I recently spent a month in Venice to pursue my interest in art and architecture. However, I took time to visit the Naval Museum which is situated outside the
gates of the Arsenale where the ships of the formidable Venetian navy were built. It's a rather unfrequented place - I doubt if there were half a dozen
people there - and the collections are eclectic and rather haphazard, the labels faded and curling, the information on them sparse. There was, however, a huge
number of exquisitely made scale models of ships from many navies and all ages - including, I was glad to see, one of HMS Victory.
I was intrigued by numerous models of Venetian ships which defended the Venetian Empire until Venice fell to Napoleon in 1797. They did not appear to have the complicated sails and rigging of western European navies, but relied on simple sails and oarsmen. I remember a TV programme some years ago in which a couple of classical scholars, armed only with classical texts, supervised the construction of a Greek trireme which also relied on oarsmen - three decks of them. After much trial and error, the oarsmen finally established a rhythm - each deck singing a song of a different tempo to the other two to avoid getting their oars entangled. Once they started to move, the speed, elegance and manoeuverability of the ship was awesome. The Venetian Navy too, in its heyday, was a fearsome fleet. I wondered why western navies didn't rely on the oar plus sail principle until I read a label which said that this sort of ship was not suitable for ocean journeys. (But didn't the Vikings cross the Atlantic with a similar 'simple sail and oar' arrangement?) A great deal of Nelson's naval service was in the Mediterranean. I wonder why western European navies do not appear to have adopted 'sail plus oars' for at least that part of their fleet which was not ocean-going.
(Incidentally, the Venetian oarsmen were not the oppressed slaves of Hollywood-Roman Empire films; they were highly paid volunteers. In times of real difficulty, prisoners would be used but they too were all volunteers who thereby gained remission of their sentences.)
I was intrigued by numerous models of Venetian ships which defended the Venetian Empire until Venice fell to Napoleon in 1797. They did not appear to have the complicated sails and rigging of western European navies, but relied on simple sails and oarsmen. I remember a TV programme some years ago in which a couple of classical scholars, armed only with classical texts, supervised the construction of a Greek trireme which also relied on oarsmen - three decks of them. After much trial and error, the oarsmen finally established a rhythm - each deck singing a song of a different tempo to the other two to avoid getting their oars entangled. Once they started to move, the speed, elegance and manoeuverability of the ship was awesome. The Venetian Navy too, in its heyday, was a fearsome fleet. I wondered why western navies didn't rely on the oar plus sail principle until I read a label which said that this sort of ship was not suitable for ocean journeys. (But didn't the Vikings cross the Atlantic with a similar 'simple sail and oar' arrangement?) A great deal of Nelson's naval service was in the Mediterranean. I wonder why western European navies do not appear to have adopted 'sail plus oars' for at least that part of their fleet which was not ocean-going.
(Incidentally, the Venetian oarsmen were not the oppressed slaves of Hollywood-Roman Empire films; they were highly paid volunteers. In times of real difficulty, prisoners would be used but they too were all volunteers who thereby gained remission of their sentences.)
