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00:28Closed Captioning by Kris Brandhagen.com
01:07The Mediterranean, a sea of historical significance.
01:13In ancient times, the civilizations that grew up around it were the most important of their age.
01:19From Egypt through to Rome, it was Mediterranean nations who led the Western world.
01:26Warfare was a vital part of their history.
01:30Naval warfare was no exception.
01:34It is no coincidence that the great nations of the ancient past were all familiar with the art of war
01:41at sea.
01:42Some of the battles they fought were amongst the most important in all history.
01:48Later on, in medieval times, the warship would also become a feature of the northern European world.
01:57This is the story of those distant days.
02:01The days of the first sea powers.
02:33This war is never akan to be seen during the warship.
02:34the Western world, the beginnings of sea warfare can be traced to Egypt. From
02:40earliest times, the Egyptians built boats for traveling up and down the great
02:45river Nile. By 3000 BC, Egyptian ships already ventured onto the waters of the
02:52Mediterranean. Surviving relief sculptures show the design of these early
02:58ships. They were powered both by the wind and by human muscle. Wind power was
03:10generated by a square sail on a bipod mast. Twenty or more oarsmen on either side of
03:16the vessel provided muscle power when mast and sail were lowered. This was the
03:24basic design for seagoing Egyptian vessels for thousands of years. Relief
03:30sculptures also tell us how the Egyptians eventually modified their ships for the
03:34business of war. The earliest ever depiction of a naval battle can be found at the
03:41temple of the New Kingdom Pharaoh, Ramesses III. Carved images show Pharaoh's forces
03:49in action against an enemy described as northerners of the Isles. Close
03:55examination of the relief shows that Egyptian warship designers introduced high
04:01washboards on either side of their vessels. These protected the rowers from
04:06enemy arrow and spear. The effectiveness of Egyptian archers and spearmen was
04:13improved by elevated decks at either end of the ship. The crow's nest structure on the
04:18mast may also have been for the benefit of the archers. The main enemies of
04:25ancient Egypt were first of all people who lived upstream further south up the
04:32river Nile and probably to a lesser extent Mediterranean peoples threatening the
04:40Nile Delta. Most Egyptian warfare is directed upstream and here there have been
04:48attacking or fighting against people at a rather less developed level of
04:55civilization whose ships probably copied Egyptian ships. At best they were pale
05:02reflections of Egyptian ships, perhaps smaller, less mobile. The people who
05:08attacked ancient Egypt from across the Mediterranean seem to have come in boats
05:14which resembled Viking longships. Not built in the same way but that sort of
05:19arrangement single banks of oars with warriors in them. And here the Egyptians would
05:26have had the advantage of the space which they provide for the fighting men. Not
05:36strictly sailors but the sorts of fighting men that you would see in a land battle. Archers,
05:42javelin men. Egyptian warships provide more and higher space for these people. And
05:52Egyptian bowmen were extremely good quality. They're renowned in the ancient world and so
05:59it's the conditions which allow these people to fight most effectively which mean that
06:04Egyptian warships were famous. Egypt was not the only naval power of its age. To the north,
06:14the Minoans and then the Mycenaeans were known for their seafaring skills. For centuries, Crete was the
06:21home base of a substantial fleet, although our knowledge of the ships they used is limited. The Cretans were
06:29attributed with designing the first warships. Their ideas were certainly adopted by the next great sea power
06:37in the eastern Mediterranean, the Phoenicians.
06:45Based around the cities of Tyre and Sidon, Phoenicia was a grouping of independent city-states that flourished
06:53around the turn of the first millennium BC. They were primarily a nation of traders. In their pursuit of
07:02trade, they became legendary seafarers. We know that Phoenician merchant ships travelled beyond the Mediterranean.
07:11It is even possible that they circumnavigated the African continent. It is virtually certain that they travelled as far as
07:20cornwall to acquire the tin needed to produce bronze. The evolution of the Phoenician warship was linked to the
07:31merchant trade, providing defence for the merchant shipping routes. The design adopted would profoundly influence
07:40the later development of battleships. As in Egypt, Phoenician ships were powered by both sail and ore. They were
07:50long, slim vessels, war galleys built for speed and manoeuvrability, with two steering oars for direction.
07:59Surviving images also proved that they were fitted with a bronze weapon that would feature again and again
08:05in ancient warship design, the ram. It's very difficult to determine exactly when the true ram developed.
08:14Early depictions of ships on vases show an extension of the keel beyond the main hull, which may be an
08:24offensive ram or may
08:25just be a forefoot, just an extension. At some stage, somebody obviously discovered that running into another ship with this
08:34forefoot's forefoot could knock a hole in it and therefore got the idea of using that offensively. Once it's realised
08:43that one can
08:43fight in this way by destroying one's enemy by ramming them, this then puts a premium on the speed and
08:52manoeuvrability of one's ships.
08:55And because the ships are all powered, people then presumably start looking for ways of packing more men into the
09:03same length of hull.
09:04And this is one reason why multiple level ships developed, where you've got oarsmen not at a single level, but
09:15at two and later three levels.
09:17So that same length of ship has twice as much power, propulsive power, without sacrificing any of the manoeuvrability of
09:27the shorter hull.
09:30For extra speed, Phoenician warships were designed with not one, but two banks of rowers. The lower bank were seated
09:39along the main body of the galley,
09:41while the upper bank were positioned in extensions known as outriggers. In themselves, these outriggers provided valuable stability in a
09:53long, narrow ship.
09:55The extra muscle power accommodated within them made the Phoenician warship a formidable opponent. Ships like this succeeded in protecting
10:06the merchant fleet.
10:08For a time, the city of Tyre became the richest in the world, and the Phoenicians established colonies across the
10:17Mediterranean region.
10:18The Phoenicians had a very important impact on the design of warship. Assyrian palace reliefs of the late 8th century,
10:25that is to say about 700 BC, rather crudely depict Phoenician vessels of two banks of oars and with what
10:32I call a kind of proto-ram, a small ram.
10:36The ram makes a major change to naval warfare, and hence to warships, because it means that ships are capable
10:45of fighting in a rather different way.
10:47Before the ram, you fight your enemies rather as if you're fighting a battle on land. You come alongside and
10:54you bombard them. You could do that on land.
10:56But with a ram, you've got a different way of knocking out enemy ships.
11:04The ram enables specifically naval tactics to evolve. It means that seamanship, the ability to row and steer skillfully, become
11:15very, very important.
11:16It's the great change in ancient naval warfare.
11:23As Phoenicia flourished, another group of city-states in the region began to prosper, the Greek city-states.
11:32Like the Phoenicians, the Greeks were traders and colonists, for whom mobility at sea was vital.
11:40From the 8th century BC, they began to spread out into the Mediterranean.
11:47For trade, they relied on the Pentecounter, an undecked, light-hulled vessel, with square sail and 25 oarsmen either side.
11:58The Pentecounter was strongly influenced by the Phoenician merchant galleys.
12:03A fast ship, it was said it could overtake any other vessel on the Mediterranean.
12:09Often, this advantage would be used against the ships of other nations.
12:16Many a voyage would lead to a substantial booty of looted cargo.
12:21For a time, the Greeks, with their Pentecontors, were the greatest buccaneers of the Mediterranean.
12:30Greek warships were also influenced by the Phoenicians.
12:35Early Greek examples were virtual copies of the Phoenician two bankers.
12:41History has come to know these ships after the Latin phrase meaning two oars, byremes.
12:48The Greek byrem is a striking example of a phenomenon that features repeatedly in the history of warship design.
12:56The theft of rival nations' ideas.
13:01The similarities between the Greek and Phoenician vessels are obvious, although some differences do occur.
13:09Primarily, the Greek byrem was lighter.
13:13For ramming strength, a storming bridge, or cacostroma, ran the full 80-foot length of the vessel.
13:20The ship's keel was also designed to provide the strength needed for ramming.
13:25It's difficult to say who first introduced keels to boat design because we don't have the archaeological evidence to prove
13:37this.
13:38It's quite likely that keels were introduced in different parts of the ancient world at different times in parallel developments.
13:51The importance of the keels to the design of a boat is that it allows a larger, a stronger, a
14:00more stable structure to be built.
14:05And in terms of warships, that means bigger, more men in it, you can move faster, you can have more
14:12missile men in it.
14:14It's a bigger thread.
14:18Despite these design innovations, the byrem would soon be surpassed as the standard Greek ship of war.
14:25Around the 6th century BC, a new kind of vessel was introduced, as the Greeks sought a warship more powerful
14:33than ever before.
14:36Far and away, the most distinctive feature of this new kind of vessel was its additional bank of rowers.
14:44The two-banked byreme now became the three-banked trireme.
14:50It would become the most famous warship of the ancient world.
14:58Contemporary images of triremes are few, restricted to depictions on surviving Greek vases.
15:05From ancient writers, however, we can build up a reasonably clear idea of the ship's design.
15:12Like its predecessors, the trireme was powered by both sail and oar.
15:19A standard ship of its time was around 125 feet long and 20 feet wide.
15:26The crew totalled about 200.
15:30170 of these were oarsmen.
15:34This concentration of muscle power produced remarkable results.
15:40The top speed of a trireme was around seven knots.
15:44All of it as a result of massive human effort.
15:48The working conditions for a trireme oarsman must have been extremely hard.
15:54The Greek oarsmen were not slaves, as is commonly believed.
15:58They were free citizens of their city-states and they volunteered to serve at sea rather than on land as
16:04a hoplite,
16:05sort of the citizen warrior of the era.
16:07So they were well-motivated, but they must have worked in very hard, cramped conditions.
16:12And effectively they had to be as fit and as strong as a modern international rower.
16:19The conditions in a trireme were cramped, unpleasant and smelly.
16:24There's a passage in a comedy by the Athenian playwright Aristophanes, which talks about rowers farting in each other's faces.
16:34You've got to imagine three rows of rowers.
16:38The people on the top have got their backside roughly at nose level with the people in the second row.
16:43The people in the second row have got their backside roughly at nose level with the people down below.
16:47So there's a lot of bodily odours wafting around in this ship.
16:54The positioning of the rowers responsible for this unprecedented performance remains the greatest mystery of the trireme design.
17:03There are two contending theories.
17:06The first suggests that the oarsmen were positioned in banks one above the other.
17:13The other theory argues that there were only two banks, with one oarsman on the lower level and two on
17:20the top.
17:22However the rowers were positioned, we know that their power resulted in an awesome instrument of war.
17:29The trireme's ram was a fearsome device, a three-pronged metal spur with the potential to cause catastrophic damage to
17:39enemy vessels.
17:41Just above it was the all-seeing eye, the most recognisable feature of any Greek warship.
17:48The all-seeing eye, which features so prominently on Greek warships, was used extensively by the Greeks,
17:56but in fact went back to the Egyptians, where it was seen as the eye of Horus, one of the
18:00Egyptian gods.
18:01And the idea of it being there was it helped the ship to navigate through difficult and dangerous seas.
18:07The trireme represented a new era in warship design, power and strength,
18:13and it soon became famous throughout the known world.
18:16The trireme was the first, we think, the first three-level ship,
18:22with rowers at three levels, 170 rowers packed into the hull,
18:2762 on top, 54 in the middle, 54 on the bottom.
18:31This would appear to have been the optimal design for speed and manoeuvrability,
18:37so the optimal design for ramming.
18:40It was the type of warship which was the most common in the ancient world for about a thousand years,
18:49from the 6th century BC through to the 4th century AD.
18:53It was also the basic ship of the fleets of classical Athens at a height,
19:00so it really was the most important ship design of the ancient world,
19:05and it was a design from which all subsequent odd warships of the ancient world were developed.
19:16It can be reasonably suggested that, had it not been for the development of the trireme,
19:22the world would now be a profoundly different place.
19:26In the early 5th century BC, the Greeks were at war with the Persians.
19:31In 480 BC, a huge Persian fleet commanded by King Xerxes,
19:38took on a Greek fleet of triremes commanded by Themistocles.
19:43The Persians were superior in number,
19:46but the cunning of the Greeks would prove decisive in the Battle of Salamis.
19:53The two fleets engaged in the Bay of Eleusis on the Aegean island of Salamis.
20:00The Persians attacked from the south, through the narrow channels leading into the bay.
20:06With Xerxes watching from his throne on an overlooking cliff top,
20:11one of the most important events in ancient history took place.
20:17The Persians were numerically superior, but this was to prove their undoing.
20:23In the narrow waterways, they lacked room for manoeuvre in their tall, bulky vessels.
20:31Hampered in their mobility, the Persian ships presented an easy target for the trireme's rams.
20:40Two hundred Persian ships were lost.
20:42Only forty Greek vessels perished.
20:45The day belonged to Themistocles.
20:50Had the result been different,
20:52the immeasurable contribution made by later Greeks to Western civilization,
20:57could never have happened.
20:59How the world would have developed in that scenario, can only be guessed.
21:06The success of the trireme, led to the incorporation of still more oarsmen in later warships.
21:12The famous quadriremes and quinquiremes had four or five banks of rowers.
21:20It is highly unlikely that these banks of men were positioned one above the other.
21:25It is also unlikely that they all powered one oar.
21:30Probably, some of the oars were pulled by more than one man.
21:36The desire for increased oar power led to a Mediterranean arms race.
21:41By the fifth century, the standard man of war was the triere.
21:45And the Greek word for that was trieres, meaning triply furnished.
21:48In other words, having three oarsmen.
21:50But as time developed in the fourth and third century,
21:54there was actually an increase in the number of oarsmen used on the ships.
21:59They're not in the banks of oars themselves, which were usually three on a large vessel.
22:05There was one particular ship built by a successor general to Alexander,
22:10a man called Demetrius Polyocates.
22:12He had a ship built in about 306, which was a septyreme.
22:17In other words, it had seven rowers.
22:20And there were about 350 of them, 200 marines.
22:25So that's a very large vessel.
22:26It must have been about 40 metres long with a very heavy bronze ram.
22:31And it also carried protection.
22:33So it was a sort of armoured vessel.
22:34It's been called the dreadnought of its age.
22:37Such vessels were very successful, but they were expensive to produce and maintain.
22:42And so you actually needed a very strong economy to enable you to do that.
22:46So if the economy, the supporting state was not strong,
22:49then such vessels could not be maintained.
22:57In Egypt, Ptolemy III built a ship known as Atessa Contares,
23:03with 40 banks of oars and 4,000 rowers.
23:08Perhaps unsurprisingly, this monster ship was never used.
23:13Soon afterwards, the fashion for enormous warships began to fade.
23:21In addition to ship design, the Greeks made other important contributions to the history of sea power.
23:29Tactically, they adopted two specific battle procedures.
23:33The first was known as the Periplus, a manoeuvre intended to outflank the enemy and attack him in the stern.
23:43By contrast, the Diekplus involved a direct assault on the enemy line of ships.
23:49Having pierced the line, a wheel manoeuvre, left and right, would be deployed to attack the unprotected rear of the
23:58broken line.
24:00Tactics like these proved remarkably successful in battles between warring Greek states and external enemies such as Carthage.
24:11In weaponry, too, the Greeks were innovators.
24:16The Macedonian, Demetrius Poliocetes, is credited with introducing shipboard catapults for firing heavy darts at enemy vessels.
24:26He is also credited with the invention of the ballistae, a device for bombarding rival ships with boulders.
24:35The Greeks were as innovative in naval warfare as they were in every other aspect of life.
24:43There is no doubt that the Trireme was the greatest warship of the ancient Mediterranean.
24:50However, by the 3rd century BC, a new power began to rise in the West, Rome.
25:06Spreading out from central Italy, Roman ships would eventually come to dominate the whole of the Mediterranean.
25:14They were not originally a seagoing people.
25:17But by adopting the best ideas of their rivals and applying them with their customary genius and courage,
25:24they became masters of the sea for centuries.
25:30The story of Roman naval power begins with the First Punic War against Carthage.
25:37At the beginning of the 3rd century BC, Carthage was the dominant power of the Western Mediterranean,
25:44a seagoing trading nation of Phoenician descent.
25:49Her quadriremes and quinquiremes were especially famed in the region.
25:55When war broke out with Rome over the island of Sicily in 264 BC,
26:01the Carthaginian navy looked likely to prevail against a nation with no seafaring experience.
26:09However, Rome now determined to make herself a naval force to be reckoned with.
26:17Unfortunately for the Carthaginians, one of their quinquiremes was beached and abandoned early in the conflict.
26:25Finding it, the Romans decided to copy its design wholesale.
26:29A fleet of 100 quinquiremes was constructed along Carthaginian lines,
26:36but with one significant innovation.
26:39The Romans were always keen to fight the way they knew best, as they did on land.
26:46This meant a strong role for marine troops in Roman naval tactics.
26:52The key to Roman success in naval warfare was the complement of fighting men, marines, on board their ships.
27:04The Romans built a navy.
27:06They're not expert sailors.
27:08They're not trained rowers.
27:10They're not going to be able to match the skill of the Carthaginian navy.
27:16So the way that the Romans set about fighting their naval battles is by transforming the sea into land.
27:25By counteracting the superior naval ability of the Carthaginians,
27:33and allowing the Romans strength, with their foot soldiers, their infantrymen, to dominate.
27:41What they do is develop a special boarding bridge, which makes them particularly efficient at boarding tactics.
27:47And this is the so-called corvus, the crow, which is a sort of boarding plank with a big spike
27:56on the end,
27:57which they drop on the opposing ship as they come nearby and locks the two ships together
28:02and allows the Roman legions to pull across this boarding bridge and sweep away their opponents and capture their enemies.
28:11And this is so effective, initially, that the Carthaginians have no answer to it.
28:18The disadvantage of the great boarding bridge is that it makes the Roman ships horribly unwieldy and unstable,
28:25and whenever they're caught in a storm, they lose hundreds of ships at a time.
28:30So the development doesn't last for very long, but it does introduce Rome to naval power.
28:38It forces them to create a navy, and it sets Rome up as the major naval power of first the
28:49western and later the eastern Mediterranean.
28:54In 260 BC, at the Battle of Miley, northeast of Sicily,
29:00the new Roman fleet destroyed 44 Carthaginian ships and killed or captured 10,000 men.
29:08It was a sign of things to come.
29:13By 241 BC, another great naval victory at the Ergitis Islands marked the end of the first war with Carthage.
29:23Less than a hundred years later, Roman victory in the Third Punic War resulted in the complete destruction of its
29:32enemy forever.
29:34Rome was now the master of the western Mediterranean.
29:38It takes the Romans time to become a naval power.
29:43They don't initially know how to do it.
29:46They're not terribly good at weather.
29:50They allow their ships to get blown against headlands.
29:54There's one spectacular case of a sort of bluff Roman commander.
30:00He wants to get stuck into the Carthaginians.
30:03He wants to fight their fleet.
30:04And before you go into battle in the ancient world, you have to consult the gods.
30:09You're not going to win unless God is on your side.
30:13And so this man, Clodius, consults the gods.
30:17He gives some food to the sacred chickens who are kept on board the flagship.
30:24And he observes, will they eat, won't they eat?
30:28He's observing the response of the gods.
30:31And the chickens refuse to eat.
30:33So no deal, no battle is the message from the gods.
30:37And Clodius, he wants to fight.
30:39He thinks it's a good opportunity.
30:41And so he kicks the chickens over the side and says, if they won't eat, let them drink.
30:46And he leads his fleet into battle and they're destroyed.
30:49He ignored the warning of the gods.
30:53In fact, he lost the battle because he put his fleet in a bad position.
30:58Off a lee shore with the wind likely to blow his fleet onto rocks.
31:05Bad leadership.
31:07Inexpert leadership.
31:09But the Romans become a naval power by sheer determination and by numbers.
31:16The Romans are not troubled by the loss of a hundred ships, a few tens of thousands of men.
31:26They replace them.
31:28They've got almost unlimited manpower resources at this time.
31:33And they use them.
31:39Soon, the whole of the greatest European sea was under Roman control.
31:46In 67 BC, Pompey led a three-year naval campaign against pirates in the eastern Mediterranean.
31:54In three years, his fleet of 500 ships achieved its purpose.
32:00The pirates were cleared from the sea.
32:04The Mediterranean was divided into 13 administrative regions.
32:10And Rome was now unchallenged as the dominant naval power of the age.
32:18By Pompey's time, the Roman method of sea warfare had subtly changed.
32:25The spiked gangway fell from favor and the use of the ram grew more widespread.
32:31To give the ram real power, Roman galleys were built large and heavy.
32:37Against external enemies, the heavy galley proved itself effective.
32:43Notably, during a campaign against Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.
32:50However, another type of Roman warship then began to be deployed.
32:55This was the Libernian, a faster, lighter vessel than the traditional heavy galley.
33:03Originally a uniremo, Roman designers later added a second bank of wars.
33:10This resulted in a highly maneuverable warship.
33:14One that would dominate the first millennium AD.
33:20The Libernian proved itself at the Battle of Actaeon.
33:25Following the death of Julius Caesar, Rome was risen with internal dispute.
33:31This led to war between the forces of Octavian and the forces of Marc Antony and Cleopatra.
33:39On September the 2nd, 31 BC, on the northwest coast of Greece, the Roman Egyptian fleet met and battled the
33:50ships of Octavian commanded by Agrippa.
33:55Antony's ships were traditional heavy galleys, while Agrippa's vessels were the new, lighter Libernians.
34:02It was these vessels that won the day.
34:05Their mobility enabled them to avoid ruin from enemy ramming.
34:10In addition, Agrippa adopted the devastating tactic of ramming the enemy's oars.
34:18The speed of his ships meant that Antony's crews were unable to pull the oars aboard in time.
34:25With Agrippa winning the day, first Cleopatra, then Antony withdrew.
34:33Agrippa's victory was of massive importance to the history of Rome.
34:39Soon, Octavian became Augustus Caesar, and Rome became an empire.
34:50The sea power of Rome extended far beyond the Mediterranean.
34:55By the time of the Battle of Actium, Roman warships had already ventured into northern European waters.
35:03Off the coasts of Gaul, Julius Caesar led a fleet of ships against the sailing vessels of the Veneti tribe.
35:11Here you have a Mediterranean power from a tideless landlocked sea facing up to the problems of sea warfare on
35:23the open tidal Atlantic.
35:25And it's clear that the battle was a fairly even one.
35:30The problem the Romans had was the ships of Veneti were clearly extremely different.
35:36They were made of oak, and the scantling of the timbers, that is, their dimensions, was extremely large.
35:42So much so that the rams at the front of traditional Roman warships were ineffective against the Venetic fleet.
35:52The one advantage which the Romans had was that the Veneti were absolutely dependent on sail for moving their ships
36:03anywhere.
36:04The Romans took advantage of this in two ways.
36:07First of all, they constructed for themselves essentially a series of very long-handled billhooks,
36:15with which they caught and eventually cut through the halyards which held the yard arms of the Venetic ships in
36:23place,
36:24thus bringing down the yards and sails and immobilising the ships, allowing the Romans then to board them.
36:32And after a bit, the Venetic fleet broke off the engagement and started to retreat.
36:38And here Caesar had enormous good fortune.
36:42His ships, of course, were powered by oars in the traditional Mediterranean fashion.
36:49And what happened was the wind dropped.
36:51So the Venetic fleet was totally becalmed and simply couldn't move, whereas Caesar's ships could still.
36:58So they were able to catch up with the Venetic fleet.
37:01And because the Venetic could do little to manoeuvre or avoid the Roman fleet,
37:06the Romans were able to board them, capture their ships and destroy this extremely powerful fleet.
37:14In the centuries that followed, Rome had no rival as a sea power.
37:20In the Mediterranean, the empire remained master of the seas long after its split into east and west.
37:28For 11 centuries, the Eastern Empire, based at Constantinople, continued to maintain a substantial fleet of ships.
37:37In that time, warship design hardly altered at all.
37:43Well into the second millennium AD, ships built to the basic Libernian design continued to patrol the Mediterranean.
37:54Not even the rise of Islam could dent the Roman domination.
37:59In the 8th century, Muslim sieges of Constantinople were repeatedly repelled by Roman sea power.
38:06This was partly due to the introduction of a terrifying new weapon, Greek fire.
38:14In use from the 7th century, Greek fire was an incendiary mixture, probably a combination of naphtha, sulphur and pitch.
38:24In battle, it was thrown like a grenade or blown through copper tubes onto an enemy ship.
38:32Contemporary writers relate how the end of these tubes were decorated to look like monsters' heads,
38:39to enhance the terror generated by the new weapon.
38:45Greek fire's effectiveness stemmed from the fact that water could not extinguish its flames.
38:51In fact, it simply made matters worse.
38:55Only sand, vinegar or urine could tame its destructive power.
39:01When used effectively, Greek fire could cause devastation in an enemy fleet.
39:08For centuries, its exclusive use by the Romans enabled them to continue their mastery of the Mediterranean.
39:21As Byzantine Rome battled the Muslims off the coasts of southern Europe,
39:26in the north, a completely new sea power prepared to announce itself.
39:32The age of the Vikings was about to begin.
39:44By 800 AD, this Scandinavian warrior race had succeeded in designing a completely new kind of warship.
39:54The longship.
39:56With the Western Roman Empire having long broken up,
39:59the opportunities for conquest available to a developing naval power were substantial.
40:07Over the next centuries,
40:09it was the Scandinavian Vikings who took advantage of the seas of northern Europe.
40:15Their ships remain their most memorable achievement.
40:23We know from archaeological discoveries
40:26that Scandinavian ship design developed gradually in the early centuries AD.
40:33At the start of that period, their vessels were unsophisticated.
40:39However, the Scandinavians soon began to make advances in design.
40:45The oar was introduced,
40:48sail was also discovered,
40:51and Scandinavian vessels began to be fitted with a genuine keel.
40:56By AD 800, they had developed a ship that would enable them to dominate Europe for an age.
41:04This was the legendary longship.
41:08I think the Viking longship comes across as a revolutionary instrument of war.
41:14It allowed its users a strategic mobility
41:18and the ability to land forces almost anywhere that they chose.
41:24Fighting at sea was actually quite rare in the 10th and 11th century,
41:28which was the high point of the longship.
41:30Although there was a great battle at Stichelstadt in 1030,
41:34where King Olaf, Saint Olaf as he's known, was defeated by his enemies.
41:38That was very much like a land battle at sea.
41:40The ships got locked together,
41:41and then the Vikings had at one another with axes, spears and arrows in the traditional saga manner.
41:49And what you have to say about the longship was that its importance was really that it was so maneuverable
41:57in strategic terms,
41:58rather than in tactical encounters.
42:03The longship was the same.
42:03Detailed evidence for the design of the longship is not extensive.
42:08It is limited to accounts in ancient Norse sagas,
42:12and some priceless archeological finds.
42:16Despite this, a clear picture of the longship does emerge.
42:21By AD 1000, the design had become established in Scandinavia.
42:28By then, it was already terrifyingly familiar to people across northern Europe.
42:38The classic longships were built in three different sizes,
42:42all of them narrow in the beam.
42:44The largest of them were 150 feet in length,
42:4920 feet wide, and carried a crew of 180.
42:54Power was generated by the old combination of square sail and muscle power.
43:01Smaller longships carried 40 rowers or less.
43:05The largest carried over 60.
43:08In terms of their construction,
43:10the most distinctive feature of the longship was that it was clinker-built.
43:17The hull was made up of overlapping planks,
43:21riveted together and secured against the water,
43:25or caulked with tarred rope.
43:28The unusually high bow and stern were constructed from a single piece of timber,
43:34as was the keel.
43:37It was on ships like these,
43:39the Viking warriors set out on their missions of conquest
43:43in the Europe of the Middle Ages.
43:55The Viking longship was a substantial advance in boat design,
44:00because it enabled the Vikings to move in pretty hostile waters.
44:09The oared warships of the ancient Mediterranean were pretty flimsy constructions,
44:16even the big ones.
44:17And they could only function in relatively calm seas.
44:21They fought in summer.
44:23They couldn't cope with heavy weather,
44:26serious waves.
44:28Whereas the Viking longship had the flexibility,
44:33through its special construction,
44:35to ride with the waves of the North Sea of the North Atlantic.
44:40They enjoy very considerable successes,
44:44because their boats are capable of travelling up river and down river,
44:50across Russia to the Black Sea.
44:52But they're also capable of sailing around the North Sea,
44:56through the Channel, around the coasts of France and Spain,
45:00into the Mediterranean, through the Straits of Gibraltar,
45:04delivering Viking warriors on their pillaging expeditions.
45:10Viking warships are primarily means of transporting fighting men
45:17to a place where they will then engage in typically Viking habits
45:24of raping, pillaging, plundering, burning, killing,
45:29what they enjoy doing.
45:33The longship was a superb instrument of war.
45:37The medium-sized vessels, in particular, were especially effective.
45:43No tribe or nation in Europe could construct anything
45:47to match it for speed and mobility.
45:50In the early Viking raids on Northern Europe,
45:54they encountered no seaborne opposition whatsoever.
45:58Theirs were the only effective warships in the whole region,
46:02and they carried the fearsome Viking warriors as far south as Spain.
46:12Soon, the natives of lands visited by the Viking raiders,
46:17began to construct their own warships,
46:20in an attempt to meet the Scandinavian menace.
46:22For their design, they simply copied the sleek contours of their enemies' great vessels.
46:30Scotland, England, and France, amongst others, built ships to the Viking design.
46:38According to ancient chronicles, Alfred the Great built a fleet of ships,
46:44some of which had more than sixty oars.
46:47It is likely that these vessels were also built to the design pioneered by his Viking enemy.
46:56This fashion for imitation is confirmed by the Bayeux Tapestry.
47:02In depicting the Norman conquest of England in 1066,
47:06the tapestry includes an image of the Moorer,
47:10William the Conqueror's flagship.
47:12The Viking influence in its design is obvious.
47:17However, by 1066, the Scandinavians were already responding to this wholesale theft of their great ship design.
47:28Notably, they added additional horizontal planks to their later ships.
47:33This increase in the freeboard enabled the Viking crews to fire weapons such as arrows and darts down at their
47:41enemies,
47:42and undoubtedly increased their ability to fight.
47:47As late as 1300 AD, the warships of medieval northern Europe were virtually all built to the longship design.
48:00With the later Middle Ages, however, the history of sea power moves towards a new age.
48:07The longship would be the last great ship of war, whose strength derived from the power of the oar.
48:15The invention of the rudder, and radical improvements in the design of sails,
48:20would result in a new kind of warship, more powerful than anything seen before.
48:27The discovery of gunpowder would also have radical implications for the ship of war as the Middle Ages drew to
48:35a close.
48:37A new chapter in the history of naval warfare was about to begin.
49:36The surface of naval warfare was about to begin.
49:37You
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