Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/322

 description; and it is no solution of the difficulty to deny, as Mr. Charnock and others have done, the existence of vessels beyond a certain size, when it is found that a theory practicable within certain limits would be altogether impracticable if carried beyond them.

That this would be the case in Mr. Charnock's plan he himself admits. He says that a trireme was a galley more formidable than the bireme, "having one tier of oars extending between the masts, a second abaft the mainmast, and a third forward, near the prow or stem before the foremast." The quadriremes he describes as having had "their oars ranged like the triremes, with the difference of having two tiers of oars one above the other, abaft the mainmast." "The quinqueremes," he adds, "were also of the same description, with the addition of the second tier of oars forward." He then goes on to state that "the octoremes had two tiers of oars in the midships, and three at the stem and stern, making in all eight." This is no doubt an easy method of solving the difficulty, so far as regards biremes, triremes, quadriremes and octoremes, but our author fails to explain how his principle can be applied to vessels of a larger description, or even how the number of rowers each of these classes are said to have contained was placed at the oars. The latter he does not attempt, and as summarily dismisses the former by questioning the existence altogether of any vessels with more than three tiers of oars placed either directly or obliquely above each other, in the face of the most ample evidence to the contrary. However, the theory Mr. Charnock