Speaking of names (sort of) there weren't too many oddballs, but some of the pop culture references got me: I didn't know EDNA Mode (or the movie she was in), ULTRAMAN was new to me and the grid, as were BIREMES, double-decker-oar ships used in ancient Greece (before ONE BC, even).
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Shaw(1995), pp. 164–65 With the consolidation of Roman imperial power, the size of both fleets and galleys decreased considerably. The huge polyremes disappeared and the fleet were equipped primarily with triremes and liburnians, compact biremes with 25 pairs of oars that were well suited for patrol duty and chasing down raiders and pirates.
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The bireme was twice the triaconter's length and height, and thus employed 120 rowers. Biremes were galleys, galleasses, dromons, and small pleasure crafts pamphyles. The next development, the trireme, keeping the length of the bireme, added a tier to the height, the rowers being thus increased to 180. It also had a large square sail.
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A bireme is an ancient oared warship (galley) with two decks of oars. Biremes were long vessels built for military purposes and could achieve relatively high speed. They were invented well before the 6th century BC and were used by the Phoenicians, Assyrians & Greeks. Greek bireme circa 500 BC, image from a Greek vase in the British Museum, which was found at Vulci in Etruria.
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Triremes, biremes and quinqueremes are all mentioned during New Barbarians. Rather than being defined by banks of oars, the names refer to the number of screw propellers on the boats. Despite being armed with near-modern equipment, the ships are still designed to be used as traditional Roman ships; boarding enemy galleys rather than attacking them directly. Contact with the Aztec/Serican fleet forces the Roman Empire to develop battleships for the first time during New Barbarians.
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The size of the new naval forces also made it difficult to find enough skilled rowers for the one-man- per-oar system of the earliest triremes. With more than one man per oar, a single rower could set the pace for the others to follow, meaning that more unskilled rowers could be employed.Morrison, Coates & Rankov (2000), pp. 48–49 The successor states of Alexander the Great's empire built galleys that were like triremes or biremes in oar layout, but manned with additional rowers for each oar.
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During this time, most of the galley crews were disbanded or employed for entertainment purposes in mock battles or in handling the sail-like sun-screens in the larger Roman arenas. What fleets remained were treated as auxiliaries of the land forces, and galley crewmen themselves called themselves milites, "soldiers", rather than nautae, "sailors".Rankov (1995), pp. 78–80 The Roman galley fleets were turned into provincial patrol forces that were smaller and relied largely on liburnians, compact biremes with 25 pairs of oars.
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Romano-Britannic usurper- emperor Allectus (r. 293-296 AD), depicting a trireme on the reverse During the Hellenistic period, the light trireme was supplanted by larger warships in dominant navies, especially the pentere/quinquereme. The maximum practical number of oar banks a ship could have was three. So the number in the type name did not refer to the banks of oars any more (as for biremes and triremes), but to the number of rowers per vertical section, with several men on each oar.
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Legions of Death is a one or two-player strategy game set during the Punic Wars between ancient Rome and Carthage. In single-player mode the player controls the fleet of Carthage, in two-player mode one player controls the Roman navy while the other controls the Carthaginian fleet. Each player must try to destroy their opponent's fleet and gain control of the Mediterranean. At the start of play each player receives a number of points to construct their navy using a combination of faster biremes and triremes, along with various heavier combat ships, up to Heptares class.
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Nevertheless, the Athenians and Spartans attacked and burned the laid-up Persian fleet at Mycale, and freed many of the Ionian towns. These battles involved triremes or biremes as the standard fighting platform, and the focus of the battle was to ram the opponent's vessel using the boat's reinforced prow. The opponent would try to maneuver and avoid contact, or alternately rush all the marines to the side about to be hit, thus tilting the boat. When the ram had withdrawn and the marines dispersed, the hole would now be above the waterline and not a critical injury to the ship.
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With the rise of Rome the biggest fleet of quinqueremes temporarily ruled the Mediterranean, but during the civil wars after Caesar's death the fleet was on the wrong side and a new warfare with light liburnas was developed. By Imperial times the fleet was relatively small and had mostly political influence, controlling the grain supply and fighting pirates, who usually employed light biremes and liburnians. But instead of the successful liburnians of the Greek Civil War, it was again centred around light triremes, but still with many marines. Out of this type of ship, the dromon developed.
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Phoenician warshipCasson, Lionel (1995): "Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World", Johns Hopkins University Press, , fig. 76 with two rows of oars, relief from Nineveh, ca. 700 BC Depictions of two-banked ships (biremes), with or without the parexeiresia (the outriggers, see below), are common in 8th century BC and later vases and pottery fragments, and it is at the end of that century that the first references to three-banked ships are found. Fragments from an 8th- century relief at the Assyrian capital of Nineveh depicting the fleets of Tyre and Sidon show ships with rams, and fitted with oars pivoted at two levels.
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The first known naumachia was given by Julius Caesar in Rome in 46 BCE on occasion of his quadruple triumph. After having a basin dug near the Tiber, capable of holding actual biremes, triremes and quinqueremes, he made 2000 combatants and 4000 rowers, all prisoners of war, fight. In 2 BCE on the occasion of the inauguration of the Temple of Mars Ultor ("Mars the Avenger"), Augustus gave a naumachia based on Caesar's model. As cited in Res Gestæ (§ 23), he created a basin on the right bank of the Tiber where 3000 men, not counting rowers, fought in 30 vessels with rams and a number of smaller boats.
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Assyrian warship, a bireme with pointed bow circa 700 BC In the time of Mesopotamia, Ancient Persia, Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, warships were always galleys (such as biremes, triremes and quinqueremes): long, narrow vessels powered by banks of oarsmen and designed to ram and sink enemy vessels, or to engage them bow-first and follow up with boarding parties. The development of catapults in the 4th century BC and the subsequent refinement of this technology enabled the first fleets of artillery-equipped warships by the Hellenistic age. During late antiquity, ramming fell out of use and the galley tactics against other ships used during the Middle Ages until the late 16th century focused on boarding.
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He gathered a fleet consisting of eighty transport ships, sufficient to carry two legions (Legio VII and Legio X), and an unknown number of warships under a quaestor, at an unnamed port in the territory of the Morini, almost certainly Portus Itius (Boulogne). Another eighteen transports of cavalry were to sail from a different port, probably Ambleteuse. These ships may have been triremes or biremes, or may have been adapted from Venetic designs Caesar had seen previously, or may even have been requisitioned from the Veneti and other coastal tribes. Clearly in a hurry, Caesar himself left a garrison at the port and set out "at the third watch" – well after midnight – on 23 August with the legions, leaving the cavalry to march to their ships, embark, and join him as soon as possible.
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As the Roman siege of Athens was drawing towards a successful conclusion, Sulla's strategic attention began to focus more widely on subsequent operations against the main Pontic forces, and combating Mithridates' control of the sea lanes. He sent Lucullus to collect such a fleet as may be possible from Rome's allies along the eastern Mediterranean seaboard, first to the important but currently disturbed states of Cyrene and Ptolemaic Egypt.Plut.Luc.2.2 Lucullus set out from the Piraeus in mid winter 87-6 BC with three Greek yachts (myoparones) and three light Rhodian biremes, hoping to evade the prevailing sea power of the Pontic fleets and their piratic allies by speed and taking advantage of the worst sailing conditions.Plut.Luc.2.3 He initially made Crete, and is said to have won over the cities to the Roman side.
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Under the prow there was a rostrum made for striking the enemy ships under the sea. By its original form, the Liburna was the most similar to the Greek penteconter. It had one bench with 25 oars on each side, while in the late ages of the Roman Republic, it became a smaller version of a trireme, but with two banks of oars (a bireme), faster, lighter, and more agile than biremes and triremes. The Liburnian design was adopted by the Romans and became a key part of Ancient Rome's navy, most possibly by mediation of Macedonian navy in the 2nd half of the 1st century BC. Liburna ships played a key role in naval battle of Actium in Greece, which lasted from August 31 to September 2 of 31 BC. Because of its naval and manoeuvrer features and bravery of its Liburnian crews, these ships completely defeated much bigger and heavier eastern ships, quadriremes and penterames.
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Beyond three, the number in the type name did not refer to the number of ranks of oars any more (as for biremes and triremes, respectively two and three ranks of oars with one rower per oar), but to the number of rowers per vertical section, with several men on each oar. Indeed, just because a ship was designated with a larger type number did not mean it necessarily had or operated all three possible ranks: the quadrireme may have been a simple evolution of a standard trireme, but with two rowers on the top oar; it may also have been a bireme with two men on each oar; or it may just have had a single rank with four men on a each single oar. Classes of ship could differ in their configuration between regions and over time, but in no case did a "four" ship have four horizontal ranks of oars. From galleys used in the 16th to 18th centuries AD, it is known that the maximum number of men that can operate a single oar efficiently is eight.
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