"Livy's levity on ships" Topic

In his History of Rome (XXVI,42) he divides the seleucid and roman ships between decked and undecked ships.
What exactly are these undecked ships? Liburnae?

link

The undecked ships were smaller ships without continuous decking for carrying a useful clump of marines nor with protection for the rowers to engage in close combat. The undecked ships are usually grouped together under the heading 'lembi/lemboi' which is a catch-all for light warship as was liburnian later. They could be thirty-oared or fifty-oared open ships, probably rowed on one level but possibly some hemiolia which were '1 1/2'are grouped as lemboi by Livy. He also calls some lemboi 'biremis' which means the same class included ships with two tiers of oars, but still undecked, apparently. The undecked ships did not always have a ram. Was that unspecific enough for you ? ;)
I'm not sure where your reference to Livy is pointing maybe double-check it ?

XXXVI, of course!

So then I could generalise with quinqueremes as decked and liburnians as undecked I guess

Aha. yes so you can see at once how Livy is describing a range of types but the essence is they cannot stand in a battle line because the are undecked. Yes i think best thing is to make sure they are very much less good in combat and susceptible to missiles. Remember a Five has a manned displacement of 100 tonnes and carries 40 to 120 marines. A lembus has 15 tonnes or so and maybe 10 marines.

basically monoremes then, like an hemoila since I found out that the liburnian could have deck