Latin Question

Babylon said:
How does one shout STARBOARD in Latin?
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Actually they probably wouldn't have had a "Steering Board" in those days, but rather a steering oar.

The steering board was always on the starboard side and so, to protect it when coming alongside, they had to use the "Port" side.

When you were steering, you had your back turned to the port side and so you get the Dutch "bakbord" which the French adopted as "babord".
 
thank you AP. I note that a recent reconstruction of a trireme was crewed by "modern men and a few women". It reached a steady 4kts, and ram speed of 8Kts. (Wiki)
 
From Virgil's Aedeid Book 3

ast ubi digressum Siculae te admouerit orae
uentus, et angusti rarescent claustra Pelori,
laeua tibi tellus et longo laeua petantur
aequora circuitu; dextrum fuge litus et undas.

Which somebody translated as

But when the wind carries you, on leaving, to the Sicilian shore,
and the barriers of narrow Pelorus open ahead,
make for the seas and land to port, in a long circuit:
avoid the shore and waters on the starboard side.

This advice seems to refer to the Strait of Messina.

I remember having to translate this stuff in school!
 
sarabande said:
thank you AP. I note that a recent reconstruction of a trireme was crewed by "modern men and a few women". It reached a steady 4kts, and ram speed of 8Kts. (Wiki)
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Yes, but with an inexperienced and partly female crew, and without time to "tune" things like the exact relationship between oar and bench. In Greek Classical times, triremes were rowed by free citizens drawn from the lower classes. This was a way that they could qualify for citizenship benefits through war service without having to buy extremely expensive armour and/or weapons. There were also professional oarsmen used in commercial shipping, though their vessels wouldn't be the agile and fast triremes. They were, of course practised and highly skilled! Galley slaves were a later phase, from the Roman Empire.

Classical sources giving journey times between ports suggest that 6 knots was a comfortable routine speed and over 7 was not exceptional (I gather the latter comes from Xenophon, usually regarded as a pretty reliable source). Barring training a crew of burly types for several years, modern testing is unlikely to determine the true limits of a trireme.

I don't think there is a classical source that gives us a way of estimating the maximum ramming speed, by definition it couldn't be kept up long enough to make a voyage between known harbours, and I daresay that the crew of a trireme had other things on their mind when employing it! But I'd imagine that it could not exceed about 15 knots, for practical reasons to do with stroke length and timing.

Classical tactics in naval warfare seem to have put a high premium on manoeverability, so I'd imagine that the two oars pictures were to increase manoeverability. For the same reason, I'd imagine that the ultimate sprint speed was rarely used
 
Sybarite said:
The steering board was always on the starboard side and so, to protect it when coming alongside, they had to use the "Port" side.
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Well, they had to use the "larboard" side anyway - from a corruption of ladde board: the loading side as opposed to the steering side. The larboard side of a boat wasn't known as 'port' until the mid-19th century to avoid confusion when 'larboard' and 'starboard' were shouted!
 
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