Trireme Olympias: The Final Report

by Boris Rankov (Editor)

This volume represents the final publication of the Olympias project, which saw the building of a full-scale reconstruction of a 170-oared Athenian trireme of the 4th century BC and its operation in five series of sea-trials in the Aegean Sea. The first three sea-trials in 1987, 1988 and 1990 have already been published in separate volumes (the last two by Oxbow) and this completes the series with reports of the 1992 and 1994 trials. The 1992 report by Paul Lipke of Trireme Trust USA, which collaborated with the Trireme Trust in the operation of the ship, offers an alternative view of the project as a whole from that presented in previous reports. The rest of the volume is devoted to some twenty-six papers presenting more recent research on the trireme, some of them originally presented at a conference held in Oxford and Henley in 1998. One group of papers by Timothy Shaw and John Coates presents the argument for making relatively small adjustments to the hull and oar-system of Olympias , which would enable the crew to generate far more power and so match the performance under oar which is implied by the ancient sources. The papers, therefore show the detailed thinking behind the modifications proposed in the second edition of The Athenian Trireme (2000). Another set of papers offers further critiques of the project, some positive and some skeptical and hostile. A third group investigates aspects of operation and performance under both oar and sail, including slipping and launching, the ancient evidence for speed under oar and physiological aspects of the ship's "human engine". A fourth group looks at aspects of construction and maintenance and a final set of papers presents some of the latest research inspired by the project, including an investigation of the effects of ramming, a reconsideration of the evidence for the dimensions of the ancient trireme and the modeling of battle maneuvers based on the data produced by the trials of Olympias .

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2012

About the author

Dr. Boris Rankov is a professor of Roman history at Royal Holloway, University of London. He studied Classics and Ancient History at Oxford, where he also wrote his doctoral thesis on Roman military staff officers. He has held a Research Fellowship at Oxford and lectureships in the United States and Western Australia. Rankov's research interests include Roman history, especially Roman Britain, the Roman army, epigraphy and archaeology of the Roman empire, and ancient shipping. While at Oxford, he rowed in six winning Boat Race crews and has, since 1988, been one of the rowing masters on the reconstructed Greek trireme Olympias.

Reviews

[Joe White · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rating is dependent on your desire to read technical algebraic boat design papers used to support a reconstruction of a 400-500 BC Greek Trireme. For many, this might be a 1 star torture, where getting past the first summary chapter will be a challenge.

Here are some of my reflections:

review : Trireme Olympias The Final Report
finished Sat. 1/3/15; written Wed 1/7/15


This book is a collection of technical papers regarding the Olympias project. Any reader attempting this book should already be familiar with the other books written regarding the financing and building of the trireme Olympias, and the earlier sea trials of the project.

The overwhelming focus of the project was to test the build design parameters of the most common Greek Mediterranean warship from 500 BC to the Roman period. There were enough written reports to make the design parameters fairly specific, and there are just barely enough archaeologial remains and reliefs to be able to hone into a moderately precise reconstruction.

Ship size was governed largely from surviving ship shed outlines, and written recordings of oar requirements for 270 rowers, divided into three categories of rowing personnel survive.

The collection of papers here was strongly biased by the original boat designers toward attempting to determine why the predicted boat speed, both top speed and sustained average speed, was not obtained in sea trials. The target objective to attain was on the order of an average of 7.9 knots over a "long day" of approximately 16 hours plus. This was developed largley from a quoted passaged from Xenophon regrding a passage from Byzantium to Heraclea, around 113 nautical miles performed regularly over a "long day". No precise historical statement mentioned the percentage use of sail or its use in regard to wind speeds at various times of the day. So conjectures in the papers here emphasized to rowing capabilities.

Since this book is a colection of papers by different authors, with most largely focusing on the rowing performance characteristics, then the book is full of repetition, where each author restates the basic premisies, sources, results of trials, etc. before prognosticating on what changes or implications need to be further considered in enhancing or evaluating boat speed. There were a couple of critical papers suggesting that the design was totally wrong and that assumptions made of written records should be interpreted differently.

I was surprised that the sailing capabilities of the vessel were given scant mention, with almost no detailed analysis of equipment, or suggested testing for modifications. Part of the reason for the exclusion of rigorous sail testing was probably based on the fact that apparently in battle, the sails were not used at all, and were often left ashore. When used, they were apparently a sign of extraction and flight from battle using a smaller sail than the large mainsail. A statement was made that with the small sail, a boat had the speed capability to almost always escape disaster. While it may have been true, then all the other quotes regarding the use of oars exclusively, and using the oars as a means to achieve a faster speed than sail, didn't quite point to the same conclusions in my opinion.

The papers presented here were largely detailed analysis reports, each full of algebraic formulations for such items as boat speed analysis, human mechanical power output potential, blade shape and oar handling capabilities in the context of the power stroke as applied in a crewed 8 boat, healing angles caused by waves and their impact on the stroke and thus boat speed, human ballasting conditions and its affect on healing, maximum heals in turns (particularly fast turns), oar lengths, tholepin attachments, the effects and impact of hogging, the impact of ballasting - particularly in regard to mortise and tenon loosening and shipworm degredation causing the boat to take on more water, etc.

There were separate papers dealing with wood types, mortise and tenon joinery, and shipworm degradation. Each of these items was usually included in the other topics regarding the oar speed of the boat, which generates the feeling of repetition for the reader.

A primary topic throughout was the interscalmium measurement, the distance length between tholepins of two rowers, which is a direct measurement of how much room a rower has to perform the correct stroke and thus benefit boat speed. The arrangement of the lower deck, closest to the water was deemed to be constricted by both too short of this interscalmium measurement, and by the impact of overhead and spanning beams restricting stoke positioning. From historical archeaological finds spanning a thousand years, many of which ocurred after the Olympias was designed, this interscalmium measurement of 2 cubits, was probably taken as an incorrect value for the cubit length. Newer boatshed finds also indicated the the boat may have been designed too short and could easily have been at least 10 feet longer. A significant objective of some of the papers was to encourage the building of a new boat to a newer design with a longer interscalmium measuremant.

Cost of building and maintenance was not mentioned in any of the papers here, except with regard to the cost of shipping the boat and crew to England for trials with a shortened crew for the trials tests. It was a relatively staggering amount of money just for that exercise in my limmited financial world, and probably one reason why the papers presented here were so detailed and narrowly focused on rowing boat speed. The current boat has had fairly extensive repairs and rebuild, and due to costs, were performed with newer materials (bolts) and epoxy, which are cheaper and more widely used than the original mortise and tenon reconstructions.

Interscalmium is a word that will penetrate your dreams if you read this book closely.

In regard to the physical size of the book itself, it was presented in a coffee table book format with oversize pages which can better present photographic imformation. However, the photography presented was very limited, and for a book so detailed, the lines drawings were fairly limited. I would have preferred a thicker book in a smaller format such as a regular textbook size of 8x11.