The First Age of Sail?

The Bronze Age (c2000-700 BC in Britain) is, perhaps, the most underestimated period in our history. Not only was metal-working introduced, thereby ending the Stone Age, but the period also saw the appearance of the domestic horse, and of the wheel. It may also have been the first age of sail, although specific evidence for this is tantalisingly elusive. Certainly there was a great explosion of trade. Objects made by the same hands, and with the same tools, are found in Ireland, Wiltshire and Brittany.

Bronze Age boats have been found at North Ferriby in Yorkshire, and in Dover Harbour, their planks literally sewn together with willow withies. These boats, however, had neither masts nor oar-locks. They must have been paddled. When the Ferriby boats were first discovered, it was assumed that they were used for river transport, but the discovery at Dover provoked a reassessment. Why would it be there if it were not a sea-going vessel?

One of the Ferriby boats at the time of its discovery in 1963. Photo: W. Wright.

The National Maritime Museum in Cornwall recently built a replica of one of the Ferriby boats and launched it at Falmouth. If it were not for the shipping lanes, I would probably be willing to take my chances crossing the Channel in one of these, as my characters do in Undreamed Shores, but to take one from Cornwall to Brittany or Ireland would be another matter entirely.

The replica Bronze Age boat launched at Falmouth.

The boats or ships depicted in rock art in Sweden, similarly, seem in most cases to lack masts, although one from Tanum might just show a ship under sail.

Depiction of a small boat and larger ship from Tanum, Sweden. Photo: Ch. Purkner (licensed under GNU).

Rock engravings from Haljesta, Sweden. Photo: Olof Ekstrom (licensed under GNU).

The little gold model of a boat found at Broighter in Ireland has both a mast and oar-locks, but this dates to a late stage in the Iron Age (c50 BC).

The Broighter gold boat. Photo: Ardfern (licensed under CCA).

Parts of the Broighter Boat. 1. Mast. 2. Yard. 3. Steering oar. 4. Grappling iron. 5. Forked implement. 6-7. Oars. (Image is in the public domain).

The demand for bronze would, in itself, have been a spur for the development of maritime trade. The components of bronze are copper and tin. There are relatively few sources of tin in western Europe, and one of the most significant is in Cornwall. At some point between 2000 BC and 50 BC, someone must have set sail from Cornwall for the first time, in a boat that looked more like the one from Broighter than the one from Ferriby.

St Michael's Mount, a possible loading point for Cornish tin bound for the continent.

The circumstantial evidence suggests that this happened at quite an early stage in this time-scale. Perhaps, like the vessel in which Tim Severin crossed the Atlantic, it was made of ox-hides stretched over a light wooden frame, in which case the chances of its being preserved archaeologically are minimal. I strongly suspect that, by 1500 BC, such vessels would have been a common sight around British and European shores, and they would have changed forever the relationship between Britain and its continental neighbours.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores and An Accidental King, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.com. For this week only, the e-book versions are available for just 77 pence.

You might like to take a look at the blogs of my fellow authors, all of whom are posting something with a nautical historical theme:

J.M. Aucoin
Helen Hollick
Doug Boren
Linda Collison
Margaret Muir
Julian Stockwin
Anna Belfrage
Andy Millen
V.E. Ulett
T.S. Rhodes
Mark Patton
Katherine Bone
Alaric Bond
Ginger Myrick
Judith Starkston
Seymour Hamilton
Rick Spilman
James L. Nelson
S.J. Turney
Prue Batten
Antoine Vanner
Joan Druett
Edward James
Nighthawk News

Ville-es-Nouaux, the site of the final battle in Undreamed Shores. The monument in the foreground is Zilar's burial place, and that behind it is the "accursed shrine" built by his people ,and buried on Meruskine's orders.

Cassius Dio and Roman Britain

If Tacitus wrote history in the tradition of Thucydides, then Cassius Dio (c155-235 AD) wrote in the tradition of Herodotus. His 80 volumes of Roman history, not all of which survive, cover 1400 years, from the foundation of Rome in 735 BC down to 229 AD. He wrote in Greek rather than Latin, and is thought to have imitated the writing style of Thucydides, but the scope of his work is much more akin to that of Herodotus.

He spent much of his adult life in Rome (he was an aristocrat, who also served as Governor of Smyrna and Proconsul in Africa), so he would have had access to archival sources which do not survive today, but he cheerfully mixes myth and history when he discusses Rome's early years, and never allows a lack of evidence to spoil the telling of a great tale. Sometimes, when I read his work, it is very tempting to see him as the father of my own craft - historical fiction, rather than "history" in the sense that we understand it today.

He provides much the most detailed accounts we have both of the Claudian invasion of 43 AD, and of the Boudiccan Revolt of 60/61 AD. It is important to remember, however, that he was writing more than a century after the events which he describes. Unlike Tacitus, he is very unlikely to have spoken to anyone who was actually there.

Like Tacitus and Thucydides before him, he does not demur to put words in the mouths of his characters. Here is part of his rendition of the speech that he claims Boudicca gave on the eve of her revolt (it can be read in full at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio).

"I thank thee, Andraste [an ancient British goddess], and call upon thee as woman speaking to woman...that those over whom I rule are Britons...thoroughly versed in the arts of war, who hold all things in common, even women and children, so that they possess the same valour as the men. As the queen, then, of such men, and of such women, I supplicate and pray thee for victory against men insolent, unjust, insatiable...Let the wench sing and lord it over the Romans, for they surely deserve to be the slaves of such a woman."
Translation by Earnest Carey.

"Boadicea haranguing the Britons." Photo: Oksmith, from an 1860 edition of David Hume's The History of England in Three Volumes.

It is, of course, it must be, pure fiction, but, as a novelist, I hope I can be forgiven for wishing I had written it. I may not be the first, either. It has long seemed likely to me (though one could never prove it) that this speech inspired Elizabeth I when she came to write her own speech given at Tilbury on the eve of the confrontation with the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth was fluent in Latin and Greek, and well-versed in the works of the classical authors. To what other source would she turn, as a woman leading her British forces into battle, not just against Spain, but against the "insolence," as she would have seen it, of the Roman (Catholic) world?

Elizabeth I, the "Armada Portrait." Anne-Marie Duff performs the Tilbury speech at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbjj9Nmn6ZU.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores and An Accidental King, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.com. His course on "The Classical World and its Inheritance" is now open for enrolments at the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution (www.hlsi.net/courses.aspx).

Suetonius and Roman Britain

Gaius Suetonius Tranquilus (69-122 AD) was a younger contemporary of Tacitus. Under the Emperor Hadrian, he was also Director of the Imperial Archive, which would have given him access to the letters written and received by emperors and their officials. Hadrian fired him in 119 AD, because his relationship with the Empress Vibia Sabina was thought to be rather too close, although it is unclear how far their "affair" actually went.

It was, perhaps, in order to avoid competing with or duplicating the work of Tacitus that Suetonius chose biography as his principal literary genre, and the work for which he is best known is De Vita Caesarum, the lives of the twelve Caesars (from Julius Caesar to Domitian). This work can be read in Latin and English at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars (and I ought to have mentioned last week that the works of Tacitus can be read at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus). He delights in telling us about the sexual proclivities of the world's most powerful men (it is through him that we know of Tiberius's paedophilia and Caligula's penchant for incest), but is scrupulously fair in weighing their achievements against their weaknesses. What, then, does he have to tell us about Britain?

Often it is in throw-away lines and minor asides that his insights shine through to us. Of Caligula's plan to invade Britain, he tells us "All that he accomplished was that he received the surrender of Adminius, son of Cynobelinus, King of the Britons, who had been banished by his father..."

                         Coin of Cunobelinus (photo: Saforrest, licensed under GNU).

Of Claudius's successful invasion, he writes that "...on the voyage...from Ostia, he was nearly cast away twice in furious north-westers...Therefore he made the journey from Marseille all the way to Boulogne by land, crossed from there and, without any battle or bloodshed, received the submission of a part of the island, returned to Rome six months after leaving the city, and celebrated a Triumph of great splendour." This has more of a ring of truth about it than Cassius Dio's suggestion that the experienced general, Aulus Plautius, had to appeal to the emperor for "assistance" before moving on Colchester.

The Emperor Claudius (photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen, licensed under CCA).

Of the future Emperor Vespasian's role in that invasion, he tells us that "In the reign of Claudius, he was sent in command of a legion to Germany, through the influence of Narcissus; from there he was transferred to Britain, where he fought thirty battles with the enemy. He reduced to subjection more than twenty towns, as well as the Isle of Wight." This fits closely with what we know from other sources (we might question the definition of a "town"), but the reliance of a Roman senator on the patronage of a freedman is very telling, the more so because Suetonius mentions it only in passing.

His portraits of the individuals who held power have an intimacy about them that makes for compelling reading. One has continually to remind oneself that (since his biographies cover a period of almost 200 years), he did not know most of them personally. As a biographer, this does not entirely surprise me. Having read Sir John Lubbock's letters and diaries, and trawled through his business accounts, the realisation dawned on me, at a certain point that, in some respects, I knew him better than I knew my own father. As a novelist, however, it was to Suetonius that I turned most frequently in my characterisation of Claudius, Vespasian and Titus, all of whom have speaking parts in An Accidental King.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon.

Tacitus on Roman Britain

Much of what we know about Roman Britain, and especially about the 1st Century AD, is based on archaeological evidence. There are, however, at least some references to the British Isles in historical sources. Care needs to be taken in the way in which we read these references, since no classical "historian" was a historian in the way that we understand the word today, and some of the ancient sources are not really "primary" sources in any case. We draw clear boundaries between "academic history," "popular history," "journalism" and "historical fiction," but classical writers did not, and regularly hopped back and forth across them.

It is in the works of Tacitus (56-c125 AD) that we come closest to a real primary source for Britain in the 1st Century AD, although he never came to Britain, and believed it to be much closer to Spain than it actually is, with Ireland lying between. He was a historian in the tradition of Thucydides, which is to say that he comes closer to the "journalistic" than to the "historical fiction" end of the spectrum, writing mainly about events that happened during his lifetime, or during the previous generation (his Annals cover the period 14-68 AD, one of the few Roman sources to mention the execution of Christ; his Histories cover the period 68-96 AD) and informing himself, in all likelihood, through interviews with those directly involved. Elevated by Vespasian to senatorial rank, he almost certainly had access to the Acta Senatus, the Roman equivalent of Hansard, no part of which survives today.

The work most relevant to Roman Britain, however, is his biography of his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who served as Governor of Britannia from 78 to 84 AD. He describes, in some detail, Agricola's military campaigns in northern Britain (he was the first Roman governor seriously to attempt a conquest of Scotland), as well as his building programmes in the major cities of the province:

"He...gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses...and so the population was gradually led into the demoralising temptations of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as 'civilisation,' when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement."

The note of cynicism (there are other examples) is typical not only of Tacitus, but of Roman attitudes to conquered peoples more generally (one of the earliest depictions of Britannia shows her not ruling the waves, but being violently assaulted by the Emperor Claudius). The substance of what Tacitus says, however, is borne out by the archaeology. An inscription in the Verulamium Museum makes it clear that it was under Agricola that the forum of St Alban's was rebuilt, a full twenty years after it was burned by Boudicca. He may, similarly, have been the first successfully to rebuild London, although his predecessors clearly attempted it.

Relief of Claudius subduing Britannia, from Aphrodisias (modern Turkey). Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Like most classical historians, however, Tacitus probably crosses into fiction when reporting speeches (even Pericles's famous funeral speech, as rendered by Thucydides, is probably not a verbatim transcript, though it is an eye-witness account). He puts the following words in the mouth of the Scottish chieftain, Calgacus, on the eve of his defeat by Agricola at the Battle of Mons Graupius:

"We, the most distant dwellers upon Earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by our very remoteness...Now the farthest bounds of Britain lay open to our enemies...Pillagers of the World, they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate plunder, and now they ransack the sea...To robbery, butchery and rapine they give the lying name of 'government,' they create desolation and call it peace."

It is very unlikely that any Roman heard the speech that Calgacus really gave, and less likely still that any such spy was taking notes. Rather it must be seen as an early example of a literary tradition of fictionalised speeches that reaches its high point in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Henry V.

Agricola's Scottish campaign, as reconstructed from Tacitus's account. There is some archaeological evidence to support this, although the scale of Agricola's "victories" may have been exaggerated.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores and An Accidental King, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.com.

Vespasian and Britain

One of the things that stands out from the recent "Wonder of Rome" blog-hop is the consensus that exists among those of my fellow authors who commented directly on Rome's emperors, that Vespasian was one of the best. One can, perhaps, overstate this (he was, after all, a military dictator who, among other things, brutally suppressed a Jewish insurgency) but, when judged against other Roman emperors, he was certainly one of the most successful, and his ten year reign bought peace and prosperity to the empire.

                                Credit: Shakko (CCA).

He is also one of very few Roman emperors to have spent a significant period of time in Britain. He commanded the II Augusta, one of the four legions involved in the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, and probably remained on British soil for four years. The only detailed account of the invasion is by Cassius Dio, writing 150 years after the event. He has both Vespasian and his brother, Sabinus, playing key roles in the battles fought at the crossing points of the Medway and Thames.

What is more certain, because the movements of the II Augusta have left their traces in the archaeological record, is that Vespasian spent most of his four years in Hampshire, Dorset and Devon. The Durotriges of Dorset, in particular, put up fierce resistance, and here Vespasian would have been in his element, since he was campaigning in a landscape dominated by hill-forts, just as Julius Caesar had done in Gaul. All educated Roman men had read Caesar's account, and Vespasian may well have carried a copy with him.

Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who excavated the hill-fort of Maiden Castle in the 1930s, found a cemetery there with the remains of fourteen people, some of whom had clearly died in action against Vespasian's troops. He painted a vivid picture of the fall of the hill-fort itself, but there is little real evidence for this, and it is just as likely that these warriors fell elsewhere, and were simply brought back to Maiden Castle for burial. More convincing evidence for a Roman attack comes from the hill-fort of Hod Hill, where eleven Roman ballista bolts have been found. In both cases, Vespasian seems to have required the inhabitants to leave their fortified enclosures and re-settle elsewhere, leaving small garrisons to guard against any possibility of their return.

          Maiden Castle, Dorset. Credit: Ashmolean Museum (public domain).

         A reconstructed Roman ballista. Credit: Matthias Kabel (GNU).

Vespasian, however, seems to have understood the importance of winning the peace as well as the war. It seems likely that it was he who cultivated and befriended the British king, Cogidubnus, and persuaded the Emperor Claudius to grant him the title, "Great King of the Britons." Whether this gave him any real power over other client rulers, such as Prasutagus of the Iceni, or Cartimandua of the Brigantes, is unclear, but he must certainly have been Rome's man.

Thirty years later, Vespasian was to cultivate a very similar friendship with the Jewish leader, Flavius Josephus, and he, unlike Cogidubnus, has left us a detailed account:

"...the inhabitants of Sepphoris of Galilee met him, who were for peace with the Romans. These citizens had beforehand taken care of their own safety and, being sensible of the power of the Romans, they had been with Cestius Gallus before Vespasian came, and had given their faith to him, and received the security of his right hand, and had received a Roman garrison; and at this time, withal, they received Vespasian, the Roman general, very kindly and readily, and readily promised that they would assist him..."

Josephus himself had been leading an army against the Romans, but was captured and brought before Vespasian.

"...he did not set Josephus at liberty from his hands, but bestowed on him suits of clothes and other precious gifts; he treated him, also, in a very obliging manner, and continued to do so..."

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores and An Accidental King, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.com.

Sea-Craft and Shipping in the Roman World (The Wonder of Rome Blog-Hop)

With the expansion of the Roman Empire in the 1st Centuries (BC & AD), the peoples of northern and western Europe found themselves, for the first time in their history, within the compass of a trade network that was truly international, rather than simply regional. Silks from China and spices from India would have been traded in the market-places of York and Exeter. Lead from north Wales was used to make the pipes that fed the bath-houses of Cyprus and Egypt. Wine and olives from Italy and Spain were consumed in the dining rooms of villas at Chedworth and Lullingstone.

Most of the trade between north-western Europe and the Mediterranean world was by sea, and we know something of the craft that plied this trade, and of the men who sailed them, both from archaeology and from historical sources. Commerce was not a "respectable" occupation for wealthy Roman citizens, so ship-owners and captains were, for the most part, either freed slaves or foreigners, including Greeks, Cypriots and Phoenicians.

Most of the ships that are known from the archaeological record were small coastal freighters, 20-25 metres in length, with a single mast. They typically had two steering oars connected by long tillers.

Lucian tells us that one such ship "...depended for its safety on one little man, already a greybeard, who turned those great steering oars with just a skinny tiller." 

The Kyrenia ship, found off the coast of Cyprus, is pre-Roman (3rd Century BC), but is very similar to the Roman ships found in the ancient harbours of Pisa and Fiumicino. From the personal effects found in her cabin, it is believed that she had a crew of four men. Many of these ships had no galley or firebox, so the crew probably came ashore each night to cook their meal. 

            Kyrenia II, a working replica of a trading ship of the 3rd Century BC.

                            Fiumicino IV, part of the hull of a Roman freighter.

Such ships undoubtedly sailed between London or Chichester and ports along the coastlines of modern France, Germany and Belgium. The cargo ships that braved the Bay of Biscay, however, were probably much larger. We get a glimpse of such vessels in the wreck from Le Grand Conglue, near Marseille, which was around 40 metres in length, and dates to the early 1st Century AD. These ships carried passengers as well as cargo, but on a casual basis, negotiable with the captain.

The Grand Conglue wreck, with amphorae used for the transportation of wine or olive oil.

Passenger travel, however, was not for the faint-hearted. Travellers brought their own food, wine and bedding on board, and their own slaves to cook their meals in the ship's galley. They slept in improvised shelters on the deck. Synesius, writing in the 5th Century AD, describes one such voyage, on a ship with a crew of twelve.

The crew were "...ordinary farm-boys who, up to last year, had never touched an oar..." and "...the one thing they all shared in common was having some bodily defect...they made jokes about this, and called each other by their misfortunes instead of their real names - 'Cripple,' 'Ruptured,' 'One-Arm,' 'Squint.'"

There were more than fifty passengers sailing with Synesius, around a third of them women. The captain must have taken pity on these women, since they were allowed to sleep below deck, with a "good strong curtain" to protect their modesty. They must have feared, however, for more than just their reputation and their virtue. Synesius describes the almost inevitable storm in graphic detail:

"The men groaned, the women shrieked, everybody called upon God, cried aloud, remembered their dear ones. Only [the captain] was in good spirits. Then someone cried out that all who had gold should hang it around their necks...to provide...money to pay for a funeral...The ship was running along under full canvas because we couldn't shorten the sail. Time and again we laid hands upon the lines, but gave up because they were jammed in the blocks."

Travel by sea, however, was significantly faster (and therefore cheaper) than travelling overland. The fastest voyage on record was from the Straits of Messina to Alexandria in six days, an average travelling speed of six knots, allowing the ship to cover 100-135 miles per day. This, however, was evidently with the most favourable of all possible winds.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos are published by Crooked Cat Publishing, and can be purchased from Amazon.

To learn more about "The Wonder of Rome," take a look at the blogs of the other writers contributing to this blog-hop:


David Pilling

Elisabeth Storrs

Gordon Doherty

Scott Hunter

Mark Patton

Ruth Downie

M. C. Scott

Fred Nath

Brian Young – The Eagle has Fallen

Helen Hollick

Heather Domin

David Blixt

Alison Morton

Petrea Burchard

Tim Hodkinson

S. J. A. Turney

Chichester Harbour and the Roman Invasion of Britain

What do we know for certain about the Roman invasion of Britain? That it happened in 43 AD; that it involved four legions under the command of General Aulus Plautius; that the Emperor Claudius himself arrived at a late stage, accompanied by a number of elephants; and that he took the surrender of a number of British tribes at Colchester. That's about it.

Where did the legions land? Richborough in Kent is the answer most often given, and supported by the evidence of a substantial fort and supply base, ditches that may have protected a beachhead and the presence of a substantial triumphal arch. The most detailed account is that given by Cassius Dio (written 150 years after the event), and it is certainly consistent with a march west and north, subduing the Cantiaci, the Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni, with key battles at the crossing points of the Medway and Thames. That, almost certainly, is part of the story, but is it the whole story?

The beachhead protected by the fortifications at Richborough is about 700 metres in length. Was that really sufficient for the disembarkation of the estimated 45,000 men and 15,000 horses and mules that made up the invasion force? Cassius Dio tells us that the invasion was prompted by the flight to Rome of Verica, the king of the Atrebates/Regnenses (probably a single people by that point in time), under pressure from Caratacos of the Catuvellauni. This has led some to suggest Chichester Harbour as the landing point for at least part of the invasion force.

The important point about Chichester Harbour is that it was on friendly territory. A Roman force marching north through Sussex and Hampshire, with Verica or Cogidubnus (who may have been Verica's son) riding alongside its commander, might well have been viewed as an army of liberation. Silchester, which Caratacos had recently seized, could probably have been taken by a relatively small force, which could then have marched on to the Thames, joining up with Plautius's much larger force that had fought its way through Kent. Crucially, they would also have established a secure line of supply from Chichester's natural harbour.

Chichester's natural harbour (photo: John Armagh). Fishbourne is at the end of the uppermost creek.

In the early days of my research for An Accidental King, I spent some time around the harbour, trying to see it through the eyes of a Roman commander. This particular commander (it may have been the future Emperor Vespasian) would have had his mind on logistics, not strategy. The fighting was taking place elsewhere. The harbour is a very different place at high and low tide. He would need to know the locations of the deep channels, for which local pilots would have been essential. The mud-flats at low tide are no place for horses or armoured men to be caught out.

The areas shaded green on the map are open water when the tide is high, mud-flats when it is low.

This commander would have wanted deep-water jetties. Some might already have existed for trading purposes. If there had been prior contact between the Roman commander and Cogidubnus, more could have been constructed in advance. If not, the Roman engineers could probably have improvised them quite quickly.

Fishbourne Roman Palace is located at the end of the easternmost deep channel of the harbour. The deepest levels of the excavation, beneath the various phases of the palace itself, revealed the foundations of Roman military granaries, and this may be a pointer to the real significance of the harbour to the invasion plans. The invasion force is estimated to have required 50-70 tonnes of grain per day, almost all of which would need to be imported. It is unlikely that all of this came through Richborough.

Reconstruction of a Roman legionary granary at The Lunt Roman Fort, near Coventry.

It is natural that Cassius Dio should have concentrated on the action taking place in Kent, and that he should have placed Vespasian (by then a god) at its centre. The reality may have been rather different.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.