WEBVTT - Ancient Oars on the Wine-Dark Sea, Part 2 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:07.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:14.880 Hey you welcome do Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:15.760 name is Robert. 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:18.119 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.840 part two in our series on the ore powered galleys 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:25.360 of the ancient World. Now, if you haven't heard part 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:27.639 one yet, you might want to go listen to that first. 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:32.280 But in the previous episode we talked about Ptolemy, the 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:37.000 fourth of Egypt's great war ship, which allegedly was built 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.240 in the third century BCE. We have no physical remains, 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:44.080 only historical descriptions, but Rob what were some good details 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.360 on that. It allegedly had like thousands of people manning it. 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:52.600 Yeah, it's just an unreasonable amount of oars and oars men, 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:56.240 but would have been essentially an ancient world aircraft carrier, 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:59.400 though of course not for aircraft, but for at least troops, 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.320 if not maybe siege equipment. The general consensus has often 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:05.679 been that this is not a practical war vessel, but 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.920 just a way of showing off. So we talked a 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:11.520 little bit about that, and my intention is to eventually 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:13.840 come back to it and look at some more scholarship 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:17.240 about it. Once we finished talking about all of the 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:22.400 operational war vessels of the ancient world in the Mediterranean. 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:24.800 Yes, we will have to return to the big one, 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:29.480 but also last time we talked about the difference between 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:33.640 paddling and rowing, and thus the difference between paddles and ores. 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:36.000 You paddle with a paddle and you row with an ore, 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:39.800 the main difference being that an ore is locked or 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:42.840 pinned to the boat's hull itself some way, and you 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:47.680 typically row facing backwards while you paddle facing forwards. We 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:51.880 also talked about some prehistoric evidence of the use of 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:55.480 wooden paddles for water transport in Stone Age Northern Europe, 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:59.200 including one eight to nine thousand year old paddle, and 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:01.760 we also talked to some of the pressures leading to 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:05.160 the development of different mechanisms for powering watercraft in the 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:10.880 ancient Mediterranean, like wind versus human powered propulsion. And we're 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:13.680 back with part two to continue the discussion today. 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:16.400 Yeah, as we started getting into in the last episode, 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:20.799 the ancient Mediterranean was this vast inland sea ringed by 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:27.200 coastal lands that both did various powerful and established civilizations 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:32.400 as well as emergent powers. Coastal cultures largely contained to 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:36.799 this inland sea developed means to travel and exploit these waters. 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.880 But the development of wind power was a huge game changer, 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:43.280 allowing for greater use of the sea for transportation despite 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.560 the unpredictable nature of Mediterranean winds. So with all of 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:50.080 this we get the establishment of greater trade routes between 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:53.800 these various powers, and islands like Crete also become more 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:57.320 and more important given all this traffic. But this also 0:02:57.440 --> 0:02:59.519 means that you know, especially out of ancient Egypt and 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:03.200 out of Ancia in Mesopotamia, again you have the emergence 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:06.840 of all these marine trade routes and this ends up 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:09.680 spilling over into conflict as well, conflict over these trade 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:12.720 routes and around these trade routes, and we get like 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:17.440 a couple of key developments in maritime conflict technology. The 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:20.799 first one is pretty obvious and simple, and that is, okay, 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:23.120 if you have a ship that can carry cargo, it 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.919 can also carry troops. And so the first warships were 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:30.840 basically just cargo ships carrying armed forces, and we have 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.280 various accounts of this. Ancient Egyptian record speak of this 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.880 as far back as twenty four to fifty BCE. That's 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:42.280 when the pharaoh Sahure that means he who is close 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:45.960 to Ray the god used a cargo fleet to carry 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.520 an army to the Levantine coast. This would be the 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:53.400 earliest of multiple examples of the ancient Egyptians using seapower 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.840 to transport troops. These would have been big, lumbering troop 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.960 movements by sea. So the flip side of the coin 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:03.080 here is you would also see the use of sail 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:07.560 and or driven rovers, so small faster vessels. They could 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:11.600 be used to do things like deliver a message, gather intel, 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:16.080 also attack coastal targets or even unprotected vessels. 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:19.520 A theme I've noticed before, which is that sometimes the 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:22.800 line between naval warfare and piracy is quite thin. 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:27.280 Yes, yeah, absolutely, it depends on who's doing the analysis, 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:29.839 and we'll have more examples of that as we go here. 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:32.920 One of my sources in this that I cided in 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:35.160 the last episode is the book The Ancient Mariners by 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:38.760 Lionel Cassen, who is one of the one of the 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:44.479 key authorities of the twentieth century on ancient Mediterranean sea 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.960 powers and so forth, and he wrote that these vessels 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.559 were likely that these rovers, these smaller faster vessels were 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:55.080 likely as old as the big cargo ships, but our 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:57.920 written records of their usage and conflict only goes back 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:02.320 to like the fourteenth century BC. But they're quite telling. 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:06.000 We get this idea of fleets of sea rovers utilized 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:10.120 to disrupt cross sea communication and maritime trade, as well 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:14.479 as to eventually enforced blockades. Syrian naval units were thus 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.200 able to disrupt the link between Egypt and Biblos, and 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:22.880 you also had full fledged sea powers like the Minoans 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:26.280 and then the Mycenians who were able to hold their 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.440 own and then some against powers like Egypt. It also 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:33.480 meant that an age of rich over sea trade largely 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:37.599 entered into an age of like rampant sea rovers. So 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:41.000 you know, we see some of the first recorded sea 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:43.800 battles during this rough time period we're looking at here, 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:48.279 such as Rameses the Third's defeat of an invading fleet 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.320 of the Sea peoples the Battle of the Delta in 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:52.800 eleven seventy five BCE. 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:56.520 Now, an interesting thing about this particular battle is that 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.880 I've read it described in some sources as being not 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:03.640 that different from a land battle, just taking place on 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:04.640 top of the water. 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:09.920 Yeah, and you get that from the Egyptian illustrations of 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:13.160 the battle, the way that it ends up rolling out. 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:17.320 It's a couple of basics on the way this went down. Now, 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:19.720 on the subject of the Sea People's much has been 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:23.840 hypothesized about who they were and where they came from, 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:30.800 but they definitely invaded Eastern Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Cyprus, and 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.280 Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age and were 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:37.960 particularly active during the thirteenth century BC. There are different 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:40.640 ways to look at them, from a confederacy of different 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:44.720 seafaring raiders to varying groups of people's displaced by late 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:48.880 Bronze Age disturbances. So it's an entire topic undo itself. 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:51.680 But this would have been the second war between the 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:55.599 Egyptians and the Sea People's case in his book, wrote 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:58.200 that it was very much it seems like a mass 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.640 migration and not at all like the smaller raids that 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:05.000 Egypt had pretty much always had to contend with on 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.760 their coastal border. It consisted of two main forces working 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.239 their way down the coast toward Egypt at this point, 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:14.400 the main body that moved by land and the accompanying 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:19.000 fleet that largely kept pace along the coast. Now, as 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:22.960 far as the actual engagement, the way it is said 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:27.840 to have gone down is as follows. So the forces 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:30.600 of Egypt had just defeated the forces of the Sea 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:34.320 peoples on land in Syria and then rushed back across 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:37.600 the sea to Egypt with the Sea People's in pursuit, 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.480 and in doing so drew their fleet into an ambush 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.080 at the mouth of the Nile. And this would have 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:48.240 been via an ambush fleet, but also supporting fire from 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:51.119 the shore as well, but in both cases to your point, 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.840 this all very much mirrored a land battle. So you know, 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:59.480 people on ships shooting arrows at each other, people on 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.520 land shooting arrows of the ships, flaming or otherwise boarding 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.440 actions and so forth. Again, a lot of this is 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:11.320 what we gather from ancient Egyptian illustrations of the conflict. 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.080 Yes, there's one quite famous illustration of this battle that 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:17.440 is busy to look at. 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:20.520 Yeah, the only thing that's instantly clear is which one 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.600 is the pharaoh. You can figure that out pretty easily. 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:24.600 He's the big one. 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.960 The end result here is that it's a total Egyptian 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:31.720 victory over the Sea People's, you know, not wiping them out, 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:35.280 but defeating them enough to where they have to retreat 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:40.040 and are apparently unable to reach so far south again 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:43.440 as to attempt at the conquest of Egypt, now elsewhere 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:46.000 in the Mediterranean, more or less around the same time, 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:48.960 and as related in the Iliad, you have, of course 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.920 the whole business with Troy. Of course, as we've discussed 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:57.079 in the show before, also their caveats about our understanding 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:02.200 of the historical aspects of of Troy as opposed to 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:06.920 the literary context here. But for the most part, you know, 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:11.199 we have this story of a like a Greek alliance 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:16.199 taking on the city of Troy, the forces of Greece 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:20.640 consisting of you know, experienced marauders and traders, everyone joining 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:26.320 up under the command of Agamemnon. In his book, Cason writes, 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.200 it's a very well written book and has some nice descriptions. 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:32.720 He writes, for once the major cities of Greece for 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.840 went their traditional pastime of praying on one another and 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.240 joined hands for a combined operation against Troy. And while 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:41.560 it's described as of course a land based siege of 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:44.520 a city with no navy, they travel to their destination 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:45.920 via ship, and of. 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:48.199 Course the ships play a major role in the narrative 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:51.280 of the Iliad. You know, there's like the famous passage 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:53.320 where there's like the listing of all the ships and 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:54.680 the warriors brought with them. 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.920 Yeah, yeah, there's at the works of homer Are you know, 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:02.240 are actually a key point in trying to understand what 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:06.679 these ships were and how they functioned. Okayse And points 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:10.240 out that ancient freighters, as the my Sitians would have used, 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:14.080 typically traversed by sail alone. They were roomy and slow 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:18.800 ships built exclusively for war. However, it had to be galleys. 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:21.320 We've kind of gotten to this already, I think. So 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:23.720 they had to be fast when it mattered, so they 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:27.440 could depend on sails when speed wasn't a necessity, or 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.240 when the wind was good, which, of course it's worth 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:32.040 noting that if the wind is really good, that will 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:35.240 propel you rather swiftly. But conditions have to be right, 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:38.800 and you could not necessarily count on the Mediterranean winds, 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:42.000 especially if conflict was involved. So the sails could easily 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.720 be stored away in favor of that ore power that 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:49.640 was dependent entirely upon the muscles of your crew. And 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:53.120 he points out that the ore power here again in 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:56.720 Homeric times, if you will, was provided by the crew 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:59.559 of the vessel, which also included the ship's fighting men. 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.880 So it's interesting. So on one hand, we shouldn't make 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.800 the mistake of thinking that they were not good oarsmen. 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:10.720 They were apparently very good oarsman, highly trained, very skilled. 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:15.160 There's actually a part in the Odyssey where Alcinous brags 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:20.000 that brags about what great oarsmen his men are. But 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:23.040 they were not just dedicated to oarsmen. They also would 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:24.600 have been called on to do all these other things 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:25.000 as well. 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:26.400 M okay. 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:29.560 So there was a careful balance apparently in play to 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:33.200 how hard you would push your rowers, because if you 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:36.720 were planning on, you know, making an amphibious landing, an 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:40.080 amphibious invasion on the other end of your journey, they 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:42.400 need to be able to get up and go and 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:45.640 do that. So I was trying to imagine, like what 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.000 would be comparison with it would be kind of like 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.360 if an NFL team had to potentially row to I 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:53.719 don't know, the Super Bowl and then play the game 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:54.440 when they got there. 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:56.640 Yeah, they've got to run to the game or something. 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.960 Yeah. So the author here he contends that, yeah, basically 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:04.800 these folks would rather sail than row, and they would 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:07.640 depend on sailing as often as possible. But again, there 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:09.720 are going to be certain conditions where it's just going 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:12.360 to make sense and make all the difference to get 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:16.679 everybody pushing those oars or pulling those oars. Now, what 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.800 were these ships like? We have few illustrations. We have 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:23.640 the descriptions by Homer, including part in the Odyssey where 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:26.600 Odysseus builds a new ship, But even a lot of 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.440 this didn't come together till the twentieth century when we 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:35.560 had maritime archaeology to give us some actual evidence to 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:38.760 base some of this on other archaeological data, that we 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:42.160 could take some of those passages and make better sense 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:45.880 of what they were saying. So Cason contends that the vessels, 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:50.800 which he jokingly describes as seagoing greyhounds during this period 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:54.000 between thirteen hundred and twelve hundred BC, would have looked 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:58.079 essentially like this, long low holes on abruptly rising prow. 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:01.280 That's the front of the ship. They had a curved stern, 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:04.920 as opposed to the reported build of the sea people's vessels, 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:07.679 which were described as having a straight stern. The stern, 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:10.480 of course, is the back of the ship. All right, 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:12.600 So at this point we're talking more or less about 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:16.760 single level galleys becoming the norm. These would have been 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:21.240 single level or vessels powered by around thirty men, and 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.439 we based a lot of this on like vase paintings, 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:30.520 Homeric writings, you know, chronicles from eighth century BC, and 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:34.199 so forth that let us know that. Okay, eventually though, 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:37.080 the ships begin to vary in size, the number of 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:39.360 the oars ends up ranging from twenty to forty or 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:42.520 even fifty. We'll get into that more later. Early on, though, 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:45.160 we would have been dealing with a case where most 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:48.080 of these vessels would have been privately owned, and they 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:52.240 would have engaged in both merchant trade and raiding so 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.319 as well as you know, carrying armed men to a destination, 0:13:55.920 --> 0:14:00.800 and there would have been more of this than dedicated fighting. Again, 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.000 we get into that idea that there's a thin line 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:08.480 between between what is piracy and what is some other pursuit, 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:12.560 including actual trade. But as all this heats up, it 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:15.520 gets to the point where, okay, a single row of 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:18.120 ores is not going to cut it. You're going to 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:23.920 need an additional row of ores. And it's interesting getting 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:28.160 into this because yeah, we see the birth of the 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:34.160 fifty ORed vessels, the penticonters, which might have apparently reflected 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:37.680 a major development in the eighth century BCE, according to 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:41.760 Fagan and Rancoff, who I scided in the last episode. 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.840 That's Brian Fagan and Boris Rhancoff. So the vessels we're 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.440 talking about here would have featured two levels of rowers, 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.160 one rowing at the same level is those single row 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:55.920 galleys that came before, but then a lower level in 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:59.440 the hold working ores through apertures in the hole. So 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:02.000 it's interesting. You might imagine that we just built one 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:04.280 on top of the other, like an ice cream cone, 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:06.880 but it's not quite the same. It's a little more 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:10.400 complicated than that ends up involving like a reworking of 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:11.520 the whole itself. 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:15.080 Now, on one hand, I would imagine, okay, you're adding 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.840 more ores, more rowers. That gives your boat more power, 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:23.040 you can achieve greater speeds. But from what I understand, 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:27.680 splitting the operators of the vessel the power in the 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:32.440 rowers into multiple levels also has other implications for the 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:35.080 design and construction of the vessel. 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:37.600 Yeah, yeah, And I found this really interesting as well, 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:41.200 because it wasn't simply that you could have more ores 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.720 per vessel and therefore more power. In fact, in many 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.440 cases you'd have vessels with the same number of ores 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.640 that a single level craft would have boasted. But since 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.720 you can spread them out across two levels, that means 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:56.680 you can make the craft itself shorter. So you had 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.400 the ability to make not only a faster vessel, but 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:01.760 this is key, a more maneuverable one. 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.120 Ah Right, So a shorter vessel will have less drag 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:07.840 in the water and will be able to turn more easily, 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:11.080 and I guess probably also have less weight per unit 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:12.000 of rowing space. 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:17.360 Yeah. I don't know if there's an actual decent comparison 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:19.920 to be made to buses, but I couldn't help but 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.360 think about like the difference between like a double decker 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.360 bus and one of those giant buses where they're like 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.680 joined together with this bendi part in the middle, because 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:32.240 I guess both of them can be difficult to maneuver 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:35.680 in their own way. But I don't know, maybe it's 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.760 a halfway useful analogy. But these general changes that are 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:42.560 going on here, according to Fake and Rohnkoff, they seem 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:46.760 to suggest though that fighting capacity was becoming more and 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:50.680 more important, and carrying capacity was less of a concern. 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:54.520 So yeah, you're you're having to upgrade the design of 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.080 your vessels in order to emphasize speed and mobility as 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:00.320 opposed to just how much stuff you could care, be 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:05.000 that that stuff cargo or troops or something else. However, 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.880 the length of these vessels does gradually increase, incorporating more 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:12.840 and more ores, upward of one hundred. So again everything 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:17.240 continues to evolve new forms, and then like stretch the 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:19.680 ability of that form, what happens if we added more 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:32.960 ores to it and so forth put more ores in. Yeah, 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.480 now it's also crucial to mention that. Apparently, as action 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:40.520 in the Mediterranean heats up again over this, over years 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:47.920 and years, decades and decades, ultimately centuries, sea based trade, piracy, colonization, 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:53.119 and more, this kind of eventually ends the days of 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:58.200 independently held galleys being like the main brunt of any 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:02.359 force out there. So Cason wrote writes about this, saying quote, 0:18:02.359 --> 0:18:04.720 in these days, there was no one state that had 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.280 the naval strengths to police the seas. Every city involved 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:10.800 in trade had to maintain its own fleet, not only 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:14.399 to protect its merchantmen against the ubiquitous pirates, whose calling 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:17.440 now as before, had the status of a recognized profession, 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:21.840 but also to repel attacks delivered by commercial rivals, since 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:26.040 such attempts were an acknowledged means of discouraging competition. 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:29.760 Literal corporate raiders exactly. 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.320 Yeah, so it's dangerous out there. And yeah, any stresses 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:35.520 that the building up of navies and the perfecting of 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:38.360 these different maritime war technologies in the ancient world, all 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:40.800 this one hand in hand with the planning, the planting 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:43.520 of colonies, the opening up of new trade routes between 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:48.200 these various city states, and so forth. So yeah, it's 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:51.880 just it gets more and more dangerous, and the maritime 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:56.040 technology evolves to keep up with that. Now, the pentagonter 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:59.280 seemed again that the two leveled org vessels seems to 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:01.920 have remained the main warship from the eight through six 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:07.439 centuries BCE, But clearly this climate demanded greater innovation, you know, 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:12.080 to continue to to you know, to push the boundaries 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:16.160 of what's possible. Every conceivable edge is going to count 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:21.119 in one of these altercations. And so we see a 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:23.720 couple of things, and they're very interconnected here. One was 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:27.439 the increasing importance of the nautical ram, which we'll get 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:29.959 to in a bit. But then the other goes in 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:31.959 hand in hand with that as well, and that is 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:36.239 I think everyone can guess, add a third level of 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:42.200 rowers to your vessel optimize. Yeah, add more ores, more 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:45.679 humans pulling those ores so that we can have more power. 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.480 So the name of the try Rem comes from three 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:49.960 levels of rowers. 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:54.720 That's right, the try Rem. It's basically like we've been describing. 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:59.080 It's the Penticonter with a third level added. But make 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:03.080 no mistake, this is really did apparently push the engineering 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:06.679 limits of the ancient world, and according to what I've 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.800 been reading, could easily be considered the most advanced vehicle 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.320 of the age. So it wasn't just let's strap another 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:17.639 row of oars up there, it wasn't. It involved redesigning 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:22.679 the whole ship. And these were advanced vehicles that in 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.240 the last episode we compared to jet fighters of today, 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.439 ultimately in the long run, too expensive for city states 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:31.800 to keep up with. And of course these became just 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:35.720 a staple of sea conflict and sea power of the day. 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:38.359 The Greeks used these, and then the defeat of the 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:43.000 Persians at Salamis in for ADBCE, and they would be 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.639 a major part of their maritime might. This battle, by 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.879 the way, I am reminded, is depicted in the twenty 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:54.960 fourteen three hundred sequel. As usual a sequel, there was 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:57.080 a sequel. I saw part of it on an airplane, 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:01.399 as usual. I am dubious about out looking to a 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:05.960 three hundred picture for any kind of historical accuracy. But 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:08.000 I don't know. People who have seen the movie write 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:10.360 in maybe it has some really good trirem scenes. I mean, 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:12.840 I would at least ask that there would be cool 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.840 trirem action sequences in that picture. So, as far as 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:20.000 we know, with the trirem the third level, the top 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:24.919 level would have had the oarsmen rowing through outriggers so 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:27.680 as to keep the whole as narrow as possible, while 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:31.359 the two lower levels would have rowed through whole apertures. 0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:34.159 As such, you could power up a vessel with a 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:36.960 good one hundred and seventy ores and it would have 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:41.280 been as maneuverable as the two level pentdiconter, but ultimately 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:45.640 faster and deadlier. Now where did this innovation come from? Well, 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:49.080 according to the author, as I was reading here, Athenian 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:55.199 general and historian Thucydides credited to the Corinthian shipwright Menocles 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:58.240 in the eighth century, but Fagan and Rankov state that 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:02.119 more recent scholarships suggest that the invention hailed from perhaps 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:05.800 the Egyptians or the Phoenicians under Persian rule near the 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:09.560 end of the sixth century. Now, as of their writing, 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:13.320 there had been zero wrecks of these vessels discovered, duing 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:16.160 part to the fact that they would have apparently it's 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:20.120 thought have had positive buoyancy of hold. But in any 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:23.080 case this was the case, then it's still the case. 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:26.840 Now thousands of these ships were built and lost, and 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:29.600 apparently truly lost, because we've never found a wreck. 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:32.360 Now by never found a wreck, rob you mean never 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:38.520 found a substantially intact wreck. But we do have pieces, right. 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:42.960 We have pieces. We have we have various other bits 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:45.720 and pieces, you know, we have literary and historic writings. 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:49.200 And there were also some remains of the sea harbor 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:53.240 sheds at Piraeus near Athens that were also helpful in 0:22:53.320 --> 0:22:56.119 trying to piece together exactly what a trirem was. 0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:59.920 But if somebody's trying to build a replica replica of 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:03.320 an ancient Greek tryrem, in the modern world, it is 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:08.040 an exercise involving some amount of speculation and interpretation. You 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:10.960 don't just have like one you can copy right right. 0:23:11.080 --> 0:23:15.440 And this was the endeavor in the creation of the 0:23:15.560 --> 0:23:19.840 Olympias in the mid nineteen eighties, where you had a 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.320 bunch of experts come together and build what I've seen 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:27.240 referred to as a floating hypothesis. Let's take everything we 0:23:27.400 --> 0:23:31.639 know about what a tr rem probably was, you know 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:34.680 what we know about ancient construction techniques and so forth, 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:38.720 and let's build one with the understanding that we're we're 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:43.520 not going to get it one hundred percent correct. You know, 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:47.240 nobody has I have seen anybody arguing that the resulting 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:51.480 ship is just dead on. It's inevitably incorrect. It cannot 0:23:51.800 --> 0:23:55.359