In article .com,
toad wrote:
On 13 Mar, 02:36, wrote:

That galley rowing
all the time's a killer. Wikopedia says the Romans introduced it,

I've just read a biography of Boudica. That concurs that the Romans
were the first to come up with Galleys with multiple tiers of oars
giving a serious alternative power source. Designed for the first

Not even nearly. Try the Greeks in the ~700-800 BCE era for two-tier
galleys (/probably/ the Ionian city-states). Triremes (three tiers) were
introduced (by Samos?) somewhere around or before 600 BCE and were the
most common "capital ships" until the Hellenistic period, after the
break-up of Alexander the Great's empire - the successor states then
began putting more than one man on an oar, leading eventually to galleys
with 20 men diposed on three vertically-tiered oars (Ptolemy IV went as
far as a catamaran galley with two "twentys" fastened together. A big, big
ship with plenty of oar power. Probably a brute to handle under sail,
though.

The big galleys vanished from sight after Actium, and by the time of the
Roman invasion of Britain (Claudius, not Caesar's raiding expeditions)
they were long gone - galleys of the Imperial period were small biremes
(Liburnians - two-deck galleys) and a few triremes - back to the Greek
ships of nearly 500 years before, in size at least.

http://www.amazon.com/Ships-Seamansh.../dp/0801851300

is probably the best general reference on the subject.

The Romans knew damn all about boats and damn all about seamanship
outside of the Med. Apparently they just copied their boats from the
Greeks, and added oars. Great example of fresh thinking, and coming up

Copied more from Carthegian designs than Greek - Greek ships were
still much bigger than the Roman or Cartheginian ships of that period.

--
Andy Breen ~ Not speaking on behalf of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)