Customer Reviews

The Trireme Project: Operational Experience 1987-90, Lessons Learnt (Oxbow Monographs)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is always fascinating to learn how ancient technologies worked--by trying them out. The authors of this volume describe their reconstruction of such a ship, which they named the OLYMPIAS. They used the ancient shell-first method of ship construction. Planks were fastened edge-to-edge by tenons.

This method is superior to the more recent plank-on-frame method of wooden shipbuilding. Coates comments: "By that method, common in Europe for about the last thousand years, planks forming the skin of a ship are not positively and directly fastened to each other, but only via the frames. Only the caulking rammed between the planks prevents them from sliding on each other, like the leaves of a carriage spring, when the hull is subjected to longitudinal bending and to shear forces. Framed construction is heavier, cheaper, easier to repair, but inherently weaker and structurally less elegant than the shell construction of the ancient Mediterranean. The shell strength of the ancient method is essential to the trireme whose hull is fifteen times as long as it is deep, a very high ratio indeed for an undecked timber hull built without the benefit of modern glues." (p. 22).