers like Egypt. It also
Speaker 2: meant that an age of rich over sea trade largely
Speaker 2: entered into an age of like rampant sea rovers. So
Speaker 2: you know, we see some of the first recorded sea
Speaker 2: battles during this rough time period we're looking at here,
Speaker 2: such as Rameses the Third's defeat of an invading fleet
Speaker 2: of the Sea peoples the Battle of the Delta in
Speaker 2: eleven seventy five BCE.
Speaker 3: Now, an interesting thing about this particular battle is that
Speaker 3: I've read it described in some sources as being not
Speaker 3: that different from a land battle, just taking place on
Speaker 3: top of the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you get that from the Egyptian illustrations of
Speaker 2: the battle, the way that it ends up rolling out.
Speaker 2: It's a couple of basics on the way this went down. Now,
Speaker 2: on the subject of the Sea People's much has been
Speaker 2: hypothesized about who they were and where they came from,
Speaker 2: but they definitely invaded Eastern Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Cyprus, and
Speaker 2: Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age and were
Speaker 2: particularly active during the thirteenth century BC. There are different
Speaker 2: ways to look at them, from a confederacy of different
Speaker 2: seafaring raiders to varying groups of people's displaced by late
Speaker 2: Bronze Age disturbances. So it's an entire topic undo itself.
Speaker 2: But this would have been the second war between the
Speaker 2: Egyptians and the Sea People's case in his book, wrote
Speaker 2: that it was very much it seems like a mass
Speaker 2: migration and not at all like the smaller raids that
Speaker 2: Egypt had pretty much always had to contend with on
Speaker 2: their coastal border. It consisted of two main forces working
Speaker 2: their way down the coast toward Egypt at this point,
Speaker 2: the main body that moved by land and the accompanying
Speaker 2: fleet that largely kept pace along the coast. Now, as
Speaker 2: far as the actual engagement, the way it is said
Speaker 2: to have gone down is as follows. So the forces
Speaker 2: of Egypt had just defeated the forces of the Sea
Speaker 2: peoples on land in Syria and then rushed back across
Speaker 2: the sea to Egypt with the Sea People's in pursuit,
Speaker 2: and in doing so drew their fleet into an ambush
Speaker 2: at the mouth of the Nile. And this would have
Speaker 2: been via an ambush fleet, but also supporting fire from
Speaker 2: the shore as well, but in both cases to your point,
Speaker 2: this all very much mirrored a land battle. So you know,
Speaker 2: people on ships shooting arrows at each other, people on
Speaker 2: land shooting arrows of the ships, flaming or otherwise boarding
Speaker 2: actions and so forth. Again, a lot of this is
Speaker 2: what we gather from ancient Egyptian illustrations of the conflict.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's one quite famous illustration of this battle that
Speaker 3: is busy to look at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the only thing that's instantly clear is which one
Speaker 2: is the pharaoh. You can figure that out pretty easily.
Speaker 3: He's the big one.
Speaker 2: The end result here is that it's a total Egyptian
Speaker 2: victory over the Sea People's, you know, not wiping them out,
Speaker 2: but defeating them enough to where they have to retreat
Speaker 2: and are apparently unable to reach so far south again
Speaker 2: as to attempt at the conquest of Egypt, now elsewhere
Speaker 2: in the Mediterranean, more or less around the same time,
Speaker 2: and as related in the Iliad, you have, of course
Speaker 2: the whole business with Troy. Of course, as we've discussed
Speaker 2: in the show before, also their caveats about our understanding
Speaker 2: of the historical aspects of of Troy as opposed to
Speaker 2: the literary context here. But for the most part, you know,
Speaker 2: we have this story of a like a Greek alliance
Speaker 2: taking on the city of Troy, the forces of Greece
Speaker 2: consisting of you know, experienced marauders and traders, everyone joining
Speaker 2: up under the command of Agamemnon. In his book, Cason writes,
Speaker 2: it's a very well written book and has some nice descriptions.
Speaker 2: He writes, for once the major cities of Greece for
Speaker 2: went their traditional pastime of praying on one another and
Speaker 2: joined hands for a combined operation against Troy. And while
Speaker 2: it's described as of course a land based siege of
Speaker 2: a city with no navy, they travel to their destination
Speaker 2: via ship, and of.
Speaker 3: Course the ships play a major role in the narrative
Speaker 3: of the Iliad. You know, there's like the famous passage
Speaker 3: where there's like the listing of all the ships and
Speaker 3: the warriors brought with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's at the works of homer Are you know,
Speaker 2: are actually a key point in trying to understand what
Speaker 2: these ships were and how they functioned. Okayse And points
Speaker 2: out that ancient freighters, as the my Sitians would have used,
Speaker 2: typically traversed by sail alone. They were roomy and slow
Speaker 2: ships built exclusively for war. However, it had to be galleys.
Speaker 2: We've kind of gotten to this already, I think. So
Speaker 2: they had to be fast when it mattered, so they
Speaker 2: could depend on sails when speed wasn't a necessity, or
Speaker 2: when the wind was good, which, of course it's worth
Speaker 2: noting that if the wind is really good, that will
Speaker 2: propel you rather swiftly. But conditions have to be right,
Speaker 2: and you could not necessarily count on the Mediterranean winds,
Speaker 2: especially if conflict was involved. So the sails could easily
Speaker 2: be stored away in favor of that ore power that
Speaker 2: was dependent entirely upon the muscles of your crew. And
Speaker 2: he points out that the ore power here again in
Speaker 2: Homeric times, if you will, was provided by the crew
Speaker 2: of the vessel, which also included the ship's fighting men.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting. So on one hand, we shouldn't make
Speaker 2: the mistake of thinking that they were not good oarsmen.
Speaker 2: They were apparently very good oarsman, highly trained, very skilled.
Speaker 2: There's actually a part in the Odyssey where Alcinous brags
Speaker 2: that brags about what great oarsmen his men are. But
Speaker 2: they were not just dedicated to oarsmen. They also would
Speaker 2: have been called on to do all these other things
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: M okay.
Speaker 2: So there was a careful balance apparently in play to
Speaker 2: how hard you would push your rowers, because if you
Speaker 2: were planning on, you know, making an amphibious landing, an
Speaker 2: amphibious invasion on the other end of your journey, they
Speaker 2: need to be able to get up and go and
Speaker 2: do that. So I was trying to imagine, like what
Speaker 2: would be comparison with it would be kind of like
Speaker 2: if an NFL team had to potentially row to I
Speaker 2: don't know, the Super Bowl and then play the game
Speaker 2: when they got there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've got to run to the game or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the author here he contends that, yeah, basically
Speaker 2: these folks would rather sail than row, and they would
Speaker 2: depend on sailing as often as possible. But again, there
Speaker 2: are going to be certain conditions where it's just going
Speaker 2: to make sense and make all the difference to get
Speaker 2: everybody pushing those oars or pulling those oars. Now, what
Speaker 2: were these ships like? We have few illustrations. We have
Speaker 2: the descriptions by Homer, including part in the Odyssey where
Speaker 2: Odysseus builds a new ship, But even a lot of
Speaker 2: this didn't come together till the twentieth century when we
Speaker 2: had maritime archaeology to give us some actual evidence to
Speaker 2: base some of this on other archaeological data, that we
Speaker 2: could take some of those passages and make better sense
Speaker 2: of what they were saying. So Cason contends that the vessels,
Speaker 2: which he jokingly describes as seagoing greyhounds during this period
Speaker 2: between thirteen hundred and twelve hundred BC, would have looked
Speaker 2: essentially like this, long low holes on abruptly rising prow.
Speaker 2: That's the front of the ship. They had a curved stern,
Speaker 2: as opposed to the reported build of the sea people's vessels,
Speaker 2: which were described as having a straight stern. The stern,
Speaker 2: of course, is the back of the ship. All right,
Speaker 2: So at this point we're talking more or less about
Speaker 2: single level galleys becoming the norm. These would have been
Speaker 2: single level or vessels powered by around thirty men, and
Speaker 2: we based a lot of this on like vase paintings,
Speaker 2: Homeric writings, you know, chronicles from eighth century BC, and
Speaker 2: so forth that let us know that. Okay, eventually though,
Speaker 2: the ships begin to vary in size, the number of
Speaker 2: the oars ends up ranging from twenty to forty or
Speaker 2: even fifty. We'll get into that more later. Early on, though,
Speaker 2: we would have been dealing with a case where most
Speaker 2: of these vessels would have been privately owned, and they
Speaker 2: would have engaged in both merchant trade and raiding so
Speaker 2: as well as you know, carrying armed men to a destination,
Speaker 2: and there would have been more of this than dedicated fighting. Again,
Speaker 2: we get into that idea that there's a thin line
Speaker 2: between between what is piracy and what is some other pursuit,
Speaker 2: including actual trade. But as all this heats up, it
Speaker 2: gets to the point where, okay, a single row of
Speaker 2: ores is not going to cut it. You're going to
Speaker 2: need an additional row of ores. And it's interesting getting
Speaker 2: into this because yeah, we see the birth of the
Speaker 2: fifty ORed vessels, the penticonters, which might have apparently reflected
Speaker 2: a major development in the eighth century BCE, according to
Speaker 2: Fagan and Rancoff, who I scided in the last episode.
Speaker 2: That's Brian Fagan and Boris Rhancoff. So the vessels we're
Speaker 2: talking about here would have featured two levels of rowers,
Speaker 2: one rowing at the same level is those single row
Speaker 2: galleys that came before, but then a lower level in
Speaker 2: the hold working ores through apertures in the hole. So
Speaker 2: it's interesting. You might imagine that we just built one
Speaker 2: on top of the other, like an ice cream cone,
Speaker 2: but it's not quite the same. It's a little more
Speaker 2: complicated than that ends up involving like a reworking of
Speaker 2: the whole itself.
Speaker 3: Now, on one hand, I would imagine, okay, you're adding
Speaker 3: more ores, more rowers. That gives your boat more power,
Speaker 3: you can achieve greater speeds. But from what I understand,
Speaker 3: splitting the operators of the vessel the power in the
Speaker 3: rowers into multiple levels also has other implications for the
Speaker 3: design and construction of the vessel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I found this really interesting as well,
Speaker 2: because it wasn't simply that you could have more ores
Speaker 2: per vessel and therefore more power. In fact, in many
Speaker 2: cases you'd have vessels with the same number of ores
Speaker 2: that a single level craft would have boasted. But since
Speaker 2: you can spread them out across two levels, that means
Speaker 2: you can make the craft itself shorter. So you had
Speaker 2: the ability to make not only a faster vessel, but
Speaker 2: this is key, a more maneuverable one.
Speaker 3: Ah Right, So a shorter vessel will have less drag
Speaker 3: in the water and will be able to turn more easily,
Speaker 3: and I guess probably also have less weight per unit
Speaker 3: of rowing space.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know if there's an actual decent comparison
Speaker 2: to be made to buses, but I couldn't help but
Speaker 2: think about like the difference between like a double decker
Speaker 2: bus and one of those giant buses where they're like
Speaker 2: joined together with this bendi part in the middle, because
Speaker 2: I guess both of them can be difficult to maneuver
Speaker 2: in their own way. But I don't know, maybe it's
Speaker 2: a halfway useful analogy. But these general changes that are
Speaker 2: going on here, according to Fake and Rohnkoff, they seem
Speaker 2: to suggest though that fighting capacity was becoming more and
Speaker 2: more important, and carrying capacity was less of a concern.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you're you're having to upgrade the design of
Speaker 2: your vessels in order to emphasize speed and mobility as
Speaker 2: opposed to just how much stuff you could care, be
Speaker 2: that that stuff cargo or troops or something else. However,
Speaker 2: the length of these vessels does gradually increase, incorporating more
Speaker 2: and more ores, upward of one hundred. So again everything
Speaker 2: continues to evolve new forms, and then like stretch the
Speaker 2: ability of that form, what happens if we added more
Speaker 2: ores to it and so forth put more ores in. Yeah,
Speaker 2: now it's also crucial to mention that. Apparently, as action
Speaker 2: in the Mediterranean heats up again over this, over years
Speaker 2: and years, decades and decades, ultimately centuries, sea based trade, piracy, colonization,
Speaker 2: and more, this kind of eventually ends the days of
Speaker 2: independently held galleys being like the main brunt of any
Speaker 2: force out there. So Cason wrote writes about this, saying quote,
Speaker 2: in these days, there was no one state that had
Speaker 2: the naval strengths to police the seas. Every city involved
Speaker 2: in trade had to maintain its own fleet, not only
Speaker 2: to protect its merchantmen against the ubiquitous pirates, whose calling
Speaker 2: now as before, had the status of a recognized profession,
Speaker 2: but also to repel attacks delivered by commercial rivals, since
Speaker 2: such attempts were an acknowledged means of discouraging competition.
Speaker 3: Literal corporate raiders exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's dangerous out there. And yeah, any stresses
Speaker 2: that the building up of navies and the perfecting of
Speaker 2: these different maritime war technologies in the ancient world, all
Speaker 2: this one hand in hand with the planning, the planting
Speaker 2: of colonies, the opening up of new trade routes between
Speaker 2: these various city states, and so forth. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: just it gets more and more dangerous, and the maritime
Speaker 2: technology evolves to keep up with that. Now, the pentagonter
Speaker 2: seemed again that the two leveled org vessels seems to
Speaker 2: have remained the main warship from the eight through six
Speaker 2: centuries BCE, But clearly this climate demanded greater innovation, you know,
Speaker 2: to continue to to you know, to push the boundaries
Speaker 2: of what's possible. Every conceivable edge is going to count
Speaker 2: in one of these altercations. And so we see a
Speaker 2: couple of things, and they're very interconnected here. One was
Speaker 2: the increasing importance of the nautical ram, which we'll get
Speaker 2: to in a bit. But then the other goes in
Speaker 2: hand in hand with that as well, and that is
Speaker 2: I think everyone can guess, add a third level of
Speaker 2: rowers to your vessel optimize. Yeah, add more ores, more
Speaker 2: humans pulling those ores so that we can have more power.
Speaker 3: So the name of the try Rem comes from three
Speaker 3: levels of rowers.
Speaker 2: That's right, the try Rem. It's basically like we've been describing.
Speaker 2: It's the Penticonter with a third level added. But make
Speaker 2: no mistake, this is really did apparently push the engineering
Speaker 2: limits of the ancient world, and according to what I've
Speaker 2: been reading, could easily be considered the most advanced vehicle
Speaker 2: of the age. So it wasn't just let's strap another
Speaker 2: row of oars up there, it wasn't. It involved redesigning
Speaker 2: the whole ship. And these were advanced vehicles that in
Speaker 2: the last episode we compared to jet fighters of today,
Speaker 2: ultimately in the long run, too expensive for city states
Speaker 2: to keep up with. And of course these became just
Speaker 2: a staple of sea conflict and sea power of the day.
Speaker 2: The Greeks used these, and then the defeat of the
Speaker 2: Persians at Salamis in for ADBCE, and they would be
Speaker 2: a major part of their maritime might. This battle, by
Speaker 2: the way, I am reminded, is depicted in the twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen three hundred sequel. As usual a sequel, there was
Speaker 2: a sequel. I saw part of it on an airplane,
Speaker 2: as usual. I am dubious about out looking to a
Speaker 2: three hundred picture for any kind of historical accuracy. But
Speaker 2: I don't know. People who have seen the movie write
Speaker 2: in maybe it has some really good trirem scenes. I mean,
Speaker 2: I would at least ask that there would be cool
Speaker 2: trirem action sequences in that picture. So, as far as
Speaker 2: we know, with the trirem the third level, the top
Speaker 2: level would have had the oarsmen rowing through outriggers so
Speaker 2: as to keep the whole as narrow as possible, while
Speaker 2: the two lower levels would have rowed through whole apertures.
Speaker 2: As such, you could power up a vessel with a
Speaker 2: good one hundred and seventy ores and it would have
Speaker 2: been as maneuverable as the two level pentdiconter, but ultimately
Speaker 2: faster and deadlier. Now where did this innovation come from? Well,
Speaker 2: according to the author, as I was reading here, Athenian
Speaker 2: general and historian Thucydides credited to the Corinthian shipwright Menocles
Speaker 2: in the eighth century, but Fagan and Rankov state that
Speaker 2: more recent scholarships suggest that the invention hailed from perhaps
Speaker 2: the Egyptians or the Phoenicians under Persian rule near the
Speaker 2: end of the sixth century. Now, as of their writing,
Speaker 2: there had been zero wrecks of these vessels discovered, duing
Speaker 2: part to the fact that they would have apparently it's
Speaker 2: thought have had positive buoyancy of hold. But in any
Speaker 2: case this was the case, then it's still the case.
Speaker 2: Now thousands of these ships were built and lost, and
Speaker 2: apparently truly lost, because we've never found a wreck.
Speaker 3: Now by never found a wreck, rob you mean never
Speaker 3: found a substantially intact wreck. But we do have pieces, right.
Speaker 2: We have pieces. We have we have various other bits
Speaker 2: and pieces, you know, we have literary and historic writings.
Speaker 2: And there were also some remains of the sea harbor
Speaker 2: sheds at Piraeus near Athens that were also helpful in
Speaker 2: trying to piece together exactly what a trirem was.
Speaker 3: But if somebody's trying to build a replica replica of
Speaker 3: an ancient Greek tryrem, in the modern world, it is
Speaker 3: an exercise involving some amount of speculation and interpretation. You
Speaker 3: don't just have like one you can copy right right.
Speaker 2: And this was the endeavor in the creation of the
Speaker 2: Olympias in the mid nineteen eighties, where you had a
Speaker 2: bunch of experts come together and build what I've seen
Speaker 2: referred to as a floating hypothesis. Let's take everything we
Speaker 2: know about what a tr rem probably was, you know
Speaker 2: what we know about ancient construction techniques and so forth,
Speaker 2: and let's build one with the understanding that we're we're
Speaker 2: not going to get it one hundred percent correct. You know,
Speaker 2: nobody has I have seen anybody arguing that the resulting
Speaker 2: ship is just dead on. It's inevitably incorrect. It cannot
Speaker 2: possibly be a one for one match for what any
Speaker 2: given try ream actually was in the ancient world. But
Speaker 2: the idea is that it would give us like a
Speaker 2: solid model which we could then run through trials, experiment with,
Speaker 2: and then have nuanced conversations about where this prototype gets
Speaker 2: it wrong. You know, where this recreation gets it wrong,
Speaker 2: Like Okay, maybe it's it's too heavy and therefore too slow,
Speaker 2: or maybe you know, it's not tough enough to withstand
Speaker 2: being rammed and so forth, And so they built this thing.
Speaker 2: And there are plenty of images of this vessel there are,
Speaker 2: there's there's footage, there's there have been documentaries, there is.
Speaker 2: The resulting craft was thirty six point nine meters or
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty one feet one inch in length,
Speaker 2: powered by two sails, and of course one hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy oarsmen. And I believe oorsmon is technically considered a
Speaker 2: gender neutral term because i've and I have seen plenty
Speaker 2: of photos of the folks that they recruited to power
Speaker 2: this vessel in these trials, and you see plenty of
Speaker 2: female oarsmen on the crew as well. And they did
Speaker 2: five seasons of trials between nineteen eighty seven and nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four.
Speaker 3: So I guess some people got really good at rowing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you can imagine where there would have
Speaker 2: been a huge sense of camaraderie in this. If you
Speaker 2: were a rowing enthusiast or and or you know, an
Speaker 2: ancient maritime warfare enthusiast, you know, you'd want to get
Speaker 2: in there, cram into this vessel with all these people
Speaker 2: and start pulling.
Speaker 3: These oars oh, does it look fairly cozy.
Speaker 2: It looks like there is a sense of camaraderie. And
Speaker 2: the photos that I was looking at, you know, it's
Speaker 2: a very nice day in the Mediterranean, so there is
Speaker 2: a certain vacation y feel to these photos. But also
Speaker 2: it is a lot of people crammed into and above
Speaker 2: the whole of a vessel, pulling oars and having to
Speaker 2: do so in a skilled and determined fashion. I've read
Speaker 2: that the Olympias boasted an armament of the vessel is
Speaker 2: still round it, but it has a bronze ram on
Speaker 2: the bow, ten spears and four archers. But I don't
Speaker 2: think it actually engaged in any military activity in the
Speaker 2: late eighties and early nineties, just to be clear on that.
Speaker 2: But I can't help but think that it would have
Speaker 2: made for a nice time travel movie.
Speaker 3: Right Wait, you mean the replica and its krew get
Speaker 3: sent to the past and they have to fight their
Speaker 3: way through through I don't know, battles in the fifth
Speaker 3: century BCE or a bunch of try Reams from the
Speaker 3: fifth century BCE come to now and threaten all of
Speaker 3: our modern navies and only a Tryream can fight them back.
Speaker 2: I think both concepts could work, and I think a
Speaker 2: comedy would perhaps work well, you know, you could have
Speaker 2: this almost almost kind of like the Odyssey or something, right,
Speaker 2: except it's having to return home from the future or something. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the key findings from the Olympus trials, and there are
Speaker 2: a lot of findings. There are a lot of these trials,
Speaker 2: and again a lot of this was about, you know,
Speaker 2: creating space to then have these more nuanced discussions about
Speaker 2: what they got wrong right and what they perhaps got wrong.
Speaker 2: But apparently they found that chiefly a three level war
Speaker 2: system is viable. Prior to this, some scholars had doubted
Speaker 2: that it was actually possible to have three levels of oarsmen.
Speaker 2: They also found that it was both fast and highly maneuverable.
Speaker 2: I think with this model they were able to reach
Speaker 2: maximum more speeds of just under nine knots. But I
Speaker 2: think there are some discussions about how maybe that was
Speaker 2: too slow, maybe the vessel was too heavy. Again, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of back and forth as part of the
Speaker 2: research surrounding it. But Fagan and Rehnkoff and by the way,
Speaker 2: Rencoff was a rowing Master professor of ancient history and
Speaker 2: served as chair of the Trirene Trust that carried out
Speaker 2: the Olympus, the Olympia's construction, and those trials. They state
Speaker 2: that it's now widely accepted that this ship is likely
Speaker 2: a generally accurate representation of what these ships were like. Again,
Speaker 2: it seems unlikely that we'd ever know for sure on
Speaker 2: this without time travel, but it seems generally on the money,
Speaker 2: or close enough to the money for us to to
Speaker 2: use it as a means of understanding what these vessels were.
Speaker 2: I included a couple of photos here in our outline,
Speaker 2: and everyone out there can can look these up as well.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the ship at sea with oars out, sails
Speaker 2: raised looks absolutely amazing, and there's a peek inside at
Speaker 2: the folks pulling the oars. Again, it seems like they're
Speaker 2: having a great time, but it is not spacious.
Speaker 3: Also, I see there's a multi level seating with people
Speaker 3: next to each other. I guess that's to get the
Speaker 3: different angles of the oars in play, so a lot
Speaker 3: of people are sort of head level with their neighbors.
Speaker 2: Butts, Yeah, yeah, when we're talking about three levels, don't
Speaker 2: think of it like an apartment building where there's a
Speaker 2: there's like a clear U dividing point between first floor,
Speaker 2: second floor, third floor. No, it's all it's all crammed
Speaker 2: in there, and it's all part. It's not like an
Speaker 2: I Cream cone scoop scenario. It's all incorporated into the design,
Speaker 2: and that design is ultimately a large part of it
Speaker 2: is about powering that ram That's right.
Speaker 3: So, Rob, you asked me to take a look at
Speaker 3: ramming and ramming maneuvers for this episode, and this was
Speaker 3: a lot more interesting and complex than I expected. I
Speaker 3: was just thinking, yeah, you know, how complex can it be?
Speaker 3: You're just trying to run into each other. But no,
Speaker 3: it's a delicate dance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to admit that it was more complex
Speaker 2: than I was expecting as well. And I think part
Speaker 2: of it is that I watched twenty Thousand Leagues Under
Speaker 2: the Sea, the nineteen fifty four adaptation a lot as
Speaker 2: a kid, in which, of course the fictional submarine the
Speaker 2: Nautilus ram's enemy ships or enemies perceived enemies of Captain Nemo.
Speaker 2: And again, this may be more nuanced in the film
Speaker 2: than I remember, and maybe more so in the text,
Speaker 2: but I seem to think of it as just the
Speaker 2: Nautilus just goes as fast as it can and just
Speaker 2: crashes through whatever it's trying to destroy. And so it's
Speaker 2: easy for me to fall back on that and think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: well ramming speed with a trirem it's just row as
Speaker 2: fast as possible and hit them with as much velocity
Speaker 2: as you can muster.
Speaker 3: It's been a while since I've read twenty thousand Leagues
Speaker 3: under the Sea, but I recall a plot line early
Speaker 3: in the book where somebody, maybe it's a Professor Aronnax
Speaker 3: or one of his rivals, proposes that all of the
Speaker 3: ships that are mysteriously sinking around the world, this is
Speaker 3: like the inciting incident or phenomena, phenomenon that begins the story,
Speaker 3: that they are being attacked by a gigantic narwhale. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, the unicorn of the sea. It has this
Speaker 3: big spike, and you know, we all know that it
Speaker 3: grows to a length of forty feet, but imagine it
Speaker 3: could grow even bigger. It does not grow to a
Speaker 3: length of forty feet, but imagine it could grow even bigger.
Speaker 3: And that's what is going on. And now, of course
Speaker 3: what is revealed later on is that they're being rammed,
Speaker 3: as you said, by Captain Nemo's submarine and of course,
Speaker 3: ramming as a weapon does indeed play a major role
Speaker 3: in naval warfare. Going back into antiquity, now, you can
Speaker 3: think of lots of reasons that ships would have always
Speaker 3: been important in war. As we've talked about. You know,
Speaker 3: they can move troops, they can move cargo and provisions,
Speaker 3: they can engage in scouting, they can deliver messages and
Speaker 3: so forth. But this age of war, galleys, the naval
Speaker 3: ships powered by rows of oars, really showed the importance
Speaker 3: of direct ship to ship combat, and thus the speed,
Speaker 3: design and maneuverability of the galleys themselves became paramount, and
Speaker 3: that's what ultimately leads to this extremely optimized design of
Speaker 3: the trirem. So in ancient naval conflict, as we've already
Speaker 3: alluded to, there are several different methods you could have
Speaker 3: of attacking other boats on the water. You could have
Speaker 3: archers on your boat. You could come up alongside that
Speaker 3: boat and shoot at enemy troops or the crew on board.
Speaker 3: You could have marines armed soldiers like maybe the Greek
Speaker 3: boats might have some hoplight soldiers that would board enemy
Speaker 3: boats and try to attack and overwhelm the crew. Or
Speaker 3: you could attack the physical boat itself. So a major
Speaker 3: goal of the trirem in ancient warfare was to destroy
Speaker 3: or more accurately immobilize enemy ships, and the primary method
Speaker 3: of doing this was ramming. So before you had the
Speaker 3: cannon and the torpedo, you had the ram.
Speaker 2: Okas in the ancient Mariners' Rights, no longer was a
Speaker 2: sea battle simply a match in which ships closed and
Speaker 2: the marines on each side fought it out, a sort
Speaker 2: of land fight transferred to shipboard, as in Ramsey's successful
Speaker 2: attack on the Sea Raiders. The ram changed all that.
Speaker 2: It shifted the emphasis to the men that nanned the oars.
Speaker 3: That's right. The boat is the weapon, and the target
Speaker 3: of the attack is the other boat. And so the
Speaker 3: way you wheeld the weapon is to guide and power
Speaker 3: the boat. That's right.
Speaker 2: And in this you end up depending on a highly
Speaker 2: skilled rowing crew that could, in Cason's words, respond instantly
Speaker 2: and accurately to command.
Speaker 3: They had to be on the same page, they had
Speaker 3: to act fast, with great strength and power, and they
Speaker 3: had to know what they were doing at the same
Speaker 3: time synchronization. So, picking up again on your analogy earlier,
Speaker 3: rob of the trirem as kind of like a jet
Speaker 3: fighter of its time. It was a highly optimized vessel.
Speaker 3: It was stripped down to maximize rowing power. Generally, on
Speaker 3: a Trirem, there were no living quarters on these boats.
Speaker 3: They were essentially all engine, but that engine was human
Speaker 3: bodies and so as such, a weakness of the Trirem
Speaker 3: in a way was that it would generally have to
Speaker 3: go ashore each day to meet the needs of its
Speaker 3: crew for food, supplies and rest. This is not a
Speaker 3: boat for people to live on at sea for long
Speaker 3: periods of time. Again, it's all engine and the people
Speaker 3: are the engine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you can see this when you look at
Speaker 2: the modern photos of that reconstruction, Like there's just not
Speaker 2: a lot of a parent room in there, so you
Speaker 2: can't imagine how a meal would potentially work on there,
Speaker 2: or how you would handle anything like a shift change
Speaker 2: or sleeping and so forth.
Speaker 3: There are accounts of people doing it, like there's one
Speaker 3: famous account in the ancient world of a trireme that
Speaker 3: was sent out after another one to try to overtake
Speaker 3: it to countermand the orders that had been given, and
Speaker 3: so allegedly, like the rowers worked in shifts so they
Speaker 3: could row all night and one slept while the other
Speaker 3: road and so there are stories that this kind of
Speaker 3: thing could be done in the extreme, but generally this
Speaker 3: is not a vessel to live on for extended periods
Speaker 3: of time. It is made for battle, and so a
Speaker 3: major factor deciding the success of an ancient war galley
Speaker 3: was the ability of its crew to perform. The corollarya
Speaker 3: of that is that human exhaustion could mean death. So
Speaker 3: ancient trirems often would be fitted with sails of some kind.
Speaker 3: They might have a main mast sail that could be
Speaker 3: used to save the crew's strength while they're just sort
Speaker 3: of cruising somewhere, and then would generally not be used
Speaker 3: for battle. The boat might leave ashore its main mast
Speaker 3: sail if contact with the enemy was imminent. The goal
Speaker 3: of naval combat, this ship to ship combat at the
Speaker 3: time was to crush or puncture the hull of the
Speaker 3: enemy vessel to or sometimes alternately, to shear off its
Speaker 3: ores on one side, either of which would disable it
Speaker 3: in battle. Now in the modern era, if we think
Speaker 3: of puncturing the hull of a ship, we think this
Speaker 3: means the goal is to sink the enemy ship, to
Speaker 3: send it to the bottom of the ocean. But that's
Speaker 3: not necessarily the case in fact, that's usually not the case.
Speaker 3: In ancient Mediterranean naval combat, the ship, being made of
Speaker 3: wood and lightly constructed and not full of much else,
Speaker 3: would usually not sink entirely, but would become a floating
Speaker 3: wreck which the winner of the battle could later toe
Speaker 3: away for salvage or for you know, just to show
Speaker 3: off what you did.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Case In points out that there would often be
Speaker 2: a capture of the enemy's ship's ram as a trophy.
Speaker 2: This is apparently common practice, though again you can recognize
Speaker 2: the challenges involved. You know, it would have to be
Speaker 2: it would have to be a matter of capturing the
Speaker 2: whole vessel and not just all right, we punctured them.
Speaker 2: Now everyone go get that ram.
Speaker 3: Hit right right, I mean, it would still be full
Speaker 3: of hostile enemy troops and all that. So, like, there's
Speaker 3: some more there's some more work to be done here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And one thing the case mentioned is that the
Speaker 2: whole like grappling and boarding actions that ever, completely goes away.
Speaker 2: But this ramming, this becomes like the key attack method.
Speaker 2: This becomes like the main focus of the ship design.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, some ancient sources that refer to rammed ships
Speaker 3: describe what happens to them, not as sinking, but as
Speaker 3: a word that translates to dipping. They would dip, so
Speaker 3: I think the idea is they would become flooded and useless.
Speaker 3: But because again they're wooden and lightly built, they don't
Speaker 3: sink to the bottom, so they're just like sitting there.
Speaker 3: You can imagine the physical aftermath in the area of
Speaker 3: an ancient naval battle would be a like a fascinating
Speaker 3: and terrifying place. Yeah, So what was going on with
Speaker 3: the ramming itself? Well, from what I've been reading, it
Speaker 3: seems to me that ramming is primarily a maneuvering game.
Speaker 3: So trirems were built with of course, dedicated ramming mechanisms.
Speaker 3: So sticking out of the front of the boat there
Speaker 3: would be a thick reinforced wooden spike that extends from
Speaker 3: the keel, and that would be capped with a metal covering.
Speaker 3: So like an Athenian trirem would would have a wooden
Speaker 3: extension from the keel just around the water line, maybe
Speaker 3: right ad or right below the water line, and this
Speaker 3: would be covered in a bronze sheath. A later and
Speaker 3: popular Athenian ram design would have like three horizontally aligned fins.
Speaker 3: These sort of thin fins lined up in rows, and
Speaker 3: I'll get to the reason for that in a minute.
Speaker 3: Speed and maneuverability were a crucial part of the battle.
Speaker 3: In order to perform a successful ram the galley would
Speaker 3: need to set up its maneuver correctly. It would need
Speaker 3: to build up speed so that it could get in
Speaker 3: position to gain an advantageous angle goal, and it would
Speaker 3: be trying to come into the other boat's broadside, so
Speaker 3: before the actual ramming itself. A major part of ancient
Speaker 3: Mediterranean naval tactics seem to be focused on getting behind
Speaker 3: the enemy, getting through the enemy lines, and positioning your
Speaker 3: coming around and positioning yourself behind the enemy ship, because
Speaker 3: attacking from the rear made it easier to get the
Speaker 3: angle you wanted and to make it harder for the
Speaker 3: enemy ship to attack you.
Speaker 2: That's right, it's got to In order for a ship
Speaker 2: that you're facing from behind to turn around and potentially
Speaker 2: come back and face you, it would have to expose
Speaker 2: its entire side to your ramming force.
Speaker 3: Exactly. Yes, Another very important consideration is not getting stuck
Speaker 3: after the ramming attack. So imagine you use your ram
Speaker 3: at the prow of your boat to punch a hole
Speaker 3: in the enemy's hull, and then your RAM gets stuck.
Speaker 3: It gets stuck in the hole that it punched. You are, now, wow,
Speaker 3: just as disabled as the other ship. And if it's
Speaker 3: dipping down in the water, you're going to be dipping
Speaker 3: with it. You're also vulnerable to getting your own hull
Speaker 3: rammed from the side because you're just sitting there with
Speaker 3: your broadside exposed to enemy ships, and you can't move.
Speaker 2: Right because another one could be right behind you. Now
Speaker 2: I got three ships all crashed together.
Speaker 3: So as important as the ramming maneuver was, an equally
Speaker 3: important thing was designing the RAM and the ship so
Speaker 3: as not to get not to punch through and get
Speaker 3: stuck in the first place, and then also to have
Speaker 3: the crew master the ability of going in reverse to
Speaker 3: disengage after a successful attack. Now I was reading a
Speaker 3: bit more about some boat design considerations in a book
Speaker 3: called Archaeology and the Social History of Ships by Richard A.
Speaker 3: Gould from Cambridge University Press, twenty eleven. Ramming as an
Speaker 3: attack maneuver introduces stresses on the ship's hull integrity. Of course,
Speaker 3: right Goole calls ramming quote controlled collision and that's that
Speaker 3: is what it is. You're just crashing into another ship,
Speaker 3: but you're hoping to do it in a way that
Speaker 3: hurts the other ship more than it hurts you. Apparently,
Speaker 3: some scholars have suggested that trirems may have had short
Speaker 3: use lives, given the risks to their structure, both from
Speaker 3: being rammed but also from absorbing the shock of delivering
Speaker 3: a ramming attack.
Speaker 2: Wow, and you can only imagine that would that would
Speaker 2: add to this idea that they were costly vehicles to use,
Speaker 2: because yeah, if you could only get like maybe one
Speaker 2: hit out of this vehicle, like now it's ruined. Now
Speaker 2: it's total, and you've got to build another one from scrap.
Speaker 3: I mean, hopefully it's not totaled after one hit. But
Speaker 3: you know, the more the more hits you do with it,
Speaker 3: the more risk you have that you are going to
Speaker 3: incur damage to the ship itself. Goul to Wright's quote,
Speaker 3: early rams were pointed and risk to becoming stuck in
Speaker 3: the opposing ships hull. So if you look up pictures
Speaker 3: of these, these earlier rams were often more they look
Speaker 3: just kind of like a horn or a tusk or something.
Speaker 3: But Gould says quote trirem rams were blunt with a
Speaker 3: squared off face, and were intended to pound and shatter
Speaker 3: the planks in the opposing ship's hull rather than punch
Speaker 3: a hole through it. So you were trying to damage
Speaker 3: the target ship's hull in a way that maybe cracks
Speaker 3: the wood or takes it, or causes damage to a
Speaker 3: joint or something that ruins its watertight integrity. It will
Speaker 3: start to take on water. That's the goal. But you
Speaker 3: do not want to just punch a hole all the
Speaker 3: way through and get stuck inside it again for all
Speaker 3: the reasons we've talked about that that is a risk
Speaker 3: to you. So this delicate balance of considerations not only
Speaker 3: had implications for the design of the RAM and the ship,
Speaker 3: but also for the crew, because a ramming attack had
Speaker 3: to be fast enough that the target ship could not
Speaker 3: escape and fast enough that the impact force would break
Speaker 3: through the planks of the enemy's hull and make it
Speaker 3: take on water. But at the same time, it could
Speaker 3: not be so fast that the impact caused damage to
Speaker 3: the attacking ship or punched through and got the ram stuck.
Speaker 3: So this made me sort of rethink the idea of
Speaker 3: speed and the triream based on what I'm reading in
Speaker 3: this book by Gould. Here it seems that top speed
Speaker 3: was especially important for maneuvering in trying to get behind
Speaker 3: the enemy and into the advantageous position for a ramming charge,
Speaker 3: you want to be in the right position and have
Speaker 3: your enemy in the wrong position. But top speed was
Speaker 3: not necessarily for ramming itself, because ramming at top speed
Speaker 3: could have been dangerous to the attacking galley.
Speaker 2: Wow, so ramming speed could also conceivably mean or like
Speaker 2: ramming deceleration. Once you're in a position.
Speaker 3: Based on what I've read, yes, it seems like you
Speaker 3: don't want to hit the hit the opposing boat at
Speaker 3: top speed again because of risks to your own hull
Speaker 3: integrity absorbing the shock of that hit, and you don't
Speaker 3: want to get stuck, so you just want to You
Speaker 3: want to hit it just hard enough to damage it now.
Speaker 3: Gould also points out that there could have been additional
Speaker 3: things that that ancient shipbuilders did to reinforce the hull
Speaker 3: for battles and make it make it better able to
Speaker 3: absorb the shock of a ramming hit. Like there was
Speaker 3: a practice of apparently using rope cables wrapped around the
Speaker 3: ship's hull to help provide strength during a battle. So
Speaker 3: there could be other things that would reinforce it that
Speaker 3: we don't fully know about, if that makes sense. But
Speaker 3: like you were saying, it does go against the idea
Speaker 3: of the Nautilus trying to just ram into something at
Speaker 3: top speed, because yeah, if the Nautilus did that, wouldn't
Speaker 3: it probably actually get stuck in the ship that it hit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or I also couldn't help but think about Star
Speaker 2: Trek a little bit, which makes sense. Star Trek in
Speaker 2: its space combat is very much based on naval combat,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's basically just a space age variation
Speaker 2: on all of that, and so if but with no
Speaker 2: up and down right right, But but you could imagine
Speaker 2: a scenario where if you know, Captain Picard wanted to
Speaker 2: need or needed to ram another ship, he wouldn't want
Speaker 2: to like punch it into like into warp. That would
Speaker 2: be crazy, like that would just like atomize both vessels, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he would need to depend on a lesser velocity one
Speaker 2: that would accomplish whatever the goal is, you know, like
Speaker 2: I don't know, take out an engine on the enemy
Speaker 2: vessel as opposed to just destroying everything. Trekkies, I'm depending
Speaker 2: on you to point out an example where something like
Speaker 2: that surely happened. There had to have been some ramming
Speaker 2: maneuvers at one point or another, and I just am
Speaker 2: not thinking of them.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I would love to see that. So one
Speaker 3: one more question. If we're thinking about trying to zero
Speaker 3: in on ideal ramming speed for one of these attacks,
Speaker 3: I was reading in several sources. One was a book
Speaker 3: by an author named Nick Fields called Athenian Trirem Versus
Speaker 3: Persian Trirem The Greco Persian Wars four ninety nine to
Speaker 3: four forty nine. This was published in twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: by Bloomsbury. And this book contains interesting photos of a
Speaker 3: bronze ram sheath that is from the ancient world. Maybe
Speaker 3: we'll come back and talk about that in the next part.
Speaker 3: But because it has some interesting design features not just
Speaker 3: for ramming efficiency, but a decorative design features that I
Speaker 3: thought were interesting. But I just wanted to mention this
Speaker 3: book because it gets into the idea of ramming speed.
Speaker 3: So Fields says that if the target ship is either
Speaker 3: stationary or moving towards you, and you can hit it
Speaker 3: within an angle of between twenty and seventy degrees, the
Speaker 3: attacking boats. Ramming speed only needed to be about three
Speaker 3: to four knots, so that's not that's not super fast.
Speaker 3: That's between five point five and seven point five kilometers
Speaker 3: per hour, and so that's if you're hitting it at
Speaker 3: a more oblique angle between twenty and seventy degrees. If
Speaker 3: you're able to line up something closer to a ninety
Speaker 3: degree hit, you hit it in the middle of its length.
Speaker 3: Even less speed is required to break through and make
Speaker 3: it take on water. That's probably between two to three knots,
Speaker 3: which is between three point seven and five point five
Speaker 3: kilometers per hour. There was also research published just this
Speaker 3: year about the ramming speeds needed for try rems. This
Speaker 3: was published by itzac at All in the journal Journal
Speaker 3: of Archaeological Science Reports in twenty twenty four. The paper
Speaker 3: is called Damaging a triyream by Ramming the Kinetics, and
Speaker 3: the main finding was that quote the minimum impact velocity
Speaker 3: required to break a single plank is one point three
Speaker 3: to three knot, so this was obviously well within the
Speaker 3: capabilities of a trirem. There's really no question that it
Speaker 3: could easily achieve the speeds needed to cause damage to
Speaker 3: the opposing ships, and it didn't have to be near
Speaker 3: top speed to do it. They could go at a
Speaker 3: quite achievable speed and cause that damage with minimal risk
Speaker 3: to the attacking ship. And even on just an intuitive
Speaker 3: physics level, it kind of makes sense that you wouldn't
Speaker 3: need that much speed because of course you are hitting
Speaker 3: a boat at its weak point with your strongest point,
Speaker 3: and you've got the force of that impact concentrated down
Speaker 3: not across like the full height of it of the
Speaker 3: ship's hull, but down into this small impact zone at
Speaker 3: the tip of the ram.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'd be interested to hear from many folks
Speaker 2: out there who have a lot of experience around boats
Speaker 2: who can speak to like accidental rammings or bumpings like
Speaker 2: in harbor and docks situations, Like how easy is it
Speaker 2: to accidentally punch a hole in the hull of a
Speaker 2: small vessel or at least a wooden vessel, given that
Speaker 2: we're talking about wooden wooden ships here. Well, this has
Speaker 2: been fascinating. Yeah, ramming one boat into another seems that,
Speaker 2: you know, on the surface, to be something that would
Speaker 2: be very simple and straightforward. But yeah, there's a there's
Speaker 2: a whole it's a whole engineering problem. To it. There's
Speaker 2: an there's a there's a there's a military art to it,
Speaker 2: and involves a discipline and maneuver. It's pretty fascinating, and
Speaker 2: you can only imagine the mix of uh, you know,
Speaker 2: actual like combat scenario learning that would be involved in
Speaker 2: all of this, as well as experiments and testing. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it kind of boggles the mind, gives you a
Speaker 2: new new respect for what these ancient mariners were up.
Speaker 3: To, how they had to all work together to make
Speaker 3: the boat function as kind of a single organism.
Speaker 2: All right, well, we're going to go ahead and close
Speaker 2: out this episode, but we'll be back for a third.
Speaker 2: I think the third episode will cap everything off, So
Speaker 2: tune back in on Tuesday as we return with part
Speaker 2: three of Ancient Oars on the Wine Dark Sea. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, we'll remind you that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays.
Speaker 2: On Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to talk
Speaker 2: about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ
Speaker 3: Posway and huge thanks to our guest producer today, Andrew Howard.
Speaker 3: Appreciate you stepping in, Andrew. If you would like to
Speaker 3: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 3: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
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