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