Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/61

 Rh much what they might have been, had some prototype of the present-day 'Blue Water School' been amongst them. Secure in their Sea Power they troubled comparatively little about the Roman invasion and the failure of their army in Sicily. In these years the interior of the island was practically in Roman hands, but the coast towns were all at the mercy of Carthaginian ships—so too the coast towns of Italy, despite the fortified ports specially established against naval raids.

Then it was that Rome suddenly turned attention to the sea. Stories of the ignorant Romans building a fleet upon the model of a wrecked Carthaginian warship are probably not fiction, for though they had ample numbers of naval architects in the Greeks and Etruscans on their own shores, they had not, however any practice in building such efficient warships as were the Carthaginian vessels. Few trained seamen were available, and 'shore establishments' were instituted in which rowing was practised. The first effort was a sufficiently dismal failure. One hundred quinqueremes and thirty triremes were constructed, and seventeen of these ships—a trial squadron under C. Cornelius Scipio—encountered the Carthaginians under Boodes off Messana in superior force.

The Carthaginians to the number of twenty ships