The Trireme Dreadnought of the Ancient Mediterranean

A trireme (from Latin triremis, literally "three-oarer") was a type of galley, a Hellenistic-era warship that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.
The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar. The early trireme was a development of the penteconter, an ancient warship with a single row of 25 oars on each side, and of the bireme (Greek: διήρης), a warship with two banks of oars, probably of Phoenician origin. As a ship it was fast and agile, and became the dominant warship in the Mediterranean from the 7th to the 4th century BC, when they were largely superseded by the larger quadriremes and quinqueremes. Triremes played a vital role in the Persian Wars, the creation of the Athenian maritime empire, and its downfall in the Peloponnesian War.

The music provided by Hyland0r is available at: http://www.youtube.com/user/Hyland0r

Category:

Education

Tags:

• The
• Trireme
• Dreadnaught
• of
• the
• Ancient
• Mediterranean
• man
• early
• development
• penteconter
• ancient
• oars
• bireme
• Phoenician
• ship
• it
• was
• fast
• agile
• dominant
• warship
• Persian
• Wars
• creation
• Athenian
• maritime
• empire
• Peloponnesian
• War.

[sbx213]

great video. Thanks.

[Historyisthekey]

@XxSeanOfDeathxX I'm with you. I was baffled when somone first posted 'trooroom', I thought they were using some kind of acronym. XD 'tree-reme' is a much more accurate description.

I am sorry about my pronounciation in this, I hope it doesn't detract from the video too much.

[XxSeanOfDeathxX]

@auralstream Sounds more like Treereme to me.

[auralstream]

THE TRUUURUM

[proulxmontpellier]

They imported of lot of timber from Thracia, that is modern day Northern Greece and Bulgaria.

[thevampireking21]

@HeLpLOstGOdAny1

There were probably no trees left in Greece at the time big enough for these ships. So they were probably imported from up north in the baltic areas. Its one of the reasons that triremes were so expensive.

[Historyisthekey]

@HeLpLOstGOdAny1 it's also worth noting that later ships generally made use of further reinforcement on the hulls and thicker hull planking. What's more, later ship designs tended to use hardwoods (such as oak)which are much slower in growing and maturing. Due to availability, the pine tree was the wood of chocie fr rtrireme construction, meaning that it would have had very little impact on deforestation etc when compared to later ship models.

[Historyisthekey]

@HeLpLOstGOdAny1 Well with the trireme you're looking at a length of approx. 35-40 metres and a width of 6m and a height of only 3m. If we compare this to, say, the Mary Rose (which was 12m wide, 32m long and 13m high) we can estimate that it would be about 1/8th of the amount of timber that would be used in a Tudor warship; a.k.a. slightly over 20 trees. This is corroborated by the fact that Herodotus states that a trireme could be constructed with around 20 good pine trees.

[HeLpLOstGOdAny1]

I wonder how much manufacturing these ships changed the natural environment of the Ancient world? It's said 170 mature Oaks went into an average Tudor warship, that's not to mention vast numbers of other trees felled as well for auxiliary & support network & infrastructure involved. Do you have any idea/estimate of numbers of trees involved in production of the Trireme?