Maritime History of Europe - Maritime History of The Roman Empire

Maritime History of The Roman Empire

Roman galleys helped to build the Roman Empire. The empires’ struggle with Carthage inspired them to build and to fight in war galleys, but the galleys did not have much cargo space, so “round ships” were constructed for trade, especially with Egypt. Many of these ships reached 200 feet (61 m) in length and were capable of carrying over a thousand tons of cargo. These ships used sail power alone to haul commodities in the mediterranean sea. The volume of trade that the roman merchant fleet carried was larger than any other until the industrial revolution. We know quite a bit about these round ships, since Romans, like Egyptians and Greeks, left records in stone, sometimes even on a sarcophagus.

There were many shipwrecks of Roman vessels, which can be explained by the very large number of trading vessels during Roman times since the volume of sea trade in the mediterranean reached a quantity to be only equaled in the 19th century. This greatly increased the number of shipwrecks.

The western Mediterranean came under the control of the barbarians, after their invasion split the Empire in two, while Byzantium dominated the eastern half of the sea. The eastern empire lasted until 1453, such was the efficiency of the Byzantine navy, with its fleets armed with Byzantine fire (or Greek fire), a mixture of naphtha oil and saltpetre, fired through tubes in the bows of the ship. Enemy ships were often afraid to get too close to the Byzantine fleet, since the liquid fire gave the Byzantines a considerable advantage.