Roman Warships - 9781843836100

For nearly nine hundred years, the Romans operated naval forces. From a few small ships, their navy grew to deploy huge fleets and become the World's first 'superpower navy', dominating the seas around Western Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, as well as the great rivers that formed a large part of the eastern boundary of the Roman World.

Both as a republic and later as an empire, the Romans built and maintained naval forces numbering many hundreds of warships of many different types, deployed in fleets all around their empire. Ships were developed to meet the circumstances and environments of the different areas in which they had to operate, the different functions that they needed to fulfill and the changing nature of their enemies. The security that they provided permitted the growth and continuance of maritime trade at a level not reached again for many centuries. They were the medium by which Roman power could be projected, and instrumental in the growth and maintenance of the empire. Yet these warships, the very tools that allowed all of that activity, have remained largely unstudied.

This book seeks to chart the development and evolution of Roman warships. Using and interpreting the surviving evidence to reconstruct the ships as drawings and models, it aims to show what Roman warships of various types may well have looked like, how they worked, and their various functions.