etc., and the remainder
soldiers. Of the rowers, 62 occupied the upper, 58 the middle and 54 the
lower tier. Many writers have supposed that each oar was worked by
several rowers, as in the galleys of the Middle Ages. This, however, was
not the case, for it has been conclusively proved that, in the Greek
galleys, up to the class of triremes, at any rate, there was only one
man to each oar. For instance, Thucydides, describing the surprise
attack intended to be delivered on the Piraeus, and actually delivered
against the island of Salamis by the Peloponnesians in 429 B.C., relates
that the sailors were marched from Corinth to Nisaea, the harbour of
Megara, on the Athenian side of the isthmus, in order to launch forty
ships which happened to be lying in the docks there, and that _each_
sailor carried his cushion and his oar, with its thong, on his march. We
have, moreover, a direct proof of the size of the longest oars used in
triremes, for the inventories of the Athenian dockyards expressly state
that they were 9-1/2 cubits, or 13 ft. 6 in. in length. The reason why
the oars were arranged in tiers, or banks, one above the other was, no
doubt, that, in this way, the propelling power could be increased
without a corresponding increase in the length of the ships. To make a
long sea-going vessel sufficiently strong without a closed upper deck
would have severely taxed the skill of the early shipbuilders. Moreover,
long vessels would have been very difficult to manoeuvre, and in the
Greek mode of fighting, ramming being one of the chief modes of offence,
facility in manoeuvring was of prime importance. The rowers on each
side sat in the same vertical longitudinal plane, and consequently the
length of the inboard portions of the oars varied according as the
curve of the vessel's side approached or receded from this vertical
plane. The seats occupied by the rowers in the successive tiers were
arranged one above the other in oblique lines sloping upwards towards
the stem, as shown in Figs. 14 and 15. The vertical distance between the
seats was about 2 ft. The horizontal gap between the benches in each
tier was about 3 ft. The seats were some 9 in. wide, and foot-supports
were fixed to each for the use of the rower next above and behind. The
oars were so arranged that the blades in each tier all struck the water
in the same fore and aft line. The lower oar-ports were about 3 ft., the
middle 4-1/4 ft., and the upper 5-1/2 ft., abov