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PERSIAN WAR SHIPWRECKS
ARCHEOLOGICAL PROJECT
The naval actions of the Persian War rank among the greatest
maritime ventures of the ancient world, both in terms of
the large scale of the operations and historical significance
of the outcome to Greece in particular, and Western Civilization
in general. Under the Achaemenian kings Darius and Xerxes,
the Persians sent armadas of warships into the northern and
western Aegean in the confident expectation of adding mainland
Greece to the ever-growing Persian Empire.
According to Herodotus, the fleet Xerxes assembled in 480 BC comprised 1207 triremes
from Phoenicia, Egypt Cyprus and Asia Minor, including Ionian and other East
Greek ships. Support ships, troop transports and smaller galleys (pentekonters)
accompanied the fleet of triremes. Facing this host of ships was a Greek fleet
more than 300 strong, including contingents from Athens, Aegina, Corinth, and
other Greek islands and cities. The diversity of these fleets is as striking
as their size.
On three occasions, Persian fleets suffered major losses during storms. First,
in about the year 492 BC, a northerly gale destroyed the invasion fleet sent
by Darius while it was trying to round the Mt. Athos peninsula. Herodotus writes:
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From Thasos the fleet stood across to the
mainland, and sailed along shore to Acanthus, whence
an attempt was made to double Mount Athos. But here a
violent north wind sprang up, against which nothing could
intend, and handled a large number of the ships with
much rudeness, shattering them and driving them aground
upon Athos. 'Tis said the number of the ships destroyed
was little short of three hundred; and the men who perished
were more than twenty thousand. For the sea about Athos
abounds in monsters beyond all others; and so a portion
were seized and devoured by these animals, while others
were dashed violently against the rocks; some, who did
not know how to swim, were engulfed; and some died of
the cold.
The Histories, Book VI: 44. (Trans. G. Rawlinson) |
Although all Herodotus' numbers may be exaggerated or otherwise
distorted, the loss of ships was so devastating that Darius'
son, Xerxes, had a canal
dug though
the narrow neck of the Mr. Athos peninsula so that such a disaster would not
happen again.
During the even larger-scale invasion mounted by Xerxes in 480 BC, another late
summer storm destroyed part of a Persian fleet on the Magnesian coast near Cape
Sepias. In making its way south, Xerxes' fleet passed one night on a constricted
beach, with the ships moored eight-deep near the shore. At dawn a northwest gale
began to blow, and over the next three days many warships-Herodotus gives the
number of 400-were caught out at sea or wrecked along the coast. Grain ships
and transports also sank.
At about the same time, a squadron of warships from the main Persian fleet-again,
according to Herodotus, 200 ships-attempted to circumnavigate Euboea in order
to outflank the Greek fleet stationed at Artemision. This squadron was struck
by a storm near a location termed the "Hollows" of Euboea. Herodotus
states that all ships were lost.
Once the Persian fleet had reassembled near Aphetai following the disaster on
the Magnesian coast, they contended with the Greek fleet off Cape Artemision
on three successive days---the same days on which the Spartan king Loenidas with
a small Greek force was attempting to stop the Xerxes' land army at the narrow
pass of Thermopylae. The Greeks held out against the Persian fleet at Artemision
until they received word that the resistance at Thermopylae had failed. During
the three days of fighting at sea, some ships were captured while others were
rammed and towed back to shore. The fighting was prolonged and some pieces of
damaged ships, especially the bronze rams, may have gone to the bottom.
After the Greek fleet carried out a night retreat from Artemision, a final battle
was fought about the time of the autumnal equinox in the narrow channel between
the island of Salamis and the southern coast of Attica. According to Herodotus,
the first contact between the hostile fleets at Salamis came when an Athenian
ship rammed a Phoenician ship and sheared off its prow. The weight of the bronze-sheathed
ram of the Phoenician trireme should have carried this ship section to the seabottom.
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