Design
By their design, Roman warships do not fundamentally differ from the ships of Greece and the Hellenistic states of Asia Minor. Among the Romans, we find the same tens and hundreds of oars as the main propulsion device of the vessel, the same multi-tiered arrangement, approximately the same aesthetics of the fore and stern posts.
All the same - but on a new round of evolution. The ships are getting bigger. They acquire artillery (lat.tormenta), a permanent party of marines (lat.manipularii or liburnarii), equipped with assault ramps - "crows" and battle towers.
According to the Roman classification, all warships were called naves longae, "long ships", due to their relatively narrow hulls, maintaining a width to length ratio of 1: 6 or more. The opposite of warships were transport (naves rotundae, "round ships").
Warships were divided according to the presence / absence of a ram on naves rostrae (with a ram) and all other, "just" ships. Also, since sometimes ships with one or even two rows of oars did not have a deck, there was a division into open ships, naves apertae (for the Greeks, afracts), and closed ships, naves constratae (for the Greeks, cataphracts).
Types
The main, most accurate and widespread classification is the division of antique warships depending on the number of rows of oars.
Ships with one row of oars (vertically) were called moneris or uniremes, and in modern literature they are often referred to simply as galleys, with two - biremes or liburns, with three - triremes or triremes, with four - tetreras or quadriremes, with five - penters or quinquerems, with six - hexers.
However, further the clear classification is "blurred". In ancient literature, you can find references to gepter / septer, octer, enner, decemrem (ten-row?) And so on up to sedecimrem (sixteen-row ships!). Also known is the story of Athenaeus from Navcratis about the tesseraconter ("forty-shot"). If we mean by this the number of rowing lines, then it will turn out to be complete nonsense. Both from a technical and military point of view.
The only conceivable semantic content of these names is the total number of rowers on one side, one cut (section) in all tiers. That is, for example, if in the bottom row we have one rower for one oar, in the next row - two, in the third row - three, etc., then in total in five tiers we get 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 15 rowers … Such a ship, in principle, can be called a quindecime.
In any case, the question of the architecture of Roman (as well as Carthaginian, Hellenistic, etc.) warships larger than the trireme is still open.
Roman ships were on average larger than those of the Greek or Carthaginian class. With a fair wind, masts were installed on the ship (up to three on quinquerems and hexers) and sails were raised on them. Large ships were sometimes armored with bronze plates and were almost always hung before battle with oxhides soaked in water to protect them from incendiary shells.
Also, on the eve of the collision with the enemy, the sails were rolled up and placed in covers, and the masts were laid on the deck. The overwhelming majority of Roman warships, unlike, for example, Egyptian ones, did not have stationary, non-removable masts at all.
Roman ships, like Greek ships, were optimized for coastal naval battles, rather than long raids on the high seas. It was impossible to provide good habitability for a medium ship for one and a half hundred rowers, two or three dozen sailors and the centuria of the Marine Corps. Therefore, in the evening the fleet strove to land on the shore. Crews, rowers, and most of the Marines disembarked and slept in tents. In the morning we sailed on.
The ships were built quickly. In 40-60 days, the Romans could build a quinquerema and fully commission it. This explains the impressive size of the Roman fleets during the Punic Wars. For example, according to my calculations (cautious and therefore probably underestimated), during the First Punic War (264-241 BC), the Romans commissioned more than a thousand first class warships: from trireme to quinquereme. (That is, not counting the unirem and bireme.)
The ships had a relatively low seaworthiness and in the event of a strong sudden storm, the fleet risked perishing almost in full force. In particular, during the same First Punic War, due to storms and storms, the Romans lost at least 200 first class ships. On the other hand, due to fairly advanced technologies (and, it seems, not without the help of sophisticated Roman magicians), if the ship did not die from bad weather or in battle with the enemy, it served for a surprisingly long time. The normal service life was considered to be 25-30 years. (For comparison: the British battleship Dreadnought (1906) became obsolete eight years after construction, and the American Essex-class aircraft carriers were put into reserve 10-15 years after the start of operation.)
Since they sailed only with a fair wind, and the rest of the time they used exclusively the muscular strength of the rowers, the speed of the ships left much to be desired. The heavier Roman ships were even slower than the Greek ones. A ship capable of squeezing 7-8 knots (14 km / h) was considered "fast", and a cruising speed of 3-4 knots was considered quite decent for a quinkvere.
The crew of the ship, in the likeness of the Roman land army, was called "centuria". There were two main officials on the ship: the captain ("trierarch"), responsible for the actual navigation and navigation, and the centurion, responsible for the conduct of hostilities. The latter commanded several dozen marines.
Contrary to popular belief, in the republican period (V-I centuries BC) all crew members of Roman ships, including rowers, were civilians. (The same, incidentally, applies to the Greek navy.) Only during the Second Punic War (218-201 BC), as an extraordinary measure, did the Romans go for the limited use of freedmen in the navy. However, later, slaves and prisoners were indeed used more and more as rowers.
The fleet was originally commanded by two "naval duumvirs" (duoviri navales). Subsequently, the prefects (praefecti) of the fleet appeared, approximately equivalent in status to modern admirals. In a real combat situation, individual formations from several to several dozen ships were sometimes commanded by the ground commanders of the troops transported on the ships of this formation.
Biremes and Liburns
Biremes were two-tiered rowing vessels, and liburns could be built in both two- and single-tiered versions. The usual number of rowers on the bireme is 50-80, the number of marines is 30-50. In order to increase the capacity, even small biremes and liburns were often equipped with a closed deck, which was not usually done on ships of a similar class in other fleets.
Rice. 1. Roman bireme (set artemon and main sail, the second row of oars removed)
Already during the First Punic War, it became clear that the biremes could not effectively fight against the Carthaginian quadrimes with a high side, protected from ramming by many oars. To fight the Carthaginian ships, the Romans began to build Quinquerems. Biremes and liburns over the next centuries were used mainly for sentinel, messenger and reconnaissance services, or for fighting in shallow water. Also, biremes could be effectively used against trade and combat single-row galleys (usually pirate ones), in comparison with which they were much better armed and protected.
However, during the battle of Actium (Actium, 31 BC), it was the light biremes of Octavian who were able to prevail over the large ships of Antony (triremes, quinquerems and even decemme, according to some sources) due to their high maneuverability and, probably, wide the use of incendiary shells.
Along with the seaworthy liburns, the Romans built many different types of river liburns, which were used in hostilities and when patrolling the Rhine, Danube, Nile. If we consider that 20 even not very large Liburns are able to take on board the full cohort of the Roman army (600 people), it will become clear that the formations of maneuverable Liburn and Bireme were an ideal tactical means of rapid reaction in river, lagoon and skerry areas when operating against pirates, enemy foragers and barbarian troops crossing water barriers in disorder.
Rice. 2. Libourne-monera (top-back view)
Interesting details about the technology of making liburn can be found in Vegetius (IV, 32 et seq.).
Triremes
The crew of a typical trireme consisted of 150 rowers, 12 sailors, approximately 80 marines, and several officers. The transport capacity was, if necessary, 200-250 legionnaires.
The Trireme was a faster ship than the Quadri- and Quinquerems, and more powerful than the Biremes and Liburns. At the same time, the dimensions of the trireme made it possible, if necessary, to place throwing machines on it.
Trireme was a kind of "golden mean", a multifunctional cruiser of the ancient fleet. For this reason, triremes were built in the hundreds and were the most common type of versatile warship in the Mediterranean.
Rice. 3. Roman trireme (trireme)
Quadrireme
Quadriremes and larger warships were also not uncommon, but they were massively built only directly during major military campaigns. Mostly during the Punic, Syrian and Macedonian wars, i.e. in the III-II centuries. BC. Actually, the first quadri- and quinquerems were improved copies of the Carthaginian ships of similar classes, first encountered by the Romans during the First Punic War.
Rice. 4. Quadrireme
Quinquerems
Such ships are referred to by ancient authors as Penteres or Quinquerems. In old translations of Roman texts, you can also find the terms "five-decker" and "five-decker".
These battleships of Antiquity were often not supplied with a ram, and, being armed with throwing machines (up to 8 on board) and manned by large parties of marines (up to 300 people), they served as a kind of floating fortresses, with which the Carthaginians were very difficult to cope.
In a short time, the Romans commissioned 100 penters and 20 triremes. And this despite the fact that before that the Romans had no experience of building large ships. At the beginning of the war, the Romans used triremes, which were kindly provided to them by the Greek colonies in Italy (Tarentum and others).
In Polybius we find: "The confirmation of what I have just said about the extraordinary courage of the Romans is the following: when they first thought of sending their troops to Messena, they did not have not only sailing ships, but long ships in general and not even a single boat; ships and three-deck they took from the Tarantians and Locrians, as well as from the Eleans and the inhabitants of Naples, and they boldly ferried troops on them. At this time, the Carthaginians attacked the Romans in the strait; the hands of the Romans; the Romans modeled on it and built their entire fleet …"
Rice. 5. Quinquereme
In total, during the First Punic War, the Romans built over 500 quinquerems. During the same war, the first hexers were also built (in the translation of "World History" by Polybius FG Mishchenko - "six-decks").
One of the likely options for the location of oars and rowers on a large Roman warship (in this case, on a quadrireme) is shown in the illustration on the right.
It is also appropriate to mention a fundamentally different version of the quinquereme. Many historians point to the inconsistencies that arise when interpreting a quinquereme as a ship with five tiers of oars located one above the other. In particular, the length and mass of the oars of the topmost row are critically large, and their effectiveness is in serious doubt. As an alternative design of the quinquereme, a kind of "two-and-a-half-rim" is put forward, which has a staggered arrangement of oars (see Fig. 5-2). It is assumed that there were 2-3 rowers on each oar of the quinquerems, and not one, as, for example, on trirems.
Rice. 5-2. Quinquereme
Hexers
There is evidence that the Romans also built more than five-tiered ships. So, when in 117 A. D. Hadrian's legionnaires reached the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, they built a fleet, the flagship of which was allegedly a hexera (see figure). However, already during the battle with the Carthaginian fleet at Eknom (First Punic War), the flagships of the Roman fleet were two hexers ("six-decked").
According to some calculations, the largest ship built using ancient technology could be a seven-tiered ship up to 300 feet long (about 90 m). A longer ship would inevitably break on the waves.
Rice. 6. Hexera, the superdreadnought of Antiquity
Super heavy ships
These include Septers, Enners, and Decimremes. Both the first and the second were never built in large quantities. Ancient historiography contains only a few scanty references to these leviathans. Obviously, the Enners and Decimremes were very slow-moving and could not withstand the speed of the squadron on a par with the Triremes and Quinquerems. For this reason, they were used as coastal battleships to guard their harbors, or to tax enemy naval fortresses as mobile platforms for sieging towers, telescopic assault ladders (sambuca) and heavy artillery. In a linear battle, Mark Antony tried to apply decimremes (31 BC, battle of Actium), but they were burned by the fast ships of Octavian Augustus.
Rice. 7. Enner, is a 3-4-tiered warship, on each oar of which there are 2-3 rowers. (armament - up to 12 throwing machines)
Rice. 8. Decemrema (c. 41 BC). It is a 2-3 longline battleship with 3-4 rowers on each oar. (armament - up to 12 throwing machines)
Armament
Schematic drawing of a boarding "raven"
The main weapon of the Roman ship was the marines:
If the Greeks and Hellenistic states mostly used a ramming strike as the main tactical technique, then the Romans, back in the First Punic War, relied on a decisive boarding battle. Roman manipularii (marines) had excellent fighting qualities. The Carthaginians, who relied on the speed and maneuverability of their ships, had more skillful sailors, but were unable to oppose similar soldiers to the Romans. First, they lost the naval battle at Mila, and a few years later, the Roman Quinquerems, equipped with boarding "ravens", crushed the Carthaginian fleet at the Aegat Islands.
Since the First Punic War, the assault ramp - "raven" (Latin corvus) has become almost an integral part of the Roman ships of the first class. The "Raven" was an assault ladder of a special design, it was ten meters long and about 1.8 meters wide. It was named "Raven" because of the characteristic beak-like shape of a large iron hook (see figure), which was located on the lower surface of the assault ladder. Either ramming an enemy ship, or simply breaking its oars in a glancing blow, the Roman ship sharply lowered the "raven", which pierced the deck with its steel hook and was firmly stuck in it. The Roman marines drew their swords … And after that, as Roman authors usually put it, "everything was decided by the personal valor and zeal of soldiers who wanted to excel in battle in front of their superiors."
Despite the skepticism of individual researchers contradicting not only common sense, but also the original sources, the fact of the use of throwing machines on the ships of the Roman fleet is hardly in doubt.
For example, in Appian's "Civil Wars" (V, 119) we find: "When the appointed day came, with loud shouts, the battle began with a competition of oarsmen, throwing stones, incendiary shells, and arrows using both machines and hands. Then the ships themselves began to break each other, striking either the sides, or into the epotides - the bars protruding in front, - or into the bow, where the blow was strongest and where he, dropping the crew, made the ship incapable of action. and spears. " (italics are mine - A. Z.)
This and several other fragments of ancient authors allow us to conclude that throwing machines, from the IV century. BC. widely used in the land armies of the developed states of Antiquity, they were also used on Hellenistic and Roman ships. At the same time, however, the question of the scale of application of this fruit of the "high technologies" of Antiquity remains controversial.
In terms of their weight and overall characteristics and firing accuracy, the most suitable for use on deck or semi-decked ships of any class are light torsion two-arm arrow throwers ("scorpions").
Scorpion, the most common gun mount in the Roman navy
Further, the use of such devices as the harpax (see below), as well as the shelling of enemy ships and coastal fortifications with stone, lead and incendiary cannonballs would have been impossible without the use of heavier two-arm torsion arrow and stone throwers - ballistae. Of course, the difficulties of aiming fire from a swinging platform (which is any ship), significant mass and dimensions limit the probable range of types of Roman ships on which ballistae could be installed. However, on such types as, say, Enners and Decemrems, which were precisely special floating artillery platforms, it is not so difficult to imagine ballistas.
Ballista
The latter also applies to the onager, a single-shoulder torsion stone thrower. There is every reason to believe that if onagers were used as deck artillery, it was only for shelling ground targets. Note that the one shown in Fig. 5 the ship's onager is equipped with wheels primarily not to carry it from place to place. On the contrary, the onagers installed on the decks of super-heavy Roman ships were probably fixed with ropes, although not tightly, but with certain tolerances, as in many cases the later gunpowder naval artillery. The wheels of the onager, like the wheels of the lathes of the later medieval trebuchets, served to compensate for the strong overturning moment that occurred at the time of the shot.
Onager. The wheels of the deck onager most likely served to compensate for the overturning moment that occurs at the time of the shot. Let's also pay attention to the hooks shown at the front of the machine. For them, the ropes were to be wound to hold the onager in place while rolling.
The most interesting throwing machine that could be used in the Roman navy is the polybolus, a semi-automatic arrow launcher, which is an improved scorpion. If the descriptions are to be believed, this machine was continuously firing arrows from a "magazine" located above the guide stock. The chain drive, driven by the rotation of the gate, simultaneously cocked the polybol, pulling the bowstring, fed an arrow from the "magazine" to the box and, on the next turn, lowered the bowstring. Thus, the polyball can even be considered a fully automatic weapon with a forced reloading mechanic.
Polybol (semi-automatic arrowhead)
For fire support, the Romans also used hired Cretan archers, who were famous for their accuracy and remarkable incendiary arrows ("malleoli").
In addition to arrows, spears, stones and iron-bound logs, Roman ship ballistas also fired heavy iron harpoons (harpax). The harpax tip had an ingenious design. After penetrating into the hull of an enemy ship, it opened, so that it was almost impossible to remove the harpax back. Thus, the adversary was "lassoed" preferably from two or three ships at once and switched to a favorite tactical technique: in fact, boarding combat.
Harpax. Above - harpax, general view. Below - the tip of the harpax, which opened after breaking through the casing
Regarding the harpax, Appian reports the following: Agrippa invented the so-called harpax - a five-foot log, studded with iron and fitted with rings at both ends. On one of the rings hung a harpax, an iron hook, and to the other were attached many small ropes, which were pulled by machines harpax, when he, being thrown by a catapult, hooked on an enemy ship.
But most of all, the harpax was distinguished, which was thrown onto ships due to its lightness from a long distance and snagged whenever the ropes pulled it back with force. It was difficult to chop it off for those who were attacked, since it was bound with iron; its length also made the ropes inaccessible in order to chop them off. In view of the fact that the weapon was put into action for the first time, they have not yet invented such measures against it as sickles planted on shafts. The only remedy that could be thought of against the harpax, in view of the unexpectedness of its appearance, was to move in the opposite direction, backing up. But since the opponents did the same, the forces of the rowers were equal, the harpax continued to do his job. "[Civil Wars, V, 118-119]
Despite all the technical and artillery sophistication described, the ram (Latin rostrum) was a much more reliable and powerful weapon of the ship than ballistae and scorpions.
Battering rams were made of iron or bronze and were usually used in pairs. A large ram (actually rostrum) in the form of a high flat trident was under water and was intended to crush the underwater part of the enemy ship. Rostrum weighed very, very decently. For example, a bronze ram from a Greek bireme found by Israeli archaeologists tightened 400 kg. It is easy to imagine how much the rostrum of the Roman Quinquerems weighed.
The small ram (proembolon) was above the water and had the shape of a ram, pork, crocodile head. This second, small, ram served as a buffer preventing a) the destruction of the ship's stem upon collision with the side of an enemy ship; b) too deep penetration of the rostrum into the hull of the enemy ship.
The latter could have dire consequences for the attacker. The ram could get stuck in the enemy corps and the attacker completely lost maneuverability. If the enemy ship burned, you could burn with him for the company. If the enemy ship was sinking, then at best it was possible to remain without a ram, and at worst - to drown with it.
A very exotic weapon was the so-called "dolphin". It was a large oblong stone or lead ingot, which was lifted to the top of the mast or to a special shot before the battle (that is, to a long swing beam with a block and a winch). When the enemy ship was in the immediate vicinity, the mast (shot) was piled up so that it was above the foe, and the cable holding the "dolphin" was cut off. The heavy blank fell down, breaking the deck, rowers' benches and / or the bottom of the enemy ship.
It is believed, however, that the "dolphin" was effective only against undecked ships, since only in this case could he pierce the bottom and drown the enemy ship. In other words, the "dolphin" could be used against pirate feluccas or liburns, but not in a collision with a first class ship. For this reason, the "dolphin" was rather an attribute of an unarmed merchant ship than a Roman triremes or quadrireme, already armed to the teeth.
Finally, various incendiary means were used on Roman ships, which included the so-called. braziers and siphons.
"Braziers" were ordinary buckets, into which flammable liquid was poured and set on fire immediately before the battle. Then the "brazier" was hung at the end of a long hook or shot. Thus, the "brazier" was carried five to seven meters forward along the course of the ship, which made it possible to empty a bucket of flammable liquid onto the deck of an enemy ship even before the proembolon and / or ram came into contact not only with the side, but even with the oars adversary.
It was with the help of "braziers" that the Romans broke through the formation of the Syrian fleet at the Battle of Panorma (190 BC).
Handheld flamethrower (left) and flamethrower siphon (right)
Tactics
The tactics of the Roman navy were simple and highly effective. Starting a rapprochement with the enemy fleet, the Romans bombarded it with a hail of incendiary arrows and other projectiles from throwing machines. Then, coming close to each other, they sank the enemy ships with ramming strikes or dumped on board. The tactical art consisted of vigorously maneuvering to attack one enemy ship with two or three of our own, and thereby create an overwhelming numerical superiority in a boarding battle. When the enemy fired intense counter fire from their throwing machines, the Roman Marines lined up with a turtle (as shown in the trireme drawing on the previous page), waiting for the deadly hail.
The picture shows a Roman centuria storming an enemy fortification in the turtle formation"
If the weather was favorable and "braziers" were available, the Romans could try to burn enemy ships without engaging in a boarding battle.
