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NOAN TRADERS been active in the eastern Mediterranean by the 2nd millennium from
the island of Crete are known to have
BCE, but it was the Phoenicians—a civilization based to the north of
present-day Israel—who first spread across the entire sea, doing so
between 1200 BCE and 900 BCE. Before this, the Egyptians had developed
the sail by around 3500 BCE, and on the strength of it they became the
world’s dominant naval power, but the Egyptian Empire had collapsed
in 1085 BCE, giving the Phoenicians a chance to flourish. Their
civilization was based on trade, which they conducted by sea, traveling
in oar-powered sailing vessels that the Greeks called gauloi (meaning
“tubs”), from which the word “galley” derives. Their trade routes
spanned the Mediterranean, the west coast of Africa, and the Canary
Islands, and their colonies included Carthage (in present-day Tunisia),
and towns in Ibiza, Sicily, and southern Spain. By far their greatest
invention was the bireme, which was a galley with two rows of oarsmen
on each side of the ship. The design was adopted by the Greeks, another
great culture that was thriving on islands and city-states by the sea, and
who in turn developed the trireme—a galley with three rows of
oarsmen on each side. Homer’sOdyssey, written in around 700 BCE, gives
a description of seamen at work aboard a typical Greek galley—
probably a single-decked, 50-oared ship known as a penteconter:
Telemachus shouted out commands to his shipmates: “All lay hands to
tackle!” They sprang to orders, hoisting the pinewood mast, they stepped
it firm in its blocks amidships, lashed it fast with stays and with braided
rawhide halyards hauled the white sail high. Suddenly wind hit full and
the canvas bellied out and a dark blue wave, foaming up at the bow, sang
out loud and strong as the ship made way, skimming the whitecaps,
cutting toward her goal.
Military triremes and penteconters gave the Greeks their greatest
naval victory at Salamis, in 480 BCE, when they defeated an invading
force of much larger Persian vessels. Such victories proved that naval
strength was the key to political power in the region—a fact that