Imperial Navy.

[Gaius Octavius]

Did Archimedes' 'clamp' actually exist, and if so, was it used elsewhere?

[caldrail]

Oh, they did badly. Only their stuberness kept them asking for more after they succeded in losing so many ships to storms. Probably the top heavy corvus had something to do with their fleets ending usualy at the bottom of the sea.

Yes it did. So the poor design of the vessels, and the relatively poor seamanship of roman sailors (which wasn't up to mediterranean standards of the day and even that wasn't so hot. Ship captains preferred to hug the coast where-ever possible to beach overnight, and for most vessels of the time, poor design or not, a trip across the open water was a risk.

Edited February 4, 2008 by caldrail

[Gaius Octavius]

One thing that I can't understand, is that Italy, with one of the longest coast lines in Europe, was not a great seafaring nation then.

[caldrail]

Because everyone else was sailing for them

[caldrail]

Seriously though, its occured to me that the romans, whilst not the greatest sailors in the world, did get their feet wet beyond the mediterranean. They were sailing around north west europe and risking the english channel and north sea, plus venturing deep into the Indian Ocean. If I remember right, they also rounded the top of scotland in an attempt to discover the boundaries of the british coastline and thus also strayed into the Atlantic and Irish Sea. We also know they traded northward, so were crossing the Baltic too.

 

Now some of these votyages were done by local seamen hired by roman traders, others were done by roman agents or military crews. Its not that the romans couldn't sail as such, since they'd picked up a lot of knowledge from other peoples beside their own experience of nautical matters. What limited them more was the seaworthiness of the vessels they operated.