Page:Boating - Woodgate - 1888.pdf/38

 ground for new public buildings in the Pireus near Athens, some engraved stone slabs were found built up in a low wall which had been uncovered. These were happily preserved and deciphered, and were found to be records of the dockyard authorities of the Athenian admiralty in the second and third centuries before Christ. Many interesting details were thus brought to light which were sct in order by the illustrious scholar Boeckh in his volume entitled ‘Urkunden tiber das Seewesen des attischen Staates.’ His pupil Dr. Graser has eafried on his researches by the examination .of innumerable coins, vases, ete., and has rescued the subject from niuch of the obscurity which enveloped it. The following description of the trireme, based upon his labours, is quoted, by permission, from the new edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ vol. xxi. pp. 806, 807.

In describing the trireme it will be convenient to deal first with the disposition of the rowers and subsequently with the construction of the vessel itself. The object of arranging the oars in banks was to economise horizontal space and to obtain an increase in the number of oars without haying to lengthen the vessel. We know from Vitruvius that the ‘interscalinium, or space horizontally measured from oar to oar, was two cubits, This is exactly borne out by the proportions of an Attic aphract trireme, as shown on a fragment of a bas-relief found in the Acropolis, The rowers in all classes of banked vessels sat in the same vertical plane, the seats ascending in a line obliquely towards the stern of the vessel. Thus in a trireme the thranite, or oarsman of the highest bank, was nearest the stern of the set of three to which be belonged. Next behind him and somewhat below him sat his zygite, or oarsman of the second bank; and next below and behind the zygite sat the thalamite, or oarsman of the lowest bank. The vertical distance between these seats was 2 feet, the horizontal distance about 1 foot, The horizontal distance, it is well to repeat, between each seat in the same bank was 3 feet (the seat itself about 9 inches broad). Each man had a resting-place for his feet, somewhat wide apart, fixed to the bench of the man on the row'next below and in front of him. In rowing, the upper hand, as is shown in most of the representations which remain, was held with the palm turned inwards towards the body. This is accounted for by the angle at