"Shearing oars" Topic

I'm thinking that when oars were sheared off of a ship, the casualties must have been horrendous. The oarsmen are packed in tight, little room (and time) to move, and when the outboard part of the oar was pushed in one direction (even before reaching the point of the oar breaking), the handle was swept the opposite, crushing whatever unfortunate was in the way.

However, I'm also assuming that a ship's oar crew (if they had sufficient warning) was also trained to minimize the impact by shifting the oars to a position where the rowers wouldn't be turned into a bloody pulp (and even save a few oars in the process.)

Not having seen how other galley rules deal with this situation, would it be safe to say that an oar crew would have a 50-50 chance of survival when getting sheared?

Just curious… ;)

I would imagine that it would depend on the impact and how well trained the crew was. If they hadn't prepared the snapping of the wood and resultant splinters and released energy would just smash people into the above mentioned pulp.

At the same time most of the crew would proably be rowing furiously trying to get the hell out of the way or trying to ram the ship that was ramming them.

It would probably be pretty messy. I would say 50-50 survival rate was probably high. I had a friend who was in a mine when a cable pulling a load of coal up snapped. It cut a guys head in half from the tension. The tension wouldn't be as great on the oars as the shearing force on an oar probably wouldn't come close to the pulling force on the steel cable but I'm sure it would do much good to a human being either and if you were still holding onto the oar you would be snapped forward before being smashed by your equipment. If you were chained below it would be even worse.

"If you were chained below it would be even worse."

Oarsmen were rarely slaves, notwithstanding Ben Hur, and usually rubbish if they were. They were almost always professional seamen and needed to be so.

". . .or trying to ram the ship that was ramming them. . ."

Shearing isn't the same as ramming, although you'd likely destroy some oars in the process of a ram. Ideally, a ram would his perpendicular to the target while when shearing, the ships would pass on a parallel course. As I recall, a shearing maneuver was really tricky to perform and, in ancient times at least, only the Athenians were sufficiently trained to use it on a consistent basis.

"Shearing isn't the same as ramming"

It is a type of ramming. Ramming is to strike with a ram and that is what the ships are doing. They are stiking the sides of the enemy ship with their ram.

Whether using the diekplus or the periplus to create an option to use this style of attack the timing and skill of the crew came into play. The manuever was difficult to use so the Spartan's allies came up with the reinforced prow that allowed head on ramming.

Shearing isn't really ramming. The damage to the oars is done by contact with more than just the underwater ram.

Shearing may well have happened during a ram or when a ram failed to make full contact but an intentional (and successful) shear would involve smashing along the oarbank with the prow whilst steering parallel to the enemy for a short stretch and then away.

It needed to be done by a vessel more maneouvrable than its opponent and with very good timing though I suspect a great many were done simply attempting to get close.

Tony H

I've not read much on ancient naval warfare, but I think there ought to be some information on this in the original sources. I suggest starting with Aeschylus' The Persians and the relevant passages of Herodotus and working your way forward in time.

van Wees 'Greek warfare' has a good section on naval warfare, but as far as I can remember, doesn't mention shearing.

I don't see how you can think that shearing isn't ramming. Of course it is.

You take part of your ship and smash it into a part of the enemies ship with the intent to break the enemy ship. That is exactly a ram. Just because you are ramming the oars and not the hull doesn't stop it from being a ram.

It isn't ramming with the immeadiate intent to sink (not that triremes often sank, they usually just got swamped with water and became unmanueverable) but it is a collision that is intended to cause damage, in a other words a "ram."

This was the way they fought, if they could ram the ship at a perfect angle and pull their oars in as they did so they could disable the enemy ship, presumably kill a lot of the crew and leave their own ship intact. Any other type of ramming was more dangerous but was necessary since battle field conditions are rarely perfect.

One early problem with ramming was that the ram was twisted off, as happened to the Phoceans when the faced Carthage and the Etruscans after fleeing their homeland upon the advance of the Persians. Tactics not being developed to what they would be later the Phoceans lost many of their ships in the fight and those that were not lost had their rams twisted off.

Presumably, few died when the ramming ship did not shear off the oars as the ram only created a small hole in the side of the ship and apart from maybe a couple of guys here and there who were unlucky or had not braced themselves properly few men died. If the ramming ship got stuck they then had to face the enemy crew in close combat, they did have an advantage in this situation as they didn't have to get onto an enemy ship to fight, but why chance it.

There is a pretty good book on Greek Naval warfare called (unsurprisingly) Greek and Roman Naval Warfare, by W. L. Rodgers.

The first couple hundred pages deal with Greek naval warfare while the rest mostly deals with post-Alexander naval warfare.

Another good book on the subject is the Battle of Salamis by Barry Strauss. This one is a lot more readable than Rodgers book (which can drag at times.) But it only covers the early part of the 5th century and doesn't include much on actual tactics. He does note that when a ships oars were rammed by another boat the crew were knocked about and it was probably fatal.

Also, if you're really into Greek naval warfare, check out The Athenian Trireme by Morrisson, et al. It covers more details on how to construct the ship than the history but there are a lot of neat little facts about tactics and the actual difficulties of pulling off some of these maneuvers. These guys actually built a trireme, it's a pretty neat book.

Oarsmen were rarely slaves, notwithstanding Ben Hur, and usually rubbish if they were. They were almost always professional seamen and needed to be so.

I say, I didn't realize that. I've never seen Ben Hur, but I've always been under the impression that oarsmen were slaves.

Oarsmen in Athens were sometimes citizens, sometimes slave and often resident aliens and other poor people.

The resistance to the reformation of the Athenian navy that Themistocles carried out (reformation essentially meaning creation in this case) was that it would put people in the hoplite class on the same benches as the cities poor, while their armour and shields gathered dust at home. Fortunately he was able to convince the people it was necessary and the Athenians were able to escape the destruction of their city and take the fight to the enemy at Salamis.

When I read Donald Kagan's "Peloponesian War", the thing that struck me most was that, as the war drug on, that the sides would get into bidding wars over oarsmen.

Without cash to pay oarsmen, a navy would grind to a halt.

Up until then, I had bought into the Ben Hur thing, too.

Thanks all! Much to digest here.
If I ever get around to updating my galley rules, I think I'll have it so that ships that have already taken their turn of play lose the crew when they get sheared, and if they haven't it'll be a 50-50 chance (lower if some command points or something are expended.) I hate "bookkeeping" so I'll be trying to keep things simple…. ;)

Yes- oarsmen needed to be healthy, well trained and highly motivated. If slaves were ever used they were likely 'trustees' who knew they could earn their freedom over time by performing their duty.

I, too, was not – and should have been – aware that slave-driven galleys were really an Early Modern thing. But then it should be no surprise since both the Romans and most Greek cities seem to have preferred to use citizen soldiers; Rome's auxiliary troops were an important part of the military machine but not held on the same level as legionaries.

I think we should be careful of assuming that Classical slaves were not "healthy, well trained and highly motivated" however – among other things, a galley in action was a precarious place and performance meant increased odds of survival – since we know that slaves put to other tasks were often all of these things. There does not seem to have been the same sort of moral degradation of the slave in antiquity that we associate with 18th/19th century slavery in the New World. That said, I agree that ancient oarsmen had to be good at what they did, and whether slave or free, a high degree of professionalism – and probably a real sense of compelling incentive – would be required for them to perform well.

I should have thought that the slaves worked to death in the Athenian silver mines would have disagreed with you as to the humanity of their treatment.

Shearing and then making a tight turn to ram an enemy was standard practise for Triremes which were maned by free men.