Polyremes from the battle of Actium: some construction details
By William Murray
Proceedings from the Tropis Conference, Vol.4 (1991)
Introduction: During the past decade, our basic knowledge about ancient warships and the problems associated with ancient naval warfare has increased significantly because of two major developments. The first was the discovery, in 1980, of an intact bronze warship ram just south of Haifa. The second, was the successful completion of the Olympias, a full scale working model of a Classical trieres or “three”. would like to discuss with you a third development that occurred during this same period – a discovery, really – that provides excellent data concerning the design, the size and perhaps even the function of polyremes or super galleys, ships for which we have a notorious dearth of physical information. Specifically, this discovery provides us with reasonably accurate bow dimensions from the largest classes of warships that fought in the Battle of Actium.
Most everyone here knows that the Battle of Actium was the last great sea battle of antiquity. It was fought on September 2nd in 31 BC, off Cape Aktion at the entrance to the Ambracian Gulf. Octavian, at the head of a Western fleet, decisively turned back an attempt by his rival Mark Antony to lead an Eastern fleet toward Italy. The battle is significant in naval terms because it marked the last time that large warships like “sixes”, “sevens”, “eights”, “nines”, and “tens” were used in significant numbers as ships of the line, something which had been a prominent feature of Hellenistic naval warfare. The sources unanimously explain that Antony, who had the advantage over Octavian in these large classes, lost the battle because his ships were too big and heavy to fight effectively against the smaller, faster and more manoeuvrable ships of the Western fleet. Antony’s large ships proved to be such a liability on September 2nd, we might well ask if their design and function were similar to vessels of the same class that had performed so well a few centuries before. Let us defer this question for a moment and consider, instead, a few events that followed soon after the battle.
Polyremes from the battle of Actium: some construction details
By William Murray
Proceedings from the Tropis Conference, Vol.4 (1991)
Introduction: During the past decade, our basic knowledge about ancient warships and the problems associated with ancient naval warfare has increased significantly because of two major developments. The first was the discovery, in 1980, of an intact bronze warship ram just south of Haifa. The second, was the successful completion of the Olympias, a full scale working model of a Classical trieres or “three”. would like to discuss with you a third development that occurred during this same period – a discovery, really – that provides excellent data concerning the design, the size and perhaps even the function of polyremes or super galleys, ships for which we have a notorious dearth of physical information. Specifically, this discovery provides us with reasonably accurate bow dimensions from the largest classes of warships that fought in the Battle of Actium.
Most everyone here knows that the Battle of Actium was the last great sea battle of antiquity. It was fought on September 2nd in 31 BC, off Cape Aktion at the entrance to the Ambracian Gulf. Octavian, at the head of a Western fleet, decisively turned back an attempt by his rival Mark Antony to lead an Eastern fleet toward Italy. The battle is significant in naval terms because it marked the last time that large warships like “sixes”, “sevens”, “eights”, “nines”, and “tens” were used in significant numbers as ships of the line, something which had been a prominent feature of Hellenistic naval warfare. The sources unanimously explain that Antony, who had the advantage over Octavian in these large classes, lost the battle because his ships were too big and heavy to fight effectively against the smaller, faster and more manoeuvrable ships of the Western fleet. Antony’s large ships proved to be such a liability on September 2nd, we might well ask if their design and function were similar to vessels of the same class that had performed so well a few centuries before. Let us defer this question for a moment and consider, instead, a few events that followed soon after the battle.
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