Hello.

I was looking at some trireme images in the web and it is said that almost no specimen was found, so How are we so sure about their shapes?

DO you have any link or image of such ship designs, showind this configuration (I mean, the front part with the eyes and the nose like structure and the rammming device)

http://www.xlegio.ru/ships/00-greekbiremeversion01.jpg

I only found an assyrian war ship image with the ramming tip:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:AssyrianWarship.jpg

Thanks

P.D.
Do you know who used trireme and bireme and wich was their weaponry? (Fenicians? Romans? Egiptians?)
Do you know of any heavier ships?

Thanks again and sorry for the lack of appropiate terms.

Hi Rodolfo,

There are a number of representations of triremes to be found in Greek art and coinage. The likeness of a trireme is also carved into a cliff face on Rhodes (Rodos), near the Lindos fortress. As to who used them (beyond the Greeks) and how long they were in use... I don't know. I believe the Carthaginians are described as using them, but don't have anything in front of me.

Sorry if the above is somewhat vague-- this isn't my first area of interest. Hopefully others will be able to provide more in the way of images.

David

Hi Rodolfo. Most of what we know about ancient Mediterranean warships comes from three types of sources:

-Depictions on coins, reliefs, mosaics, and even life-sized sculptures. Often these just show the bow or are not detailed, but they give some information.
-Physical remains such as the foundations of boat-houses and surviving rams. There are even several Carthaginian warships from the First Punic War (early 3rd century BCE) which survive intact off Sicily although no other warships survive.
- Written documents in Greek and Latin which describe types of ships, how fast they could travel, and how they fought.

In the case of the trireme, we have a detailed sculpture from the Acropolis in Athens, the remains of boat-houses, and lots of written evidence which gives a pretty good idea of how they looked. A reconstruction was built 30 years ago and could do almost everything ancient triremes could supposedly do.

Triremes were invented by Greeks or Phoenecians sometime between 800 and 500 BCE. We can't pin it down more exactly because there is not very much evidence from that period, especially on the Phoenecian end. In the Hellenistic period (roughly from the death of Alexander the Great to the reign of Augustus) ancient warships went up to 'sixteens' (probably two banks of 8 rowers on each side of the ship). But 'fours' (probably two banks of two-man oars on each side of the ship) and 'fives' (probably two banks of two-man oars and one bank of one-man oars on each side of the ship) were the mainstay of most fleets, and 'threes' (triremes) were still used.

Hi Rodolfo,

A quick search on google will give you a wealth of information on biremes and triremes, even youtube movies,

Here are a couple of quick ones:

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/war/Trireme.htm

http://www.trireme.gr/en/boats.html

Or visit this ship modelers forum in spain, they are a bunch of very good people:

http://www.cuadernamaestra.com/foro/index.php

Good luck.

Thanks to all guys,
Thats what i was searching for, i didn´t know thyat there were bireme coins and such.
Thanks.

If you have the patience to scrutinize a long scholarly work, Kathryn Simonsen's dissertation on the development of the ram in connection with ancient shipbuilding and naval warfare techniques would be really worth the effort needed to understand it:

http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0015/NQ54242.pdf

another excellent source is this page about a very detailed reconstruction of the ancient trireme:

http://ay-avebury.soton.ac.uk/Prospectus/CMA/...lect26.htm