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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

form of which has been so much doubted and combated, and so repeatedlymentioned by authors quoted in the course of this chapter) the forty bankedgalley of Ptolemy Philopater. These lucubrations have been productive ofmany opinions highly absurd, and a suggestion of a variety of principles anddogmas, which cannot, in the nature of things, be otherwise than erroneous andfalse.

Vossius is of opinion, that no vessel ever had more than seven tiers of oars,and confirms his opinion by that of Pollux, a Greek writer, who lived in thereign of the emperor Commodus. After having declared his thoughts on thesubject, he proceeds, in support of them, to scrutinize the assertions relative tothe vessel of Ptolemy, and to examine the probable distance, as well betweenthe banks or tiers of oars in that particular vessel, as in others of inferior rateand magnitude. In modern gallies, the shortest distance kept between oarand oar is three feet, and the greatest four; but it has been asserted by somewho have pretended to be, and really have proved themselves possessed of noinconsiderable knowlege, particularly in the construction of vessels belongingto that class of which we are now speaking, that an interspace of two feet sixinches between the rowers is sufficient, inasmuch as the legs and arms of themen, when extended in this occupation, do not require more. In answer to theobjection that might be started to such cases of great emergency and exertions,as require a much greater interspace, in order to render the stroke longerand more forcible, it is observed, that the exertions of all being uniform, andthe rower stretching forward as well as bending backward, as far as the rowerwho sits next behind him, it alters not the case in the smallest degree; but itis confessed to be the opinion of those best informed, that the effluvia proceedingfrom men so employed, and placed so near each other, would have beenextremely injurious to their health, and consequently, that the seats wereplaced at a still greater distance from each other.

The interspaces in the ancient gallies were not (as is insisted by many)always, if ever, influenced by considerations similar to these. Supposing therowers to have sat directly over each other, the distance between them is saidto have been no more than two feet six inches, or at most three feet; but thatif the same rose obliquely, the rowers sitting as on a flight of stairs, the distancebetween the oars in the same line, or tier, was at least seven feet. That thisstatement is absurd, or that the account given by Memnon of an Octoremegalley, which had one hundred oars in each tier, is false, might be apparent to the

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