Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/335

 saving of which evidently induced the ancients to increase the number of tiers.

As the galleys of the ancients must have varied very much in their capacity and dimensions, it would be more reasonable to suppose that, from the unireme to the quinquereme inclusive, they derived their names from the number of oars placed horizontally over each other, rather than from the number of oblique rows as suggested by Mr. Howell. That is to say, though a trireme bore that name because she had three tiers of oars placed thus:—

she was, nevertheless, still a trireme, if she had four, five, ten, or even twenty oblique rows of oar-ports, only she would be a trireme of a larger size, just as we have or had frigates—single-decked vessels, which have varied in size from 600 to 6,000 tons. A trireme might therefore be a much more powerful vessel than a quadrireme or quinquereme. On a similar principle, a quadrireme would have four horizontal tiers of oars, as follows:—

but, as in the case of the trireme, she would still be a quadrireme, only of a larger size, if she had more than four oblique rows. There is, however, a limit beyond which oars could not be worked when placed