Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/348

 the sweep of the handles of the oars, and to enable the rowers to walk one or two steps forward, and then throw themselves backwards with greater impetus into their seats, as already described.

The conclusions at which we have arrived may be condensed as follows:—

1. Ancient galleys were classed or rated according to their number of banks, rows or tiers of oars.

2. All galleys above the unireme had their oar-ports placed obliquely above each other in horizontal rows.

3. No galley had more than five horizontal rows.

4. Every galley, from the unireme to the quinquereme inclusive, derived its name or class from the number of horizontal rows.

5. All galleys, above a quinquereme, were likewise classed according to the number of rows. In their case, however, the oblique rows were counted; but, in all cases, from the smallest to the largest, including Ptolemy's tesseracontoros, ''each row, whether oblique or horizontal, was a distinct bank of oars'', which, like the number of guns, wherever they were placed, in wooden men-of-war, ''constituted the only basis for their classification''.

6. The portion of the galley appropriated to the rowers and their oars was as separate from the other portions of the vessel as is the machinery of a paddle-wheel steamer. The rowers, also, like modern engineers and stokers, were entirely distinct from the seamen and marines; and among them were leaders and crack rowers, who were as indispensable to get the galley under way and keep the rest of the rowers in time as are the engineers of our own day, who