SYRACOUSIA II

Just what Hieron II wanted with a monster grain freighter requires some explanation.
Why should an hellenistic monarch seek to extol his own and his kingdom's power and virtue by means of a massive maritime corn carrier ? 

South eastern Sicily is fertile. It was also under peaceful control of Hieron. It was a grain basket of the ancient world.  In the mid 3rd century BC there was much money to be made from selling corn abroad or largesse to be shown by giving it away to places with poorer agriculture or smitten by war pestilence or earthquake. If Hieron could safely despatch corn around the Mediterranean there was a fortune to be made.

Hieron made a name for humself by attacking the Mamertines. This was a public service because these were a collection of brigands slaves pirates and freebooter who had settled in the city of Messana. The Mamertines called themselves 'the people of the war god' after Mamers an Oscan war god.The menfolk of Messana were descendents of mercenaries hired by the tyrant Agathokles, himself an infamous  fore-runner of Hieron at Syracuse. They gained the city by murdering the citizens one night and siezing their women and treasure. Their subsequent behaviourtowards the neighbours was no better. Forget ideas about Johnny Depp in big boots and a bandana. Mediterranean pirates of the classical world ranked with the lowest form of humanity to emerge anywhere.

Mamertine warrior c. 220AD - could be Mamer?

Being an island and a colony of Corinth it was vital for Syracuse to keep the sea lanes open. If piratical activity became to intense the island was effectively blockaded. Mamertine and Tyrrhenian pirates harassed Hiero's trade but they were difficult to eradicate.

a pirate galley intercepts a grain freighter : Attic vase c.450BC

So for Hieron moving his grain safely was a big deal.

To move grain safely by sea requires certain things of the transporter.


Size : better to move a lot in 1 go - the hamster foraging  principle.

 

Speed- do it fast to avoid predators - again a lesson from hamsters. A longer hull gives higher speed .

Stability - bulk cargo is dangerous to move in bad weather. A broad stable hull is better. (Also for wealthy passengers...)

Bulk carrier Stellar Banner after cargo of ore shifted

Defence - pirates could descend in hoards. Any freighter had to be able to defend itself against several other ships and perhaps hundreds of attackers.

Manouverability - this would be limited by the size of the ship but the ability to manoeuvre into harbour was vital,  or to evade pursuers.

Servicability - the hull and rig should be robust and not require anything out of the ordinary to keep it in running order.

All of these factors mitigate for a large ship rather than a small fast one or a flock of small ones.

Galleys were reliably fast and could sail through calm but they had a limited freight capacity in their slim shallow hulls and so the ship should obviously be a sailing ship or 'round ship' 'strongylos'.

THE DIMENSIONS OF THE SHIP

Just how big was this 'monstrous mass' ?

From Athenaeus we get to know the following:

• it required the wood for 60 triremes to construct the whole thing
•  the sacred trireme built by Antigonos and victorious off Kos was not a quarter of Syracousia

In addition we can note that

• the Nemi vessels, the largest found, are 70mx30m and 73m x24m 
• grain freighter Isis from Lucan's poem 'The Wishes' , 55m by 13.5m or so, hold 4 - 5m deep
• Caligula's obelisk-transporter was 104m long -  but only made 1 voyage
• Ptolemy II's '40' could have been about 100 metres long 
• Ptolemy IV's Thalemagos was 30 cubits by half a stadion i.e c.15m by 90m !!
• longest wooden ships without steel bracing < 80m WIKI LIST HERE

Largest wooden ship - Wyoming in 1917 - 140m x 15.5m : ships this big had steel hull bracing (still failed)

Taking the wood used first. If we consider the project as a 3 dimensional mass of wood with a similar density of wood involved within the whole structure then 60 times the mass of a trireme from Coates this would be about 30 tonnes of wood.So...30 x 60 = 1800 tonnes.

The trireme occupies circa 35m by 6m by 4 m of space.840m3

840 cubic metres x 60 is 50,400.

If we take the cube root of this we can get the block equivalent of the monster...Yes, very simplified...
 

The cube root is 36.Double the length to half the width and get the profile more elongate.

Interestingly, if we double the length we get about the length of the Nemi ships. And the longest modern era wooden ships.

We must then halve another dimension, shall we use the height, to get an 18m high structure.

This ballpark model is a block 72metres long by 36metres wide and 18metres high.

Very rough, and we should expect more wood goes to strengthening the hull and reducing the interior volume. If we reduce the interior volume by a quarter, conservative, to allow for a heavier structure, we have our block model as 65metres by 32metres by 16metres. Or so.

Now, typically, sailing freighters have a length to breadth ratio around 4:1. As per the Nemi ships which were for use on a confined lake, this falls to 3:1 or less.

VIKING ERA SHIPS ILLUSTRATE THIS WELL

WARSHIPS  L:B RATIO                                   CARGO SHIPS   L:B RATIO
Ladby                   7.4                                         Klåstad                          4.4
Hedeby 1              11.4                                       Skuldelev 6                   4.48
Roskilde 6             9.3                                        Skuldelev 3                   4.24
Skuldelev 5          7                                            Skuldelev 1                   3.44
Sludelev 2            7.5                                         Hedby 3                        3.55

Aslak - Ladby replica and Nidhug( L:B 4)

ANCIENT EXAMPLES
CARGO

Kyrenia Ship   2.5
Isis                   4.5
Nemi 1              3
Nemi 2              3.5
WAR GALLEY
trieres Olympias  7

The same relationship holds.

But our ship must sail the high seas so we must drop the width of 36m down somewhat to a quarter of 65 i.e. 16metres. Following the block model would now mean we stretch the heigh to maintain the timber mass...adding a third or so to the height to give keel to top deck height of 20metres or so.

Mackintosh et al (Syracusia as a giant cargo vessel, IJNA 1999) arrive at dimensions of 61.5metres  length   15.5metres beam  by 10metres high. Not a million miles away.

So we have a length and beam that is useable. I will take 64metres and 16 metres as nice round figures to base my model upon.

The rather top-heavy figure of 20 metres for keel-to-top deck can be controlled by Athenaeus' statements that there were three exterior gangways - parados - plus a hold.  This means 3 decks with ceilings (terrestrial use of the word..) at 2 to 2.5 metres. and a hold of simliar depth would give 10 metres keel to top. Height above water level would therefore be around 7 metres ?

If the topsides were too high then Vasa-Mary Rose syndrome could occur.

Vasa had a poop deck 19 metres above the keel and c.15m above the waterline. In addition, it had a very high centre of gravity. Ancient ships tended to have little superstructure, keeping their centre of gravity low. There was no incentive to have several decks for guns and massively strong superstructure.
 A schooner of similar dimensions from 1920 was c.8m waterline to deck.

A similar sclae vessel for comparison can be provided by the French 118 gun Ocean class warships from c.1800. Larger than the Victory, these were 3-deckers with similar domensions to our prospective Syracousia. at  65.18 metres by 16.25m in beam. They were massive platforms for 118 cannon and survived in service until 1860 or so.

Ocean class 118 gun French warship c. 1800 

These ships stood about 10.5 metres from the waterline to the poop deck.
Their holds were 5 metres deep - most below the waterline.
They had four deck levels above the waterline but these had overheads at under 2 metres each.
These would not be appropriate for the Syracousia which had to accommodate high status guests and had luxurious fittings.

All in all 11 metres over the waterline would seem to be a maximum for a ship of these general proportions.

DIMENSIONS FOR THE MODEL

Erring on a slightly larger 'monstrous mass' I decided to go for the following dimensions.

LENGTH : 64 METRES   BEAM : 16 METRES   HEIGHT ABOVE WATERLINE : 11 METRES


This gives a hull more seaworthy than the Nemi ships, which, although built with the same quality as a sea-going ship are essentially barges not intended to be exposed to waves or swell. or to move under sail. Thus, ot as enormous as the greatest dimensions we know of from the classical world but somehwat according to modern era giants.

The large size of the hull allows stability, higher speed under sail and the carrying of sufficient defences to hold off pirates.

Equivalent of Syrakousia and pirates : 'Standy by to repel boarders!'

 FIGHTING PIRATES : just have to watch again..... HERE  and HERE


Next we will work out the ship's lines.

THE HELLENISTIC FLAT TOP

THE most remarkable ship we know about from the ancient world is
 the Syrakousia - the Maid of Syracuse.
 

Syracousia as reconstructed in 1798.

Despite some translations and reconstructions deciding the opposite, Syracousia was a sailing ship and not a galley. Even so,  it is more than worthy of discussion here. She led, for example, a small flotilla of support ships which were mostly galleys.

Flipped Prof is an Italian 3D graphics team(?) who produce reconstructions of the ancient world. They look great but have some errors of detail.

Flipped Prof show here a reconstruction of Syrakousia as a galley with 3 tiers of oars.

Youtube HERE

 

 The error is simply made, because the ancient Greek text is somewhat garbled, technical and difficult to understand if one knows little of ancient ships.

Having held the idea in mind for many years I finally decided that I had to make a model of this behemoth and try to make some sense of the ancient account.

SOURCES

The Syracousia was constructed in a special place and time which allowed for such futuristic, cutting- edge  projects to be carried out.

Hieron the Second of Syracuse was a hellenistic ing who had access to great wealth and great technologists. Hieron started the First Punic War(264BC)  on the Punic side but was obviously gifted in diplomacy for he ended it on the Roman side (241BC) and remained friendly with them until his death in 215BC. As if to demonstrate what a feat this was, within 4 year sof his death the romans had seen fit to sack Syracuse and swallow his kingdom.

Hieron II lived until 92. Barely a bad word written about him (enemies all very dead)

Hieron II was admired and successful and wealthy. Hellenistic kings were supposed to give public displays of their wealth and excellence as a kind of public and religious duty. What would today be seen as wasteful junket would have been interpreted as a demonstration of how the gods smiled on the kingodom's ruler and therefore the kingdom and therefore each individual citizen. Big parades, tours and festivals were de rigeur for an Hellenistic king.

Vulgar to Romans but essential to Hellenistic royalty

 Hieron was fortunate enough to have a bevy of beautiful brains at his disposal. Hellenistic courts loved knowledge, fine arts natural sciences and engineering. Just as his predecessor, Dyonisius I, Hieron patronised the wise and clever. He was lucky enough to have the great Archimedes at the head of his brains trust and this combined with a penchant for shipbuilding led to the Syracousia.

We shall see, Carl, we shall see....

We have an account, a detailed account, (but not wholly clear, dammit!) of the great ship. It comes, bizzarely enough, from a long and rambling work from the 3rd century AD known as 'The Philosopher-Gastronomes'  (Deipnosophistae), by the Egyptian-Greek  Athenaeus of Naucratis. In his work, which survives in incomplete form, Athenaeus manages to name-drop no less than 800 ancient authors and 2500 literary works. He is a mine, (some might say a pile) of information about the ancient world.

Athenaeus, then, scratched an account of a work by Moschion who was an earlier writer. How early we do not know. He could also have been writing AD. But Moschion had knowledge of the Syracousia project and preserved it due to his delightful profession of 'paradoxographer'. His bag was to create the 'wierd tales' or 'stranger than fiction' pulp of his day.

Just now we stick to construction rather than seduction...

Bored with scoffing for a while, the Philosopher-Gastronomes are treated to a lengthy morsel from Moschion which tells of how Archimedes was entrusted with a project to build the biggest and best grain freighter by Hieron II.

But the tall tale told for the delectation of the well-stuffed Hellenestic aesthetes has been a target for scepticism.

THE ENTERTAINMENT PUT ME OFF MY CUSTARD AND LARK-TONGUES...FOR A WHILE.

.WHY COULDWE NOT JUST HAVE STORIES AND POEMS ABOUT SHIPS INSTEAD ?

Dawe, Diggle and Page, in thier survey of the Greek epigram*,  (p. 27) see the tale as an 'absurd yarn' - as absurd as their Dickensian assemblage of names, no doubt. Part of Moschion's account includes an epigram attributed to one 'Archimelus'.( Incidentally, we know sweet Fanny Adams about these two apart from their naming in Athenaeus.)Epigrams should be pithy, witty, ingenious and brief. They originated as tombstone inscriptions and memorials  - our modern epitaph - where every letter cost money.

(Remember,  'Many archaic epitymbic epigrams are monostichs'  A sentence I have vowed never to remember)

'I told you I was Milligan!'

The problem Dawe, Diggle and Page have with the Syracousia epigram is that it lives up to none of these criteria. Get this.....

Who placed this monstrous mass upon the earth;
What master led it with untiring cables,
How was the deck nail'd to the mighty beams,
And with what axe did men the vessel form?
Surely it equals Aetna in its height,
Or any isle which rises from the sea
Where the Egean wave entwined foams
Amid the Cyclades; on either side
Its breadth is equal, and its walls alike.
Sure 'twas the giants' work, who hoped to reach
By such vast ladder to the heights of heaven.
Its topmast reaches to the stars; and hides
Its mighty bulwarks 'mid the endless clouds.
It holds its anchors with untiring cables,
Like those with which proud Xerxes bound the strait
Which between Sestos and Abydos foams.
A deftly carved inscription on the side
Shows what strong hand has launch'd it on the deep;
It says that Hiero, Hierocles' son,
The king of Sicily, pride of Dorian race,
Sends it a wealthy messenger of gifts
To the Aegean islands; and the God
Who rules the sea, great Neptune, convoys it
Safe o'er the blue and foaming waves to Greece.

You may notice that the 'epigram' is almost as large as the monster ship herself, but we must remember tha the form did get extended with time to allow flowery praises to be heaped on the subjects.
The judgement of DD&P is that this epigram is 'the most fatuous to have survived from the Alexandrian era'. Also . 'the hyperbole is grotesque'. Academics stamping their feet are never a pretty sight. DD&P conclude that the whole tale is a fanciful crock and dismiss it.

Unfortunately for the poetry-inclined latter-day dodgy legal firm, they were not naval architects nor were they sailors. Like Livy they write about nautical themes from the security of their bathtubs where the most complex vessel in sight is a plastic duck.

Now we can explain the most complex ancient ship ..Oh I can anyway because  I built it.....

 DD&P used a naval expert upon which to base their judgement. The one they chose was the intrepid, and impressive Cecil Torr. I will devote a whole blog page to Cecil Torr. He is one of my favourite writers and researchers on classical war galleys and ancient nautical topics in general, not to mention ancient Greek music.  To an Englishman he also has to his credit the publication of one of the most profoundly English books ever. Ranking with Tristram Shandy. But that was nothing to do with Syracousia. The point about Cecil Torr is that he is rather dead. Even in 1981 when DD&P published their tome he was long gone.Cecil's feet failed to retain their wooden enfurbishments in 1928.  Torr's classic  ' Ancient Ships' was published in 1894. DD&P missed out on almost a hundred years of research, discovery and debate and the birth of maritime archaeology. They dismiss Syracousia as an absurd yarn on the basis of an earlier generation's knowledge of ancient shipping.  Apart from that, they were probably correct about the poem's artistic merits....

The facts that we have from Moschion via Athenaeus are fabulous but can be shown to lie within the technical capabilities of the classical world.

The Nemi ships, Caligula's pleasure barges proved such colossi were constructed by the ancients. (may the German army be ever cursed for burning them!). Accounts of the Ptolemies' massive Nile-cuisers - Thalamegoi - back the concept up. Many authors have pored over the after dinner tale - probbly often after dinner - and worked out that Syracousia lies well within the realm of capability for men of the calibre of Archimedes. 

Queus to see ships excavted at Nemi in 1932

Caligula's pleasure-ships : 70 and 73 metres long. with beam 30 and 24 metres

I wanted to build a model of this thing and now I will lay out how I proceeded in the following blog entries.


HELLENISTIC FLAT TOP ?

If the Hellenistic world had aeroplanes they could have landed on this thing ! With the ingenuity of the modern era's early naval fliers a seaplane using a combination ofI Icarus' wings (with perfected non-melting glue!) Heron's jet engine, the torsion devices invented for artillery etc. could have allowed a microlite type thingy to have been produced and operated from a Syracousia type vessel, more than 50 metres long and with a flat top.

HUMAN FLIERS HERE

 Just a crazy thought which I will not pursue further ! ;)

(The silver lining in the cloud of Covid19 is that I have time for this ....  More follows...)


 *Further Greek Epigrams. Cambridge 1981

J 'syrACCUSE!

The saga continues. It is mainly because the Osprey NewVanguard225 has been screaming from my bookshelf for a year or so. It seems to take up more space than an encyclopedia. Partly becaue when I first saw the book I was simply glad the subject had been addressed. This I somewhat regret. I hope to lay the ghost by writing these blogposts.

 Last time plate D got it. The Quinquereme also illustrated in plate D is not error-free but for now I will jump to plate E- 'The Siege of Syracuse 212B.C.'.

What a dog's dinner. Apart from the dress of the sailors at the stern (see previous blogpost).

..warning for the faint-hearted

The most salient problem is the theme of the picture, which is the deployment of a sambuca against the walls of Syracuse.

If you are in doubt as to what a sambuca is look here.



The sambuca of the siege of Syracuse was an arrangement of ships and a ramp for mounting the walls and was so-named because it looked like the musical instrument. Note the soundbox - the ships - and the neck - the ramp - linked by ropes, the strings.

The caption to the plate is largely an excerpt from a translation of Polybius (Historia VIII,4).
By this means the caption author(s?) are hoist by their own petard. The contraption in the plate bears little resemblance to Polybius' description. The ship the thing is mounted-on is also odd.

OK let's go through Polybius' recipe and see how one should make a sambuca.

Nice try but no drinking while blogging!

 SAMBUCA DEL D'AMATO-RAVA
 1) Take ONE quinquereme.
2) A ladder four feet wide (1.2 metres ) with a side-railing.
3) The next bits need two ships. Here we have only one !? Skip over..
4) The affair is raised by men in the stern pulling lines which run through a block at the masthead. In the plate there are precisely four sailors in the stern. One is musing on the massive cable in front of him. The others are making themselves look busy to avoid having to pull on it. The end of the cable is indistinctly terminated in the deck. If you follow the cables to the masthead it is apparent that the sambuca itself is not connected to the stern. The cables illustrated are th emast-stays. The forward mast-stays terminate in thin air or off the ship on land? The sambuca hangs in the block suspended from the foremast and a single cable runs down therefrom to the deck. Unmanned. The size of the sambuca makes it unlikely it could have been the foremast that supported it. Polybius must mean the mainmast.In any casehe clearly says the sailors hauling it up are in the stern of the ships.
5) The platform at the end of the ladder was protected by wicker screens on three sides which were thrown off when the escalading troops rushed up to get onto the wall. The wicker screens are still in place in the plate.

SAMBUCA DEL POLYBIO
 1) On a pair of quinqueremes lashed together,
2)Mount over the junction a ladder 1.2metres wide and very long to project before the ships.The ladder is roofed-over and has side-railings.
3)Arrange functional tackle running from the ladder over the mainmasts to enable sailors in the sterns of the ships to raise the ladder with the aid of sailors in the bows who will use poles.
4)The ladder is equipped with a platform at the end occupied by four men protected by wicker screens on three sides.
5) When the platform is in place above the wall then the screens are thrown down and the main escalading party rushes up the ladder and onto the wall.


How long was the sambuca ?
To get maximum lift the ladder must have had a line fitted as near to its extremity as possible. Maybe 2metres behind the tip or immediately behind the platform. When elevated this point cannot have been raised higher than the top of the mast which was the fulcrum.

The mast top block of a quinquereme would be at about 12 metres over the waterline.
Solving the triangle for a hypothetical slope in action for the ramp of 45 degrees...

The sambuca was in the order of 17 metres long. Polybius says it projects a long way forward of the ships and so it does.

Putting all this together we get an arrangement somewhat like this...

Check this with Polybius

The sambuca in red projects forward as it lies ready to be raised.
The lines to raise it run from behind the landing platform over the mainmasts and to parties of seamen (B) in the sterns ready to haul it up.
In the bows (A) of each ship are parties of seamen with poles to help raise and position the ladder.
Troops wait on deck ready to swarm up the ladder when the landing platform is in place on the walls of Syracuse.

While plate E is down let us kick it some more.
The scale of the ship - a quinquereme - is gross. The timbers on the tower at the ship's stern are approximately 20cm or more thick which maybe they have to be because it is armoured with metal shingles and occupied by Chinamen and a bolt-thrower. The height of the deck above the waterline is well over 3 metres judging by the height of the men on the deck.

 It has a strange gangway built onto the side of the bow. There appear to be men marching up the bow ornament. The pedalion disappears through the oarbox which has two holes in it for some reason. In this situation the pedalion cannot be lifted out of the water by angling it back or outward to any great degree. There is no ventilation course of louvres or apertures for the oarsmen who would soon expire.

Plate E : Too-close-up

One should not look landward because the Syracusans are using one of those fairground crane toys to attack the Romans are are shining searchlights on them to set them on fire. The Romans fight back with geometrically impossible combinations of sambucæ.



On the back of this book - Osprey new Vanguard 225 is written ' With dazzling, meticulously researched artwork, it examines Republican Rome's warships...'
Maybe not.
Messrs Connolly and McBride must be gently rotating in their respective Eternities.

SOUTH - BUT NOT SO PACIFIC

Rossano Brazzi defends Syracuse against the nasty northerners. Classic sword and sandals action.

Great models, great music. Pity the poor galley slaves,,as per usual.

 (Link fixed..)

SYRACUSE REBORN - plus ships!

Including some trieres and a view of Syracusia, this is a short example from Syracuse 3D Reborn - historical cinema.