"Binxu" oars and three-oared warships

There is an important set of scenes in the movie "The Legend of Bin Hu" about the early oaring of Bin Hu on a sea boat. On the bottom floor of the cabin, Bin Hui rowed hard with a group of slaves selling coolies, and the sweat and indomitable face made a deep impression.

This set of shots actually reflects the process of increasing the oarsmen's oars when the three-oared warship attacks, and it can be seen that the ancient three-oared warships are huge and require many oarsmen to control.

The earliest three-oared warships were invented in ancient Greece. Due to the sheer size of the hull, many paddlers are required to provide power. The three-oared warship was also a powerful weapon for ancient navies to seize sea supremacy, like battleships and aircraft carriers since modern times. The great battles fought in ancient times by three-oared warships were the famous and decisive battles of the Salami Sea and the Battle of Aktim.

When a three-oared warship is engaged, the mast of the ship is generally lowered, which increases maneuverability, and sometimes does not carry the sail at all. In addition, when the ship is in combat, the speed of travel is changeable, usually according to the progress of the war, the captain issues instructions to change, but generally from slow to fast are "combat speed", "attack speed" and "impact speed".

In ancient Roman times, a three-oared warship with a crow hanging appeared. It is to install a suspension bridge with a length of 12 meters and a width of 1.2 meters on the bow of the ship. When the enemy ship approaches, the shipwright will suddenly lower the suspension bridge, at which time the iron nails under the bridge will be firmly nailed to the deck of the enemy ship, forming a "bridge". In this way, a "land battle" can be fought on the enemy ship.

Because the shape of the suspension bridge resembles a crow, it is called a "crow suspension bridge", and the battleship equipped with this suspension bridge is called a "crow battleship". It was this peculiar invention that allowed the Romans to turn naval warfare into land warfare, and to turn the Romans, who were not good at naval warfare, into an advantage, and the Romans won several major naval victories by relying on the "crow hanging".

Source: Shenzhen Evening News