Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/313

 one were frequently employed upon the same oar. Such was the case in the celebrated Liburnian galleys, already described.

Here the question arises how many men could, with convenience, sit on each bench? Presuming that, in the case of an oar fifty-seven feet in length, one-third, or nineteen feet, remained within board, there would, allowing fifteen inches for each rower, be space for fifteen men to work at the one oar; and if the men who sat within six feet of the row-port were of no service, there is still ample space left to place ten effective rowers.

If in comparatively modern times, when rowers were by no means crowded, eighteen inches for each man abreast was considered more than sufficient, we may infer that five men to an oar was far from an unfrequent practice in manning the state galleys of the Italian Republics. But while there is no difficulty in understanding how five or even ten men could be rendered serviceable in working the oars of single-banked galleys, a great difficulty arises when we inquire how that number of men could effectively handle the upper bank oars of the quadriremes and quinqueremes. On these and on many other matters the accounts of the ancients are conflicting: nor do the imperfect illustrations on ancient monuments and on coins materially assist in their elucidation. Assured of the fact that there were many vessels of much larger dimensions than even quinqueremes propelled by oars, we have to consider ''how this was done''. Now the only mode of arriving at correct