The venue for the first day was the splendid new River and Rowing Museum at Henley-on-Thames, in part because it houses a full-scale mock-up of the modified design. This was built for exhibition by Coventry Boat Builders, who constructed the original trial piece for Olympias. The Museum was able to provide first-class conference facilities and would, it was hoped, in itself attract as many people as possible to attend. The discussion on the second day was held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The conference was originally planned to take place in June 1998, but because the Museum was not, in the event, able to open its doors to the public until the end of August, it was necessary to postpone until the weekend of 19th/20th September.
A major aim of the conference was to invite criticism of the Trust's proposals from interested experts around the world, so that alternative points of view should be aired and, where persuasive, be taken on board. Fourteen scholars from a wide range of disciplines were able to attend, eight of them produced specially written papers for pre-circulation and three more who could not make the journey also sent papers. We were also able to welcome to both days of the conference Commodore Aristotelis Dimitsas, the Hellenic Navy officer in charge of the Olympias while she remains on display at Neon Faliron, and were gratified to hear from him that she might yet be allowed to go to sea again, possibly to appear at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.
The Saturday commenced with a welcome by the Chairman of the Trust, followed by an introduction to the Olympias project and a brief summary of her sea-trials. A video of the ship in operation was then shown before Timothy Shaw made a presentation of the Trust's reasons for proposing a modification of the Olympias design. He summarised his three pre-circulated papers which argued, firstly, that Xenophon implies that a trireme should have been able to maintain a cruising speed of 7 to 8 knots over a period of 16 to 18 hours; secondly, that such a speed cannot have been maintained with the assistance of sail; and, thirdly, that the length of stroke possible in Olympias is too short to enable her to maintain a 7 to 8 knot cruising speed under oar, and that a satisfactory length of stroke could be obtained by canting the oar-rig by 18.4 degrees.
John Coates then concluded the morning's proceedings by summarising his paper in which he describes how the rig could be skewed and the implications for the design. A ship built to the new design and employing a longer cubit would be just under 3 metres longer than Olympias at 39.6 metres, 15 cm wider over the outriggers at 5.6 metres, and have approximately 5% greater hull resistance at higher speeds. Nevertheless, the modifications to the oar-rig and the longer stroke this allowed would enable her to attain 9.7 knots in a short sprint and to sustain 7.5 knots in prolonged cruising.
After this, the conference adjourned for a long lunch-break, during which attendees were able to visit the Museum galleries, sit in the trireme mock-up and inspect the impressive audio-visual display which accompanies it.
There followed four short but fascinating papers, interspersed with questions from the floor. The first , by Ian Whitehead, former recorder on Olympias and now Museums Officer for the Hartlepool Museum Service, argued that the demand for a crew to be able to row any reconstruction construction for 16 to 18 hours at 7 to 8 knots was too high, since triremes can be shown to have voyaged under both oar and sail whenever possible. However, the ability to maintain such a speed over about 10 hours rowing in a day would be consistent with our evidence.
Hermann Wallinga, formerly Professor of Ancient History at the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht, argued that the evidence for a 7 to 8 knot cruising speed in Xenophon is a propagandistic exaggeration and that our other texts, especially Thucydides, imply a sustained speed of only just over 5 knots, of which Olympias is already capable.
The reality of long-distance rowing was described by Anthony Duff, Lecturer in Marine Studies at Falmouth Marine School, from his own experience in Cornish gigs. He stressed the importance of thorough preparation, strict discipline and psychological strength. Rowing has to be done efficiently, with regular breaks and rotations, at 25-30% pressure and 22-24 strokes per minute. Average fluid intake is one litre per hour, depending on the weather.
John Hale, an archaeologist from the University of Louisville, Kentucky, gave a presentation of his thesis that the bent knees and positioning of the feet in several iconographical representations of Greek oared ships strongly imply the use of a sliding stroke. This technique allows the rowing stroke to be lengthened without extension of the individual room in the ship allowed to each oarsman. A sliding stroke would therefore obviate the need for skewing of the oar-rig.
After a coffee break, the final session of the day was taken up with a long paper by Andre Sleeswyk, Professor of Physics at the University of Groningen, in which he questioned various aspects of both the Olympias and the modified design (as Professor Sleeswyk was unable to attend, the paper was read in his absence by the Chairman). He calculated that the ramming would have caused the attacking rowers to be flung forward in the hull unless they had a means of bracing themselves, which should be built into the design. Professor Sleeswyk also argued that Vitruvius' two-cubit interscalmium should be taken as the clear distance between two thole-pins, not as a heart-to-heart figure as has been done in Olympias. The skewing of the rig, he believed, would introduce disadvantages such as a loss of power by reduction of the alongships component of the force produced by the oarsmen. He therefore preferred a simple extension of the interscalmium or the use of a sliding stroke. Finally, he suggested a variety of modifications to the hull design which would, in his opinion, conform better to the ancient evidence. The whole paper provoked a lively, prolonged discussion which ended the Saturday session.
The invited scholars reconvened at Corpus Christi College, Oxford the next day. The colloquium was divided into four themes which covered discussion of specific pre-circulated papers together with relevant papers from the previous day. The first theme was the general validity of the Olympias design. Alec Tilley, a well-known critic of the project, argued in his paper that the Olympias design does not conform to the ancient iconographical, archaeological and literary evidence and is fundamentally wrong. He proposed instead a single-level, 30-bench, triple-banked, (i.e. 90-man) trireme (later developed by Cimon into a four-banked ship with 120 men) rowed according to his own earlier interpretation of the Siren vase (Antiquity 66 (1992), 599-610).
Antony Papalas, Professor of Greek and Roman History at East Carolina University, countered in his paper that it was Tilley's trireme which did not conform to the evidence and that the Olympias design was essentially correct, even if it required some slight modifications. In the subsequent discussion, Commander Tilley explained the evidence for 170 rowers to a trireme by suggesting that only 120 rowed in the trireme itself while the other 50 were in a separate auxiliary vessel accompanying the trireme and under the command of the officer known as the pentekontarchos (`commander of 50'). He interpreted the diagonal lines on the Lenormant relief, which Coates and Morrison have seen as oars, as part of the structure of the ship, and in any case followed Lucien Basch in seeing the relief as Roman. He also interpreted the lower opening shown on the Ruvo vase (which is certainly early fourth-century BC) as being a scupper rather than an oarport.
The colloquium then moved on to consider individual details of Olympias' design. Ronald Bockius of the Museum fur Antike Schiffahrt in Mainz, Germany concluded that comparative evidence from Roman wrecks does not favour a significant extension of the room available in the trireme.
There followed discussion of John Hale's paper of the previous day. Hale indicated that he was thinking of a sliding stroke of about 6 inches (15 cm) only. Andrew Taylor, the rowing master on Olympias in 1994, suggested that the rise of the knees and movement of the legs in fixed-seat rowing were in fact very little different from the amount of sliding for which Hale was arguing, and Hale agreed.
The Chairman then summarised the second part of his own paper in which he presented comparative evidence from the Mainz Roman ships which suggested that the oar must have been attached forward of the thole, as in Olympias. In subsequent discussion, it was agreed, that so long as the oar could be kept tight against the thole, there was no advantage to attaching the oars sternwards of the thole.
Finally, Paul Lipke, who acted both as a team leader and a carpenter on board Olympias from 1987 to 1993 summarised his paper arguing the need for a programme of tenon research.
After lunch, Sean McGrail, formerly Professor of Maritime Archaeology at Oxford, suggested that there was still a great deal of experimentation which should be carried out on Olympias before finalising a new design. Discussion then turned to requirements for a revised design. The Chairman added an unusually precise text from Livy concerning a Roman fleet to the evidence for cruising at 7 to 8 knots, and there was then discussion of the importance of being able to attain a particular speed as a criterion for the new design, and what that speed should be. Rene Burlet, an expert on Renaissance and later galleys, had already expressed the opinion in a pre-circulated paper that one should expect a major dropping-off of speed after the first few hours of rowing. In line with this Harry Rossiter, an exercise physiologist from St George's Hospital Medical School, showed that the maximum power available from individual rowers over a particular length of time could be calculated from existing data, from which could then be calculated how fast any particular hull with any oar-rig could be driven over time.
The conference concluded with discussion of the priorities for experimentation towards a new design both if Olympias became available and if she did not. These included more voyaging over long distances, more sailing trials, which had been discussed in a pre-circulated paper by Douglas Lindsay (sailing master in 1992 and 1994), and beaching the ship. Experimental investigation of canting the rig was also proposed - however scepticism was expressed on its authenticity.
It is intended that all the papers contributed to the conference will be published, together with the report on the 1992, 1993 and 1994 trials and the Trust's considered proposals for a modified design. It is a measure of the success of the conference that we will now have a great many issues and points of view to consider before that design can be finalised.
The full text of the Chairman's report is available on request: please telephone Andrew Ruddle on 01932-220401
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