Warships were used to fight wars over ocean. As I said earlier, boats were powered by oars. Back then, approximately one thousand eight hundred prisoners and slaves had to power the ships. Three people powered each oar. At first, warships started as long, narrow, one leveled ships so that they could transport troops to the site of battle called the pentekontor. The pentekontor only had one tier (one side of a boat which oarsmen would steer the ship). Later, they wanted to transport more soldiers and faster, so they added more oarsmen. Additional to that change, the Greeks put in bronze rams to the ships' bows to ram enemy warships. The best fighting ship was the trireme. The trireme was used about the five hundred B.C. and was better than the pentekontor. It had three times as many levels of oarsmen as the pentekontor. Trireme was an English version of trieres, which meant, "three fitted." If there was good weather, the trireme was able to go a maximum of fourteen knots. By then, warships were not to transport troops anymore, they were used in naval battles. So, the trireme would only hold about fourteen soildiers. Since this was still in the 500 B.C. time period, gunpowder was not invented yet; they had to maneuver ships to attack with rams. One technique was called the "Diekplous," meaning break through and ram. It meant that the Greeks would point their bow into the enemy ship. When they ram into the enemy's boat hull, their boat would sink because the boat would be flooded with water. Since the trireme was light weighted, it was blown off course many times when high winds arose. The Greeks ended up making a boat with four tiers that had two men to an oar called quinqueremes. These improved boats were a lot heavier and it was shielded with lead below the ship so that it was unable to be rammed.
At the battle of Salamis with Persia, the Greeks won. It was all because of the tactics using all the rams on their ships. The Perians had lots more ships, but the Greeks let them surround them. Because the Persians did not know the Greeks had rams on their ships, the Greeks just went at high speeds and rammed many of the Persians' warships. A few days later, they met again at Salamis. The Greeks were able to convince the Persians the Greek fleet would escape at night. The Persians did not want that; so they were up all night watching while the Greek's oarsmen slept. Because the Persians did not have enough sleep since they were not focused on the attack and all the Persians would be part sleepy. This was all part to the Greek's plan. Then at dawn, the Greeks quickly attacked the Persians. Sucessfully, the Greek's plan worked and they won the battle!
