, unless all swung accurately together. The
flat-bottomed galleys rolled badly in a heavy sea, and in rough weather
rowing was fatiguing and even perilous work.

Some two hundred men in a small ship meant crowded quarters, and lack of
room everywhere except on the fighting deck. But as the fleets hugged the
shore, and generally lay up for the night, the crews could mostly land to
cook, eat, and sleep. In the Persian ships belonging to many nations, and
some of them to the Greek cities of Asia, Xerxes took the precaution of
having at least thirty picked Persian warriors in each crew. Their presence
was intended to secure the fidelity of the rest.

In the Greek fleet the rowers were partly slaves, partly freemen impressed
or hired for the work. Then there were a few seamen, fishermen, or men who
in the days of peace manned the local coasting craft. The chiefs of this
navigating party were the _keleustes_, who presided over the rowers and
gave the signal for each stroke, and the pilot, who was supposed to have a
knowledge of the local waters and of wind and weather, and who acted as
steersman, handling alone, or with the help of his assistants, the long
stern oar that served as a rudder. The fighting men were not sailors, but
soldiers embarked to fight afloat, and their military chief commanded the
ship, with the help of the pilot. For more than two thousand years this
division between the sailor and the fighting element in navies continued
throughout the world. The fighting commander and the sailing-master were
two different men, and the captain of a man-of-war was often a landsman.

In the Greek fleet which lay sheltered in the narrows, behind the long
island of Euboea while the Persians were battling with the tempest off Cape
Sepias, the Admiral was the Spartan Eurybiades, a veteran General, who knew
more about forming a phalanx of spearmen than directing the movements of a
fleet. The military reputation of his race had secured for him the chief
command, though of the whole fleet of between three and four hundred
triremes, less than a third had been provided by Sparta and her allies, and
half of the armada was formed of the well-equipped Athenian fleet,
commanded by Themistocles in person. As the storm abated the fleets faced
each other in the strait north of Euboea. In the Persian armada the best
ships were five long galleys commanded by an Amazon queen, Artemisia of
Halicarnassus, a Greek fighting against Greeks. She