Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/318



It might be unnecessary to offer any further remarks on this branch of the subject, had not Mr. Mitford, the celebrated historian of Greece, expressed so strong an opinion in favour of it. "The most satisfactory conjectures," he remarks, "that I have met with by far, are those of General Melvill." It may, however, be here explained that General Melvill, in common with other writers, had previously entertained the opinion that the number of banks were measured by the number of men at an oar. That is to say, a unireme, he considered, had only one man placed at an oar, a bireme two, a trireme three, and so forth, up to the great ship of Ptolemy Philopator, which had, according to this theory, forty men to each of its fifty-seven feet oars. As the General on examination found such a theory to be untenable, he conceived the idea that in no case was there more than one man to an oar. "He," then, "set himself to investigate the subject for confirmation of this opinion on fact, as he should find that fact to turn out in the descriptions of sea-fights and other naval transactions, as given by the ancient authors, particularly Polybius, Cæsar, Livy, and Florus." Impressed with his new idea, it occurred to him, that "the indispensable requisites were, that in the arrangement of the rowers within, each side ought to have been such as to admit of the greatest number possible, that they should be so placed as not to impede each other; that they should be enabled to row to the best advantage;