Introduction of Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Barry Eads. Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale. Introduction. Three hundred years ago, Francis Bacon wrote, amongst otherwise words, Quote, To be master of the sea is an abridgment of monarchy. The battle of Actium decided the empire of the world. The battle of Lepanto arrested the greatness of the Turk. There be many examples where sea fights have been final to the war. But this much is certain, that he that commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as little of the war as he will. Whereas those that be strongest by land are many times, nevertheless, in great straits. Surely at this day, with us of Europe, the vantage of strength at sea, which is one of the principal dowries of this kingdom of Great Britain, is great. Both because most of the kingdoms of Europe are not merely inland, but girt with the sea most part of their compass. And because the wealth of both Indies seems in great part, but an accessory to the command of the seas. The three centuries that have gone by, since this was written, have afforded ample confirmation of the view here set forth as to the importance of battles by sea, and the supreme value of the command of the sea. Not only we of Europe, but our kindred in America, and our allies in far Eastern Asia, have now their proudly cherished memories of decisive naval victory. I propose to tell, in non-technical and popular language, the story of some of the most remarkable episodes in the history of sea power. I shall begin with the first sea fight of which we have a detailed history, the Battle of Salamis, B.C. 480. The victory by which the mysticlyse the Athenian proved the soundness of his maxim that, he who commands the sea commands all. I shall end with the last and greatest of naval engagements, the Battle of Tsushima, an event that reversed the long experience of victory won by West over East, which began with Salamis more than 2,000 years ago. I shall have to tell of British triumphs on the sea from Slewess to Trafalgar, but I shall take instances from the history of other countries also, for it is well that we should remember that the skill, enterprise, and courage of admirals and seamen is no exclusive possession of our own people. I shall incidentally describe the gradual evolution of the warship from the wooden or driven galleys that fought in the Straits of Salamis to the steel-built, steam-propelled giants that met in battle in the Straits of Tsushima. I shall have something to say of old seafaring ways and much to tell of the brave deeds done by men of many nations. These true stories of the sea will, I trust, have not only the interest that belongs to all records of courage, danger, and adventure, but also some practical lessons of their own, for they may help to keep alive that intelligent popular interest in sea power, which is the best guarantee that the interests of our own navy, the best safeguard of the empire, will not be neglected, no matter what government is in power or what political views may happen for the moment to be in the Ascendant. John R. Hale. End of introduction. Chapter 1 of Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale. Chapter 1. Salamis, B.C. 480 The world has lost all record of the greatest of its inventors. The pioneers, who in far-off ages devised the simple appliances with which men till the ground did their domestic work and fought their battles for thousands of years. He, who hung up the first weavers' beam and shaped the first rude shuttle, was a more wonderful inventor than Arkwright. The maker of the first bow and arrow was a more enterprising pioneer than our inventors of machine guns. And greater than the builders of dread-naughts were those who, with hearts curred round with oak and triple brass, were the first to trust their frail barks to the cruel sea. No doubt the hallowed tree trunk and the coracle of oceans and skins had long before this made their trial trips on rivers and lakes. Then came the first ventures in the shallow sea margins, and, at last, a primitive naval architect built up plank ball-works round his hallowed tree trunk and stiffened them with ribs of bent branches, and the first ship was launched. This evolution of the ship must have been in progress independently in more places than one. We're most concerned here with its development in that eastern end of the Landlock Mediterranean, which is the meeting place of so many races, and around which so much of what is most memenous in the world's history has happened. There seems good reason for believing that among the pioneers in early naval construction were the men of that marvellous people of Old Egypt, to whom the world's civilization owe so much. They had doubtless learned their work on their own nile before they pushed out by the channels of the Delta to the waters of the Great Sea. They had invented the sail, though it was centuries before anyone learned to do more than scud before the wind. It took long experience of the sea to discover that one could fix one sail at an oblique angle with a midline of the ship to lay a course with the wind on the quarter or even a beam and not dead a stern. But there was as important an invention as the sail, that of the oar. We are so familiar with it that we do not realize all it means, yet it is a notable fact that whole races of men who navigate river, lake, and sea, successfully and boldly, never hit upon the principle of the oar till they were taught it by Europeans, and could of themselves get no further than the paddle. The oar, with its leverage, its capacity for making the very weight of the crew become a mode of power, became in more senses than one the great instrument of progress on the sea. It gave the ship a power of maneuvering independently of the wind, the same power that is the essence of advantage in steam propulsion. The centuries during which the sailing ship was the chief reliance of navigation and commerce were, after all, an episode between the long ages when the oar-driven galley was the typical ship and the present age of steam beginning less than a hundred years ago. Sales were an occasional help to the early navigator. Our songs of the sea call them the white wings of the ship. For the Greek poet Escalus the wings of the ship were the long oars. The trader creeping along the coast or working from island to island, helping himself when the wind served with the sail and having only a small crew, could not afford much oar though he had often to trust it. But for the fighting ship oar power and speed were as important as mechanical horsepower is for the warships of the twentieth century. So the war galley was built longer than the trader to make room for as many oars as possible on either side. In the Mediterranean in those early days, as with the Vikings of later centuries, the long ship meant the ship of war. It is strange to reflect that all through human history war has been a greater incentive to shipbuilding progress than peaceful commerce. For those early navigators the prizes to be won by fighting and raiding were greater than any that the more prosaic paths of trade could offer. The fleets that issued from the delta of the Nile were piratical squadrons that were the terrors of the Mediterranean coasts. The Greek, too, like the Norsemen, began his career on the sea with piracy. The Athenian historian tells of days when it was no offence to ask a seafaring man, are you a pirate, sir? The first admirals of the eastern Mediterranean had undoubtedly more likeness to Captain Kidd and Blackbeard than to Nelson and Collingwood. Later came the time when organized governments in the Greek cities and on the Phoenician coast kept fleets on the landlocked sea to deal with piracy and protect peaceful commerce. But the prizes that alerted the coarser were so tempting the piracy revived again and again. And even in the late days of the Roman Republic the Council Pompeii had to conduct a maritime war on a large scale to clear the sea of the pirates. Of the early naval wars of the Mediterranean, battles of more or less peratical fleets, or of the war galleys of coast and island states we have no clear record or no vestige of a record. Egyptians, Venetians, Cretans, men of the rich island state of which we have only recently found the remains in buried palaces, Greeks of the Asiatic mainland and their eastern neighbors, Greeks of the islands and the peninsula, Illyrians of the labyrinth of Creekin Island that fringes the Adriatic, Sicilians and Carthaginians all had their adventures and battles on the sea in the dim beginnings of history. Homer has his catalogue of ships set forth in stately verse telling how the Greek chieftains led 120,000 warriors embarked on 1100 galleys to the Siege of Troy, but no hostile fleet meant them, if indeed the great armament ever sailed as to which historians and critics dispute. One must pass on for centuries after Homer's day to find reliable and detailed records of early naval war. The first great battle on the sea, of which we can tell the story, was the fight in the Straits of Salamis when Greek and Persian strove for the mastery of the Near East. King Darius had found that his hold on the Greek cities of Asia Minor was insecure so long as they could look for arm help to their kindred beyond the Archipelago, and he had sent us sat traps to raid the Greek mainland. That first invasion ended disastrously at Marathon. His son Xerces took up the quarrel and devoted years to the preparation not of a raid upon Europe, but of an invasion in which the whole power of his vast empire was to be put forth by sea and land. It was fortunate for Greece that the man who then counted for most in the politics of Athens was one who recognized the all importance of sea power, though it is likely that at the outset all he had in mind was that the possession of an efficient fleet would enable his city to exert its influence on the islands and among the coast cities to the exclusion of the military power of its rival Sparta. When it was proposed that the product of the silver mines of Lorium should be distributed among the Athenian citizens, it was Themiscles who persuaded his fellow countrymen that a better investment for the public wealth would be found in the building and equipment of a fleet. He used as one of his arguments the probability that the Persian king would, sooner or later, try to avenge the defeat of Marathon. A no less effective argument was the necessity of protecting their growing commerce. Athens looked upon the sea, and that sea at once divided and united the scattered Greek communities who lived on the coasts and islands of the arch Plago. It was the possession of the fleet thus acquired that enabled Themocles and Athens to play a decisive part in the crisis of the struggle with Asia. It was in the spring of B.C. 480 that the march from Asia Minor began. The vast multitude gathered from every land in western Asia, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, and the wild mountain plateaus of the Indian border was too numerous to be transported in any fleet that even the great king could assemble. For seven days and nights it poured across the floating bridge that swayed with the current of the Dardanelles, a bridge that was a wonder of early military engineering, and the making of which would tax the resources of the best army of today. It then marched by the coastline through what is now Ramelea and Thessaly. It aid up the supplies of the lands through which it passed. If it was to escape famine it must keep in touch with the ships that crossed and recrossed the narrow seas, bringing heavy cargos of food and forage from the ports of Asia, and escorted by squadrons of long war galleys. Every Greek city had been warned of the impending danger. Even those who remembered Marathon, the day when a few thousand spearmen had routed an Asiatic horde outnumbering them tenfold, realized that any force that now could be put in the field would be overwhelmed by this human tide of a million fighting men. But there was one soldier statement who saw the way to safety, and grasped the central fact of the situation. This was Themocles the Athenian, the chief man of that city, against which the first fury of the tack would be directed. No doubt it was he who inspired the prophetess of Delphi with her mysterious message that the Athenians must make for themselves wooden walls, and he supplied the explanation of the enigma. The Persian must be meant not on the land, but in wooden walls upon the sea. Victory upon that element would mean the destruction of the huge army on land. The greater its numbers, the more helpless it would be in its position. It could not live upon the country. There must be a continual stream of seaborn supplies arriving from Asia, and this would be interrupted and cease altogether once the Greeks were masters of the sea. The Athens of the time was not the wonderful city that arose in later years, embellished by the masterpieces of some of the greatest architects and artists the world has ever known. The houses huddled round the foot of the Cedadel Hill, the Acropolis, which was crowned with rudely built, primitive temples. But the people whose home it was were startled by the proposed love Themocles that their city should be abandoned to the enemy without one blow struck in its defence. Not Athens only, but every village and farm in the surrounding country was to be deserted. Men, women, and children, horses and cattle were all to be conveyed across the narrow strait to the island of Salamis, which was to be the temporary refuge of the citizens of Athens and of the country folk of Attica. Would they ever return to their ruined homes and devastated lands where they would find houses burned and vines and olives cut down? Could they even hope to maintain themselves in Salamis? Would it not be better to fight in defence of their homes even against desperate odds and meet their fate at once instead of only deferring the evil day? It was no easy task for the man of the moment to persuade his fellow countrymen to adopt his own farsighted plans. Even when most of them had accepted his leadership and were obeying his orders, a handful of desperate men refused to go. They took refuge on the hill of the Acropolis and, acting upon the literal meaning of the oracle, toiled with axe and hammer, building up wooden barriers before the gates of the Old Citadel. Everywhere else the city and the country round were soon deserted. The people streamed down to the ocean and were ferried over to Salamis where huts of straw and branches rose up in wide extended camps to shelter the crowds that could find no place in the island villages. In every wood on either shore trees were being felled. In every creek shipwrights were busy night and day building new ships or refitting old. To every Greek seaport messages had been sent, begging them to send to the streets of Salamis as many ships, oarsmen, and fighting men as they could muster. Slowly the Persian army moved southward through Thessaly. A handful of Spartans under Leonidas had been sent forward to delay the Persian advance, to hold the pass of Thermopylae between the eastern shoulder of Maunetna and the sea. It was a hopeless position. To fight there at all with such an insignificant force was a mistake. But the government of Sparta, slaves to tradition, could not grasp the idea of the plans proposed by the great Athenian. They were half persuaded to recall Leonidas but hesitated to act until it was too late. The Spartan chief and his few hundred warriors died at their post in self-sacrificing obedience to the letter of their orders. The Persians poured over the pass and inundated the plains of Attica. The few Athenians who had assisted in defending the Acropolis of Athens made only a brief resistance against overwhelming numbers. They were all put to the sword and their fellow countrymen in the island of Salamis saw, far off, the pall of smoke that hung in the air over their city, where temples and houses alike were sacked and set on fire by the victors. The winds and waves had already been fighting for the Greeks. The Persian war fleet of twelve hundred great ships had arrived in Sicily till they neared the group of islands off the northern point of Euboea. Their scouts reported a Greek fleet to be lying in the channel between the large island and the mainland. Night was coming on, and the Persians anchored in eight long rows off Cape Cepius. As the sun rose there came one of those sudden gales from the eastward that are still the terror of small craft in the Archipelago. The modern sailor would try to beat out to seaward and get as far as the shore, but these old world seamen dreaded the open sea. They tried to ride out the gale, but anchors dragged and hundreds of ships were piled in shattered masses on the shore. Some were stranded in positions where they could be repaired and refloated as the weather cleared up, but by the evening of the third day, when it last the wind fell, only eight hundred galleys of the Persian armada were still in sea-worthy fighting condition. Here, as on other ships, the very numbers of the Persian fleet proved a source of danger to it. The harbors that could give shelter to this multitude of ships were very few and far between. Nor was it an easy matter to find that other refuge of the ancient navigator, a beach of easy slope and sufficiently wide extent to enable the ships to be dragged out of the water and placed high and dry beyond the reach of the angriest waves. The fact that the ships were beached and hauled up between bad weather and in winter limited their size, and in both the Persian and the Greek fleets there was probably not a ship much larger than the barges we see on our canals, or as big as some of the largest sea-going barges. The typical warship of the period of the Persian War was probably not more than eighty or a hundred feet long, narrow and nearly flat-bottomed. At the bow and stern there was a strongly built deck. Between this poop and folk-soul, a lighter ground ran for an aft, and under this were the stations of the roars. The bow was strengthened with plates of iron or brass and beams of oak to enable it to be used as a ram, and the stem rose above the deck level and was carved into the head of some bird or beast. There was a light mast which could be rigged up when the wind served and carried a cross-yard on the square sail. Mast and yard were taken down before going into action. The Greeks called their war galleys triers, Romans tri-rems, and the names are generally explained as meaning that the ships were propelled by three banks or rows of oars placed one above the other on either side. The widely accepted theory of how they worked is that the seats of the roars were placed, not directly above each other, but that those who worked the lowest and shortest oars were close to the sides of the ship. The men for the middle range of oars, a little above them and further near the centerline of the ship. An endless amount of every addition and research has been expended on this question. But most of those who have dealt with it have been classical scholars possessing little or no practical acquaintance with seafaring conditions, and none of their proposed arrangements of the three banks of oars looks at all likely to be workable and effective. A practical test of the theory was made by Napoleon III when his history of Julius Caesar was being prepared. He had a trirem constructed and tried upon the Seine. There were three banks of oars, but though the fitting and arrangement was changed again and again under the joint advice of classical experts and practical seamen, no satisfactory method of working the superposed banks of oars could be devised. The probability is that no such method of working was ever generally employed, and that the belief in the existence of old world navies made up of ships with tier on tier of oars on either side is the outcome of a misunderstanding, as to the meaning of a word. Trirem seems at first glance to mean triple-ord, in the sense of the oars being triplicated. But there are strong arguments for the view that it was not the oars, but the oarmen who were arranged in threes. If this view is correct, the ancient oarship was a galley with a single row of long oars on either side, and three men pulling together with each heavy oar. We know that in old navies of the Papal States and the Republics of Vienna and Genoa, in the Middle Ages and the Days of the Renaissance, and in the royal galleys of the old French monarchy, there were no ships with superimposed banks of oars. But there were galleys known as trirems, quadra-rems, and pender-rems, driven by long oars each worked by three, four, or five rowers. It is at least very likely that this was the method adopted in the warships of still earlier times. A trirem of the early Days of the Persian War with fifty or sixty oars would, thus, have a crew of one hundred fifty or one hundred eighty rowers. Add to this some fifty or sixty fighting men, and we have a total crew of over two hundred. In the Persian navies the rowers were mostly slaves, like the galley slaves of later times. They were chained to longer oars and kept in order or roused to exertion by the whip of their taskmasters. To train them to work together effectively required a long apprenticeship, and in rough water their work was especially difficult. To miss the regular time of the stroke was dangerous, for the long oars projecting far inboard would knock down and injure the nearest rowers unless all swung accurately together. The flat-bottom galleys rolled badly in a rough weather rowing was fatiguing and even perilous work. Some two hundred men in a small ship meant crowded quarters, and lack of room everywhere except on the fighting deck. But as the fleets hugged the shore and generally lay up for the night the crews could mostly land to cook, eat, and sleep. In the Persian ships belonging to many nations, and some of them to the Greek citizens of Asia, Xerces took the precaution of having at least Persian warriors in each crew. Their presence was intended to secure the fidelity of the rest. In the Greek fleet the rowers were partly slaves, partly freemen impressed or hired for the work. Then there were a few seamen, fishermen, or men who, in the days of peace, manned the local coasting craft. The chief of this navigating party were the Kelyustes who presided over the rowers and gave the signal for each stroke, and the pilot was supposed to have a knowledge of the local waters and of wind and weather, and who acted as stearmen, handling alone or with the help of his assistants, the long stern ore that served as a rudder. The fighting men were not sailors but soldiers embarked to fight a float, and their military chief commanded the ship with the help of the pilot. For more than two thousand years this division between the sailor and the fighting element and navies continued throughout the world. However in the sailing master were two different men, and the captain of a man-o'-war was often a landsman. In the Greek fleet which lay sheltered in the narrows behind the Long Island of Yuboia while the Persians were battling with the Tempest off Cape Sepeas, the admiral was the Spartan Eurebiades, a veteran general who knew more about forming a phalanx of spearmen than directing the movements of a fleet. The military reputation of his race had secured for him the chief command, though the whole fleet of between three and four hundred triremes, less than a third had been provided by Sparta and her allies, and half of the Armada was formed of a well-equipped Athenian fleet, commanded by Themistocles in person. As the storm abated the fleets faced each other in the strait north of Yuboia. In the Persian Armada the best ships were five long galleys commanded by an Amazon queen, Artemnesia of Heliconarsis, a Greek fighting against Greeks. She scored the first success, swooping down with her squadron on a Greek galley that had ventured to scout along the Persian front in the gray of the morning. Attacked by the five the ship was taken and the victors celebrated their success by hanging the commander over the prow of his ship, cutting his throat and letting his blood flow into the sea, and offering to the gods of the deep. The cruel deed was something that inspired no less sense of horror in those days of war. It was probably not on account of this piece of barbarity, but out of their anger at being opposed by a woman, and a Greek woman, that the allied leaders of Greece set a price on the head of the Amazon queen. But no one ever succeeded in qualifying to claim it. The Persians, hoping to gain advantage from their superior numbers, now detached a squadron which was to coast along the eastern shores of Yuboia, enter the strait at southern end, and fall in the rear of the Greeks, while the main body attacked them in front. Eurybiades and Themistocles had early intelligence of this movement but were not alarmed by it. Shortly before sunset the Greeks bore down upon the Persians, attacked them in the narrow waters where their numbers could not tell, sank some of thirty ships by ramming them, and then drew off as the night came on. It was a wild night. The Greeks had hardly regained their sheltered when the wind rose. Lightning played around the mountain crests on either hand. The thunder rolled and the rain came down in torrents. The main Persian fleet, in a less sheltered position, found it difficult to avoid disaster, and the crews were horrified at seeing, as the lightning lit up the seas, masses of debris and swollen corpse of drowned men drifting amongst them, as the currents brought the wreckage of the earlier storm floating down from beyond Eurybius. The hundred ships detached around the southern point of Euboea were still slowly making their way along its rocky eastern coast, caught in the midnight storm most of them drove ashore and were dashed to pieces. In the morning the sea was still rough, but the Greeks came out of the strait and without committing themselves to general action fell upon the nearest ships, the squadron of Cilicia, and sank and captured several of them, and began to close upon them. On the third day the sea was calm and the Persians tried to force the narrows by a frontal attack. There was some hard fighting and loss on both sides, but the Greeks held their own. As the sun set the Persians rode back towards their anchorage inside Cape Seapius. When the sun rose again the Greek fleet had disappeared. Eurybiades and Themistocles had agreed in the night after the battle that the time was come to abandon the defense of Euboea and Strait and retire to the waters of Salamis. The Persian army was now flooding the mainland with its myriads of fighting men, and was master of Attica. A fleet, depending so much on the land for supplies and for rest for its crews, could not maintain itself in the straits when the Persians held the mainland and were in a position to seize also the island of Euboea. Before sunrise the Greek ships were working their way in long procession through the straits. Early in the day they began to pass, one by one, the narrows at Chalice, now spanned by a bridge. Then the strait widened and there were none to bar their way to the open sea, and round Cape Sunium to their sheltered station in the straits behind the island of Salamis. They had been reinforced on the way and they now numbered 366 fighting ships. Those of Sparta and the Peloponnesus were 89, the Athenian fleet 180, while 97 more were supplied by the Greek islands. Some of the ships from Melos and the Cyclades being Pentecounters, large vessels whose long ores were manned by five rowers. Losses by storm and battle had reduced the Persian armada to some 600 effective ships. The odds were serious, but not desperate. But while the Persian fleet was directed by a single will, there were divided council among the Greeks. Eurybides had most of the leaders on his side when he argued that Athens was hopelessly lost and the best hope for Greece was to defend the Peloponnesus by holding the Isthmus of Corinth with what land forces could be assembled and removing the fleet to the waters of the neighboring waters to cooperate in the defense. Themistically is on the other hand, shrank from the idea of abandoning the refugees in the island of Salamis and he regarded the adjacent straits as the best position in which the Greeks could give battle. There, as in the Channel of Euboea, the narrow waters would do something to nullify the Persian advantage of numbers. For the Greeks, formed in several lines extending from shore to shore, could only be attacked by equal numbers. Only the leading ships of the attack would be in action at any given moment, and it would not matter how many hundred ships were crowded behind them. With a column of spearmen on land, the weight of the rearward ranks, formed in a seried phalanx, would force onward those in front. With a column of ships formed in several successive lines and narrow waters, any attempt of the rearward ships to press forward would mean confusion and disaster to themselves and those that formed the leading lines. This would have been true even of ships under sail, but in battle the war-gallies were ore-driven, and as the ships jammed together there would be entangled oars and rowers flung from their benches with broken heads and arms. Better discipline, more thorough fighting power on the Greek side, would mean that the leading ships of their fleet would deal effectually with their nearest adversaries, while the rearward ships would rest upon their oars and plunge into the melee only when disaster to a leading ship left an opening. A doubtful story says that the Missocles, foreseen that if the battle were long delayed the Spartan party would carry their point, and withdraw to the Ismus, ran the risk of sending a message to King Xerces, urging him to attack at once, hinting at a deflection of the Athenian fleet and telling him that if he acted without delay the Greeks were at his mercy and that they were so terrified that they were thinking chiefly of how they might escape. Herodotus tells of a council of war of the Persian leaders at which the fighting queen of Artemisia stood alone in advising delay. She told the king that in overrunning northern Greece he had done enough for one campaign. Let him settle down for winter quarters in Attica, and he would see the Greek armament already divided by jealousies and quarrels break up and disperse. He could then prepare quietly for the conquest of the Peloponnesus in the spring. But Xerces was far more flattered by the opinion of the Satraps, who told him he had only to stretch out his hands to destroy the Greek fleet and make himself undisputed master of the sea. And just as the Missocles was despairing of being able to keep the fleet at Salamis, news came that the Persians had decided to attack. The news was brought by Aristotes, the son of Lysimachus, who had been unjustly exiled from Athens some years before. But now in a moment of his country's danger ran the blockade of the Persians in a ship of Aegea, and came to throw his lot in with his fellow citizens. For the Greeks to set out for the Isthmus under these conditions would be to risk having to meet superior numbers in the open sea. All now agreed that the fate of Greece was to be decided in the waters of Salamis. Xerces looked forward to the coming struggle with assured hope of victory and prepared to enjoy the spectacle of the disaster that was about to fall upon his enemies. On the green slope of Mount Agalios, which commanded a full view of Salamis in the Straits, the silk intents of the king and his court were erected, a camp that was a palace. Purple dyed hangings, gilded tent poles with pomegranates of pure gold at the top of each, carpets bright with color, carved furniture inlaid with ivory, all made up a display of luxurious pomp. Before the royal tents a golden throne had been erected. Fan-bearers took their post on neither side. Nobles who held the office of sword-bearers and cup-bearers waited at the steps of the throne. On either side, and on the slope below, the ranks of the immortal guard were formed, ten thousand veterans with armor and equipment gleaming with silver and gold. Along the shore from the white marble cliffs of Sunium, by the port of Philarum, and far up the winding coastline of the Straits, hundreds of thousands more of this army of many nations stood in battle array. They were to witness the destruction of the great king's enemies, and to take an active part at when, as all expected, disabled Greek galleys would be driven ashore, and their crews would ask in vain for quarter. They were to share too in the eruption into Salamis, once the fleet was master of the Straits, and when the people of Athens, no longer protected by the sea, would be at the mercy of the Asiatic warriors. Amid the blare of trumpets the king took his seat upon the throne, and watched his great armada sweeping towards the Straits like a floating city. In those hundreds of long, low-sided ships, thousands of slaves strained at the banks of heavy oars, encouraged by the shouts of the picked warriors who crowded the decks, and, if their energies flagged, stimulated to new exertions by the whip of their taskmasters. From every point of vantage in Salamis, women, old men, children, all who could not fight, looked out upon the sea, watching with heart-rending anxiety the signs of the approaching struggle, death or slavery and untold misery would be their fate if numbers should prevail in the battle. In our days, in the hours before such a decisive struggle, a people watches the newspaper, and waits for tidings of the fight in a turmoil of mingled hopes and fears. But whatever may be the result, the individual who is thus a spectator at a distance runs no personal risks. It was otherwise in those days of merciless heathen warfare, and here all would see for themselves the changing fortunes of the fight on which their own fate depended. The Greek fleet had been formed into two divisions of unequal strength. The smaller anchored in the western opening of the Straits, furthest from the advance of the enemy's armada, and was detailed to prevent any attack through the narrows on the Greek rear. The main body, three hundred strong, was moored in successive lines just inside the opening of the Straits to the eastward. The best ships, the most trusted leaders, the picked warriors were in the foremost line. On them the result of the day would chiefly depend, and here the man who had planned it all commanded an Athenian war galley in the center of the array. In this fact we see another striking difference between past and present. The modern specialization of offices and capacities which divides between different individuals the function of political leader, general, and admiral was yet centuries distant in the future. The Missocles, who advised the policy of naval war, was to be the foremost leader in the battle, and though purely naval tactics were to have some part in it, it was to a great extent a land battle fought out on floating platforms so that one who had learned the art of war and land could act as an admiral on the sea. Sixty thousand men, rowers, and warriors were crowded on board the Greek fleet. At least twice as many must have been born on the decks and rowers benches of the Persian armada. Midway in the opening of the Straits, the Persians had occupied the rocky island of Cytalia, its ledges and its summit glittered with the arms, and beside it some lightcraft had taken post to assist friendly vessels in distress. Past the island the great fleet swept in four successive divisions driven by the measured stroke of tens of thousands of oars. On the left of the leading line was the Phoenician fleet, led by the tributary kings of Tyre and Sidon, a formidable squadron, where these war galleys were manned by real seamen, bold sailors who knew not only the ways of the landlocked Mediterranean, but had ventured into the outer ocean. On the right were the ships of the Greek cities of Ionia, the long galleys of Ephesus, Miletus, Samos, and Samothrace. Here, Greek would meet Greek in deadly strife. The rowers shouted as they bent to the long oars. The warriors gripped in the prow with spear and javelin in hand, sang the war songs of many nations. Along the bulwarks of the ships of Asia crouched the Persian and Babylonian archers, the best bowmen of the ancient world, with the arrow resting ready on the string. As the left of the leading line reached the opening of the strait, the rowers reduced their speed, while on the other flank the stroke became more rapid. The long line was wheeling round the point of Salamis, and came in full sight of the Greek fleet, ranged in battle array across the narrows. The Athenian ships formed the right and center of its leading line. The fleet of the Peloponnesus, under the veteran Euribides, was on the left. The rowers were resting on their oars, or just using them enough to keep the ships in position. As the Persians came sweeping into the straits, the Greeks began to chant the peon, their battle with him. The crash of the encounter between the two navies was now imminent. For a few moments it seemed that already the Persians were sure to victory, for seeing the enormous mass of the ships of Asia crowding the strait from shore to shore, and stretching far away on the open sea outside it, not a few of the European leaders lost heart for a while. The rowers began to back water, and many of the ships of the first line retired, stern foremost into the narrows. The rest followed their example, each one fearing to lose his place in the line, and be exposed in isolation to attack of a crowd of enemies. It was perilously like the beginning of a panic that would soon end in disaster if it were not checked, but it was over soon. The last of the retiring Greek ships was a galley of Palin in Macedonia, commanded by a good soldier, Arminius. He was one of those who was doing his best to check the panic, resolved that whoever else gave way he would sink rather than take to flight. He turned the prow of his tyrum against the approaching enemy, and invading the ram of a Persian ship ran alongside of her. The intermingled oars broke like matchwood, and the two ships grappled. The battle had begun. Attacked on the other side by another of the ships of Asia, Arminius was in deadly peril. The side of their comrades' courage and of his danger stopped the retirement of the Greeks. Their rowers were now straining every nerve to come to the rescue of the tyrum, and from shore to shore the two fleets met with a loud outcry, and the jarring crash of scores of voluntary or involuntary collisions. All order was soon lost. The Strait of Salamis was now the scene of a vast melee, hundreds of ships crowding together in the narrow pass between the island and the mainland. The mysticlies, in the center with the picked ships of Athens, was forcing his way, wedge-like, between the Phoenician and Squadrons, into the dense mass of the Persian center. The bronze beaks ground their way into hostile timbers, oars were swept away, rowers thrown in confusion from their benches stunned and with broken limbs. Ships sank and drowning men struggled for life. The Asiatic archers shot their arrows at close quarters. The spearmen hurled their javelins, but it was not by missile weapons the fight was to be decided. Where the stroke of the ram failed the ships were jammed together in the press and men fought hand to hand on foxels and upper decks. Here it was that the Greeks, trained athletes, chosen men in the prime of life, protected by their armor and relying on the thrust of the long and heavy spear, had the advantage over the Asiatics. Only their own countrymen of the Ionian squadron could make any stand against them, and the Ionians had to face the spears of Sparta, in the hands of warriors all eager to avenge the slaughter of Thermopylae. Some of these Ionian Greeks, fighting under Persian standard, won local success here and there in the melee. They captured or sank several of the Spartan tyrants. One of the ships of Samothraes performed an exploit like that of Paul Jones, when, with his own ships sinking under the fleet of his crew, he boarded and captured the Serapis. A Greek tyrant had rammed the Samothracian ship, tearing open her side, but as she went down her Persian and Ionian crew scrambled on board their assailant and drove the Greeks into the sea at Spear Point. It was noted that few of the Persian crews were swimmers. When their ships sank, they were drowned. The Greeks were able to save themselves in such a disaster. They threw away shield, helmet, and spear and swam to another ship or the island shore. This fact would seem to indicate that with the exception of those who manned the Ionian and Phoenician squadrons, the crew of the Persian fleet were much less at home on the sea than the Greeks. And we know from the result of many battles, from Marathon to the victories of Alexander, that on land the Greek was a better fighting man than the Asiatic. The soldiers of the Great King, inferior in fighting power even on the land, would therefore find themselves doubly handicapped by having to fight on the narrow platforms, floating on an unfamiliar element. And the side of ships being sunk and their crews drowned would tend to produce panic so the Greek wedge forced itself further and further into the massive hostile ships. And in the narrow waters, numbers could not tell. The Greeks were never at any given moment engaged with the superior force in actual hand-to-hand conflict and they had sufficient ships behind them to make good any local losses. Such a battle could only have one result. All order had been lost in the Persian fleet at an early stage of the fight. The rearward squadrons were pressed straight. And finding in the crowded waters that they were endangering each other without being able to take any effective part in the battle, they began to draw off. And the formal ships, pressed back by the Greek attack, began to follow them towards the open water. The whole mingled mass of the battle was drifting eastward. The movement left the island of Vitalion protected by the Asiatic fleet. And Aristides, the Athenian who had been watching the flight from the shores of Salamis, embarked on a series of spearmen on some light vessels, ferryed them across to Fallatia and attacked its Persian garrison. They made a poor show of resistance and to a man they were speared or flung over the rocks into the sea. The poet Escalus, who was fighting as the soldier on one of the Athenian Tyremes, told afterwards, not in pity but rejoicing at the destruction of his country's enemies, how the cries of the mass occurred garrison of Vitalia were heard above the din of the battle and increased the growing versions. Even those who had fought best in the Asiatic armada were now losing heart and taking to flight. Queen Artemisia, with her five galleys of Heliconarsis, had fought in the front line among the ships of the Ionian squadron. She was now working her way out of the melee and in the confusion rammed and sank a Persian warship. Xerces, watching the fight from his throne on the hillside, thought it was a Greek ship that the Amazon had destroyed and exclaimed, this woman is playing the man while my men are acting like women. Two Persian ships in flight for them pursuing Greeks drove ashore at the base of Mount Agalios. Xerces, in his anger at the disaster to his fleet, ordered the troops stationed on the beach to behead every officer and man of their crews and the sentence was at once executed. The closing scene of the battle was, indeed, a time of unmitigated horrors. For while this massacre of the defeated crews was being carried out by the advancement, the victorious Greeks were slaying all the fugitive who fell into their hands. The admiral of the Persian fleet, Erebigny's brother of Xerces, was among the dead. The pursuit was not continued far beyond the straits. The Greeks hesitated to venture into open waters where numbers might tell against them if the Persians rallied and they drew back to their morning anchorage. The remnant of the Persian fleet anchored off the coast near Filarum, the port of Athens and the refuge in a small harbor. They were rejoined by a detachment which had been sent to round the south side of Salamis to attack the western entrance of the straits, but which for some reason had never been engaged during the day. The victorious Greeks did not realize the full extent of their triumph. They expected to be attacked again the next morning and hoped to repeat the maneuver which had been so far successful of engaging the enemy in the narrows with each flank protected by the shore and forced to form the actual line of fighting contact, but though they did not yet realize the fact they had won a decisive victory. Xerces had been so impressed by the failure of his great Armada to force the narrows of Salamis that he changed all his plans. In the night after the battle he held a council of war. It was decided that the attack should not be renewed, for there was no prospect of a second attempt giving better results. When the Prince Arda Xerces the heir to the empire, back to Asia Xerces himself would lead back to the bridge of the Hellspawn the main body of his immense army for to attempt to maintain it in Greece during the winter would have meant famine in its camps. The fleet was to sail at once for the northern archipelago and limit its operations to guarding the bridge of the Hellspawn and protecting the convoy for the army. When the winter came it would have to be laid up, but by that time it was hoped Xerces in the main body would be safe in Asia. Mardonius, the most trusted of the Satraps, was to occupy northern Greece with the picked force of 300,000 men, with which he was to attempt the conquest of the Peloponnesus next year. The Persian fleet sailed from the roadstead of Flairum during that same night. How far the crews were demoralized by the defeat of the previous day is shown by the fact that there was something of a panic as the white glimmered through the darkness in the moonlight and were mistaken for the sails of hostile Greek warships menacing the line of retreat. The Persian stood far out to sea to avoid these imaginary enemies. When the day broke, the mysticlies and Eurybiades could hardly credit the report that all the ships of Asia had disappeared from their anchorage of the evening before. The Athenian Admiral urged immediate pursuit. The Spartan general hesitated and at last gave a reluctant consent. The fleet sailed as far as the island of Andros, but found no trace of the enemy. In vain the mysticlies urged that it should go further and if it failed to find the enemy's fleet at least show itself in the harbors of Asia and try to rouse Ionia to revolt. Eurybiades declared that enough had been accomplished and refused to risk a voyage across the archipelago in the late autumn. So the victorious fleet returned to Salamis and thence the various contingent dispersed to be laid up for the winter in sheltered harbors and on level beaches where a stockade could be erected and a guard left to protect the ships till the fine weather of next spring allowed them to be launched again. When Xerces reached the hell's pond with his army after having lost heavily by disease and famine in his worry march through Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace he found that the long bridge with which he had linked together Europe and Asia had been swept away by a storm. But the remnant of his fleet was waiting to ferry across the strait what was left of his army now diminished by many hundreds of thousands. The next year witnessed the destruction both of the army left under Mardonius in northern Greece and the remainder of the Persian fleet that had fought at Salamis. Pausanias, with a hundred thousand Greeks, rooted the Persian army at Paltia. A fleet of 100 tyrams under the admirals Leotichides and Xantipus sailed across the archipelago in search of the Persian fleet. They founded in the waters of Salamis but the enemy retired towards the mainland without giving battle. The Asiatics were disheartened and divided. The Ionians were suspected of disaffection. The Phoenicians were anxious only to return in safety to their own country and resume their peaceful trading and as soon as they were out of sight of the Greeks they deserted the Persian fleet and sailed southward bound for Tyree and Sidon. What was left of the fleet anchored under the headland of Mycaly? There was no sign of a Greek pursuit. Rumor reported that the Athenian and Spartan admirals were intent only on securing possession of the islands and would not venture on any enterprise against the coast of Asia. Perhaps it was because he still feared to risk another engagement on the sea that the Persian admiral found a pretext for laying up his ships. He declared that they were so foul with weeds and barnacles that, as a preclude to any further operations, they must be beached and cleaned. They were therefore hauled ashore under the headland and a stockade was erected round them, the fleet thus becoming a fortified camp guarded by its crews. And then the dreaded Greek fleet appeared. Its hundred tyrants could disembark some twenty thousand men, for arms were provided even for the rowers. A landing from low-sided ships of light-draught was an easy matter. They were driven in a long line towards the shore, as they grounded the warrior sprang into the water and waited to land. The rowers left their oars, grasped spear or sword, and followed them. The stockade was stormed, the ships inside it, dry with the heat of the Asiatic sun, and with seams oozing with tar were set on fire and were soon burning fiercely. As the flames sighed down, a mass of charred timbers was all to great Armada of Asia, and the victorious Greeks sailed homeward with the news that the full fruits of Salamis had been garnered. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Famous Seafights by John R. Hale This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Famous Seafights by John R. Hale Chapter 2 Actium BC 31 Actium was one of the decisive battles of the world, the event that fixed the destinies of the Roman Empire for centuries to come, made Octavian its dictator and enabled him, while keeping the mere forms of republican life, to inaugurate the imperial system of absolute rule, and reign as the first of the Roman emperors of Augustus. It brought to a close the series of civil wars, which followed the murder of his grand-uncle Julius Caesar. The Triomvirs, Mark Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus, had avenged the assassination by a wholesale prescription of their political opponents, all of whom indiscriminately they charged with the guilt of the deed, and had defeated Brutus and Cassius on the plains of Philippi. They had parceled out the empire among them, and then quarreled over the spoil. Octavian, the dictator of the West, had expelled Lepidus from the African provinces, which had been assigned to him as his territory. Antony was now his only remaining rival. Caesar's veteran lieutenant held the eastern provinces of the empire. During the years he spent in the east he became half orientalized, under the influence of the famous Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, for whose sake he had dismissed his wife, Octavia, sister of Octavian, in order that the Egyptian might take her place. He had appeared beside her in Alexandria, wearing the insignia of the Egyptian god Osiris, while Cleopatra wore those of Isis. Coins and medals were struck bearing their effigies as joint rulers of the east, and the loyalty of Rome and the West to Octavian was confirmed by the sense of indignation which every patriotic Roman felt at the news that Antony spoke openly of making Alexandria and not Rome the center of the empire, and a founding with the Egyptian Queen a new dynasty which would rule east and west from the Nile. The question to be decided in the Civil War was therefore not merely whether Octavian or Antony was to be the ruler of the Roman world, but whether eastern or western influences were to predominate in shaping its destinies. Antony was prepared to carry the war into Italy and assembled on the western shores of Greece and army made up of the Roman legions of the eastern provinces and large contingents of oriental allies. During the winter of B.C. 32-31 he had his headquarters at Patrae, now Patras, on the Gulf of Corinth, and his army, scattered in detachments along the coast towns, was kept supplied with grain by ships from Alexandria. Antony's warfleet strengthened by squadrons of Phoenician and Egyptian galleys, lay safe in the landlocked Ambrosian Gulf, now the Gulf of Arta, approached by a winding strait that could be easily defended. But Octavian had determined to preserve Italy from the horrors of war by transporting an army across the Adriatic in the coming summer and deciding the conflict on the shores of Greece. An army of many legion was already in cantonments on the eastern coast of Italy or prepared to concentrate there in the spring. His fleet crowded the ports of Toronto and Brindisi, and minor detachments were wintering in the smaller harbors of southern Italy. Most of his ships were smaller than those to which they were to be opposed. It was reported that Antony had a considerable share of huge quinkra reams and even larger ships of war, anchored in the Ambrosian Gulf. The ships of the western empire were mostly tri-rames, but there was an advantage that while Antony's fleet was largely manned by hastily recruited landsmen, Octavian had crews made up of experienced sailors. Many of them were of the race of the Liberni, men of the island-fringed coast of Dalmatia, to this day among the best sailors of the Adriatic. And his admiral was the celebrated Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who had to his credit more than one success in the civil wars, among them a victory off the headland of Myli, in the same waters that had been the scene of the triumph of Duelius. Early in the spring, while the main body of Octavian's fleet concentrated at Brundizium, and the army that was to cross the Adriatic gathered round the harbor, Agrippa with a strong squadron put to sea, seized the port of Methoni in the Peloponnesus, and using this base as his place of operations, captured numbers of the Egyptian transports that were conveying supplies to the enemy's camps. Antony ought to have replied to this challenge by putting to sea with his combined fleet, forcing Agrippa to concentrate the western armament to meet him, and deciding by a pitched battle who was to have command of the sea in the Adriatic. But Caesar's old lieutenant, once as energetic and enterprising a soldier as his master, had now become indolent and irresolute. He was used to idling away weeks and months with Cleopatra and his semi-Oriental court. Instead of venturing on a vigorous offensive campaign, he left the initiative to his opponent, and with a nominally more powerful fleet at his disposal, he passively abandoned the command of the sea to Agrippa and Octavian. The Egypto-Roman army was ordered to concentrate on the southern shores of the Ambrosian Gulf. A division of the fleet was moored in the winding strait at its entrance, but directed to act only on the defensive. Inside the Gulf, the rest of the fleet lay, the largest ships at anchor, the smaller hauled up on the shore. The crews had been brought up to full strength by enlisting mule drivers, field laborers, and other inexperienced landsmen, and would have been better for training at sea. But, except for some drills on the landlocked waters, they were left in idleness, and sickness soon broke out among them and thinned their numbers. The ships, thus inefficiently manned, presented a formidable array. There were some 500 in all, including, however, a number of large merchant men hastily fitted for war service. Just as modern men of war are provided with steel nets, hanging on booms as a defense against torpedoes, so it would seem that some, at least, of Antony's ships had been fitted with a clumsy device for defending them against attack by fighting. Below the level of the oars, balks of timber were propped out from their sides at the waterline, and it was hoped that these barricades would break the full force of the enemy's beak. But the invention had the drawbacks of diminished speed of the ship, thus making quick turning more difficult, and thus it increased the very danger it was intended to avert. Another feature of the larger ships, some of them the biggest that had yet been built for the line of battle, was that wooden castles or towers had been erected on their upper decks, and on these structures were mounted various specimens of a rude primitive substitute for artillery. Belistai, Kettepolts and the like, engines for discharging by mechanical means huge darts or heavy stones. These same towers were also to be the places from which the eastern bowmen, the best archers of the ancient world, would shower their arrows on a hostile fleet. But locked up in the bottlenecked Ambrosian Gulf, the great fleet, with its tower-crowned array of floating giants had as little effect on the opening phase of the campaign as if its units had been so many castles on the shore. Agrippa soon felt that there was no serious risk of any attempt being made by Antony to intercept the long and delicate operation affaring over an army of 100,000 men and some 12,000 cavalry from Egypt to the opposite shore of the Adriatic. He took the precaution of watching the outlet of the Ambrosian Gulf with his swiftest ships. The narrow entrance while making it difficult to force away into the Gulf had the disadvantage of all such positions that a large fleet would take a considerable time to issue from it into the open sea and it was therefore comparatively easy to blockade and observe it. If Antony showed any sign of coming out, there would be time to bring up the Octavian to meet him in the open. It was thus that Octavian was able securely to embark his army in successive divisions and land it without interruption at the point of Torny on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Having assembled there, it marched southward along the coast till it reached the hills of the northern shore of the Ambrosian Gulf and the two armies and fleets were in the presence of each other. The legions of the Ambrosian Gulf were rising ground a few miles north of the entrance of the Gulf and above a narrow neck of land which divided one of its inlets from the open sea. The coast is here hollowed into a wide bay in which the main body of Griffith's fleet was anchored while the detached squadron observed the opening of the straits. The camp was surrounded by entrenchments and connected with the station of the fleet by a road protected by as much use of pick and spade as of sword and spear in their campaigns. On the site of the camp Octavian afterwards founded Nicopolis, the city of victory, as the memorial of its triumph. From the camp on the hill there was a wide view over the Ambrosian Gulf, a sheet of water some 30 miles long and 10 wide, surrounded by an amphitheater of hills sloping to flat and in many places marshy shores. The wide waters the fleet of Antony lay moored, line behind line, a forest of masts and yards. In the narrows of the entrance some of his largest ships were anchored. Many of the ships of Phoenicia and Egypt displayed an eastern perfusion of color in their painted upper works, their gilded bows and their bright flags and streamers. Near the southern shore lay the stake galley of Cleopatra, a floating palace with its silken sails, guided works and oars bound and plated with silver. A line of earthworks and forts across the neck of the northern point, garrisoned by the best of Antony's Roman veterans defended one side of the narrows. The other side was a low-lying triangular stretch of land, dry, sandy ground. The Greeks knew it as the acchi, just as the Italian soldiers called it the punta, both words having the same meaning, the point. At its northern extremity on the Iraqi platform there rose a temple of Apollo known as Actian, the sanctuary of the point. A place of pilgrimage for the fisher and sailor folk of the neighborhood. Its name, Latinized into Actium, became famous as that of the naval battle. On the level ground of the temple was the camp of the army of Antony and Cleopatra, a city of tents and reed-built huts. Within its mists the gay pavilions of the court. It was a mix-gathering of many nations. Roman legions commanded by the veterans of the wars of Caesar. Egyptian battalions in the quaint war dress we see on the painted walls of the tombs of the Nile. In the semi-barbarous levees of the tributary kings of eastern Asia there was widespread dissension and mutual suspicion among the allies. Not a few of the Romans were chafing at their leader's subservience to a barbarian queen. Many of the eastern kinglets saw whether they could not make a better bargain with Octavian. The cavalry of both armies skirmished among the hills on the landside of the Gulf and prisoners made by Octavian's troops readily took service with them. Then one of the Asiatic kings instead of fighting joined the hostile cavalry with his barbaric horsemen and night after night Roman deserters stole into the camp of Octavian on the northern height. An attempt led by Antony and person entrenchments was beaten off. A detachment of the fleet tried to elude the villageants of Agrippa and slip out to the sea, but had to retire before superior numbers. Then both parties watched each other while at the headquarters of Antony councils of war were held to debate upon a plan of campaign. The situation was becoming difficult for Octavian contented himself with holding his fortified camp with his infantry drawing his supplies freely to the sea while his cavalry prevented anything reaching Antony's lines from the landside and Agrippa's fleet blockading the Gulf and sweeping the sea made it impossible to bring corn from Egypt. Provisions were running short and sickness was rife. A move of some kind must be made. The veteran Canidius who commanded the army under Antony had, like most of the Romans little faith in the efficiency of the fleet. He proposed to Antony that this should be abandoned and that the army should march eastward into Macedonia and with an unexhausted country to supply it await the pursuit of ten legions of Octavian in a favorable position. But Antony, influenced by Cleopatra, refused to desert the fleet which was the one possible hope of reaching Egypt again and rejecting an attack on Roman entrenchments as a hopeless enterprise. He decided at last that all the treasure of court and army should be embarked on the ships and an effort made to break through the blockading squadrons. While the preparations were being made the Romans renewed their entreaties that their leader would rather stake his fortunes on a battle on land. One day a veteran Centurion of his guard who bore the honorable scars of many campaigns addressed him with tears in his eyes said to Antony, Imperator, why distrust these wounds, this sword, and these of wood, let Phoenicians and Egyptians fight on the sea but let us have land on which we know how to conquer or die. It is the appeal that Shakespeare puts it in the mouth of one of Antony's soldiers. O noble emperor, do not fight by sea. Trust not to rotten planks. Do you mist doubt this sword and these my wounds? Let the Egyptians and the Phoenicians go a ducking. We have used to conquer standing on the earth and fighting foot to foot. The sight of the Egypto-Roman fleet crowding down to the narrows with their sails bent on their yards showed that they meant to risk putting to sea an Octavian embarked on a grippus fleet with picked reinforcements from the legions. For four days the wind blew strongly from the southwest and the blockaded fleet waited for better weather. On the fifth day the wind had fallen, the sea was smooth and the sun shone brightly. The floating castles of Antony's van division worked out of the straits and after them in long procession came the rest of the Roman, Phoenician and Egyptian galleys. From the hills to the northward of the straits from the low lying headland of Actium to the south, two armies each of a hundred thousand men watched the spectacle and waited anxiously for the sight of the coming battle. The western fleet had steered to a position off the entrance formed in two divisions. A grippa, the other by Octavian. A grippa, whose experience and record of naval victory gave him the executive command had no attention of risking his small ships in the narrows, where they would have been opposed by an equal number of heavier ships more numerously manned and would lose whatever advantage their superior handiness and seaworthiness gave them through having no room to maneuver. He kept his fleet of four hundred triremes sufficiently far from the shore to avoid the shelving shallows that fringe it near the entrance to the strait and to have ample sea room. From some time the fleets remained in presence of each other both hesitating to begin the attack. Antony knew that his slower and heavier ships would have the best chance acting in shore and on the defensive and a grippa was on the other hand anxious not to engage until he could lure them out seaward where his light craft would have all the gain of rapid maneuvering. It was not till near noon that at last the western fleet closed with the allies. The ships that first encountered were nearly all Roman vessels for the Egyptian and Asiatic squadrons were not in the front line of Antony's fleet and the brunt of the attack fell upon the sluggish giants which had been so elaborately fortified with booms in the water and towers and breast works on their decks. As the attacking ships came into range arrows, javelins and stones flew hurdling through the air from the line of floating castles missiles that did not however inflict much loss for the men on the decks of the attacking fleet crouched behind bulwarks or covered themselves with their oblong shields and their bowmen made some show of reply to the heavier discharge of engines of war on Antony's ships and to the more rapid shooting of the Asiatic archers. The days were still far off when sea fights would be decided by fire in the sense of the discharge of projectiles. Could the tall ships have rammed the smaller and lower galleys of Octavian and Agrippa, they would certainly have sent them to the bottom a sunken ship for each blow of the brazen beak. But attempts at ramming were soon found by Antony's captains to be useless and dangerous. It was not merely that their lighter and nimbler opponents easily avoided the onset. The well-trained crews evaded every attempt to run them down or grapple them chose their own distance as they hovered round their huge adversaries and presently, as they gained confidence from impunity began successfully to practice the maneuver of alluding the ram and using their own bows not for a blow against the hull of the heavier ship but to sweep away and shatter her long oars which were too heavy to be saved by drawing them in or unshipping them. Successful attack on the oars was equivalent to disabling an adversaries engines in a modern sea fight and when the ship was thus crippled her opponents could choose their time to concentrate several of their ships for a joint attempt to take her by boarding. The unwieldy ships of Antony's first line with their half-trained and untrained crews must have formed a straggling irregular line with large intervals as they stood out to sea and it was this that gave Octavian's fleet the opportunity for the worrying tactics they adopted. Had the Egyptian and Phoenician ships support of the leading line their more sailor-like crews might have helped to turn the scale against Octavian but while the fight was yet undecided and before the Egyptian squadron had taken any part in it a breeze sprung up from the land blowing from the northeast then to the dismay of Antony's veterans who watched the battle from the headland of Actium it was seen that the Egyptians were unfurling their sails from the long yards the signal had been given from Cleopatra's stately vessel which as battle began had rode out to a position in the midst of the Egyptian squadron and now shook out her purple sails to the breeze silken fabrics of fiery red that seemed at first glance like a battle signal but in battle sails were never used and ships trusted entirely to the oar so to set the sails meant plainly that the fight was to be abandoned dropping her silver-tipped oars helped now with the land breeze that swelled her sails Cleopatra's galley passed a stern of the fighting line on its extreme left and 60 of the warships of Alexandria followed their queen those who watched from the land must have hoped against hope that this was a novel maneuver to use the breeze to aid the squadron of their allies to shoot out from behind the main body to gain the flank of the enemy and then suddenly let the sails flap idly furl or drop them and sweep down with full speed of oars on the rear of the attack with Cleopatra leading like Artemisia at Salamis but the serpent of the old Nile had no such ideas she was in full flight for Alexandria with her warships escorting her and conveying the wealth which had been embarked when it was decided to put to sea was her flight an act of treachery or the result of panic-stricken alarm at the site of the battle but even her enemies never accused her of any lack of personal courage and there are many indications that it had been arranged before the fleet came out that as soon as an opportunity offered Cleopatra with sufficient escort should make for Egypt where several legions were in garrison where even if the army now encamped beside the Ambrassian Gulf could not be extricated from its difficulties another army might be formed to prolong the war but the withdrawal of the 60 ships through the odds of battle heavily against the rest of Antony's fleet and matters were made worse by its leader suddenly allowing his infatuation for the Queen of Egypt to sweep away all sense of duty to his comrades and followers and his honor as commander as he saw Cleopatra's sails curving round his line and making for the open sea he hastily left his flagship boarded a small and swift galley and sped after the Egyptians Agrippa was too good a leader to weaken his attack on the main body of the enemy by any attempt to interrupt the flight of the Egyptian squadron when he saw the galley of Antony following it he guessed who was on board and detached a few of his triremes in pursuit Antony was saved from capture only by the rearward ships of the fugitive squadron turning back to engage and delay the pursuers in this rear-guard fight two of the Egyptian warships were captured by Agrippa's cruisers but meanwhile Antony's galley had run alongside of the royal flagship of the Egyptian fleet and he had been welcomed on board by Cleopatra by this time however he began to realize the consequences of his flight half an hour ago he stood on the deck of a fighting ship where comrades who had made his cause their own were doing brave battle against his enemies now while the fight still raged far away a stern he found himself on the deck of a pleasure yacht glittering with gold and silver silk and ivory and with women and slaves forming a circle around the queen who greeted him on the carpeted deck he made only a brief acknowledgement of her welcome and then turned away and strode toward the bow where he sat alone, huddled together brooding on thoughts of failure and disgrace while the royal galley and its escort of warships sped southward with ore and sail and the dinner battle died away in the distance and all sight of it was lost beyond the horizon the withdrawal of the Egyptians was a palpable discouragement to all the fleet but not all were aware that their leader Antony had shared Cleopatra's flight some of those who realized what had happened gave up all further effort for victory and leaving the line drove ashore on the sandy beach of Actium and abandoning their ships joined the spectators from the camp others made their way by the strait into the great landlocked haven of the Gulf but most of the fleet still kept up the fight the great ships that drifted hopelessly with broken oars among the agile galleys the Grypas, Libernian sailors or that grounded in the shallows near the shore were even in their helplessness as ships formidable floating forts that it was difficult to sink and dangerous to storm more than one attempt to board was repulsed with loss the high bulwarks and towers giving an advantage to the large fighting contingents that Antony had embarked some of them had drifted together and relashed side to side so that their crews could mutually aid each other and their archers bring a crossfire on the assailants of their wooden towers some ships had been sunk on both sides and a few of the towered warships of the eastern fleet had been captured by a Grypa but at the cost of much loss of life to complete the destruction of the Antonian fleet and to secure his victory a Grypa now adopted means that could not have been suddenly improvised and must therefore have been prepared in advance perhaps at the earlier period when he was considering the chances of forcing away into the Gulf fire was the new weapon arrows reathed with oil and blazing tow were shot at the towers and bulwarks of the enemy rafts laden with combustibles were set on fire and towed or pushed down upon the drifting sea castles ship after ship burst into flames as the fire spread some tried vainly to master it others at an early stage abandoned their ships or surrendered as the resistance of the defeated armada gradually slackened and about four o'clock came to an end it was found that a number of ships had taken refuge in the narrows in the Gulf others were aground on the point a few had been sunk and some more had surrendered but numbers were drifting on the sea wrapped in smoke and flame some of these sank as the fire reached the water's edge and the waves lapped into the hollow hall or the weight of half consumed upper works capsized them to shore in the shallows and redden sea and land with the glare of their destruction far into the night for the men who had fought the victory complete as it was had an element of disappointment they had hoped to secure as a prize the treasures of Cleopatra but these had been spirited away on the Egyptian fleet but for the commanders Octavian and his able lieutenant there was nothing to regret the battle had once more decided the issue between east and west and had given Octavian such advantages that it would be his own fault if he were not soon master of the Roman world within a few days the remnant of the defeated fleet had been surrendered or burned at its anchors the army of Canidius after a half hearted attempt at an inland march and after being further weakened by desertions declared for Octavian and joined his standards Cleopatra had entered the port of Alexandria with a pretense of returning in triumph from a naval victory. Laurel Wreaths hung on spars and bulwarks flags flew trumpet-sounded and she received the enthusiastic greeting of Greeks and Egyptians as she landed. But the truth could not long be concealed and under the blight of defeat linked with stories of leaders deserting comrades and allies Antony and Cleopatra failed to rally any determined support to their side when the conqueror of Actium came to threaten Egypt itself Soon both ended their lives with their own hands. Cleopatra only resorting to this act of desperation when after breaking with Antony she failed to enslave Octavian with her charms and foresaw that she would appear among the prisoners at his coming triumph in Rome. 2nd September B.C. 31 the day of Actium is the date which most historians select to mark the end of the Roman Republic in the beginning of the Empire the victor Octavian had already taken the name of his grand-uncle Caesar he now adopted the title of Augustus and accepted from army and senate the permanent rank of Imperator inaugurating a system of absolutism that kept some of the forms of the old Republic as a thin disguise for the change to imperialism on the height where he had camped before the battle Nicopolis the city of victory was erected the ground where his tent had stood the marble paved forum adorned with the brazen beaks of conquered warships the temple of Apollo at the point of Actium was rebuilt on more ambitious lines and the level expanse of sandy ground behind it every September for some 200 years the Actian games were held to celebrate the decisive victory Augustus did not forget that to the fleet he owed his success in the Civil War and naval stations were organized and squadrons of warships kept in commission even in the long days of peace that followed his victory they served to keep the Mediterranean free from the plague of piracy and to secure the growing overseas commerce of the empire which made the Mediterranean a vast Roman lake End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale This is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jerry Dixon Zephyr Hills, Florida Famous Sea Fights by John R. Hale Chapter 3 The Battle of Swold Island AD 1000 In the story of the battles of Salamis and Actium we have seen what naval warfare was like in Greek and Roman times it would be easy to add other examples but they would be only repetitions of much the same story for during the centuries of the Roman power there was no marked change in naval architecture or the tactics of warfare on the sea we passed then over a thousand years to a record of naval war waged in the beginning of the Middle Ages by Northern races people who had independently of Greek or Roman evolved somewhat similar types of ships but who were better sailors all that they still used the ship not so much as an engine of war as the floating platform on which warriors might meet in hand-to-hand conflict Norsemen, Dane, and Swede were all of kindred blood the landlocked Baltic the deep fjords of the Scandinavian peninsula the straits and inlets of the archipelago that fringes its North Sea coast were the waters on which they learned such skill and seamanship that they soon launched out upon the open sea daring voyages not only to the Orkneys and the Hebrides and the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland but the Pharaohs and to still more distant Iceland and Greenland and then southward to Vineland the mainland of America long after rediscovered by the navigators of the 15th century there is a considerable intermixture of Norse blood in the peoples of Great Britain and Ireland and perhaps from this sea-loving race a spirit of adventure that has helped so much to build up our own naval power when Nelson destroyed and captured the Danish fleet at Copenhagen the Danes consolved themselves by saying that only a leader of their own blood could have conquered them and that Nelson's name showed he came of the Viking line a chronicler tells how Charlemagne in his old age once came to a village on the North Seashore and camped beside it looking to seaward he saw far out some long, low ships with gaily painted oars dragon-shaped bows and sails made of brightly colored lengths of stuff sewn together and adorned with embroidery along the yard tears came to his eyes as he said these sea dragons will tear us under the empire I have made they were Viking cruisers on their way to plunder some coast town and the old emperor's prophecy was verified when the Norman who was a civilized Norseman became for a while the conquering race of Europe even before the death of Charlemagne the Norse and Danish sea kings were raiding plundering and burning along the coasts of his empire 200 years of our own history is made up of the story of their incursions England and Ireland bore the first run of their own set when they found the ways of the sea but they ravaged all the western coasts of Europe and even showed themselves in the Mediterranean at the end of the 8th until the beginning of the 11th century they were the terror of the western world and early in that dark and stormy period their raids had grown into great expeditions they landed armies that marched far inland and they carved out principalities for themselves western Europe had a brief respite at times when the Vikings fought amongst themselves in early days there were frequent struggles for supremacy in Norway between local kinglets and precious chiefs fighting was in the blood of the Northmen two sea roving squadrons would sometimes challenge each other to battle for the mere sake of a fight as Norway coalesced into a single kingdom and as the first teachers of Christianity induced the kings to suppress piracy there was more of peace and order on the northern seas but in this transition period there was more than one struggle between the Scandinavian kingdoms one of the most famous battles of these northern wars of the sea kings was fought in this period when the old wild days of sea roving were drawing to an end and its picturesque story may well be told as that of a typical Norse battle for its hero King Olaf Trigveson was the ideal of a northern sea king Olaf was the descendant of the race of Harald Harfiger Far-haired Harald the warrior who had united the kingdom of Norway then made himself its chief king at the close of the 9th century but Olaf came of a branch of the royal house that civil war had reduced to desperate straits he was born when his mother Astrid was a fugitive in a lonely island of the Baltic as a boy he was sold into slavery in Russia there one day in the marketplace of an Estonian town he was recognized by a relative Sigurd the brother of Astrid and was freed from bondage and trained to arms as a page at the court of the Norse adventurers who ruled the land the saga tells how Olaf the son of Trigve grew to be tall of stature and strong of limb and skilled in every art of land and sea of peace and war none swifter than he on the snowshoes in winter no bolder swimmer when the summer had cleared the ice from the waters he could throw darts with both hands he could toss up two swords catching them like a juggler and keeping one always in the air he could climb rocks and peaks like a mountain goat he could row and sail and had been known to display his daring skill as an athlete by running along the moving oars outside the ship he could ride a horse and fight mounted oar on foot with axe or sword with spear or bow in early manhood he came back to Norway to avenge the death of his father Trigve and then took to sea roving until the Norsemen's trade he raided the shores of the continent from Friesland to northern France but most of his paratical voyages were to the shores of our own islands and many a seaboard town in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland saw Olaf's plundering squadron of swift ships five was the number of them with which he visited the Orkneys the Viking warships were small vessels the ship dug out of the great grave mound of Fjord in Norway and now shown at Kristianna is 77 feet long with a beam of 17 amidships and a depth of just under 6 feet her drought of water would be only 4 feet and she would lie very low in the water but her lines are those of a good sea boat she had one mast 40 feet high to carry a cross yard and a square sail and she had 32 oars 16 on each side it says something for the seamen ship of the Northmen that it was with ships like this they sailed the Atlantic waves off the west coast of Ireland and made their way by the North Sea and the verge of the Arctic to the pharaohs, Iceland, Greenland and the mysterious Vineland raiding in the Irish sea Olaf Trigveson made a stay in a harbor of the silly islands and there he became a convert to Christianity on the same voyage he married the Countess Gaide and his sister of his namesake Olaf Quarren the Danish king of Dublin it was while he was staying in Ireland with the Dublin Danes that he heard news from Norway that opened larger ambitions to him the land was divided among many chiefs and the most powerful of them was hated as an oppressor by the people who, he was told would gladly welcome as their king a leader as famed as Olaf Trigveson and representing the line by the Danes of Ireland he sailed back to Norway to win its crown for himself and to cast down the worship of Thor and Odin and make the land part of Christendom in the first enterprise he was quickly successful and in 995 he was recognized as king of Norway at Trondheim during the five years that he reigned he devoted much of his energy to the second part of his mission and made among his countrymen a crown still more ready to accept external conformity sometimes he would argue exhort a pill to the reason and the goodwill of chiefs and people but often the old Viking spirit of his pagan days would master him and he would hack down with his battle-axe the emblems and the altars of Thor and Odin and challenge the old gods to avenge the insult if they had the power and then tell the startled onlookers that if they were to be loyal to him they must accept the new and better creed the open sea and the deep fjords running far into the hills were the best highways of his kingdom and Olaf spared no effort to maintain a good fighting fleet the best ships of which lay anchored before his great hall at Trondheim when he was at home when he went out to war his path was by the sea he hunted down the pirates and destroyed their strongholds in the northern fjords with none less the zeal because these places were also the last refuge of the old paganism and its berserker magicians he had built for his own use a ship called the Crane Tranan longer than ships were usually made at the time and also have narrower beam her additional length enabled more oars to be used and her sharp bow carved into a bird's head and her graceful lines made her the fastest ship in the fjords when a good crew of rowers was swinging to the oars the rowing boat is generally a bad sailor but Olaf had made the Crane swift enough under canvas or to speak more accurately when her sails of brightly dyed wool were spread she was given high bulwarks and must have had more than the usual four foot drought of water for she carried plenty of heavy stone ballast to stiffen her under sail with the Crane as his flagship Olaf sailed northward to attack the Viking Roud pirate and magician to build out for the old gods and the old wild ways Roud had another exceptionally large ship the longest in Norway until the Crane was built the swiftest also the bow carved into a dragon's head and covered with brazen scales gave Roud's ship the name of the serpent Orman as Olaf sailed northward Roud and his allies met him in a skirmish at sea but soon gave way to superior numbers he steered the serpent into the recesses of salt and fjord thought he had shaken off pursuit especially as the weather had broken and wild winds stormy seas and driving mist and rain squalls might well make the fjord inaccessible to Olaf's fleet Roud sat late feasting and drinking and in the early morning he still lay in a drunken sleep when the Crane slipped into the fjord despite mist and storm and Olaf seized the dragon ship as a prisoner almost without striking a blow when the king returned to Trondheim he had the two finest ships of the north the Crane and the serpent the latter the largest the former the swiftest vessel that had yet been launched on the northern seas proud of such weapons he wondered if he could not build a warship longer than the serpent and swifter than the Crane and he consulted his best shipbuilder Thorberg Hartlover the air splitter so named from his deafness with the sharp adds the ship writes characteristic tool in the days of wooden walls Thorberg was given a free hand and promised to build a ship that would be famous for centuries this was the Lang Orman or long serpent a dreadnought of those old Viking days she was 150 feet long and her sides rose high out of the water but she had also a deep drought the bow strengthened with the cutwater of steel was fashioned like the head of a huge dragon the stern carved into a dragon's tail and bow and stern were covered with scales of gold she had 60 oars and her crew was made up of no less than 600 picked men among them warriors whose names live in history for a while Olaf with his great ships reigned victoriously over Norway defeating more than one effort of the old pagan vikings to shake his power one of these defeated rivals Erik Jarl, Earl Erik took refuge in Sweden gathered there a number of adherents who had like himself fled from Norway to avoid Olaf's strong handed methods of reform and conversion and with them sailed the Baltic plundering its coast in the old Viking fashion King Swend of Denmark was jealous of the power of Norway so he took Erik at his court and gave him his daughter's hand Swend's queen, Segred was a Swedish princess and Erik set to work to form a triple league against Norway of which the three branches would be his own following of Norwegian Malcontents and the Swedes and Danes Olaf had spent the summer of the year 1000 with a fleet of 60 ships in the southeastern Baltic Autumn was coming King was preparing to return home before the wintery weather began when news arrived that hastened his departure it was brought by one of his Yarls Earl Sigvald who came with 11 ships men by his clansmen and reported that the rebel Erik had been joined by the kings of Sweden and Denmark and the three fleets of the allies were preparing to fall upon Olaf on his homeward voyage but Sigvald assured the king that if he had come to pilot the Norwegian fleet he would take it safely through channels deep enough for even the long serpent and elude the hostile armada which outnumbered Olaf's fleet three to one Sigvald however was a traitor he had promised to lead Olaf into waters where the allied fleets would be waiting to attack him and he knew they would be anchored inside the island of Rugen near the island of Swold sailed westward from Wendland to his last battle the saga tells how on a bright morning Erik Yarl and the two kings watched from Swold the approach of the Norwegian ships and at first doubted if Olaf was with them but when they saw the long serpent towering above the rest they doubted no longer and gave orders for their 180 ships to clear for action agreeing that Norway should be divided among them and the long serpent would be the prize of whoever first set foot on her deck so sure were they that numbers would give them the victory even against a champion of the seas like Olaf Trigvison the swift crane and the short serpent taken from Roud of Salt and Fjord had sailed ahead of the fleet they saw the ships of the allies crowding out of the channel between Swold and the mainland and turned back to give the alarm Thor killed the half brother of Olaf who commanded the short serpent urged the king to bear out to sea and avoid a fight with such desperate odds but Olaf's blood was up like the triremes of the Mediterranean the serpents, dragons and cranes of the northern seas used only the ores in battle and the king gave the order which meant fighting down with the sails he said who talks of running away I never fled yet and never will my life is in God's hands but flight would be shame forever the battle that followed is the most famous in Viking story we know it chiefly through poetic records but there is no doubt the saga preserves for us much of the living tradition of the time and if its riders yielded to the temptation of decorating their narrative with picturesque detail it must be remembered that they told the tale of Olaf's last sea fight to men who knew from experience what northern war was like so they give us what we chiefly want a life like picture of a Viking battle just as Shakespeare tells how at Shrewsbury the king had many marching in his coats and to this day in an Abyssinian army several nobles are dressed in arm like the king to divert personal attack from him so as he stood on the afterdeck of the long serpent Olaf had beside him one of his best warriors Colbyarn Slatter a man like himself in heightened build and wearing the same splendid armor with gilded shield and helmet and crimson cloak round them were grouped the picked fighting men of the bodyguard, the Shieldburg so called because it was their duty to form a breastwork of their shields and ward off arrows and javelins from the king on the poop also were the king's trumpeters bearing the war horns long horns of the wild ox which now sounded the signal for battle the droning call was taken up by ship after ship as the shouting sailors sent down sails and yards on deck the ships closed on each other side by side and drew in their oars forming in a close line of breast and then under bare mass the long array of war galleys with their high bowels carved into heads of beast and birds and dragons drifted with the current towards the hostile fleet the sailors were lashing the ships together as they moved the severing appears to have had small part in most viking fights the fleet became one great floating fortress and as the ships met bow to bow the best warriors fought hand to hand on the folksel decks the rider of the saga tells how in the center of the fleet the long serpent lay with the crane and the short serpent to port and starboard the sterns of the three ships were in line and so the bow of the long serpent projected far in front of the rest as the sailors secured the ships in position Ulf the red haired who commanded on the folksel of the long serpent went aft and called out to the king that if the serpent lay so far ahead he and his men would have tough work in the bow are you afraid asked the king we are no more afraid forward than you are aft replied Ulf with a flash of anger the king lost his temper and threatened Ulf with an arrow on his bow string put down your bow said Ulf if you shoot me you wound your own hand and then he went back to his post on the folksel deck the allied fleet was now formed in line and bearing down on the Norwegians Sigvald Jarl who had lured the king into the sandbush hung back with his eleven ships and Ulf with his sixty had to meet a three fold force King Swend with the Danish fleet formed the enemy's center to his right Ulf's namesake King Olaf Swensker led the Swedish ships on the left was Erik with the rebel heathen Jarls of Norway Olaf watched the enemy's approach and talked to Colbjorn and the men of the Shieldburg he did not reckon that the Danes or the Swedes would give much trouble he said the Danes were soft fellows and the Swedes would be better at home pickling fish than risking themselves in fight with Norsemen but Erik's attack would be dangerous these are Norwegians like ourselves it will be hard against hard perhaps we have here a touch of flattery for his countrymen from the poet of the saga a Norsemen telling the tale to men of his own race however this may be the words put into Olaf's mouth were true so far as the rebel Jarls were concerned even if they did injustice to Danes and Swedes Erik Jarl seems to have had some inventive talent and some idea of naval tactics his ship was called the Iron Beard because her bow is bristled with sharpened spikes of iron she was to be herself a weapon not merely a means of bringing fighting men to close quarters for a hand-to-hand struggle it is remarkable that though it proved useful at the battle of Swold the armed bow found no regular place in Viking warfare the Iron Beard also anticipated modern methods in another way her bulwarks were covered with iron plating it cannot have been of any serious thickness for a Viking ship had not enough displacement to spare for carrying heavy armor but the thin plates were strong enough to be a defense against arrows and spears and as these would not penetrate a thick wooden bulwark it seems likely that the plating was fixed on a rail running along each side thus giving a higher protection than the bulwark itself Eric's ship was thus a primitive iron-clad ram though Olaf had spoken lightly of the Danes it was King Swind's squadron that began the fight, rowing forward in advance of the rest and falling on the right and the right center of Olaf's fleet the Swedes at first hung back Swind himself on the left of the Danish attack steered straight for the projecting bowels of the long serpent Red-haired Ulf grappled the Danish King's ship, boarded her and after a fierce fight in which the Norwegian battle axes did deadly work, cleared her from end to end King Swind saved his life by clambering on board of another ship Olaf and his men from the high stern of the long serpent shot their arrows with telling effect into the Danish ships all along the center the Norwegians held their own and gradually the Danes began to give way it was then only the Swedes worked their ships into the melee that raged in front of the line of Norwegian bowels to have swept around the line and attacked in flank and rear while the Danes still grappled it in front would have been a more effective method of attack but the opponents thought only of meeting front to front like fighting bulls it may be too that Olaf's fleet had so drifted that there was not much room to pass it's right wing on the land but however this may be there was plenty of sea room on the left and here Eric Yarl in the iron beard led the attack and used his advantage to the full part of his squadron fell upon the Norwegian front but the iron beard and several of her consorts swung around the end of the line and concentrated their attack on the outside ship Eric had grasped the cardinal principle of naval tactics the importance of trying to crush a part of the hostile line by bringing a local superiority of force to bear upon it it was hard against hard Viking against Viking but the Norwegians in the end ship were hopelessly outnumbered they fought furiously and sold their lives dearly but soon the armed bow of the iron beard drove between their ship and the next the lashings were cut and drifted out of the line with their deck heaped with dead Eric let her drift and attacked the next ship in the same way he was eating up Olaf's left wing ship by ship while the Danes and Swedes kept the center and right busy it was the bloodiest fight that the North had ever seen a fight to the death for though there was now small hope of victory the Norse battle madness was strong in Olaf and his men as the day wore on the right held its own but one by one every ship on the left had been cleared by Eric and the Yarls and now the battle raged around the three great ships in the center the Crane and the two serpents Eric came up and drove the bow of the iron beard into the long serpents bulwarks the rebel Yarl stood on the folksle behind the bristling spikes his bloodstained battle axe in hand and his shield-burg standing close around him they had now hard work to ward off the arrows that came whistling from the long serpent for at such close quarters Eric had been recognized and more than one archer shot at him the saga tells how young Einar Tamberskelver the best of the bowmen of Norway so strong that he could send a blunt arrow through a bull's hide had posted himself in the rigging of the long serpent and made the rebel mark his arrows rattled on the shields of Eric's guard one of them graced his helmet whistled over the iron beard's deck and buried itself in her rudder head crouching in the bow of the iron beard behind her armor plates was a Finnish archer and the finlanders were such good bowmen that men said sorcery aided their skill Eric told him to shoot the man in the serpents rigging the fin to show his marksmanship aimed at Einar's bowstring and cut it with his arrow the bow released from the string sprang open and broke with a loud report what is that sound? asked Olaf Einar sprang down from the rigging and answered it is the sound of the scepter of Norway falling from your grasp it was noticed that Olaf's hand was bleeding his gauntlet was full of blood but he had given no sign when he was wounded arrows, javelins and stones were falling in showers on the decks of the Crane and the serpents for the Danes and Swedes worsted in the close fight had drawn off a little and were helping Eric's attack by thus fighting at a safer distance Eric now boarded the long serpents and midships but was beaten back he brought up more of his ships and gathered a larger boarding party the Danish and Swedish arrows had then the ranks of Wolfsmen when Eric led a second storming party on board Danes and Swedes too came clambering over the bow and the long serpents attacked on all sides was cleared to the poop here Olaf fought with Colbjorn Einar and the men of the Sheldberg around him he was somewhat disabled by his wounded hand but he still used his battle axe with deadly effect the attacking party were not quite sure which of the tall men in the gilded armor was the king but at such close quarters some of them soon recognized him and Eric called to his men not to kill Olaf but to make him prisoner Olaf knew well that if his life was spared for a while it would be only to put him to death finally with the cruelty that he then Vikings delighted in inflicting on their enemies as his men fell around him and his party was driven further and further astern he must have seen that outnumbered as his men were and with himself wounded he would soon be over mastered and made prisoner there was just one chance of escape for the best swimmer in Norway holding up his shield he stepped on the bulwark through the shield at his enemies and dived overboard Colbjorn tried to dive with him but was seized and dragged back to the ship when Eric found he was not the king he spared his life the few who remained of the shield burgs sprang overboard some were killed by men who were waiting in the boats to dispose of the fugitives others escaped by diving and swimming and reached Danish and Swedish ships where they asked for and were given quarter Einar the archer was one of those thus saved and he is heard of later in the Danish wars of England Olaf was never seen again Sigwald ships after having watched the fight from afar were rowing up to the victorious fleets and for a long time there was a rumor that King Olaf had slipped out of his coat of mail as he swam underwater and then rose and eluded Eric's boats and reached one of Sigwald's ships where he was hidden the tale ran that he had been taken back to Wendland where he was waiting to reappear someday in Norway and claim his own but years went on and there were no tidings of King Olaf Trigveson he had been drowned in his armor under the stern of the long serpent King Olaf is still after nine centuries one of the popular heroes of the Norwegian people he had a two fold fame as the ideal of a sea king as the ruler who tried in his own wild untaught way to win the land of the fjords to Christendom another Olaf who completed this last work a few years later and who like Olaf Trigveson reigned over Norway in right of his prowess and his descent from herald the fair haired is remembered as Saint Olaf Saint and martyr but no exploit of either king lives in popular tradition so brightly as the story of Olaf Trigveson's death battle at Swald my life is in God's hands he had said but flight would be shame forever his fight against desperate odds fighting in defeat and death won him fame forever End of Chapter 3 Recording by Jerry Dixon Zephyr Hills Florida