HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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each other; but experience taught navigators, that the oars, raised high abovethe water, contributed very little towards impelling the vessel forward ; andon the other hand, the nearer the row-ports were to the surface of the seathe greater was the impulsive power of the oars. The tiers were therefore allreduced into one, the oars of which were in a medium length between thoseof the lower and those of the highest rank. The length, according to the accountgiven by Vegetius, was nearly of the same proportion with that of the moderngalley, the oars of which were worked with three, four, or five persons, ac-cording to the size of the vessel. As to gallies which were of such inferiordimensions as to require only one person to an oar, as well as those to whichmore than five were necessary to the management of each, reason itself, in bothinstances, according to the number of persons employed, may. point out nearlytheir size and principal dimensions. Among the vessels built on the construc-tion we are now speaking of, the largest supposed to have been ever contrivedwas that of the emperor Caligula, called by Suetonius a Decereme, because,according to that idea which has been already so frequently repeated, ten personswere employed at each oar; these, it is by no means unfair to suppose, were ofthe same size with those used in the galley of Ptolemy. According to the regu-lations adopted in the construction of vessels of this class, there were eighty oarson each side, and in the whole, sixteen hundred persons employed to work them:but although the number both of the oars and rowers was extremely small whencompared with Ptolemy’s galley, it by no means follows that it was capable ofbeing rowed faster, for very forcible reasons before given ; among the strongestof which is the great elevation of most part of the oars used in the latter.The galley of Caligula, which Pliny commemorates, speaking of the remora, andstates to have been a Quinquireme, having four hundred rowers, was of thatclass we are now describing. Here then is no inconsiderable solution of theterm which has, both among commentators and artists, occasioned so muchdispute. This Quinquireme is said to have been fitted with eighty oars on bothsides, each of which oars was worked by five persons. These vessels were ofmuch greater length than gallies of any other description built at that time, notonly on account of the very superior number of oars with which they were fitted,but also because they were at a greater distance from each other. The accountgiven by Vegetius of the vessels used in his time is, that though they had onlyone tier of row-ports, there were nevertheless many ranks of rowers- employedin working the same oar; a description which very sufficiently proves, that the

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