out the
gale, but anchors dragged and hundreds of ships were piled in shattered
masses on the shore. Some were stranded in positions where they could be
repaired and refloated as the weather cleared up; but by the evening of the
third day, when at last the wind fell, only eight hundred galleys of the
Persian armada were still in seaworthy fighting condition.

Here, as on other occasions, the very numbers of the Persian fleet proved a
source of danger to it. The harbours that could give shelter to this
multitude of ships were very few and far between, nor was it an easy matter
to find that other refuge of the ancient navigator--a beach of easy slope
and sufficiently wide extent to enable the ships to be dragged out of the
water and placed high and dry beyond the reach of the angriest waves. The
fact that ships were beached and hauled up the shore during bad weather,
and in winter, limited their size, and in both the Persian and the Greek
fleets there probably was not a ship much bigger than the barges we see on
our canals, or as big as some of the largest sea-going barges.

The typical warship of the period of the Persian War was probably not more
than eighty or a hundred feet long, narrow, and nearly flat-bottomed. At
the bow and stern there was a strongly built deck. Between this poop and
forecastle a lighter deck ran fore and aft, and under this were the
stations of the rowers. The bow was strengthened with plates of iron or
brass, and beams of oak, to enable it to be used as a ram, and the stem
rose above the deck level and was carved into the head of some bird or
beast. There was a light mast which could be rigged up when the wind
served, and carried a cross-yard and a square sail. Mast and yard were
taken down before going into action.

The Greeks called their war galleys _trieres_, the Romans _triremes_, and
these names are generally explained as meaning that the ships were
propelled by three banks or rows of oars placed one above the other on
either side. The widely accepted theory of how they were worked is that the
seats of the rowers were placed, not directly above each other, but that
those who worked the lowest and shortest oars were close to the side of the
ship, the men for the middle range of oars a little above them and further
inboard, and the upper tier of rowers still higher and near the centre-line
of the ship. An endless amount of erudition and research has been expended
on this question; but most