Note 316 — Chapter XII · THE SIEGE

Crit. book iv. ch. 42. It is difficult to determine the size of the boat selected for this overland transit. Barbaro says, ‘le qual fusti si iera de banchi quindexe fina banchi vinti et anchi vintido’ (page 28). This would agree fairly well with the statement of Chalcondylas, that some had thirty and some fifty oars. Mr. Cecil Torr calculates that a thirty-oared ship would be about seventy feet long, a statement which appears probable (Ancient Ships, p. 21). The mediaeval galleys and other large vessels propelled by oars differed essentially from those of the sixteenth century, which were worked with long oars. See note on p. 234. I am myself not entirely satisfied that among the boats were not biremes and possibly triremes in the sense of boats which had two or three tiers of oars, one above the other. Fashions change slowly in Turkey, and I have seen a bireme with two such tiers of oars on the Bosporus. No writer mentions the length of the vessels which were carried across Pera Hill. A large modern fishing caique in the Marmora, probably not differing much in shape from the fustae then transported, and containing twelve oars, measures about fifty feet long. When the boats are longer, two men take one oar, but this is very unusual. Leonard speaks of the seventy vessels as biremes. Barbaro calls them fustae. The former was probably the best Latin word to signify the new form of vessel. Many of the ships were large, though it may be taken as certain that none were of the length of the two galleys recently raised in lake Nemi, near Rome, which belonged to Caligula, each of which is 225 feet long and 60 feet beam.