06-20-2006, 08:28 AM
Great comments... I got the 70 tons from the Wikipedia entry on the Olympias, I guess it's wrong?
As for the weight of the crew, though, yes, it's 14,000 Kg (I added 10 tons to the Olympias number, so I was going in the right direction, but wrote it wrong on the post... :-)
I don't think the trierei would be able to carry a lot of cargo, but one day-long travels were common, and considering they were rowing in the Summer, you could easily need about 5 L of water per men and per day. We know that Alexander managed to force the defending Fleet at Ephesus to retreat for lack of fresh water after three of four days (or am I thinkning in the wrong Ionian siege in here?).
That means 10,000 L per ship per day. Even if you try to get the water dragged as long as possible, and a sieging Fleet wouldn't be rowing, it's still a lot of water (and 10 more tons of displacement in morning, until the sweating and Nature calls get the most off the ship... :-)
Even if the over all displacement is down to 60 tons (40 for the ship, 14 for the crew and weapons, and 6 for water and food) the numbers are pretty much astonishing... (multiply all my figures by 0.75)
p ~ 2e5 kg m/s at ramming speed...
Still a lot!!! (Our 1 tm car would still crash at the astonishing speed of 720 km/h ~447 miles/h!)
The violence of the crash is important as I recall reading that many Spanish ships in the Felicessima Armada managed to dissassemble themselves by using their cannons on sea battle, when most of them were modified merchant ships carrying weapons designed to use as land siege cannons! If the triremes were so "delicate" as to needing being berthed on land as often as possible, it was probably because they suffered heavy damage to the wood planking on every ramming maneuver, and water could start pouring in if they weren't taken care pretty often (besides, pinewood is light but bends more easily than oak or teka...)
As for the red-hoy sand, it's certainly incredible, but I have a hypothesis to try and explain that: as the incredibly hot sand was poured on the iron shields, they quickly dissipated some of the heat (after all it's a good heat conductor), fast enough to avoid reaching melting point, and fast enough so the colder sand shielded it from the hotter one. I.e. the iron got hot by cooling the sand that got in contact with it, and that cooler sand, being a very bad heat conductor, protected the shield from further damage by keeing the red-hot sand away from the iron. As they would be handling the shields with pretty good caw hide gloves, anyway, the operation was probably done as fast as possible (I mean, 1,400ºC is a lot of heat, and an aspis could easily hold several kilograms of it, which is a considerable source of heat and discomfort...). One can even envision the inside of the shield to become covered by a glass coating of melted sand...
well, just my €0.02 cents!
As for the weight of the crew, though, yes, it's 14,000 Kg (I added 10 tons to the Olympias number, so I was going in the right direction, but wrote it wrong on the post... :-)
I don't think the trierei would be able to carry a lot of cargo, but one day-long travels were common, and considering they were rowing in the Summer, you could easily need about 5 L of water per men and per day. We know that Alexander managed to force the defending Fleet at Ephesus to retreat for lack of fresh water after three of four days (or am I thinkning in the wrong Ionian siege in here?).
That means 10,000 L per ship per day. Even if you try to get the water dragged as long as possible, and a sieging Fleet wouldn't be rowing, it's still a lot of water (and 10 more tons of displacement in morning, until the sweating and Nature calls get the most off the ship... :-)
Even if the over all displacement is down to 60 tons (40 for the ship, 14 for the crew and weapons, and 6 for water and food) the numbers are pretty much astonishing... (multiply all my figures by 0.75)
p ~ 2e5 kg m/s at ramming speed...
Still a lot!!! (Our 1 tm car would still crash at the astonishing speed of 720 km/h ~447 miles/h!)
The violence of the crash is important as I recall reading that many Spanish ships in the Felicessima Armada managed to dissassemble themselves by using their cannons on sea battle, when most of them were modified merchant ships carrying weapons designed to use as land siege cannons! If the triremes were so "delicate" as to needing being berthed on land as often as possible, it was probably because they suffered heavy damage to the wood planking on every ramming maneuver, and water could start pouring in if they weren't taken care pretty often (besides, pinewood is light but bends more easily than oak or teka...)
As for the red-hoy sand, it's certainly incredible, but I have a hypothesis to try and explain that: as the incredibly hot sand was poured on the iron shields, they quickly dissipated some of the heat (after all it's a good heat conductor), fast enough to avoid reaching melting point, and fast enough so the colder sand shielded it from the hotter one. I.e. the iron got hot by cooling the sand that got in contact with it, and that cooler sand, being a very bad heat conductor, protected the shield from further damage by keeing the red-hot sand away from the iron. As they would be handling the shields with pretty good caw hide gloves, anyway, the operation was probably done as fast as possible (I mean, 1,400ºC is a lot of heat, and an aspis could easily hold several kilograms of it, which is a considerable source of heat and discomfort...). One can even envision the inside of the shield to become covered by a glass coating of melted sand...
well, just my €0.02 cents!
Episkopos P. Lilius Frugius Simius Excalibor, :. V. S. C., Pontifex Maximus, Max Disc Eccl
David S. de Lis - my blog: <a class="postlink" href="http://praeter.blogspot.com/">http://praeter.blogspot.com/
David S. de Lis - my blog: <a class="postlink" href="http://praeter.blogspot.com/">http://praeter.blogspot.com/
