“Row, you dogs! Row!”
It really reinforces just how little space aboard those pre-Age of Sail ships there really is. Just about enough to lay down. I remember reading about later medieval ships during the Crusades where crew and/or passengers would sleep on the deck, because there wasn’t enough of a hold.
Just about enough to lay down.
Think about it. The rowers were slaves with their hands shackled to the oars for days on end.
The bottom of a trireme would have been covered in shit and piss.Nah, both Greeks and Romans preferred free men, freedmen, and citizens for rowers. Rowers in the Graeco-Roman period were professionals who needed to tightly coordinate during combat - slaves could not be relied upon to give that kind of peak-effort.
Some medieval and early modern galleys would use rowing slaves chained to their benches but they were moving much heavier ships, and usually multiple men to a single oar, and needed more raw strength than coordination.
TIL. Although I don’t know if that changes much, regarding the shit and piss situation.
Galleys were about the worst slavery job out there, except maybe the mines. I bet this is pretty similar to that.
Was it typical for triremes to have sheet metal plating along the keel? It seems like that would have been very costly at the time.
Not necessarily typical, but lead-bottomed ships are known from this period as a means of reducing wear-and-tear and maintenance costs!
What was the twisted cable running the length of the ship used for
Damn, those people under the boat must have had mad lungs
