by Bruce BethkeAs a species, we humans are clever, devious, greedy, and treacherous monkeys. In unfamiliar situations we seem to be capable of working through the four-variable equation—speed, power, defense, cost—almost by instinct. If we see that we can steal something and get away quickly before anyone else notices, we steal. If we think we can overpower one of our fellow humans and take something without fear of serious and immediate repercussions, we take. If we find ourselves in that rarest of situations, in a meeting on equal terms, we negotiate and trade, even as we watch for a hidden advantage. History presents very few examples of violent conflicts between peoples who perceive themselves to be equally powerful and on equally secure footing.
Those who extol the innate nobility of primitive man or the innocent generosity of children really should spend more time around both before they open their mouths and theorize so much. Civilization and morality are very thin veneers, readily stripped away and discarded as soon as no one's watching, unless they are backed up by very serious power. If confronted by greater power, we monkeys can be counted upon to fawn obsequiously and retreat quickly, even as we plan to come back later with more friends and bigger sticks.
More friends. Meaning more arms, to carry more sticks and throw more rocks. For most of history, the nature of conflict has been shaped simply by the available arm and leg muscles. Land and sea warfare diverge because on land, everything must move on feet, either those of humans or of draft animals, while on water there are no draft animals, and human legs have enough trouble keeping themselves afloat and alive. Thus everything must be made to float on a construction of some sort, and the four-variable equation comes down to a simple choice: sails or paddles?
Wind power is cheap: it requires relatively few men to handle the ship, is decently fast if the weather cooperates, and is a relatively safe way to transport yourself and your possessions, compared to the hazards of traveling on foot through lands filled with your loving species-mates. Arm power is reliably faster and more powerful, but expensive: you must feed and provide for a large crew, and Ben-Hur to the contrary, most naval powers preferred to crew their galleys with free men, as free men could be counted on to fight for their ship and their fellows. Besides, if you fill your boat with men who row or paddle for hours on end and feed them adequately, by the time you arrive where you're going, your crew will have great upper-body strength.
Hence the solution, in any society sufficiently sophisticated to have a division of labor, is to create two fleets: a slow fleet under sail, to carry on trade, and a swift fleet under arms, to protect that trade. Especially in the Mediterranean, you must protect your seaborne trade and coastal towns from those hated and feared people on the other side of the sea, who the ancient Greeks, no strangers to piracy themselves, named "barbarians," because they had trouble pronouncing "Berbers." And this old Greek name lives on, down through the ages, to the Barbary Coast and the Barbary Corsairs, who were the scourge of the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic until Thomas Jefferson sent the United States Marines sailing to the shores of Tripoli.
But we're getting ahead of the story. For the moment, let's focus on the balance as it teetered for millennia: sails vs arms. Pull a Roman trireme commander, a Viking king, or a Maori war-canoe chieftain out of their respective times and places and exchange them and they would instantly understand each others' boats. Call it a galley or a longboat, if you like, but the war canoe remained the dominant manifestation of naval power for more than twenty centuries.
And then came the gun...
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