Rake or Fake ?

I recently focused my attention on the 'rake attack'. Interesting to discover I could not find it. I could not find it in Heorodtus. I could not find it in Thucydides. Nor in Plutarch or Diodoros from later times.
I could find it in Ben Hur and Anthony and Cleopatra or Rome Total War but according to the people who were there at the time it was not.

The only authentic oar rake?

 There are many things which are counter-intuitive with galley warfare and the 'rake attack' is one of them.
It is logical that ships collided and that oars were broken. It is logical that getting one's oars snapped-off was a serious disadvantage in battle. Oars can snap if stressed enough. Ergo ships snapped each other's oars the better to do the enemy in. However, looking closer it seems less likely.

One of the reasons I accepted the existence of the raking attack was an article in Conway's History of the Ship which seems to set it in a technical context. (Ch.9,p.134) Quoting an estimation that a galley moving at 5 knots could break 50 oars seems to set a seal of respectability on the concept. However.

The main failure in the idea is that it assmes one side attacks and the other is the target. As with much that is shown and demonstrated with edged weapon combat reconstructions it is very nice when an instructor displays his skill versus a static target, usually a trainee. A factor always worth remembering in respect of galley warfare is that just to sail the ship efficiently all the crew cooperated at a high level and each man was skilled at his job. Apart from the initial Roman fleet in the Second Punic War - (and they cheated !) no ship was at sea in ancient time without a competent crew. It was simply too dangerous and the ship too costly to mess about in. Any warship in combat with another was a unit confident in its capabilities and well aware of the opponent's capabilities.

Let's take the basic situation for a raking attack. The idea is I sail my ship in alongside an opponent and use my hull or stern to catch, bend and snap his oars. I remain mobile. He is crippled and disadvantaged. I can return to finish him off like a wounded prey.

'Shall we do 'em now, boys ?'

Note in this picture that one side of the target vessel has a row of oar stubs all along the port side. Does this mean that not one shipped his oar in time ? On an oared ships it is often necessary when manoeuvering to take oars inboard rapidly to avoid obstacles. It takes a second or two for a skilled oarsman.

On a large galley like a trireme, oarsmen have an added incentive to ship their oars rapidly. It is 'fear of death'. Should some obstacle - such as ., shall we say an oncoming enemy galley - take your oar as your ship progresses then you find yourself holding thewrong end of a primitive machine which the enemy is using against you. Forget any threat of snapped oars - the threat of a grisly and painful death or maiming is more significant at this moment.

The oar as a lever

Normally one shifts water - or attempts to - with an oar that has a fulcrum close inboard. The force resulting shifts the ship. If a large mass instead tries to - and succeeds in - shifting the oar instead, then the wonderful properties of the simplest machine known to man will press the short length you have in your hands against your body with a force multiplied many times. It is humorous to see people learning to row a 25 m viking  ship get into this trouble when they 'catch a crab' but instead of just getting knocked off the rowing bench the situation on a  trireme is less funny.

Nowhere to run

 The thranites can more easily jump off the bench but zygians and especially thalamians are stuck into a small space. One will likely get squashed against some immoveable wood -- yuck.

Ok I exaggerate somewhat. But the concept that the whole crew of the target vessel rows blithely on while they are in danger is not tenable. Firstly, the thranian was responsible for his two mates below. He was, in turn, informed by the rowing master / keleustes or any crew member with eyes in his head - all of whom could see a threat and warn the oarsmen. Once warned, the oarsemen on that side could ship oars and avoid the threat. It would take seconds to ship oars, In addition to this, the skipper and helmsman would need to continue directing their ship into danger instead of turning their ram into the enemy or turning and accelerating away.

Hmm, maybe a few more degrees to starboard would have been good ?

But, but, but ... What if the target could not get away ? It was stopped or stuck ? Well, in those cases why make this 'oar rake' to stop of cripple a ship already stopped or crippled ? Much better to ram him - ram the sitting duck and sink him definitely. What if one approached from behind, faster than the target ? Again...why would a skipper chose to 'possibly, maybe cripple an enemy when he had the chance to ram him and decide the issue more categorically ?
Now, back to the technical data which seemed so convincing in John Coates' chapter of 'The Age of the Galley'. (heaven forfend that I should try and contradict anything JC wrote..).

Coates model for an oar-rake attack is as follows.

Attacker appproaches at 20-40 degrees 

Attacker keeps epotis hard up to target's side. This allows more leverage to break oars. Oars pushed back 60 degrees will snap. Oars pushed at offset more less than 1 metre to victims side will not be subject to enough leverage to break.

The attacker's port oars drive the ship ahead, crippling the target. Note that it is the stem post which snaps the oars and the epotis keeps the stem post at sufficient offset to generate enough leverage to do that.

 So far, so good. Again, there are problems. 

Coates allows for 50 oars being broken by a ship moving at 5 knots. This is not enough to take all the oars (80-90) on a trireme. Does the attacker grind to a halt - beam-on to an enemy who may try his hand at boarding now he has ben presented with a target ?

The breaking process will raise alarm and surely some towards the stern of the target will even at this late stage ship their oars.

The scenario relies on the 'dumb partner' - if the target steers to port or starboard the deal is off. The angle of attack is changed, the stress applied is reduced and the effect lost.

The scenario also relies upon an accurate targeting by the atacker, to set his epotis onto the enemy outrigger. If he hits too early he smashes his epotis on the enemy's. If he hits to late he will not smash as many oars as he wants.

Oh, yes.. they also carried spare oars - usually 30 , so the target could not be immobilised with one successful raking attack.

Now, this may sound like a good set of circumstances for a wargame. Lots of variables to allow nuanced outcomes according to luck of the dice. In reality, a skipper will carry out manoeuvres has has confidence in.

This model for a raking-attack is flawed, in my opinion precisely for the rasons that  it makes a nice game.

Coates even seems to say that the epotis may have had a definite function in assisting effecting oar-raking in this way. As he knew better than anybody, the epotis was actually a support for platforms in the front-ship and protection against dismounting of the outrigger against collision from ahead. Dislocation of the outrigger would take the thalamian oarbank out of commission. The Corinthians discomfited the Athenians at the Gulf of Erineus by renforcing their epotides so that bow-to-bow collisions resulted in smashing the opponent's epotis.

The epotis is the box-like structure with anchor cables running out of it.                                                                             The outrigger can be seen leading back from it.

If the combat function of the epotis was so vital to recognised tactics - as it should have been if oar-raking was one such - then somebody would have been reinforcing them before the Corinthians did, and not just for making bow-to-bow attacks as Thucydides - himself an experienced trierarch - says they were.

Kerruuunnch!

Does this mean oars were never broken in anger ? No. Collision must have been a messy business with lots of galleys involved in a battle. Off-target ram attacks could have a similar effect and, do not forget the oar-unfriendly aspects of a common-or-garden ramming. The main point is that there must be a serious question-mark over the idea of oar-raking as a genuine ancient naval tactic.

Galley wargame with Corvus Rules

Always nice to see a galley wargame.
Here is one using SOA Corvus rules.

New ships, new sea.

Ten-centimetre triremes sail out onto the nervøs-velour sea!

Sea looking great ! Persians coming this way..Tachynauts in background

Greeks going in against some high-decked Persians.

Persian deck troops look ok. Hotz ships in foreground.

Wider view of melee.

Hotz ships can be shoe-horned into Ten-Centimetre scale

Looking at my Hotz fleets in a despondent mood ... great idea, great ships but wrong size for me.
Printed at 66% the triremes from HRS are broader and longer than mine. I could print them smaller - but then the construction process becomes too much for my eyes and patience.

Then, comparing the size of the pentekonter and bireme from HRS I discovered they actually fit !
HRS trirem is a bit over-dimensioned maybe. In any case I can use the others unmodified, just printed at 66%.

At 10cm to 35m for Olympias HRS is a bit long and far too broad.

But  pentekonter and bireme match well to their original lengths.

This comparison gives a chance to show how the Hotz models have the elegant curved shapes which I sacrificed for easy construction. (In fact, Olympias is parallel-sided for most if her length.)

Anyway, nice to discover I can recycle some models. Perhaps I  may just grit tmy teeth and use the 30 HRS triremes also..?

Bored with talk of 'boarding actions'

While making my card ships I was set to thinking about the realities of combat between these kinds of ships. I sail with 25-metre viking ships - these are effectively monokrotic pentekonters- and , even without tiered oar positions I would not like to leap at another similar ship with defenders waiting.

One giant leap for mankind

In armour and with a shield the process of negotiating 'the gap' is a tricky one. Add the movement of the ships and whizzing arrows to produce a nasty situation.

If the ships have no railings such as Olympias is today, then an athletic young warrior could leap from deck to deck, his reception notwithstanding. However, it would appear that the usual state for a warship in combat was to have railings and even a line of shields mounted on it too. This means the process of climbing off one's own ship and onto the other is much more difficult.So much so that I begin to think that it was rarely on the cards.

Great ! Now lets try it one more time, at sea, in armour, with a shield and spear, and someone is shooting at you....

 In a battle based upon ramming, the ships usually come into contact with one prow against another part of the opposing ship or two prows meeting. Here there is a bottleneck which is difficult to pass. Little chance of either side getting onto the other. Within seconds or minutes the two ships would be separated again.

One would imagine that ships locked together after collision or press of battle would be more vulnerable to enemy clambering onboard.

However. usually the distance between ships was not negligible. The ram held the target ship at a distance. Oars, even broken, would hold the enemy ship away so it could not lie immediately alongside. Here is one way the oarsmen could contribute to a fight - by holding the opposing ship off with their oars.  The sailors were divided into two teams to mange th efore and aft-ship , Polybius says they had poles/boathooks with which they could fend off other ships to avoid collisions. The usual case would require a leap to gain the other ship. The paraxeiresia / outrigger would be another gap to be crossed - Brasidas fell into the outrigger during fighting at Pylos (also an example that shows a trierarch probably wore military gear).

Brasidas stands on the outrigger he should fall through (because it should not be boxed-in), on a Roman ship from 300 years later. But he cuts a fine figure anyway. 

Shipboard combat did not have space for phalanxes, files and ranks. It was a case of individual prowess and small group cooperation. This also argues against offensive boarding as a common tactic amongst Greek ships with 10 hoplites and 4 archers onboard. The few who clambered aboard the opponent would be met by the enemy with their 14 fighters plus armed sailors and oarsmen. It must have been an exceptional circumstance for a bridgehead to be won in these circumstances.

The corvus was an interesting innovation, not only because it locked the target ship onto the attacker but also because it provided a funnel to pour deck troops onto the enemy ship so that a more regular combat could take place. Its genius is that it solves the two main problems with getting a good solid melee going at sea (which the Romans thought they would usually win) - First problem was to have a solid hold on the enemy ship and the second was to provide a secure footing for attacking marines.

The Persians had circa 40 deck troops on their ships at Salamis according to Herodotos. Many writers assume this is a loading of the ship with marines a la the Roman tactic. But there was no equivalent of the corvus, no mention of gangplanks, even (though a trireme should carry two boarding ladders - for crew embarkation). We also know that the Persian style of fighting called for maximum use of the bow and then a short spear when things got to close quarters. The Greeks were contemptuous of their poor armour and shields. The fighting at Platea illustrates this, where the Persians were admired for their courage but almost pitied for their lack of skill and coordination.

Nice clothes shame about the relatively low combat efficiency against western heavy infantry.

 This large number of troops was most probably expected to fight as they usually did, to shoot with their bows. In this way they could damage the enemy and make any boarding attempt very costly. Not long before, the last stand of the defenders of thermopylae was reduced with massed archery.

'Then we die in the shade !'

Archery should be effective at sea where ships manouvre at a distance and accurate shooting at 100m or less would be potent. A hoplite, with his large shield crouching on a deck of a moving ship was, however, no easy target.

In addition, if the Persian ships had a high side as many suggest with reference to the Sennacherib reliefs, then clambering over them to board anenemy made things even more difficult. Why bother ? Just shoot his deck troops and commanders down then waltz over afterwards.

Diodoros - at a later date - tells of javelins and special long spears being used at distance and then swords when the combatants were at each others' throats.

Even at a later date the value of a long spear for boarding was appreciated : RN 19th century boarding pikes

 Such fighting as took place must have been first and foremost around the forecastles of ramming ships with poor chances for the defender to get onto their tormenter before he backed-off. Any ship using its ram effectively would not be trying to board the other. Ram and sink was better than getting involved in boarding actions. Deck fighting would result from entangled ships and ships held together long enough - and held CLOSE enough - for such fighting to develop by whatever means. The time available after impact and before the rammer backed away was short - the boarders must be well prepared and very aggressive in their actions, not to mention nimble.

How NOT to greet an oncoming rammer : I hope they can swim.

The ramming impact could cause a ship to lurch sideways and to roll violently - the deck troops on the target ship must hold on to avoid being thrown about. They could not stand waiting for the impact ready to simply hop onto the enemy ship. 

He he..good old 'Look and Learn'

  Grappling hooks are little heard of in Herodotos and Thucydides and then mostly in connection with dragging captured or sunk ships away. A ramming ship would by definition not use grapples - no point in holding on to a damaged enemy. A target ship may want to grapple but to organise it when the best option may be just to let the attacker back off and leave makes it doubtful. Grapplers would be sinking ships seeking to be bouyed-up and ships intending to take a crippled opponent as a prize. The idea that two fresh fighting ships with rams would be simultaneously trying to board each other is not logical. In specific circumstances we do read of ships loaded with troops intending to fight it out hand-to-hand but these are mostly larger ships from a later age. The 3 was a mobile ram, not a troop-carrier.


As an aside, the Osprey illustration of a 'grappler' working from within the oarsmen's space does not allow for the closeness of the oarsmens positions nor the chaos he could cause by being there. He would stop at least 2 and maybe 6 men using their oars.
 

An attack with the intention from the outset to grapple and capture the enemy ship is more likely to be conducted like a classic pirate ship action from Hollywood, with ships lying abeam. With the ship approaching the target to lie parallel gunwale to gunwale so its own marines can together jump over to the target ship.

Pirates and RN fight it out : gunwale -to-gunwale

In summary. During the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, down to the Romans' failure to admit  that they could not fight land battles on water, it was exceptional for deck troops to expect to board and sieze enemy ships. Thier job was primarily defensive, allowing the ship to function as a weapon rather than a transporter for them. Of course, those Latins spoilt it all....

A final juicy picture from 'Look and Learn'. If the ancient world did not look like this then it ought to have...

Osprey eat your hearts out..