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The first Greek galley-like ships appeared around the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. In the epic poem, the Iliad, set in the 12th century BC, oared vessels with a single row of oarmen were used primarily to transport soldiers between land battles. [19]
Triremes continued to be the mainstay of all smaller navies. While the Hellenistic kingdoms did develop the quinquereme and even larger ships, most navies of the Greek homeland and the smaller colonies could only afford triremes. They were used by the Diadochi Empires and sea powers like Syracuse, Carthage and later Rome. The difference to the ...
Because of increased weight and breadth, which brought increased friction through the water, a trireme galley was not dramatically faster than a bireme. But the change to trireme produced more significant developments than a gain in tactical speed over short distances. Early bireme galleys escorted merchant ships but were rarely used to carry ...
Relief of a Rhodian galley, most likely a trihemiolia, carved in the rock beneath the acropolis of Lindos. The trihemiolia (Greek: τριημιολία [ναῦς]) first appears in accounts of the Siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorcetes in 304 BC, where a squadron of trihemioliai was sent out as commerce raiders. [67]
The galley was a long, narrow, highly maneuverable ship powered by oarsmen, sometimes stacked in multiple levels such as biremes or triremes, and many of which also had sails. Initial efforts of the Romans to construct a war fleet were based on copies of Carthaginian warships.
Tessarakonteres (Greek: τεσσαρακοντήρης, "forty-rowed"), or simply "forty", was a very large catamaran galley reportedly built in the Hellenistic period by Ptolemy IV Philopator of Egypt. It was described by a number of ancient sources, including a lost work by Callixenus of Rhodes and surviving texts by Athenaeus and Plutarch.
The penteconter (alt. spelling pentekonter, pentaconter, pentecontor or pentekontor; Greek: πεντηκόντερος, pentēkónteros, "fifty-oared" [1]), plural penteconters, was an ancient Greek galley in use since the archaic period. In an alternative meaning, the term was also used for a military commander of fifty men in ancient Greece. [2]
Olympias achieved a speed of 9 knots (17 km/h) and was able to perform 180 degree turns within one minute, in an arc no wider than two and a half (2.5) ship-lengths. These results, achieved with an inexperienced, mixed crew, suggest that ancient historians like Thucydides were not exaggerating about the capabilities of triremes.