the.com/quinquereme
the warship that needed three hundred sweating men just to row in a straight line
means An ancient galley, used especially by the Romans and Carthaginians, powered by oars arranged so that each oar (or bank of oars) was worked by five rowers.
from From Latin *quinqueremis*, joining *quinque* 'five' with *remus* 'oar' — literally a 'five-oar.' The exact meaning of that 'five' is debated even now: it likely refers to five rowers grouped per vertical section rather than five tidy stacked decks of oars, since stacking five rows that high would be a naval engineering nightmare. The same *remus* sits inside 'trireme' (three) and 'bireme' (two), a small fleet of words counting rowers in Latin.
- crew size
- around 300 rowers and crew aboard one ship
- the name
- means five, but oars were stacked in threes
- weapon of choice
- its reinforced bronze ram, not arrows or boarders
- roman copycat
- Rome reverse-engineered theirs from a wrecked Carthaginian one
- oar mystery
- exact rower arrangement still debated by historians today
athenian trireme — ancient greek warship with three rows of oars, extensively used 480-400 bce in mediterranean naval warfare
ptolemaic 40-oared ship — massive egyptian warship built under ptolemy iv around 210 bce, described by athenaeus as the largest galley ever constructed