How hard is rowing? Did it require a lot of special skills and knowledge and not just brute force?

[LegateLivius]

You can't got through a Youtube clip of a boat being rowed by slaves ancient Greece and the Roman empire without someone getting hissy fitty about the historically wrong portrayal of rowers being slaves and then going on a diatribe about how in reality men who rowed boats in voyages, trading and commerce, and military expeditions would have been professional freemen. And that any captain worth his salt would look for professionals because despite what movies show illiterate untrained slaves lack the necessary skills to rowing giant boat in the galley class and larger particularly military battleships monsters.

So I'm asking does rowing actually require a lot of knowledge and specialized skills? Obviously its already a hard thing to do just going by movies but is it more than just brute force? Why not just teach slaves the skills? Since most rowers were paid professional crews I'd assume that means the specific knowledge needed for moving large ship with oars is far more complicated than just lifting, dropping, and pushing the oar backwards?

[caesar novus]

I think I have heard and then forgotten those issues being addressed, possibly in a documentary of a replica Roman rowing ship and their troubles getting 100 or so university students to row it properly.  Might be on youtube or in the back of someones mind; I think issues particularly arise in sprinting and maneuvering for ramming.

However, having owned a couple of rowing sculls and rowing machines I am overflowing with likely irrelevant observations. First of all, rowing can be terrible for the disks in your back. If you pull with rounded back it can squash the gel disks rearwards and bump against your spinal chord with disastrous long term effects. For some reason rowing machines do this to me the most, including the most fancy air resistance version which was made in a factory nearby to me and gave me a good deal on a test version.

Secondo, look at almost any amateur rower and see the dysfunction of them pulling the blade at a 45 degree pitch instead of vertical, and where they dip down and pull out is also whacky. I am not nitpicking and not trained, but this drives me nuts where the natural tendency is to self sabotage everything. Some of these issues could go away if the oar was higher or had a handle extension on it.

Tripleessimo, rowing is crazy in the way you are facing backwards. I never got around to trying some bike mirrors, but you can be moving pretty fast towards disaster half blind. I have looked longingly at those complex contraptions that let you face forward and row, installable even on a SUP board. But I think the best solution is the Venice standing row boats where you throw your weight forward. One or many rowers, even the lifeguards in Italy have these in little catamaran configurations that are stable and roomy for several victims.

[guidoLaMoto]

The biggest problem of many guys rowing a large vessel would be the co-oridinated effort required to synchronize the multiple oars. It's not rocket surgery or brain science-- it wouldn't take many minutes for untrained slaves to become professional rowers.

The seated backwards position is far superior to the gondolier method. Seated, one would use a combination of quads, glutes, lats & traps- the four largest muscles in the body, as opposed to doing a push-up with your arms against the oar as you fall onto it....and you gotta stand back up from the awkward forward position to take that next stroke. ...The standing gondolier method, however, has the advantage when one guy has to row and navigate (not to mention sing) in rush hour traffic on the Grand Canal.

Edited December 19, 2023 by guidoLaMoto

[caesar novus]

5 hours ago, guidoLaMoto said:

The biggest problem of many guys rowing a large vessel would be the co-oridinated effort required to synchronize the multiple oars. It's not rocket surgery or brain science-- it wouldn't take many minutes for untrained slaves to become professional rowers.

The first Punic war was a clash of 700 ships trying to ram one another in maneuvers like:

Rome's success has been attributed to the relative skill of it's mariners. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/rome-vs-carthage.html sez:

Quote

To the Romans’ surprise, the Carthaginians were not the able seamen they had feared. The increased Carthaginian fleet size and the inexperience of the freshly recruited sailors negated their previous maritime experience advantage.

Apparently Rome considered it worthwhile to pay 300 sailors each year about 100x the cost of each ship, with this making it a savings-in-disguise if the ship sinks. Sounds like the practice in olden US where the Irish were preferred for dangerous work, since their death cost nothing vs. a steep loss for a slave. Also it must help to have a motivated crew during crunch time. This is covered along with a lot more in:

Some sources say slaves were used in a crunch, but normally lower class ram-fodder were plentiful. Maybe the rowers had to have sail handling skills as well. Probably sometimes had to assist repelling boarders.

5 hours ago, guidoLaMoto said:

The seated backwards position is far superior to the gondolier method. Seated, one would use a combination of quads, glutes, lats & traps- the four largest muscles in the body, as opposed to doing a push-up with your arms against the oar as you fall onto it....and you gotta stand back up from the awkward forward position to take that next stroke. ...The standing gondolier method, however, has the advantage when one guy has to row and navigate (not to mention sing) in rush hour traffic on the Grand Canal.

With no sliding seat for Romans, the muscle set is substantially reduced. Furthermore with suboptimum placement of seating vs oarlock geometry for at least some of those crowded 300, you are further degraded. I have had 3 sailing dinghys with wonkey oars for backup. They're excruciating to row far, and for the last 2 I get along better rowing on my knees facing forward.

Gondolas are (inefficiently) sculled, not rowed. And maybe Asian style yuloh oars kind of bridge the scull-row continum. Seated backward may still be the most powerful, but get a load of these oar-pushing forward-facing racers (not on thumbnail), like I did on my first trip to Venice:

 

Edited December 19, 2023 by caesar novus

[guidoLaMoto]

I'm not saying the Romans used slaves to row. I'm saying that for large vessels, the seated position is far superior physiologically and geometrically to the standing rowing positon.

For a tri-reme, you'd need a vessel at least twice as high (deep) to have rowers standing....While your gondolier racing film is impressive, note that a gondola is essentially a canoe, barely drawing any depth in the water, skimming over the surface. A war vessel is bulky, riding very low in the water....We could also bring up the wider range of motion allowing more error in the path traced by an oar used by a standing rower compared to the relatively narrow trajectory possible when seated-- loss of efficiency....

There's a reason naval vessels were moved using seated oarsemen rather than standiing----> efficiency-- as in all things undergoing an evolution. Survival of the fittest.That's why "real" racing involves sculls with seated rowers.

[caesar novus]

I only proposed stand-rowing in an aside, for modern pleasure rowing. For competition, the magic element is a sliding seat. Nowdays you can combine facing forward with sliding seat and pulling the oar handles. Rowing is fine for a sprint, but I can't imagine doing it all day like ancient mariners (if no favorable winds for sailing). So hard on backbones over time.