The Construction Of Roman Seagoing Warships - 1060 Words

Whether you are transporting people, laying siege to a countryside, or simply shipping goods down the coast, ships have always been the way to do it and the Romans have perfected this method. Romans might not have been the first to build ships but they were the ones who were able to master the art of naval warfare and shipping goods and people to and from Alexandria. To this day we still base many of our shipping systems off of them and their influence on modern day ship design is prevalent in documents that show the materials used for ships that we still use today. The technology and history of Roman ships and the practice of shipbuilding has evolved over the span of time. Many archaeologist do not have detailed information about the†¦show more content†¦Roman ships are rather simple in design. Many ships simply had a single main mast which carried a rectangular sail. However some ships also had small sails at the bow and stern. Roman ships were steered by large oars as opposed to rudders. Lighthouses were placed by Romans to aid shipping to avoid crashes into dangerous cliff sides and rocks.Romans built large merchant ships called cortia. These large ships could carry up to 1,000 tons of cargo easily.Majority of Roman merchant ships transported a wide range of commodities, including wine, garum, fruit, nuts, oil, and fish, in two-handled clay storage jars called amphoras. Shipwrights were called either a faber navalis or an architectus navalis. These shipwrights organized themselves into collegia, or guilds, and excavations. Ancient ships were made of wood and water-proofed using pitch and paint. Commanders began to favor smaller more maneuverable ships called liburna. Liburna played a huge role in helping Octavian defeat Marc Antony. Ships with multiple levels of rowers were manoeuvrable enough to attack enemy vessels by ramming into the sides of them. The trireme was a ship that literally translated into three banks of oars. The quinqueremes were the largest ships. They had three banks of rowers with two each for the upper two oars and one rower on the lower oar. There