>Does anyone know what sort of warships the Holy Country uses? Men of
>the Sea says on p47 that the Esrolians use triremes. However on p43
>in the section on War Galleys it says that two versions are in use 50-
>oared and 30-oared. On p44-45 the Kethelan war galley Courage of
>Belintar is described as one of the fastest ships in the fleet,
>having an extra bank of oars in the stern and has 50 rowers. The
>illustration with the ship seems to show a cataphracht (fuly enclosed
>deck) bireme (two banks of oars) with a top bank of oars in an
>outrigger and with maybe 14 oars in each bank per side for a total of
>perhaps 56 oars so reasonably in line with the number of rowers
>described?
>
>Now a trireme is a ship with three banks of oars and 150-170 rowers.
>A ship with 30 oars(in 1 bank) is a triakonter, 50 oars (in one bank)
>is a pentekonter. There was a fairly obscure ship type with which may
>have been about the length of a pentekonter but with 1 1/2 banks of
>oars and around 75 rowers called a hemiola. The Courage of Belintar
>looks like it could have originally been a triakonter and then had
>half a bank of oars added but this would make it a very small ship -
>and it looks fairly substantial in the picture - with a fore and aft
>castle, enclosed deck and an outrigger more like a quinquereme but
>this would need more like 300 rowers.
At a guess someone is using "trireme" inaccurately to describe galleys with multiple decks of oars. However a galley with only fifty oarsmen to ten officers and 25 marines is going to be horribly slow. I think the Greeks had about those numbers on a trireme with 150 rowers.
So I'd go with most of the Esrolian warships being biremes and the Courage of Belintar having a third deck, possible only on part of its length. Then you can up the number of oarsmen to realistic levels - 130+. A more typical bireme would have about a hundred oarsmen, ten officers and 15-20 marines.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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