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The Battle of Salamis & the Ancient Greek Trieres
Military History Lecture Series (November 3, 2011)
Dr. Robinson Yost, Assistant Professor, History Social Sciences Department
Zeus the all-seeing grants to Athene’s prayerThat the wooden wall only shall not fall,
But help you and your children…withdraw from the foe…Divine Salamis, you will bring death to women’s sons.
The ancient Athenians were very good indeed. They pushed the outer limits of the design, materials, and men.
OUTLINE: “The Plan”
The Ships?
o the debate
o the reconstruction
o the results
o NYC or bust!
The War?
o setting the scene
o our main sources
The Battle?
o context
o tactics
o outcome
The Mystery: What was a trireme? How was it rowed?
Much literature has been published by many experts as to the appearance and the exact manner of rowing these vessels. Unfortunately, even the most erudite can only make educated guesses. We do know that the trireme, as the name implies, had three banks or tiers of oars…. But just how the rowers and benches were arranged we do not know. It has been assumed by some that there was only one rower to each oar, and that the uppermost and therefore longest oars were the only ones used when going into battle or where bursts of speed were required. [32]
Soldiers & Warriors: An Illustrated History (1966) by Jack Coggins
The trireme may have been important historically, but it itself remained a mystery. What exactly was it? Why was it developed? How was it built? How did it work? What could it do? A reconstruction of an Athenian trireme has now been built and operated to find out, and a very instructive project it has proved to be.
“Some Engineering Concepts applied to Ancient Greek Trireme Warships (2005) by John Coates
Battle of Salamis (480 B.C.)
Reconstruction
o the Argo (mortise & tenon)
o sea trials
o future?
Main Written Sources
o The Persians (c. 472 B.C.)
o Histories (ca. 440s B.C.)
Non-Written Sources
o Lenormant relief (ca. 410)
o Zea ship sheds
o vases, coins, etc.
John F. Coates (1922-2010) John S. Morrison (1913-2000)
Lenormant relief (ca. 410-400 B.C.)
The thalamians were further handicapped by having to row with slightly more of the oarloom inboard because the carlings on which the oars were worked had been insufficiently chamfered inboard of the tholepin.
Challenges for Olympias
o boarding?
o getting moving?
o rowing “blind”
o heat/ventilation
o oars/oarloops
o getting up to speed?
o working a “triad”
o “catching a crab”
o thalamian oar stroke
o top speed: 8.5 knots
o 1990 trials at Poros [film]
62 thranites
54 zygians
54 thalamians
Five sea trials of the Olympias (1987-1994)
The Results:
Since its inception nearly twenty years ago, the Athenian Trireme project has benefited from the input of historians and archaeologists, naval architects and shipbuilders, rowers, sailors and seamen, physicists and physiologists, and many others. Their cooperation has necessitated a considerable willingness on the part of individuals schooled in widely differing disciplines to understand each other’s modes of thinking. By the same token, this multi-disciplinary approach has often made it difficult to convince specialists outside the project of the validity of some of the evidence and arguments….
Through the process of collecting together the indications from antiquity, bringing to bear on them the craft of the naval architect which is bound by the laws of physics, and creating a reconstructed ship, Olympias, which has been tested at sea under oar and sail, we hope and believe that we have learned a great deal about the Athenian Trireme. We know that not all questions have been answered and that there is still much more to learn. But our fascination with the most famous warship of the ancient world remains. [275]
The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship (2000) by John Morrison, John Coates, & N. Boris Rankov
