Operations in Sicily In 264 BC, the states of
Carthage and
Rome went to war, starting the First Punic War. Carthage was a well-established
maritime power in the Western Mediterranean; Rome had
recently unified mainland Italy south of the
Po under its control. The immediate cause of the war was control of the Sicilian town of Messana (modern
Messina). More broadly both sides wished to control
Syracuse, the most powerful city-state on Sicily. By 256 BC, the war had grown into a struggle in which the Romans were attempting to defeat decisively the Carthaginians and, at a minimum, control the whole of Sicily. The Carthaginians were engaging in their traditional policy of waiting for their opponents to wear themselves out, in the expectation of then regaining some or all of their possessions and negotiating a mutually satisfactory peace treaty. The Romans were essentially a land-based power and had gained control of most of Sicily. The war there had reached a stalemate, as the Carthaginians focused on defending their well-fortified towns and cities; these were mostly on the coast and so could be supplied and reinforced without the Romans being able to use their superior army to interfere. The focus of the war shifted to the sea, where the Romans had little experience; on the few occasions they had previously felt the need for a naval presence they had relied on small
squadrons provided by their allies.
Ships During this period the standard warship of the Carthaginian navy was the
quinquereme, meaning "five-oared". The quinquereme was a
galley, long, wide at water level, with its deck standing above the sea, and displacing around . The galley expert John Coates has suggested that they could maintain for extended periods. The quinquereme was superior as a warship to the previous mainstay of Mediterranean navies, the trireme, and, being heavier, performed better than the triremes in bad weather. The modern replica galley
Olympias has achieved speeds of and cruised at for hours on end. The generally accepted theory regarding the arrangement of oarsmen in quinqueremes is that there would be sets – or files – of three oars, one above the other, with two oarsmen on each of the two uppermost oars and one on the lower, for a total of five oarsmen per file. This would be repeated down the side of a galley for a total of 28 files on each side; 168 oars in total. At least one man on each oar would need to have had some experience if the ship was to be handled effectively. Vessels were built as cataphract, or "protected", ships, with a closed hull to protect the rowers, and a full deck able to carry marines and
catapults. Carthaginian quinqueremes used a separate "oar box" which contained the rowers and was attached to the main hull. This development meant the rowers would be located above or at deck level, which allowed the hull to be strengthened, and increased carrying capacity; as well as improving the ventilation conditions of the rowers, an important factor in maintaining their stamina, and thereby improving the ship's maintainable speed. In 260 BC Romans set out to construct a fleet of 100 quinqueremes and 20 triremes. They used a shipwrecked Carthaginian quinquereme as a blueprint for their own. As novice shipwrights, the Romans built copies that were heavier than the Carthaginian vessels, and so slower and less manoeuvrable. The quinquereme provided the workhorse of the Roman and Carthaginian fleets throughout the
Punic Wars, although
hexaremes (six oarsmen per bank),
quadriremes (four oarsmen per bank) and triremes are also occasionally mentioned. So ubiquitous was the type that Polybius uses it as a shorthand for "warship" in general. A quinquereme carried a crew of 300: 280 oarsmen and 20 deck crew and officers; it would also normally carry a complement of 40 marines; if battle was thought to be imminent this would be increased to as many as 120.
Naval operations Getting the oarsmen to row as a unit, let alone to execute the more complex battle manoeuvres, required long and arduous training. As a result, the Romans were initially at a disadvantage against the more experienced Carthaginians. To counter Carthaginian superiority, the Romans introduced the
corvus, a bridge wide and long, with a heavy spike on the underside, which was designed to pierce and anchor into an enemy ship's deck. This allowed Roman legionaries acting as marines to
board enemy ships and capture them, rather than employing the previously
traditional tactic of
ramming. All warships were equipped with rams, a triple set of bronze blades weighing up to positioned at the waterline. They were made individually by the
lost-wax method to fit immovably to a galley's
prow. In the century prior to the Punic Wars, boarding had become increasingly common and ramming had declined, as the
larger and heavier vessels adopted in this period lacked the speed and manoeuvrability necessary to ram, while their sturdier construction reduced the ram's effect even in case of a successful attack. The Roman adaptation of the
corvus was a progression of this trend and compensated for their initial disadvantage in ship manoeuvring skills. However, the added weight in the prow compromised the ship's manoeuvrability, and in rough sea conditions the
corvus became useless. Largely because of the Romans' use of the
corvus, the Carthaginians were defeated in large naval battles at
Mylae in 260 BC and
Sulci in 257 BC. These victories, and their frustration at the continuing stalemate in Sicily, led the Romans to focus on a sea-based strategy and to develop a plan to invade the Carthaginian heartland in North Africa and threaten their capital, Carthage (close to what is now
Tunis), in the hope of a war-winning outcome. Both sides were determined to establish
naval supremacy and invested large amounts of money and manpower in maintaining and increasing the size of their navies. ==Prelude==