alexander

Leadership Process One: Reframing Problems 7
could not create enough water to provision the crews. Plus,
the fuel for a distillery was prohibitively heavy, and the fire
hazard was enormous. As a result, naval commanders were
constrained to carry their water with them, which put an
upper bound on operating distances. Generally, these
rowed vessels could carry a couple of days’ supply of water
for operating in the hot Mediterranean summer. A ship
might either row out one day and back the next, or row out
one day and continue on if the crew knew they could reach
fresh water the next day. If Alexander’s army secured all
sources of fresh water within about two rowing days of his
food barges’ route, he could safeguard his supply.
While this may sound like a daunting task, Alexander
managed it quite easily. His army garrisoned all sources of
fresh water (e.g., rivers, wells, and lakes) or poisoned those
sources they could not control or did not want to control.
As the army marched down the coast of modern-day Lebanon,
it came to the island city of Tyre. (Here we refer to
new Tyre—the island—not old Tyre on the mainland,
which was already as much as 500 years old.)
Tyre was critical to Alexander’s plans. This region of
the world has aquifers, and one of them supplied Tyre with
unlimited fresh water. Tyre sold this water to the Persian
fleet. But Tyre was impregnable. The island had survived
being besieged for thirteen years by the Persian fleet. That is
truly impregnable. The Tyrians were impossibly smug in
their certainty that they were safe. Had they not been, they
would not have responded as they did.
Before Alexander could move on, he had to control the
water supply on Tyre, or convince the Tyrians not to sell