Now, to a vessel of her bulk, with elevated poop and stern," he goes on to state, "less than five men cannot be allowed to each seat. Thus there are twenty-five rowers in each bank, and six times twenty-five make one hundred and fifty." But though this mode of calculation (which, by the way, does not allow for any "watch-and-watch" or reliefs[1]) makes the Grecian galley agree with his scheme of manning her so far as regards the number of rowers, it is based upon the presumption that every oar had the same number of men. But this could not have been the case; for even if five men could be placed to advantage on each of the upper tiers of oars, two of them, at least, would be useless on the lower tiers of a vessel of this size, as they would not have space to work at it. The same fallacy runs throughout his arguments in other places. Thus he accounts for the Persian trireme with her two hundred men, by saying that she "must have had six men to an oar, which is not improbable, the Asiatics being not so athletic as the Greeks. Six times thirty," he adds, "is one hundred and eighty, leaving twenty men for casualties, etc., etc."
This is an exceedingly easy mode of attempting to solve an intricate question; but Mr. Howell, instead
- ↑ Although Homer (Odys. xiii. v. 81-95) states that Ulysses was rowed from Corcyra (Corfu) to Ithaca, a distance of eighty nautical miles, without apparently any resting of the oarsmen, there is no proof that ancient galleys were propelled continuously by their oars, or for a longer period on a stretch than the one set of rowers could endure. To this day the Malay pirates sometimes row more than ten hours without change, and are fed at their oars. Nor is there anything to show how many spare men were carried for reliefs, in case of accident.
