Answer to the article "Roman fleet. Construction and types of ships"
Even a land hedgehog in the Tambov forest understands that a ship with three rows of oars will be faster than one with one. And with five - faster than three. Etc. Also a ship with a diesel engine of 3000 hp. (other things being equal or similar) will be faster than with 1000-horsepower. As I already said, "antique triremes" float from book to book, chilling waves, however, for some reason, they are always in the modern image. Not a single "antique" vase, not a single "antique" fresco with a reliable, unambiguously interpreted and equally unambiguously dated depiction of a ship with a multi-tiered arrangement of oars, no one, in my opinion, has yet been able to present. Everything that the sources offer us (for example, Shershov A. P., "On the history of military shipbuilding"), upon closer examination, turns out to be either sculptural compositions of some monuments (triumphal / rostral columns, etc.), or - decorations on dishes or on anything else. "Painting on a wine goblet", for example.
And, by the way, monumental artists and graphic designers of all times and peoples never considered themselves bound by the need to accurately observe the shapes and proportions of the objects depicted. You can observe, but you can do that, sir! There is even such a term - "stylization". And then there is the term "canon". Where did the portraits of Peter I and Alexander Suvorov come from, clad in blued steel knightly armor? Which they have never worn? And this was the canon in those days. No more.
Nothing has come down to us that could at least at a stretch be considered a "drawing of a trireme." The pictures came. Reached the canon.
Two questions:
1) to what extent does the canon correspond to the prototype?
2) when did it arise? If during or after the establishment of KVI, then there is simply nothing to talk about. The artist painted not what he saw, but what the history teacher convinced him of.
It would be nice to have an independent, so to speak, "absolute" method of dating all these columns, bas-reliefs, vases and chamber pots. According to the principle - they attached a sensor to the object, the device squeaked, and gave the age of the product. But what is not, that is not, which means that these images do not have any evidential power. However, perhaps modern historians know better than the Greek eyewitnesses what the Greek triremes looked like. Those of them who are more honorable indicate in the captions to the illustrations: "reconstruction".
The same A. P. Shershov, there are drawings of "trireme" with cuts, where everything is painted in detail. And also in the book Dudszus, Henriot, Krumrey. Das Grossbuch der Shiffstipen (Transpress, Berlin, 1983), and a whole lot of other literature on the history of shipbuilding. And everywhere - reconstruction. This can be seen with the naked eye: all these drawings are made in accordance with the modern requirements of GOST. I am not an inventor, not a creator, not even a designer or a reenactor, but in descriptive geometry I have always had a reinforced concrete "five", both at the institute and at the military school.
Yes, plans, "sides" and cuts are pretty. But it seems to me that the authors of these paper triremes themselves never tried to row upwind, even on a standard naval Yal-6, a six-rowed lifeboat. Displacement (roughly speaking, weight) empty - 960 kg. With a full-time team, equipment and supplies, about one and a half tons. At the school, I was the captain of the boat crew. So, I declare with authority: hard labor. Especially if the flip-flop is divided by four points. It is no coincidence that "hard labor" is the galley on which convicted criminals serve their sentences as rowers. It was later that the naval term crawled onto land with the preservation of its, so to speak, penitentiary content.
Rowing is very hard work. Firstly, it requires great physical strength to at least just lift and carry a heavy oar, and secondly, an excellent sense of rhythm. I beg you not to confuse a pleasure boat on the Moskva River with a lifeboat and even more so a galley! With a freeboard of the "six" of about 40-50 cm, the length of the oar is about 4 m, it is made of ash - a heavy durable tree, and the roll, the counterweight, is also filled with lead to make it easier for the rower to lift the oar from the water.
Let's think about it. For a six-rowed boat, the side height of half a meter is quite sufficient: its full-time crew is 8 people, weight is 1500 kg. Let's say our hypothetical trireme has only 10 oars in a row on each side, 60 in total. Let's say, one oarsman per oar, plus ten deck sailors, about thirty soldiers, plus the bosses and "gunners" - only about 110 people. I emphasize that all my "admissible" are taken not just to the minimum, but below the lower limit, outrageously small, all the calculations here I simplify to the limit and far beyond this limit! But even with such an unrealistically preferential approach, we get a ship with a tonnage of 150 tons. Such a vessel must have a side depth of at least one meter, unless, of course, it is a river barge or a port pontoon. It takes a long time to explain why, take it on faith or ask the ship's engineers. Just do not forget to warn that we are talking about a seagoing vessel.
Now let's build the simplest drawing. The binomial of Newton is not needed here, it is enough to recall Thales' theorem. We get the length of the oar of the LOWER row of about EIGHT meters! A boat oar weighs about 4-5 kg, unfortunately I don't remember exactly. How much will the galley weigh for the bottom row? 8-10? Dudki, 32-40, since the dependence is cubic, any engineer will confirm this to you, not only the shipbuilder. Is it possible to roll such an oar alone? Many, many hours in a row ?! No. Who doubts - I ask for the oars, even for the same yal. This means that we have two rowers per oar, and even that is speculative! - who tried it? maybe three of them are needed there? - and not one by one, which automatically increases our crew from 110 people to 170. What happens to the displacement? It also automatically increases!
A vicious circle has already begun, or rather, a spiral, which at all times has been a uniform curse, a bogeyman for engineers who design mobile equipment, and it does not matter which ones are wheelchairs or strategic bombers. The power grows - the mass grows, the greater the mass - the greater the required power! Cry at least! Therefore, qualitative leaps in this area were achieved only by a sharp increase in the specific power of the engines and the efficiency of the propellers. Example: Parsons created a workable steam turbine, and immediately the warships significantly increased their speed with a sharp improvement in other combat qualities.
But these are just flowers. We still have two rows of oars.
I take the height of the tier at 1 meter, which is again not enough, well, God bless him. We will assume that slaves served as rowers on all ancient galleys, for whom this space between decks was quite enough even during many days or even many months of voyages, although this, in fact, contradicts even the KVI, according to which legionnaires were rowers on the victorious Roman galleys. free roman citizens. Accordingly, the oar of the second tier is sixteen meters long and weighs about 300 kg.
At least kill, it is impossible to move such an oar while sitting. Neither two nor five. No, actually you can, but how long will those rowers last? For an hour? For half an hour? For ten minutes? And most importantly: what would be the frequency of that rowing? Ten strokes a minute? Five strokes? One? I'll get back to this a little later, but now let's take a quick look at the third tier. And here the oar is 24 meters long, weighing 0, 7-0, 8 tons. How many people do you order to put on the oar? Five? Ten? How much heavier the ship will be after that? This means that we are building up the side again, the displacement will increase again, the ship will become much wider and more draft; - will those rowers pull him? It is necessary to increase the number of oars in a row, but how much will the size of the ship increase? And the displacement? There is grass in the yard, firewood on the grass … And the wind in the face and the wave of a point of four? Oh, God forbid, at six?
And how, may I ask, will rowers of the first, second and third tiers synchronize their actions? Again, like a seasoned captain of a boat crew, I report: it is a very difficult task to debug the synchronized, well-coordinated work of six oarsmen on a lifeboat, and despite the fact that the boat crew is entirely enthusiastic, there is almost a fight going on for the right to take the rower's place in the boat. And on the gallery, sorry, bastards, sir. And they will have (according to KVI) long-term work on oars of completely different masses, therefore, with completely different moment of inertia, therefore, with completely different operating frequency of rowing, and all this is completely synchronous! I emphasize: perfectly synchronous! Shoot down at least one rower, and the khan, in the best case - the trireme will stop, in the worst case, it will leave the course (crashing into the next one), and break half of the oars before the fight.
Oars with different moment of inertia cannot be used on a rowing vessel. The oars should be close in parameters to each other. It is desirable - generally identical. But any scheme proposed by "reenactors" assumes the presence of oars of different lengths and masses, that is, with a different moment of inertia. (By the way, the yala has two regular spare oars, as much as 30% stock. And where would you order to store a 30% stock of her oars on a trireme?
Having reached this point in my reasoning, I, frankly, began to doubt myself. In the end, my calculations, whatever you say, are guilty of approximation, since they are based on a simple application of the principle of geometric similarity. Maybe it is not quite applicable for this case? For verification, I turned to a professional, metal engineer, employee of the Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph. D. M. V. Degtyarev, with a request to carry out the appropriate calculation according to all the rules of resistance. Mikhail Vasilyevich kindly went to meet me, and this is what happened: in order to get, so to speak, the "right to life", a twenty-five-meter oar should have a diameter of 0.5 m at the oarlock (!) And weigh 300 kg - this is provided that it is made from pine. Ash, clear to everyone, will be harder. So it turns out that the principle of similarity let me down a lot? I do not think so. 300 kg or 700 is not the difference. Both are equally unsuitable for classic, sit-down rowing. So if I was wrong, then not much, it doesn't matter.
And now we look at paintings and engravings of real galleys, well dated and documented, of the 16th-18th centuries. Fortunately for us, the galley, as a class of warship, remained in the navies of many countries for quite a long time, until the end of the eighteenth century, until where earlier, where later, it was replaced by a more advanced type of coastal action ship, the so-called gunboat), which more successfully combined paddle, sail and artillery weapons.
And here we have before us whole herds of galleys: Spanish, Genoese, Venetian, French, Swedish, Peter's, Turkish, Arab. Each and every one with one row of oars. Well, okay, Christians are stupid as traffic jams, but the Arabs, have they forgotten how to build triremes too ?!
To clarify the issue, we read smart books.
Here is what the same professor A. P. Shershov, who just a few pages ago painfully tried to recreate the trireme, about the Mediterranean gallery: the oars could reach a length of 25 m, the weight of the oar - 300 kg, the number of oarsmen - up to 10 per oar. The venerable "Das Grosse Buch der Schiffstipen" reports: the oars could reach a length of 12 m, the weight of the oar 300 kg. With a galley (galeas - heavy deck galley) side height of 1.5-2 m.
As you can see, there is also a discrepancy here. But he shouldn't embarrass us. First, it, again, is not of a fundamental nature: all the numbers, whatever one may say, are of the same order. Moreover, it cannot be otherwise. In the sources cited, the characteristics of oars are indicated in meters and kilograms. But meter and kilogram are, strictly speaking, very young units of measurement. In the "era of galleys" they were not. In the "era of galleys" the confusion and confusion in this area could drive any metrology specialist crazy. All these pounds, poods, spools, ounces, stones, livres of Tours, etc., etc., etc., not only differed among themselves, but also constantly "fluctuated" here and there, depending on the place and time. use. In addition, they still managed to change their meaning in principle: for example, both the pound and the livre are both a measure of weight and a monetary unit. So if a certain chronicler, well, let's say, Father Bernard from Saint-Denis, writes that the Count of Montmorency used 60-pound cannons during the siege of Chateau-Renaud, this does not mean, in itself, absolutely nothing. The cannons cost him £ 60 apiece? Or weighed 60 English pounds? Or is 60 pounds the weight of a kernel? But then what pounds? English? Russians? (You could have bought it in Muscovy too!) Or special "artillery" pounds (see Yu. Shokarev, "History of Weapons. Artillery")?
There are more questions than answers. Therefore, there is and cannot be any unambiguous translation of the old mass-dimensional parameters into modern ones. We can only talk about an approximate, plus or minus bast shoes, translation. So there will be inconsistency - this is natural. But he will not - and will not be - principled. Indeed, my calculation is rather rough, Degtyarev's calculation is engineering-precise, the reports of historians (based on reliable documentation of the Renaissance) fit very close to one to one. Nowhere is there a spread even by an order of magnitude.
Let's go from the other side. About thirty years ago, so-called replicas came into fashion, copies of various ancient techniques, made with the greatest possible approximation to the historical prototype. They copy everything: from Egyptian papyrus boats to WWI fighters. Among other things, ancient rowing and sailing ships are also copied. So, in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, a great many replicas of drakkars, Viking ships are built. All are single row! Englishman Tim Severin created replicas of an Irish rowing and sailing vessel and - oh, happiness! - Greek galley, the notorious "Argo". But here's to you: both are single-row!
But maybe no one has yet simply reached the point of reproducing a formidable combat trireme in nature? The answer to this question is amazing! The fact of the matter is that they "got it". Have tried it. And nothing happened!
In the late fifties and early sixties, Hollywood was swept by another fad: the fashion for films from ancient history. Many of them have even become world classics: here are Ben-Hur, Spartak and Cleopatra. Their budgets, even by now, were frantic, especially since the dollar in those days was much more expensive. The producers spared no money, the scale of extras and scenery surpasses any imagination. And so, in addition to everything, for the sake of heightening the entourage, it was decided to order full-fledged replica-remakes of antique stone-throwing machines and antique triremes. We will talk about catapults below, this is a separate and very interesting topic, here - about ships.
So, with the trireme came a misfortune: the case, which seemed so familiar to ancient shipbuilders, unexpectedly turned out to be beyond the capabilities of professional ship engineers of the middle of the twentieth century. I foresee an immediate response-objection from the defenders of the KVI: the ancient shipbuilders possessed "special techniques", magic and hermetic, which allowed them to solve technically impossible tasks nowadays. And then unknown nomads came, the craftsmen were chopped into cabbage, and the scrolls with magic spells were burned. And ends in the water.
No, no kidding. In the place of the guardians of the trad. history, I would erect a Monument to the Unknown Nomad in front of every humanitarian university. Indeed, if it were not for this ubiquitous and elusive guy of indefinite appearance and mysterious origin, it would be much more difficult to hide the ends in the water.
But if we remain realistic, then it is clear: the "ancient Greek" carpenter did not know and could not know even a thousandth part of what is known to modern specialists in materials science, mechanics, ship architecture, etc. He had neither aluminum-magnesium alloys, nor titanium, nor ultra-light carbon plastics at his disposal. If this were not so, we would all now speak Greek and at an accelerated pace we would colonize the satellites of Jupiter.
In general, the filmmakers had to shoot triremes in the pavilion, making them from foam and plywood. With a frame made of duralumin pipes, or I don't know what. Well, they are no strangers.
Georgy Kostylev "Rowers and oars"
OUTPUT … Neither the Greeks, nor the Romans built any two-, three- or more-tiered vessels, because, unlike historians, they were on friendly terms with their heads. The opinion about the existence in antiquity of "birem", "trireme", etc. there is a misunderstanding arising from either:
a) due to a complete lack of understanding by the authors of ancient texts of what they write about;
b) due to problems with translation and interpretation. It is very likely that Pliny and Diodorus had a good idea of what they were talking about, but when writing the originals of their works, they used some kind of marine terminology that did not come down to us, which was familiar and generally accepted in their time. It had never occurred to them to put a glossary at the end of the scroll. Then the translator - as usual, a thoroughly overland shtafirka, besides, perhaps not a first-class connoisseur of the language, did not understand some kind of speech turnover and did not delve into the topic, created (on paper) a "trireme", "quadrireme", etc. …
And then the original was lost. And that's all, cover the truth.
Alternatively, the author was writing a science fiction novel. Today we have ships with one row of oars. Let's fantasize how many enemies we will scare and drown if we have ships - wow! - with two, three, … fifteen rows of oars.
The third option: the authors, under the terms containing numerals, meant something else, some other characteristic feature that makes it possible to distinguish ships of one type from another. Which one? Here's an option. All terms with a numeral do not indicate the number of rowing lines, but the number of rowers per row. If this condition is met, even an incredible decera may acquire the right to life. Interesting: in the absolutist and early bourgeois fleets, the criterion for the distribution of warships according to ranks was something similar, namely the number of guns. Note, not the number of battery decks, but the number of guns! That is, it turns out that the trireme is a medium-sized galley, single-row, of course, with three oarsmen per oar. A pentirema or decera is a large rowing and sailing ship, on which oars, of course, are more massive, as a result of which more rowers are required.
We re-read the description of medieval galleys and their "sisters" from the New Time again. What do we see ?! The number of rowers on the oar reached ten people !! At the same time, the rowers did not sit on the banks-benches, but continuously walked back and forth across the deck. Here it is! Indeed, with this method of rowing, you can put ten people on the oar, and they will work with approximately the same efficiency. It's just that the outermost rower will take one or two strides, and the outermost rower will take five or six strides. If you put at least five rowers on the banks, then the outermost outer will only slightly wiggle your hands, and the outermost inner one will dangle at the end of the oar, like a rag on a pole. Absurd! From three to ten people to one oar can ONLY be put in the "STANDING" POSITION.
But then, again, there can be no talk of any multi-row vessels: if this is the first row, then what will the oars of the second, or, God forbid, the third row be, given that the height of the tier has automatically jumped to at least two meters, rowers are standing tall!
As for the galleys of Northern Europe, for example, Swedish or identical to them, Peter's, this is already another shipbuilding tradition, coming from the Viking drakkars. Its formation was influenced by the harsh sailing conditions in the Baltic, in the North and Barents Seas. Rowing there is exclusively seated, no more than two people per oar, and the oars, respectively, are shorter and lighter. By the way, Mediterranean galleys and galeases felt very uncomfortable in the inhospitable northern waters and lost to ships of the Northern European type.
I do not claim that I am right unconditionally and unambiguously. Perhaps someone can offer a more elegant explanation. Now it is important that the "antique" sailors did not have and could not have any multi-deck rowing ships, but there were ordinary galleys. Some are larger, others are smaller, but generally similar in type and all, of course, with one row of oars.
d_trader
