Warships in the Ancient World
A Greek Trireme.
The Olympias, a modern reconstruction of a war galley based upon interpretations of paintings and drawings of the Golden Age period of 500 to 300 BC.
The Mediterranean peoples began to build warships by about 2,000 BC which were distinctly different from merchant ships. The warships were always powered by oars and were lean and long and fast. Speed was the governing factor not cargo capacity. Warships and merchant ships are designed by these factors to this very day. The war galley shown above had three banks of oars, hence tri-reme, three banks. In Ursa's time 1,300 BC, only one bank was used, but the vessels would have looked much the same.
Here is another view of the Olympias. She's 120 feet long.
You can see the top row of rowers, but underneath are two more, the lowest being just above the water line. Note the fantail stern rising up. Some were even higher. A ship of 1300 BC would have been only a little shorter, but would have only have had one bank of rowers on the main deck.
Olympias's rowers. You can see the three levels; uppermost are the thranites, next down the zygites and lowest down the thalamites. Note the three thalamite Valkyries at the lower right working their oars. Contrary to popular belief, Ben-Hur notwithstanding, the ancient world peoples almost never used slaves as rowers, not even the Romans. When the Romans were in trouble during the Punic Wars, they used slaves but promised them their freedom upon victory. The work was too exacting and depended upon willing hands. The Olympias can reach a ramming speed of ten miles per hour, but will cruise at five or six, either under sail or under oars.
Oh yes, the ram. Here is a Roman ram of cast bronze.
This one dates from the 2nd century BC, is 7.5 feet long and weighs 1/2 ton. Ramming was a highly skilled battle technique much like sword fighting. A well trained crew of free rowers were necessary to make quick and unexpected moves so as to fool the enemy and hole him.
This is a plan of the Olympias.
Note the lean lines and the fact that the galley sits high on the water. She was built light so as to glide as effortlessly as possible. Heavy internal truss cables (hypozomata) tightened by tourniquets stiffened the hull and kept the ends from drooping (hogging). Merchant ships used them as well.
Mycenaean Galleys
But what of galleys in 1300 BC? What do we know? Not an awful lot. We have only fragmentary data in the form of graffiti and pictures on pottery, and because of the artistic conventions of the day, most of it is highly distorted. About the best rendering of a Mycenaean galley is this little wall picture showing a Minoan paddled galley of about 1600 BC.
And this one level or two level galley from about 800 BC. The artist is struggling with perspective, so it's difficult to tell exactly what he's trying to convey, but it's got a snake head prow, a ram. two steering oars, and a fantail stern. The fantail stern, by the way, kept the ship's head to the wind in severe storms when no canvas could be carried. If a ship came on to the wind in a storm, she would fall into trough and broach or roll over and be swamped. Things we thought were ornaments for years we now know were useful items.
In the end, we do not have much of a definite picture of war galleys of Ursa's time, but history works that way, we must interpolate. So, we picture Bokd's Ranger as a 50 oared, single banked galley something like the Olympias but a little shorter. They would have had to carry 50 rowers, perhaps ten sailors, and maybe 20 more soldiers and archers; that's 70 men and maybe five officers, a captain, two mates, a boatswain (in charge of all the gear), captain of the soldiers and archers, plus the cook. Not exactly Homer's little cockleshell boats that one runs up on shore at night - not at 80 or more tons.
Hmmm...