Roman fleet

“ Now, if a hundred decked ships, and fifty lighter open ones, and thirty Issean barks, shall begin to lay waste our coasts, and attack the cities which stand exposed, almost on the very shore, shall we then retreat into the inland towns, as if we were not afflicted with an intestine war, though in truth it is rankling in our very bowels? When Nabis and the Lacedaemonians by land, and the Roman fleet by sea, shall press us, whence must I implore the support due from the king's alliance, whence the succours of the Macedonians? ”

“ After the defeat of this part of the fleet, the rest, amounting to 120, having come up, endeavoured to avoid the fate of their companions by rowing as quickly as possible round the Roman ships, so as not to allow them to make use of the corvi. But the Romans proved themselves to be even more expert seamen than their enemies; for, though their vessels were much heavier, they worked them with so much ease, celerity, and skill, that they presented the machines to the enemy on whatever side they approached them. ”

“ No distinct body of marines was formed, but land troops were employed, when required, for this maritime service. In one instance as many as 120 legionaries fought in each ship on occasion of a great naval battle; in that case however the Roman fleet had at the same time a landing-army on board.
In this way the Romans created a fleet which was a match for the Carthaginians. Those err, who represent this building of a Roman fleet as a fairy tale, and besides they miss their aim; the feat must be understood in order to be admired. ”

“ In 540 Rome has 150 vessels (Titus Livius, XXIV. 11) this year and the following, the Roman fleet defends Apollonia, attacked by the King of Macedonia, and lands troops which ravage the territory of Utica. The effective strength of the Roman fleet appears not to have varied until 543, the epoch at which Greece again required the presence of 50 Roman ships and Sicily 100. ”

“ The Romans, although they were so powerful in land warfare, were not strong in naval achievement until after the First Punic War. In this war they learned the art of naval construction from their enemies, the Carthaginians. A Carthaginian "quinquereme," or boat with five banks of oars, drifted to the Roman coast. The Romans copied it, set up frames on dry land in which crews were taught to row, and in sixty days from the time the trees were felled they had built and manned a fleet. Later the Romans used grappling hooks with which they bound together their own and an opposing ship. ”

“ But the Roman fleet being withdrawn, and there being no British fleet to take its place, all risk disappeared.
Whether the ancient Britons were ever much inclined to military pursuits may be doubted. Certain it is that the long period of more or less intimate association with the Roman empire in its decadent days did not leave them much more military than it had found them. The degree of relative security afforded by the Roman occupation encouraged them to turn their attention to agriculture and commerce, rather than to arms. ”

“ The city was rendered still stronger by art than nature had formed it. As early as the fifth or sixth centuries of the Christian era the port was converted, by the retreat of the sea, into dry ground, and a grove of pines grew where the Roman fleet had anchored.
Besides the principal ports of Ravenna and Misenum, Augustus stationed a very considerable force at Frejus, on the coast of Provence, forty ships in the Euxine, with 3000 soldiers; a fleet to preserve the communication between Gaul and Britain, another near Alexandria, and a great number of smaller vessels on the Rhine and the Danube. ”

“ It was fought out on the high seas and in the beginning it seemed that the experienced Carthaginian navy would defeat the newly created Roman fleet. Following their ancient tactics, the Carthaginian ships would either ram the enemy vessels or by a bold attack from the side they would break their oars and would then kill the sailors of the helpless vessel with their arrows and with fire balls. But Roman engineers invented a new craft which carried a boarding bridge across which the Roman infantrymen stormed the hostile ship. ”

“ In that she was so well known as one of the triremes of the Roman fleet in British waters was now a gift of the gods to The Sword and to the Saxons. Not the centurion nor his officers nor any seaman or legionary on board the quinquereme had any thought or suspicion of that which was to come.
Onward flashed the swift, strong vessel, the oars of the Northmen biting well the sparkling sea. Fiercely rang the Roman trumpet, warning them to change their course [Pg 142] lest there should be a collision. ”

“ Thereafter, when the Greek cities of southern Italy, Neapolis leading the way in 428, were admitted to the clientship of Rome, the war-vessels, which each of these cities bound itself to furnish as a war contribution under the alliance to the Romans, formed at least a renewed nucleus for a Roman fleet. ”

“ The construction of the first fleet and the sudden defeat of the greatest navy on the seas must have aroused the Romans to self-consciousness, as the Crusades aroused the French and the defeat of the Spanish Armada awakened Elizabethan England. ”

“ And yet they fought to the last ... while the Roman Empire went fiddling into ruin."
Far away down the line a mast-head lamp flickered a message out of the darkness. The Fleet was resting like a tired giant; but the pin-point of light, and another that answered it on the instant a mile away, showed that its sleep was light. "But the end is not yet," concluded the speaker.
"No," replied his companion. He made a little gesture with his pipe-stem, embracing the silent battle-array stretching away into the night. "Not yet." ”

“ Are we then desirous that the Roman people should have and equip a fleet? that private individuals should without repugnance furnish rowers? Let us first execute the command ourselves. Let us, senators, bring into the treasury to-morrow all our gold, silver, and coined brass, each reserving rings for himself, his wife, and children, and a bulla for his son; and he who has a wife or daughters, an ounce weight of gold for each. ”

“ For most of them a navy was out of the question, as they only used the light, open-work, basket-like coracles covered with skins—about as useful for fighting the Romans at sea as bark canoes would be against real men-of-war. The Roman conquest of Britain was therefore made by the army, each conqueror, from Caesar on, winning battles farther and farther north, until a fortified Roman wall was built across the narrow neck of land between the Forth and Clyde. ”

“ You may stand on the wall, where the Roman sentinel kept watch; you may strain your eyes for a sight of the pirate fleet, fifty ships strong and every ship stout, clinker built, sixty feet long and carrying a hundred men. As soon as the Romans took their ships away they did come, and they came to stay, and as soon as the Saxons forgot their old science of navigation the Danes came, and after the Danes, or with them, the men of Norway. ”

“ You would wonder that a savage people, living in the woods, should venture even to look upon the sea from the tops of their rocks. But they had the courage to go on board some ill-made boats, and, from time to time, surprised vessels sailing by with unexpected attacks. Seeing also a Roman fleet approaching from the sea, and looking upon it as a prize, they ventured to engage it, and, at the first onset, covered the shps with a vast shower of small and great stones. Every one of them fights with three slings ”

“ Yet, again and again, the coast fortresses have assisted the operations of our war-ships when resisting the enemy, and to a certain [ 196] extent the two forces have always been, and possibly always will be closely connected.
Reference to the story of the Roman fleet for the defence of the shore of Britain, and also to the English navy under King Alfred, has already been made, but the beginning of the English navy may be traced to a somewhat later period. It had its origin in the Cinque Ports. ”

“ In consequence, even when you had lost a fleet by your own avarice and worthlessness, you did not venture to require a ship of the Mamertines, at a time when our want of ships was so excessive, and the distress of the province so great, that, even if it had been necessary to beg as supplicants for a ship, they would have granted it. But all your power either of commanding a vessel to be furnished, or of begging for one, was crippled, not by the bireme supplied to the Roman people, but by that splendid merchant vessel given to the praetor. ”

“ Now when the Roman folk would make a fleet hastily, and had no rowers, nor time to train them rightly, they built stages like to the oar benches of a ship in a certain lake, and so taught the men the swing and catch of the long oars. ”

“ Rome builds a fleet. However, Roman operations in Sicily could only be conducted at considerable risk and the coasts of Italy remained exposed to continued raids as long as Carthage had undisputed control of the sea. Consequently the Romans decided to build a fleet that would put an end to the Carthaginian naval supremacy. ”

“ But diplomatic representations of the Romans did not make weak governments strong; there was no other remedy but that of directly maintaining a fleet in these waters, and for this the Roman government lacked energy and perseverance. So all things just remained on the old footing; the piratic fleet was the only considerable naval power in the Mediterranean; the capture of men was the only trade that flourished there. ”

“ In this perplexity, an officer of experience proposed a measure, secure by the appearance of rashness: that the Roman army should cautiously advance along the seashore, while the fleet preceded their march, and successively cast a bridge of boats over the mouths of the rivers, the Timavus, the Brenta, Adige, and the Po, that fall into the Hadriatic to the north of Ravenna. Nine days he reposed in the city, collected the fragments of the Italian army, and marched towards Rimini to meet the defiance of an insulting enemy. ”

“ In their construction they displayed the energy they had ever shown when they had once determined on their plan. Skilled artisans, from friendly or subjected states, were ready to execute their orders, and the banks of the Tiber resounded with the noise of the axe, the adze, the hammer, and the mallet. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the first fleet Rome sent forth to oppose the powerful squadrons of the Carthaginians was so much inferior to the galleys of Augustus as has been supposed by some writers. [289] But the real character of the Roman vessels cannot now be ascertained ”

“ Some insult had stirred up his blood, and in revenge he sailed away with the prefect’s galley and set up on his own account. Not a sail, from a shallop to a trireme, could touch the water from the Cyclades to Cyprus without being overhauled by the captain. I was set by the prefect upon his track, and got into his good graces by lending him a little of my information, of which he made such desperate use that the Roman swore my destruction as a traitor. To make up the quarrel I tried a wider game, and was bringing his fleet upon the pirates in their very nest when ill luck came across me. ”

“ The first contact with the enemy was not encouraging. The new fleet, which was constructed in two months, consisted of 100 quinqueremes and 30 triremes. Seventeen of these while on a trial cruise were blockaded in the harbor of Messina by twenty Carthaginian ships, and the Roman commander was obliged to surrender after his crews had landed and escaped.
The next encounter was a different story. The Romans, realizing their ignorance of naval tactics and their superiority in land fighting, determined to make the next naval battle as nearly as possible like an engagement of infantry. ”

“ Look at the map and you will see that he and his supplies had to go much farther by land than the Romans and their supplies had to go by water because the Roman victory over the Carthaginian fleet had made the shortest seaways safe for Romans and very unsafe for Carthaginians. Then remember that carrying men and supplies by sea is many times easier than carrying them by land ”

“ Constantine and Licinius were contending for the Roman empire; and as the contest mainly depended on superiority at sea, each exerted himself to the utmost to fit out a formidable and numerous fleet. Licinius was emperor of the east: his fleet consisted of 380 gallies, of three ranks of oars; eighty were furnished by Egypt, eighty by Phoenicia, sixty by Ionia and Doria, thirty by Cyprus, twenty by Caria, thirty by Bithynia, and fifty by Africa. At this period there seems to have been no vessels larger than triremes. ”

“ After Rome had acquired the undisputed mastery of the world, the Greeks were wont to annoy their Roman masters by the assertion that Rome was indebted for her greatness to the fever of which Alexander of Macedonia died at Babylon on the 11th of June, 431. As it was not too agreeable for them to reflect on the actual past, they were fond of allowing their thoughts to dwell on what might have happened, had the great king turned his arms—as was said to have been his intention at the time of his death—towards the west and contested the Carthaginian supremacy by sea with his fleet, and the Roman supremacy by land with his phalanxes. ”

“ Among the other spoils of the war with the Latins, were the ships taken from the port of Antium; but the Romans, who were not a nautical people, had so little idea of the value of a fleet, that they carried the beaks or prows of the vessels to Rome, and fixed them in the Forum, as pulpits for their orators. [29] How the ships could have kept above water when subjected to mutilation, it is difficult to conceive; and indeed it would appear probable that having been deprived of their heads, they must have gone down, as a matter of stern necessity. ”