Manpower shortages and the cost of trained crews, more than the cost of the ships themselves, were often the most important factors in determining the size of a country’s navy in antiquity. Galley crews were not slaves but expensive skilled freemen. So, as it constructed a fleet, Rome instead turned to its army conscripts, teaching them rudimentary rowing and maneuvers on wooden ship mock-ups onshore. This was the navy that put to sea to fight the largest and most experienced naval force in the western Mediterranean.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Military History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Naval tactics of the day relied on skilled captains and rowers to maneuver their vessel past an opposing ship and break its oars, leaving it crippled and vulnerable. The attacker could then pierce the hull of the helpless boat with a metal prow ram and leave it to sink.

Lacking skilled captains and trained crews, the Romans played to their strongest military tactic: close infantry combat. A Roman captain would use catapults to launch grappling irons at the enemy ship, holding it fast while marines boarded and engaged in close combat. To facilitate boarding, the Romans introduced the corvus, a wooden boarding ramp 36 feet long and 4 feet wide with railings on either side and a long metal spike extending from its bottom. Using ropes, the men would swing the ramp over the side of their ship onto the enemy’s deck. The spike would drive into the deck, holding both ships together and steadying the ramp as Roman marines poured across. The new tactics caught the Carthaginians by surprise at the Battle of Mylae in 260 bc, when the Romans boarded and destroyed their ships one by one.

In 256 bc the Romans launched an amphibious invasion of North Africa, sending a fleet of 250 warships and 80 transports carrying 60,000 men. Two hundred Carthaginian warships met the Roman fleet off Mount Economus. This time, seamanship rather than manpower decided the outcome, as Roman commanders acted on their own initiative to thwart multiple attacks against the troop transports. While the Romans lost 24 ships, the Carthaginians suffered 30 sunk and 50 others captured. The Roman invasion force got through and landed in North Africa, only to be defeated in a land battle and forced to withdraw.

Roman naval losses during the First Punic War were extremely high, due mostly to the Roman practice of sailing in rough weather, as the weight of the corvus and its position on the bow made ships especially unstable in rough seas. Rome lost as many as 600 Roman warships, 1,000 transports and more than 400,000 men, a number approaching the total American dead in World War II. Probably no war in naval history has recorded as many casualties from drowning, losses representing some 15 percent of the able-bodied men of military age in Italy. Polybius called it the bloodiest war in history. Despite the casualties, the Romans pressed on, replacing lost ships and training fresh crews.

In 241 bc the Carthaginians sought to lift the Roman siege of Lilybaeum in Sicily by sending a naval force to break the Roman blockade. Certain of victory, the Carthaginians sent no marines with their ships, planning to acquire them in Lilybaeum following the battle. Despite foul weather, the Roman captains put to sea to intercept the Carthaginian fleet. In a clash near the Aegates Islands off Sicily, the Romans sank 50 ships and captured 70 of the 200 Carthaginian combatants that took part. Its last fleet gone and lacking enough money and raw materials to build another, Carthage surrendered. Rome now commanded the western Mediterranean.

Two decades later Rome and Carthage were again at war. Probably for financial reasons, Carthage had not rebuilt its combat fleet. When the Second Punic War (218–202 bc) broke out, it had no more than 50 warships to counter the Roman fleet of 220. Hannibal was forced to take his army overland through Spain rather than landing directly on the Italian mainland. Without a navy, Hannibal could not shift his forces from theater to theater as could the Romans, and his supply lines to Carthage were always under threat. As a result, there were no major sea engagements during that long war. In 204 bc a Roman invasion force of 400 transports carrying 26,000 troops and 1,200 horses and protected by 40 warships crossed from Sicily and invaded North Africa. Two years later Scipio defeated Hannibal at Zama, and Carthage surrendered. Now only Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire stood between Rome and complete dominance of the Mediterranean.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to