MAINSAIL ISSUE 8_LOW3

History Stories
6 Ancient Naval Battles
By Evan Andrews
Long before the invention of cannons and other modern weaponry, ancient navies often clashed in spectacular sea battles
involving hundreds of vessels and thousands of sailors. These engagements typically devolved into hand-to-hand combat on
the decks of ships, but they also included highly sophisticated tactics that ranged from using wooden boarding ramps and
grappling hooks to marine archers and even giant bronze rams. Below, find out more about six of the ancient world’s largest
and most brutal naval battles.
The Battle of Salamis
In 480 B.C., Ancient Greece was fighting for its life. The Persian conqueror Xerxes
had defeated a coalition of Hellenic defenders at the Battle of Thermopylae, and
his forces had sacked Athens and torched the Acropolis. Total defeat seemed on
the horizon, but the beleaguered Athenians managed to regroup with their allies
on the nearby island of Salamis. There, the admiral Themistocles hatched a plan
to strike a last-ditch blow against Xerxes’ 800-ship armada. After using a slave to
feed Xerxes false information, the Greeks lured the Persian navy into the narrow
channels near Salamis.
Arriving in the straits, the Persians were surprised by a fleet of some 370 Greek
Triremes, which sliced through the water single file and began ramming and
boarding their vessels. The Persian armada was so large that it had trouble
maneuvering in the cramped waterway, and it soon fell victim to panic. From
a specially constructed throne on the mainland, Xerxes could only watch as the
numerically inferior Greek force sank more than 300 of his ships and butchered
thousands of his sailors. With his fleet in shambles, he was forced to put his
invasion on hold and withdraw. Xerxes never managed to establish a firm foothold
in Greece again, leaving many historians to cite Salamis as the battle that saved
Hellenic culture from annihilation.
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The Battle of Actium
In 31 B.C., opposing armadas under Octavian and Marc Antony clashed near
the Greek peninsula at Actium. At stake was control of the Roman Republic,
which had hung in the balance since the assassination of Julius Caesar some
13 years earlier. Antony and his lover Cleopatra commanded several hundred
ships, many of them well-armored war galleys equipped with wooden towers
for archers, massive rams and heavy grappling irons. Octavian’s vessels were
mostly smaller Liburnian craft capable of greater speed and maneuverability and
manned by more experienced crews.
According to the ancient historian Plutarch, the ensuing engagement quickly
took on the character of a land battle, with the two sides firing flaming arrows and
heaving pots of red-hot pitch and heavy stones at one another’s decks. Antony’s
war galleys proved slow and clumsy in the heat of combat, and Octavian’s more
nimble Liburnians found success by swarming around the enemy vessels and
attacking in numbers. As the battle turned in Octavian’s favor, Cleopatra lost
her nerve and ordered her 60 vessels to abandon the fight. A love-struck Marc
Antony followed with a few ships of his own, leaving the majority of his forces
to be overwhelmed by Octavian’s fleet. The defeat at Actium was the beginning
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