Produced by Bethanne M. Simms, Wolfgang Menges and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics have been marked with underscores, like '_this_'.
oe ligature has been changed to 'oe'.
In "trieres" and "Trieres", the 'e' stands for an 'e' with a macron.
Changes:
p.23: "Platea" changed to "Plataea"
p.23: "Leothychides" changed to "Leotychides"
p.27: Footnote 2: "see Chapter XIII" changed to "see Chapter XI"
p.67: "1494" changed to "1396", for the battle of Nicopolis took
place on 25 September, 1396, not in 1494
p.71: "Nicosis" changed to "Nicosia"
p.126: "Reganzona" changed to "Regazona"
p.145: Caption: "Vanderelde" changed to "Vandervelde"
p.152: "ninety two" changed to "ninety-two"
p.162: comma after "off San Domingo" changed to period
p.227 Footnote 18: comma removed after "Worden"
pp.300, 301: "Sevastopol" changed to "Sebastopol"
p.308: "Admiral Seniavine" changed to "Admiral Senyavin"
p.341: "Swir" changed to "Svir" (two times)
p.345: Index: "Bragadino, Ambrosio" changed to "Bragadino,
Ambrogio"
p.348: Index: "Monceda" changed to "Moncada" (admiral of the
galeasses in the armada)
p.349: Index: "Valdes, Diego Flores de, admira" changed to
"Valdes, Diego Flores de, admiral"
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR
From an engraving by W. Miller from the painting by C.
Stanfield, R.A.]
FAMOUS SEA FIGHTS
FROM SALAMIS TO TSU-SHIMA
BY
JOHN RICHARD HALE
WITH THIRTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
AND SEVENTEEN PLANS
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY
1911
INTRODUCTION
Three hundred years ago Francis Bacon wrote, amongst other wise words: "To
be Master of the Sea is an Abridgement of Monarchy.... The Bataille of
Actium decided the Empire of the World. The Bataille of Lepanto arrested
the Greatnesse of the Turke. There be many Examples where Sea-Fights have
been Finall to the Warre. But this much is certaine; that hee that commands
the Sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as little of the
Warre as he will. Whereas those, that be strongest by land, are many times
neverthelesse in great Straights. Surely, at this Day, with us of Europe,
the Vantage of Strength at Sea (which is one of the Principall Dowries of
this Kingdome of Greate Brittaine) is Great; Both because Most of the
Kingdomes of Europe are not merely Inland, but girt with the Sea most part
of their Compasse; and because the Wealth of both Indies seemes in great
Part but an Accessary to the Command of the Seas."[1]
[1] Bacon's Essay on "The Greatness of Kingdoms," first
published in 1597. The extract is from the edition of 1625.
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
"Battailes 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 Themistocles 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
Tsu-shima, an event that reversed the long experience of victory won by
West over East, which began with Salamis more than two thousand years ago.
I shall have to tell of British triumphs on the sea from Sluys 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, oar-driven galleys that fought in the Straits of Salamis to the
steel-built, steam-propelled giants that met in battle in the Straits of
Tsu-shima. 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.
J.R.H.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION v
PERIOD OF OAR AND CLOSE FIGHTING
CHAPTER
I. SALAMIS, B.C. 480 1
II. ACTIUM, B.C. 31 25
III. SVOLD ISLAND, A.D. 1000 40
IV. SLUYS, 1340 55
V. LEPANTO, 1571 67
PERIOD OF SAIL AND GUN
VI. THE ARMADA, 1588 105
VII. OFF THE GUNFLEET, 1666 142
VIII. THE SAINTS' PASSAGE, 1782 158
IX. TRAFALGAR, 1805 173
PERIOD OF STEAM, ARMOUR, AND RIFLED ARTILLERY
X. HAMPTON ROADS, 1862 206
XI. LISSA, 1866 231
XII. THE YALU, 1894 252
XIII. SANTIAGO, 1898 277
XIV. TSU-SHIMA, 1905 297
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR _Frontispiece_
From an engraving by W. Miller from the painting
by C. Stanfield, R.A.
FACING PAGE
ROMAN WARSHIPS 32
After the paintings found at Pompeii.
A VIKING FLEET 48
From a drawing by Paul Hardy. By permission of
Cassell and Co.
A MEDITERRANEAN GALLEY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 67
From an engraving by J. P. le Bas, _Mediterranean Craft
of the Sixteenth Century_.
A MEDITERRANEAN CARRACK OR FRIGATE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 67
From an engraving by Tomkins, _Mediterranean Craft of
the Sixteenth Century_.
GALLEYS OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA IN ACTION WITH
TURKISH GALLEYS 80
From an engraving at the British Museum.
THE "GREAT ARMADA" ENTERING THE CHANNEL 112
From the drawing of W. H. Overend. By permission of
the _Illustrated London News_.
THE "SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS," LAUNCHED 1637 144
A typical warship of the middle of the seventeenth
century. After the painting by Vandervelde.
GUNS AND CARRONADES IN USE IN THE BRITISH NAVY IN
THE LATTER PART OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 158
From drawings at the British Museum.
A THREE-DECKER OF NELSON'S TIME 173
From an engraving at the British Museum.
H.M.S. "WARRIOR"--THE FIRST BRITISH IRONCLAD 212
From a photograph by Symonds and Co.
THE BATTLE OF HAMPTON ROADS. THE "MERRIMAC" AND
"MONITOR" ENGAGED AT CLOSE QUARTERS 224
From _Cassier's Magazine_, by permission of the Editor.
THE RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP "OREL" 330
From a photograph taken after the battle of Tsu-Shima,
showing effects of Japanese shell fire.
LIST OF PLANS
FACING PAGE
LEPANTO. Course of Allied Fleet from Ithaca Channel
to scene of battle 90
LEPANTO (1). Allies forming line of battle. Turks
advancing to attack 92
LEPANTO (2). Beginning of the battle. (Noon,
October 7th, 1571) 94
LEPANTO (3). The melee. (About 12.30 p.m.) 96
LEPANTO (4). Ulugh Ali's counter-attack. (About 2.30 p.m.) 102
LEPANTO (5). Flight of Ulugh Ali--Allied Fleet forming up
with captured prizes at close of battle. (About 4 p.m.) 104
VOYAGE OF THE ARMADA, 1588 120
TRAFALGAR 192
HAMPTON ROADS (1st day). "Merrimac" comes out, sinks
"Cumberland" and burns "Congress" 216
HAMPTON ROADS (2nd day). Duel between "Monitor" and
"Merrimac" 216
THE "MERRIMAC" AND "MONITOR" DRAWN TO THE SAME SCALE 222
LISSA. Battle formation of the Austrian Fleet 241
BATTLE OF LISSA. The Austrian attack at the beginning
of the battle 244
BATTLE OF THE YALU (1). The Japanese attack 264
BATTLE OF THE YALU (2). End of the fight 264
BATTLE OF SANTIAGO. Showing places where the Spanish
ships were destroyed 290
BATTLE OF TSU-SHIMA. Sketch-map to show the extent of the
waters in which the first part of the fight took place 321
BATTLE OF TSU-SHIMA. General map 322
BATTLE OF TSU-SHIMA. Diagrams of movements during the
fighting of May 27th 326
FROM SALAMIS TO TSU-SHIMA
CHAPTER I
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
tilled the ground, did their domestic work, and fought their battles for
thousands of years. He who hung up the first weaver's 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 "Dreadnoughts"
were those who "with hearts girt round with oak and triple brass" were the
first to trust their frail barques to "the cruel sea." No doubt the
hollowed tree trunk, and the coracle of osiers and skins, had long before
this made their trial trips on river and lake. Then came the first ventures
in the shallow sea-margins, and at last a primitive naval architect built
up planked bulwarks round his hollowed 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 are most concerned with its development in that eastern
end of the land-locked Mediterranean, which is the meeting-place of so
many races, and around which so much of what is most momentous 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 owes 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 any one learned
to do more than scud before the wind. It took long experience of the sea to
discover that one could fix one's sail at an oblique angle with the
mid-line of the ship, and play off rudder against sail to lay a course with
the wind on the quarter or even abeam and not dead astern.
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 motive power, became in more senses than one
the great instrument of progress on the sea. It gave the ship a power of
manoeuvring 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.
Sails 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 AEschylus, 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
his sail, and having only a small crew, could not afford much oar-power,
though he had often to trust to it. But for the fighting ship, oar-power
and speed were as important as mechanical horse-power 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
Norseman, 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 land-locked sea
to deal with piracy and protect peaceful commerce. But the prizes that
allured the corsair were so tempting, that piracy revived again and again,
and even in the late days of the Roman Republic the Consul Pompey 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
piratical fleets, or of the war galleys of coast and island states--we have
no clear record, or no vestige of a record. Egyptians, Phoenicians,
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 neighbours, Greeks of the islands and the Peninsula, Illyrians of
the labyrinth of creek and 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 met
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 armed help to their kindred beyond
the Archipelago, and he had sent his satraps to raid the Greek mainland.
That first invasion ended disastrously at Marathon. His son, Xerxes, 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 Laurium should be distributed among the Athenian
citizens, it was Themistocles 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 Archipelago. It was the possession of the fleet thus
acquired that enabled Themistocles 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 plateaux 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 to-day. Then it marched
by the coast-line through what is now Roumelia and Thessaly. It ate 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 cargoes 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-statesman who saw the way
to safety, and grasped the central fact of the situation. This was
Themistocles the Athenian, the chief man of that city, against which the
first fury of the attack 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 met 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 would be its position.
It could not live upon "the country"; there must be a continual stream of
sea-borne 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 citadel hill--the Acropolis--which was crowned with rudely built
primitive temples. But the people whose home it was were startled by the
proposal of Themistocles 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 far-sighted 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 shore 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 Straits 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. They held the Pass of Thermopylae, between the eastern shoulder of
Mount AEta 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 persisted 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 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 1200 great ships had coasted southwards by the shores of
Thessaly 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 lines off Cape Sepias. 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. A modern sailor would try to beat
out to seaward and get as far as possible from the dangerous 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 at last the wind fell, only eight hundred galleys of the
Persian armada were still in seaworthy fighting condition.
Here, as on other occasions, the very numbers of the Persian fleet proved a
source of danger to it. The harbours 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 ships were beached and hauled up the shore during bad weather,
and in winter, limited their size, and in both the Persian and the Greek
fleets there probably was not a ship much bigger 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
forecastle a lighter deck ran fore and aft, and under this were the
stations of the rowers. 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 and a square sail. Mast and yard were
taken down before going into action.
The Greeks called their war galleys _trieres_, the Romans _triremes_, and
these 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 were worked is that the
seats of the rowers were placed, not directly above each other, but that
those who worked the lowest and shortest oars were close to the side of the
ship, the men for the middle range of oars a little above them and further
inboard, and the upper tier of rowers still higher and near the centre-line
of the ship. An endless amount of erudition 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 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 trireme 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. _Trieres_ and _trireme_ seems
at first glance to mean triple-oared, in the sense of the oars being
triplicated; but there are strong arguments for the view that it was not
the oars but the oarsmen, who were arranged in "threes." If this view is
correct, the ancient warship was a galley with a single row of long oars on
either side, and three men pulling together each heavy oar. We know that in
the old navies of the Papal States and the Republics of Venice 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 superposed banks of
oars, but there were galleys known as "triremes," "quadriremes," and
"pentaremes," 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 trireme of the days of the Persian War with fifty or sixty oars would
thus have a crew of 150 or 180 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 their 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-bottomed galleys rolled badly in a heavy sea, and in 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 cities of Asia, Xerxes took the precaution of
having at least thirty picked 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 chiefs of this
navigating party were the _keleustes_, who presided over the rowers and
gave the signal for each stroke, and the pilot, who was supposed to have a
knowledge of the local waters and of wind and weather, and who acted as
steersman, handling alone, or with the help of his assistants, the long
stern oar that served as a rudder. The fighting men were not sailors, but
soldiers embarked to fight afloat, 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 in navies continued
throughout the world. The fighting commander and the sailing-master were
two different men, and the captain of a man-of-war was often a landsman.
In the Greek fleet which lay sheltered in the narrows, behind the long
island of Euboea while the Persians were battling with the tempest off Cape
Sepias, the Admiral was the Spartan Eurybiades, 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 of 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 the well-equipped Athenian fleet,
commanded by Themistocles in person. As the storm abated the fleets faced
each other in the strait north of Euboea. In the Persian armada the best
ships were five long galleys commanded by an Amazon queen, Artemisia of
Halicarnassus, 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 grey 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, an offering to the gods of
the deep. The cruel deed was something that inspired no particular sense of
horror in those days of heathen 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 an advantage from their superior numbers, now
detached a squadron which was to coast along the eastern shores of Euboea,
enter the strait at its southern end, and fall on 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 on the Persians, attacked them in the
narrow waters where their numbers could not tell, sank some 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
anchorage when the wind rose, lightning played round 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 sea masses of debris and swollen corpses of drowned men drifting
amongst them as the currents brought the wreckage of the earlier storm
floating down from beyond Cape Sepias. The hundred ships detached to round
the south 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 a general action, fell upon
the nearest ships, the squadron of Cilicia, and sank and captured several
of them, retiring when the main fleet 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 rowed back towards
their anchorage inside Cape Sepias.
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 defence of the Euboean 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 Strait of Negropont. Early
in the day they began to pass one by one the narrows at Chalcis, 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 penteconters, large vessels whose long
oars were each manned by five rowers. Losses by storm and battle had
reduced the Persian armada to some six hundred effective ships. The odds
were serious, but not desperate.
But while the Persian fleet was directed by a single will, there were
divided counsels among the Greeks. Eurybiades 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 neighbouring waters to co-operate in the defence.
Themistocles, 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 more were crowded behind
them. With a column of spearmen on land the weight of the rearward ranks,
formed in a serried phalanx, would force onward those in front. But with a
column of ships formed in several successive lines in 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 galleys were
oar-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 where disaster to a leading ship left an opening.
A doubtful story says that Themistocles, foreseeing that if the battle was
long delayed the Spartan party would carry their point and withdraw to the
isthmus, ran the risk of sending a message to King Xerxes, urging him to
attack at once, hinting at a defection 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 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 Xerxes was more flattered by the opinion of
the satraps who told him that he had only to stretch out his hands to
destroy the Greek fleet and make himself undisputed master of the sea. And,
just as Themistocles 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 Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, who had been unjustly exiled
from Athens some years before, but now in the moment of his country's
danger ran the blockade of the Persians in a ship of AEgina, and came to
throw in his lot with his fellow-citizens. For the Greeks to set out for
the isthmus under these circumstances 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.
Xerxes 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 AEgaleos, which commanded a full view of Salamis
and the straits, the silken tents of the King and his Court were erected, a
camp that was like a palace. Purple-dyed hangings, gilded tent poles with
pomegranates of pure gold at the top of each, carpets bright with colour,
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 either 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 armour and equipments gleaming with silver and
gold. Along the shore from the white marble cliffs of Sunium by the port of
Phalerum and far up the winding coast-line 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 in it 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 irruption 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 his 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
newspapers, 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 in 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 centre 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 functions of
political leader, general, and admiral was yet centuries distant in the
future. Themistocles, who had 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 be to a great extent a land battle fought
out on floating platforms, so that one who had learned the art of war on
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 borne 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 Psytalia. Its ledges and its
summit glittered with arms, and beside it some light craft had taken post
to assist friendly vessels in distress. Past the islet 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, for
these war galleys were manned by real seamen, bold sailors who knew not
only the ways of the land-locked 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 grouped 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 centre of its leading line, the
fleet of the Peloponnesus under the veteran Eurybiades 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 Paean, their battle hymn. The crash of the
encounter between the two navies was now imminent.
For a few moments it seemed that already the Persians were assured of
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 backwater, 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 the
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 soon over. The last of the retiring Greek ships was a galley of
Pallene in Macedonia, commanded by a good soldier, Arminias. 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 trireme against the approaching enemy, and evading 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, Arminias was in deadly peril. The sight of
their comrade's 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 isolated trireme, and from shore to shore the two fleets met with
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. Themistocles in the centre with the picked ships
of Athens was forcing his way, wedge-like, between the Phoenician and
Ionian squadrons into the dense mass of the Persian centre. 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 forecastles and upper decks. Here it was that the Greeks,
trained athletes, chosen men in the prime of life, protected by their
armour 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 the Persian standard, won local
successes here and there in the melee. They captured or sank several of the
Spartan triremes. One of the ships of Samothrace performed an exploit like
that of Paul Jones, when with his own ship sinking under the feet of his
crew he boarded and captured the "Serapis." A Greek trireme 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 the 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 to the island shore.
This fact would seem to indicate that with the exception of those who
manned the Ionian and Phoenician squadrons the crews 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 sight of ships
being sunk and their crews drowned would tend to produce panic among them.
So the Greek wedge forced itself further and further into the mass of
hostile ships, and in the narrow waters numbers could not tell. The Greeks
were never at any given moment engaged with a 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 have only one result.
All order had been lost in the Persian fleet at an early stage of the
fight. The rearward squadrons had pressed into the strait, and finding that
in the crowded waters they were endangering each other without being able
to take any effective part in the battle they began to draw off, and the
foremost 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 Psytalia unprotected by the
Asiatic fleet, and Aristides, the Athenian, who had been watching the fight
from the shore of Salamis, embarked a force of spearmen on some light
vessels, ferried them across to Psytalia 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 AEschylus, who was fighting as a
soldier on one of the Athenian triremes, told afterwards, not in pity, but
rejoicing at the destruction of his country's enemies, how the cries of the
massacred garrison of Psytalia were heard above the din of the battle and
increased the growing panic of the Persians.
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
Halicarnassus, 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. Xerxes, 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 from the pursuing Greeks drove ashore at the
base of Mount AEgaleos. Xerxes, 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 Persian
guardsmen, the victorious Greeks were slaying all the fugitives who fell
into their hands. The Admiral of the Persian fleet, Ariabignes, brother of
Xerxes, 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 Phalerum, the port
of Athens, or took refuge in the small harbour. 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 next morning, and hoped to repeat the
manoeuvre which had been so far successful, of engaging the enemy in the
narrows with each flank protected by the shore, and no room for a superior
force to form in the actual line of fighting contact. But though they did
not yet realize the fact, they had won a decisive victory. Xerxes had been
so impressed by the failure of his great armada to force the narrows of
Salamis that he had 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. Artemisia was directed to convey Prince
Artaxerxes, the heir of the Empire, back to Asia. Xerxes himself would lead
back to the bridge of the Hellespont 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
Hellespont and protecting the convoys for the army. When the winter came it
would have to be laid up; but by that time it was hoped Xerxes and the main
body would be safe in Asia. Mardonius, the most trusted of his satraps, was
to occupy northern Greece with a 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 Phalerum 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
cliffs of Sunium glimmered through the darkness in the moonlight and were
mistaken for the sails of hostile Greek warships menacing the line of
retreat. The Persians stood far out to sea to avoid these imaginary
enemies. When the day broke Themistocles 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 Themistocles urged that it should go further, and if it failed to find
the enemy's fleet, at least show itself in the harbours 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 contingents dispersed to be laid up for the winter in sheltered
harbours 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 Xerxes reached the Hellespont with his army, after having lost heavily
by disease and famine in his weary 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 there 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 of the remainder of the Persian fleet that
had fought at Salamis. Pausanias, with a hundred thousand Greeks, routed
the Persian army at Plataea. A fleet of 110 triremes, under the admirals
Leotychides and Xantippus, sailed across the Archipelago in search of the
Persian fleet. They found it in the waters of Samos, 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 southwards, bound for Tyre and
Sidon.
What was left of the fleet anchored under the headland of Mycale. There was
no sign of a Greek pursuit. Rumour 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 prelude 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 triremes 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
warriors sprang into the water and waded 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 died down and the pall of smoke drifted far over the promontory of
Mycale, a mass of charred timbers was all that was left of the great armada
of Asia, and the victorious Greeks sailed homewards with the news that the
full fruits of Salamis had been garnered.