Battles at sea

The Persians were the neighbours of Greece and invaded Greece in 490 BC. The city states banded together to form an army to defeat the Persians, and the Persian wars lasted until 449 BC. The invasion of the Persians encouraged the Athenians to build boats for a navy. The first warships were slow and clumsy, but the later ships in the Athenian navy, the triremes, were much faster, and had long thin prows to ram the enemy ships.

The triremes were about 40 metres long and up to 6 metres wide. The prow of the ship was painted with a huge eye, and this was meant to frighten the enemy. The boats had sails, but were also powered by oarsmen. There would be about 170 oarsmen on each trireme, who could row fast enough to move the boat at 10 miles an hour. The steering was done by a man at the back of the boat, with two long paddles.

Three rows of oarsmen sat in the bottom of the boat, and on top of them was a wooden deck. The soldiers and archers would move around on the deck to find the best place to attack the enemy's ships. Sometimes the soldiers would jump on to the enemy's ships, sometimes the archers would fire arrows at them and sometimes burning torches would be thrown from the deck of the trireme into the enemy boat.

The Greeks were very successful in sea battles against the Persians. One of the most famous battles was the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC, where the Greek sailors trapped the Persians in a narrow channel.