History Fun Fact (as seen in the movie “30.000”): The triremes that won the battle of Salamis were rowed by free men, proud citizens of Athens, not by slaves (though it was slaves who dug out the silver that was needed to pay for building them).
More so – all warships of the era were operated by free men. Slaves were always going to mess up your carefully choreographed battle manoeuvrings, what with them being the previously conquered enemy, and so mostly unwilling to help you out with your military career.
by the time the Punic wars came around, the triremes were obsolete, mostly replaced by the larger “quinqueremes”.
Your suspicion is justified because nobody knows how the hell they got five rowers to work together.
Also, this past weekend, bireme (smaller cousin of triremes) was a NY Times (if I remember correctly) crossword clue (“Bireme mover”). Answer – oar. Consistency across the universe if you ask me – “300” was on cable just the other day.
Reminds me of Season 1 of “Vikings” where the captive monks being brought back as slaves were made to just sit on deck while the Viking marauders rowed the longboat.
Guys sees a sign advertising free ocean cruises. He goes in the building, gets hit over the head, wakes up chained to rowing bench in a galley. After a few hours of rowing he works up the courage to ask the guy next to him, “So, do they server refereshments?”
The guy replies, “They didn’t last year.”
(rimshot)
In actuallity, anyone not keeping in sync with the rest of they guys rowing a galley, even when not in combat, risk being beaten to death by the oars and the bodies of the other rowers. They packed in like sardines and moved in unison. If you stopped or came out of sync ton or so of flesh and oar smacked into you.
There is no evidence that slaves where used to row war galleys until the late Ventitian empire circa 1500. War galleys were the jet fighters of their day and the skilled rowers, their engine. Each individual had to coordinate his actions with hundreds of other rowers or the “engine” jammed possibly capsizing the ship. They were paid and treated well.
The need for skilled rowers by Athens against Persian became the foundation of Greek Democracy. Rowering in peace time were a common lower-working class job with no political representation but when they became the engines of the Athenian battlefleet, they suddenly aquired political power as well.
(Historically, all democracies arise when the local elites suddenly discover they need the commoners help really, really badly and really, really quickly. Suddeny, the question is no longer, “was your daddy someone important” and became, “can you fight?”)
Galleys became manned by slaves only when they ceased to be the main striking elemnt of Mediterrianian navies. When they ruled the calm seas with their speed and manuverablity, their crews could command high prices and respect and free men willinging served. When sailing ships mounting dozens of guns began blowing galleys into matchsticks, the galley crews price dropped and increasingly, naval powers like Venice had to resort to impressment and then penal slavery to power their ships. Later the Italian states, France and Spain would also resort to using prisoners to row their antiquated weapons.
It is from the use of penal-slave rowers from 1500-1800 that we get the sterotype of galley slaves.
Interestingly enough, the Ottomans began to use slaves for galleys at least a century or more before the Christian world did and possibly always did (sources are unclear on the matter.) These were not penal slaves but actual human-beings-as-property slaves, most of them Christians swept up the Ottomans near total conquest of southern and south eastern Europe.
The use of slave “engines” seemed to put them at a constant disadvantage against the free rowers of the Christain world, with freeman rowed ships outperforming and sometimes outfighting slave rowed ships sometimes two or three to one. If nothing else, the slaves would often revolt right in the middle of fight and seek to escape to the enemy ships. This happend in mass during the battle of Lepato.
Using slave rowers probably caught the Ottomans in a catch-22: They couldn’t win (without high cost) against free rowed ships and if they couldn’t win, they couldn’t get high pay or attract their own free rowers, so they had to use slave rowers which meant they couldn’t win… and so on.
This is but one instance in which the Islamic worlds increasing heavy reliance on slavery undermined their once (relatively) free, tolerant and innovative civilization. In the end, the once great thinkers, inventors, explorers and traders were reduced to mere pirates, raiding the increasingly richer Europeans to the north. Eventually, in the 1800s, the Europeans (and the infant America under Jefferson) simply sailed up and with comparitive ease, blew their ships and forts to kindling and rubble.
History Fun Fact (as seen in the movie “30.000”): The triremes that won the battle of Salamis were rowed by free men, proud citizens of Athens, not by slaves (though it was slaves who dug out the silver that was needed to pay for building them).
More so – all warships of the era were operated by free men. Slaves were always going to mess up your carefully choreographed battle manoeuvrings, what with them being the previously conquered enemy, and so mostly unwilling to help you out with your military career.
…and it was worse on biremes! And when you get to mere remes…!!
I am suspicious of these other ‘remes’ but, I’m going to nod my head in silence just because I’m too lazy to look them up…
by the time the Punic wars came around, the triremes were obsolete, mostly replaced by the larger “quinqueremes”.
Your suspicion is justified because nobody knows how the hell they got five rowers to work together.
Also, this past weekend, bireme (smaller cousin of triremes) was a NY Times (if I remember correctly) crossword clue (“Bireme mover”). Answer – oar. Consistency across the universe if you ask me – “300” was on cable just the other day.
Reminds me of Season 1 of “Vikings” where the captive monks being brought back as slaves were made to just sit on deck while the Viking marauders rowed the longboat.
Congrats, your comic made me reference Wikipedia! Only xkcd has had that effect in the past!
Might work if you present the rowing as an exercise routine, especially with some pseudo-celebrity to promote it.
Rowin’ to the Oldies!
Reminds me of an old joke:
Guys sees a sign advertising free ocean cruises. He goes in the building, gets hit over the head, wakes up chained to rowing bench in a galley. After a few hours of rowing he works up the courage to ask the guy next to him, “So, do they server refereshments?”
The guy replies, “They didn’t last year.”
(rimshot)
In actuallity, anyone not keeping in sync with the rest of they guys rowing a galley, even when not in combat, risk being beaten to death by the oars and the bodies of the other rowers. They packed in like sardines and moved in unison. If you stopped or came out of sync ton or so of flesh and oar smacked into you.
There is no evidence that slaves where used to row war galleys until the late Ventitian empire circa 1500. War galleys were the jet fighters of their day and the skilled rowers, their engine. Each individual had to coordinate his actions with hundreds of other rowers or the “engine” jammed possibly capsizing the ship. They were paid and treated well.
The need for skilled rowers by Athens against Persian became the foundation of Greek Democracy. Rowering in peace time were a common lower-working class job with no political representation but when they became the engines of the Athenian battlefleet, they suddenly aquired political power as well.
(Historically, all democracies arise when the local elites suddenly discover they need the commoners help really, really badly and really, really quickly. Suddeny, the question is no longer, “was your daddy someone important” and became, “can you fight?”)
Galleys became manned by slaves only when they ceased to be the main striking elemnt of Mediterrianian navies. When they ruled the calm seas with their speed and manuverablity, their crews could command high prices and respect and free men willinging served. When sailing ships mounting dozens of guns began blowing galleys into matchsticks, the galley crews price dropped and increasingly, naval powers like Venice had to resort to impressment and then penal slavery to power their ships. Later the Italian states, France and Spain would also resort to using prisoners to row their antiquated weapons.
It is from the use of penal-slave rowers from 1500-1800 that we get the sterotype of galley slaves.
Interestingly enough, the Ottomans began to use slaves for galleys at least a century or more before the Christian world did and possibly always did (sources are unclear on the matter.) These were not penal slaves but actual human-beings-as-property slaves, most of them Christians swept up the Ottomans near total conquest of southern and south eastern Europe.
The use of slave “engines” seemed to put them at a constant disadvantage against the free rowers of the Christain world, with freeman rowed ships outperforming and sometimes outfighting slave rowed ships sometimes two or three to one. If nothing else, the slaves would often revolt right in the middle of fight and seek to escape to the enemy ships. This happend in mass during the battle of Lepato.
Using slave rowers probably caught the Ottomans in a catch-22: They couldn’t win (without high cost) against free rowed ships and if they couldn’t win, they couldn’t get high pay or attract their own free rowers, so they had to use slave rowers which meant they couldn’t win… and so on.
This is but one instance in which the Islamic worlds increasing heavy reliance on slavery undermined their once (relatively) free, tolerant and innovative civilization. In the end, the once great thinkers, inventors, explorers and traders were reduced to mere pirates, raiding the increasingly richer Europeans to the north. Eventually, in the 1800s, the Europeans (and the infant America under Jefferson) simply sailed up and with comparitive ease, blew their ships and forts to kindling and rubble.
They have never recovered.
Thanks for sharing. I like learning historical tidbits, even if they are in condensed form.
Thank you sir, very interesting bit of history there!
That’s a vicious cycle, not a catch-22
I would PAY for the privilege of rowing an ancient warship.
You could. Every summer in Scandinavia, unless they stopped without me hearing about it, they travel to the UK and back in hand made viking era ships.