Greece is a maritime country. Its people’s disposition has been honed at sea since the Mesolithic era.

Surrounded by water Greeks flourished by mastering the waves and establishing commercial networks in places that offered good harbors above all other necessities.

Most people looking at a map tend to think of the landmass as the main part of a county, but for seafaring people, the sea is their domain. This would make sense looking at the distribution of Greece cities around the Mediterranean. Even at the height of colonization (8th to 6th c. BCE), Greeks stayed as close to the shore as possible and didn’t extend too far inland.

Ships in ancient Greece were agents of sustenance, protection, wealth, and education. On their hulls, Greeks ferried goods, ideas, and military might throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. They were vital to Greek life, and developed over the centuries from rough stone-age crafts to the sophisticated vessels of the Classical era.

Our information about ships comes from shipwrecks, texts, and art depictions on pottery and sculpture. Surprisingly, given the volume of maritime activity, images of ships are scant in the archaeological record, but we have a good idea of what the ships of Ancient Greece were and how they developed over four thousand years.

Stone Age Ships

Franchthi Cave (Φράγχθι Σπήλαιον) in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece offers a rich unbroken record of human habitation, and the first evidence that mesolithic people who dwelled in Greece used ships to navigate between the islands of the Aegean and the mainland.

In Franchthi cave archaeologist have found the remnants of deep sea fish and the existence of a large quantity of obsidian tools. These obsidian tools were shown through chemical analysis to have been imported form the island of Melos, 90 nautical miles of open sea away.

These are strong indications that the cave inhabitants and their contemporaries must have used boats. 

Although, no vessel has survived from the Mesolithic era, some speculate that they were light boats made of reed similar to Papyrella boats used until recently on Corfu island.

Bronze Age Ships

Later, during the Bronze Age Cycladic and Minoan civilization relied on maritime prowess for their sustenance and development.

Cycladic civilization was centered around the islands of the central Aegean, and the Minoan civilization was a “thalassocracy” (a state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea) that dominated Crete the Aegean islands and the coasts of mainland Greece and Anatolia.

Depictions of ships on Cycladic era “frying pans” and Minoan frescoes provide us with clues for what Bronze Age seafaring vessels were like.

The depiction on the “frying pan” from Syros (2800-2300 BCE) shows a long, multi-oared ship with a long vertical prow which is crowned with a fish sculpture (perhaps as a figurehead or a weather vane) sailing among spirals representing the orbital motion of the waves.

Minoan ship depictions like the amphora from Kolona, in Aegina island, show vessel type similar to Egyptian ships of the era. Ships are depicted with a curved body that culminates in arched bow and prow, which were decorated with animal and floral themes (in the Ring of Minos depiction, the end of the stern shaped as sea horse’s head) or with a curved split tail.

A common galley in the Bronze Age era was the “penteconter“. Pentecoter galleys were about 90 feet long and were powered by 50 rowers–sitting in two rows along each side of the ship.

Other ships of the era included smaller, twenty-oared ships and larger merchant vessels which were well equipped to carry food, goods, animals, and up to 250 men around the Mediterranean.

The Ulu Burun shipwreck which sank in 1300 in the southern coast of Anatolia and carried copper ingots, luxury goods, and weapons gives us a good idea of the period ships and their cargo.

The Galley

The Mycenaeans of the late Bronze Age embarked for the Trojan on the newly invented galleys.

They were ships that were propelled by either square sails or oars. It took about 6 months to build a galley.

“The galley is an oared, wooden ship, built for speed, and used mainly for war or piracy. Mycenaean galleys were light and lean. The hull was narrow, as hydrodynamics dictated, and straight and low, to cut down on wind resistance and to ease beaching.

A pilot stood in the stern and worked a large-bladed single steering oar. (Incidentally, Homer gets this Bronze Age detail right: in his day galleys used the double-oared rudder.) The hull was decorated with a painted set of eyes in the bows and probably also with an image of the ship’s name, such as a lion, griffin, or snake. On the stem post was a figurehead in the shape of a bird’s head.

The galley was so successful that its form remained standard in the Mediterranean throughout Roman times.

But Bronze Age galleys lacked one refinement that marked their classical Greek and Roman descendants: the ram. The ram wasn’t invented until centuries later, possibly by Homer’s day.

Bronze Age naval battles were decided not by ramming but by crews wielding spears, arrows, and swords and engaging the enemy either from a cautious distance or up close in a hand-to-hand free-for-all.” (Strauss, 39).

The Rowers

In Mycenaean era, rowers were recruited from the King’s (wanax) realm. The were paid sometimes in land allotments, and their families were looked after while they were at sea. These men rowed the ships to battle, boarded and fought enemy ships at sea, and were also the infantry that fought on land.

The rowers sat on benches in two rows of about 25 on each side of the hull, in well ventilated galleries. Their heads stood above the open bulwark but were protected by leather screens. Each rower pulled one oar.

Under their bench, the rowers stored their kit which included a leather bag for grain, clay jars or skin bottles for water and wine, along with their weapons (a shield, a spear, and a sword).

Sailing in the Aegean Bronze Age

Homer describes the process of setting sail, sailing, and beaching the ships to camp in the Illiad:

“Twas night; the chiefs beside their vessel lie, Till rosy morn had purpled o’er the sky:
Then launch, and hoist the mast: indulgent gales, Supplied by Phoebus, fill the swelling sails;

The milk-white canvas bellying as they blow, The parted ocean foams and roars below:
Above the bounding billows swift they flew,
Till now the Grecian camp appear’d in view.
Far on the beach they haul their bark to land, (The crooked keel divides the yellow sand,) Then part, where stretch’d along the winding bay,” (Homer, 30)

According to Barry Strauss: “Greek kingdoms also maintained professional seamen, such as pilots and pipers (who kept time for the rowers), as well as sail weavers and other specialists. Naval architects supervised teams of skilled woodworkers in building and taking care of galleys.”

Archaic and Classical Era Ships

In the Iron Age ships continued to develop along the naval tradition established in the previous two thousand years.

Large merchant ships crisscrossed the Mediterranean, establishing colonies and market towns (Emporiums) along the coasts of today’s Black Sea, Lybia, Italy, France, and Spain, and defending their land with advanced warships like penteconters, biremes and triremes.

Biremes

Lincoln Paine in The Sea snd Civilization: A Maritime History of the World tells us:

“The largest ships of this early period were penteconters, so called because they carried fifty oarsmen […] the same period saw the development of the first two-banked ships—biremes—which carried the same number of oarsmen seated on two levels in a hull little more than half as long.

These stronger, more compact ships could support a raised deck for infantry, archers, and spearmen, which gave them a further offensive capability while keeping the rowers protected and out of the way.

For ordinary cruising, oarsmen probably rowed from the upper deck, while the lower position was used only in battle.

Eighth-century BCE illustrations show ships with rowers on two levels, but the first true biremes are depicted on reliefs from Nineveh showing Luli of Tyre’s flight to Cyprus. These show two banks of rowers; the lower oars protrude through ports cut in the hull (leather sleeves keep out the water), while the upper oars are on the gunwale level.

Rather than seating the oarsmen directly on top of each other, the benches are staggered, to keep the ship’s center of gravity low.” (Paine, 93).

The Trireme

The trireme was a long, maneuverable war vessel with three banks of oars (a total of 170 oarsmen). A natural from biremes, a trireme was a light and fast rowing ship with a powerful ram. They also had removable masts and square sails to propel her when the winds were favorable.

Her shallow draft allowed her to maneuver in shallow waters and to be beached easily, but at the expense of stability. The masts were removable.

Triremes were the most advanced warships in the 5th century BCE, and instrumental in defeating the Persian invasions the in the subsequent establishment of Athenian hegemony.

During classical naval warfare, the entire ship was a missile. In battle, foes maneuvered at sea with the goal of ramming and rupturing the joints of the enemy ship, thus sinking it or disabling it.

Her flat bottom gave her instability as well as flexibility, so that she could move easily in shallow waters”. –Maritime Museum, Chania, Greece. According to Payne (94) the Athenians widened the upper decks of their triremes to accommodate more marines, a development that also allowed for protective screens to be fitted around the thalamians.”

The inlaid eyes on either side of the prow humanized the hull and made it more of a fierce sea creature.

During the Classical era in Athens, wealthy citizens were responsible for fitting the triremes and paying the crew on behalf of the state. They were called trierarchs.

While the square sail allowed the crew to rest by cruising at wind’s speed, triremes could reach impressive speeds under oars. “Thucydides records one nonstop passage from Piraeus to Mytilene that a trireme made in little more than twenty-four hours, about 7.5 knots, and Xenophon describes the 129-mile run from Byzantium to Heraclea on the Black Sea being covered at an average speed of about seven knots. A replica trireme called the Olympias attained sprint speeds of seven knots in its first season. (Triremes were as much as 30 percent faster than penteconters, which remained the standard warship for smaller city-states lacking the resources to build or man larger vessels.)” (Paine, 95).

The crew of a trireme included the 170 oarsmen, persons who kept time with flutes and drums, lookouts, boatswains, and helmsmen alongside a contingent of infantry, archers, and spearmen the number which fluctuates in numbers through time and mission.

The trireme’s legacy includes nothing less than the ensuring the growth of the western civilization. Famously, the Athenians build a fleet of triremes to defend against the expected second Persian invasion in 480 BCE, and with it defeated the Persian fleet in Salamis. It is one of the most famous “what if” moments in history: If the Persians had won, the subsequent “Golden Age” of Classical Greece along with its direct Democracy, philosophy, technology, and art, would probably not have transpired.

The Ship’s Ram

The ram was the pointed prow of the trireme or a bireme, and consisted of a strong wooden structure, a sort of projection of the keel, covered with bronze. Originally it took the form of a boar, and later – from the Classical period onwards – that of a trident.

“The idea of using ships to disable other ships rather than as simple troop carriers to be turned into floating platforms for hand-to-hand combat came to the fore around the ninth century BCE, the date of the earliest pictorial evidence of the ship’s ram.

This may have originated as a forward extension of the keel. In its more developed form it was capped with a heavy bronze fitting, thereby creating what was in essence a massive torpedo of great strength, speed, and hitting power, and designed to punch holes in enemy ships.” (Paine, 93).

The Rowers

She was rowed by 170 oarsmen who were never chained slaves like in later eras of the Mediterranean history. They were paid regular salaries and it was not uncommon during the Peloponnesian war for rowers to defect to the opposing navy for better pay.

They were divided up into three ranks, which corresponded to three levels.

“twenty-seven oarsmen per side on the lowest and middle banks (thalamians and zygians, respectively) and thirtyone thranites per side on the upper bank, for a total of 170.

As in biremes, the rowers were staggered, the zygians just above and forward of the thalamians, the thranites just above and forward of the zygians. To compensate for their height above the water—about 1.5 meters as opposed to half a meter for the thalamians—the thranite oars rested on an outrigger that gave the rowers greater leverage.” (Paine, 94).

Sailing and Tactics

“Trireme fleets sailed either in line-ahead formation (that is, aligned bow to stern), or line-abreast (side-by-side), the former being standard for cruising, the latter for going into battle under oars. […]

Practice was essential to perfect the highly refined tactics of trireme warfare, which required coordinating the actions of not only the oarsmen within each ship, but also the actions of different ships. As a defensive measure, ships could maneuver themselves into a circle with their rams pointing outward, against which the best offense would be to circle around the group—a maneuver called a periplous—before turning into the enemy ships. Another form of periplous involved a ship’s wheeling around on a pursuing attacker to strike it from astern or abeam. A distinct maneuver was the diekplous, “sailing through and out,” in which ships in a line-abreast formation rowed through the enemy line before coming about to strike the ships from astern, the most vulnerable part of a trireme.” (Paine 95).

Building Triremes

The building of a fleet of triremes, financed by the Laurion Mines, brought a flurry of activity in the coast of Attica. Peter Green in the Greco-Persian Wars describes the process:

“…the shipwrights of Phaleron and of Piraeus could, working at top pressure, launch between six and eight triremes a month. This would produce up to two hundred in the period July 483 – May 480; between then and July 480 perhaps another dozen were laid down.

The total number available at the outset of the campaign was over 250 [see below, p. 10g.; the balance must have been made up with the best of the fleet already in existence.

That so much was achieved in so short a space of time – a crash building programme if ever there was one – is a remarkable tribute to Athenian resourcefulness and perseverance.

Crews were mustered and trained. Skilled craftsmen poured into the Piraeus dockyards. Contracts were placed abroad for ropes and sails and – above all – first-class timber.

Two hundred triremes, for instance, would require no less than 20,000 oars, cut from best pine or fir. (It was no accident that throughout the fifth century BCE the King of Macedon figured so prominently on the Athenian VIP list.) Attica’s trees were being used up faster (what with goats and charcoal-burners) than the forests could re-grow themselves, so that almost all lumber had to be imported. (Green, 57)

Hellenistic and Roman Era Ships

Ancient vs. Modern Ship Building Methods

The ancient method of ship construction differed significantly from that employed today in wooden shipbuilding. Today the ship’s keel and frame is built first and then the hull planks are fitted around it.

In Ancient Greece, the keel was built first and then planks of the hull were fastened to each other to form the shell. Then νομείς (στραβόξυλα, frames) reinforced the hull from the inside.

“Shell-first construction” dominated Mediterranean ship-building tradition from the Late Bronze Age until the second half of the first millennium AD, when it was gradually replaced by “skeleton first construction”, the method still used today.

Description of Shell-First Ship Construction

A good description and illustration was displayed in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens information accompanying the Antikythera Shipwreck exhibition:

“The ancient shipwright began the building of a ship by setting up the keel. (Fig. 1)

The stem and the sternposts were then mounted, and the builder began to shape the hull.

Long planks on superimposed lines were attached on both sides to one end of the ship and, given the desired curve, fastened then to the other end. (Fig. 2) Superimposed rows of planks were edge-joined and connected to each other with wooden tenons fitted into mortises cut in both edges of each individual plank.

The joinery was finally held in place with treenails driven into holes, drilled after the tenons had been fitted into the planks. (Fig. 3)

Frames were inserted in the structure only after the external hull was completed to a certain extent, first the floor timbers followed by the half frames and the futtocks. (Fig. 4)

The attachment of the frames to the planking started with the drilling of holes through planking and each attached frame, and the insertion of long wooden treenails into the holes.

Finally the wooden treenails were transfixed by bronze spikes, hammered from the external side of the planking. (Fig. 5)