📑 Table of Contents▼
Coinage of Tennes, king of Sidon, dated 351/0 BC. Phoenician pentekonter sailing left. Date above (here faint), waves below. King of Persia standing right, holding up lion by lock of mane; Aramaic T’ between.

The penteconter (alt. spelling pentekonter, pentaconter, pentecontor or pentekontor; Greek: πεντηκόντερος, pentēkónteros, "fifty-oared"[1]), plural penteconters, was an ancient Greek galley in use since the archaic period.

In an alternative meaning, the term was also used for a military commander of fifty men in ancient Greece.[2]

History

edit

In contrast to the ships of the Homeric poems, used to transport warriors to the battlefield, penteconters were designed to fight at sea. They had a heavy metal ram at the bow to pierce the hull of the enemy. Speed and maneuverability were key to their design. Naval historians reconstruct their design partly from written sources, from inscriptions, and from the visual arts.[3] In present understanding, the fifty of the pentaconter's name refers to the number of oars used to propel the ship: one bank of twenty-five oars to a side, fifty in total. A midship mast with sail could also propel the ship under favorable wind. Penteconters were longer than merchant ships, hence described as long vessels (νῆες μακραί, nḗes makraí ). They had a deck for carrying armored warriors (hoplite).

According to some contemporary calculations, penteconters are believed to have been between 28 and 33 m (92 and 108 ft) long, approximately 4 m wide, and capable of reaching a top speed of 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph). However, a modern reconstruction of a trireme, crewed by modern untrained amateurs, attained that top speed fairly easily on initial sea trials, which implies that the top speed of the pentaconter, with fewer oars and likely not as fast, would also have exceeded initial estimates.

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ Entry πεντηκόντορος at LSJ
  2. ^ penteconter, in Collins English Dictionary
  3. ^ J. S. Morrison and J. F. Coates, Greek and Roman Oared Warships, 399-30 B.C. (Oxbow Monographs 62), Oxford 1996, pp. 178-185 is authoritative. Online at eBook Comprehensive Academic Collection - North America.
edit
Wikimedia Commons logo
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Penteconter.
  • Wiktionary logo The dictionary definition of penteconter at Wiktionary
Stub icon

This naval article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.

📚 Artikel Terkait di Wikipedia

List of ship types

or colonial service Penteconter An ancient warship propelled by 50 oars, 25 on each side Pinisi (or Phinisi) A fast, two-masted ship traditionally used

Ship of the line

A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line

Ship

A ship is a large watercraft designed for travel across the surface of a body of water, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized tasks

Seventy-four (ship)

The "seventy-four" was a type of two-decked sailing ship of the line, which nominally carried 74 guns. It was developed by the French navy in the 1740s

Ships of ancient Rome

second century CE Roman penteconter – the name of the Greek penteconter was not romanized for the Roman version of this ship. Major tactics of naval vessels

Carrack

Spanish: nao; Catalan: carraca) is a three- or four-masted ocean-going sailing ship that was developed in the 14th to 15th centuries in Europe, most notably

Corvette

navies to "lieutenant commander", derives from the name of this type of ship. The rank is the most junior of three "captain" ranks in several European

Galleon

Galleons were large, multi-decked sailing ships developed in the early 16th century from ships such as the caravel and the carrack, in Portugal and in