Damaging a trireme by ramming: The kinetics

The ram, made of a bronze casing over a wooden structure, projected from below the waterline at the bow of the trireme. Its main purpose was to cause structural damage to the hull of the attacked ship and ensure large-scale water penetration. A ‘first principles process’ infrastructure, based on engineering principles and the energy balance concept of physics, was developed to estimate the minimum velocity required to damage an attacked ship by a ram. Deriving the velocity estimate was based on analyzing the construction details of the attacked ship and assessing its capacity to withstand the impact of a designated ’ram–head’ length. The model led to a ’velocity range’ spanning from 1.3 to 3 knots. This interval results from considering a spectrum of possible values for the parameters involved in the equation, extracted from shipwreck archaeological data. This velocity range is well within the capabilities of a trireme, as estimated by researchers and proven experimentally by the crew of the Olympias.