Dan Snow's History Hit - The Roman Navy in Britain

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

I was thrilled to be joined on the podcast by the wonderful Simon Elliott. In this episode, Simon and I got to grips with the epic Roman Navy, and what it was doing on the shores of Britain. Enjoy! Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It's Roman Britain week at History Hit. We've got podcasts going out about Roman Britain. We've got documentary going up on History Hit TV, exclusive documentary on Roman Britain. It's all happening. It's Roman Britain here, there and everywhere this week. So this is a repeat podcast. Many of you won't have heard it. It was broadcast first years ago. It's with Dr. Simon Elliott. He is a force of nature. He's written many fantastic books. He's been on this podcast many times before. You may have heard him talking about probably the largest single military campaign ever fought on British soil. That was Septimius Severus's campaign in Scotland. But in this episode, we're going to

talk about the Classus Britannica, the Roman fleet that guarded the shores of Britain from incursions across the North Sea, the German Sea. It's such a fascinating subject, and Simon definitely does it justice in this one of the epic podcasts of the Back Catalogue. If you want to listen to all the other Back Catalogue podcasts, they're only available at History Hit TV. It's our history channel, basically. It's like the Netflix for history, but it's got audio. It's better than Netflix in many ways, really. I mean mean that's what you hear people saying some people say it's got hundreds of documentaries and lots of audio on there it's got the new documentary on roman britain launching this week and if you want to go onto history at tv and take out a

subscription that'd be fantastic a great way to support everything we're doing here we're working on a big documentary at the moment around Viking ships. So, you know, all the support very, very gratefully received. If you head over to History Hit TV and use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free and then you get a second month for just one pound, euro or dollar. And feast yourself, eyes and ears, on Rome and Britain. So in the meantime, everyone, here's Dr. Simon Elliott. Enjoy. So in the meantime, everyone, here's Dr. Simon Elliott. Enjoy.

Simon, this is such an amazing subject because I often feel that the naval, the maritime, is ignored when people think about the Roman world. But that was, to a very large extent, that was a maritime empire, wasn't it? Well, it was. If you think about the Roman Empire, I mean, they have the Mare Nostrum sort of in the Mediterranean and then they have the Atlantic up to and around the British Isles. So yeah, it was definitely a maritime nation. And also, don't forget the rivers as well because the frontiers, for example,

in the north were along the Rhine and along the Danube. The principal routes of access on major campaigns were down rivers. So when Julian invaded invaded persia he sort of went down the targets in the euphrates that's what that's where they carried all their that's where the the logistics sort of took place so the maritime component was a vital aspect of the roman empire and as you say it's often overlooked while you're on that subject i'm

this is a key point isn't it because rivers now have been sort of canalised, ditchified, sewerised. Rivers were mighty, sprawling, wide. I mean, how wide would the Thames have been, for example, in the spring when it was in flood? Probably about twice as wide as it is today, because you've got to bear in mind with the major rivers we have today, they're sort of embanked, etc. So the Thames is a good example so probably twice as wide although interestingly actually probably more easily fordable when you go up river oh sorry down river for the simple reason that there would have been much more sort of marshland etc and I can give you a great example of a river from some of my research in the Roman Medway Valley I live in the upper Medway Valley

and the the Romans had five major ragstone quarries in the upper Medway Valley. I live in the Upper Medway Valley and the Romans had five major ragstone quarries in the Upper Medway Valley which I think by the way were actually run by the Classics Britannica on behalf of the state, the Roman Navy in Britain and they used the river Medway to transport millions of pieces of work ragstone which ended up sort of building a lot of Roman London through to the mid-third century and that is a journey of about 170 to 127 kilometres one way, including an overnight stop. So you're talking about a lot of, a huge amount, let's say half the stone which built Roman London,

being quarried in ragstone quarries in the upper Medway Valley. So we're talking about above the tidal reach and above Maidstone being sent along the River Medway and then sent along the Thames Estuary to London. So that's the kind of enormous undertaking that they'd have done in just the civilian context. We're not talking about what they did in a military context either. Okay, so Simon, that's fascinating stuff. Let's start at the beginning. Where does the Classus Britannica start? Or indeed, should we start with the Claudian invasion? Obviously, that was a maritime amphibious operation. It's also very important because that is the origins of the Classis Britannica.

So for background, the Classis Britannica was a regional navy. So in the Roman Principate, instead of having one huge navy or sort of ad hoc navies as the Romans had throughout, for example, the Punic Wars and the Hellenistic Wars and the Civil Wars and the Mediterranean in the later centuries BC as you go to the age of Augustus and onwards they they changed that and they ended up having regional fleets so they ended up having 10 regional fleets covering different geographic areas so there is a Classis Alexandrina in Egypt there is a Classis Germanica in Germany but for us our regional fleet was the Classis Britannica, created from the 900 ships which were built for the Claudian invasion in AD 43, staffed by about 7,000 personnel. And that remained in being from AD 43 through to probably the mid-third century, when we probably won't touch on it later, but it mysteriously disappears from the historical record. So, yeah, that's how it originated. from the historical record.

So yeah, that's how it originated. And what kind of ships? I mean, was there a change in design from the Mediterranean craft or the riverine craft of Germany and Central Europe? So the more oceanic, the tougher conditions that perhaps you might expect to find

in the Western approaches or in the Channel? Certainly Caesar, when Caesar was fighting his campaigns against the coastal Gauls in the first century BC, he initially employed some sort of polyrheum large galleys from the Mediterranean and later copied some of the ship designs of the Gauls themselves, which were better suited to the

rough waters. However, intriguingly for the Classical Britannica, we know from sculptures and carvings and from the written record. Principally, their main fighting platform was the Libernia Bireme. So we're not talking about its huge polyremes. We're talking about Bireme galleys, much smaller, with a ram and a ballista or two, maybe sort of a castle mounted on the rear. And by Bireme, you mean two decks of oars, do you? Absolutely right, yeah.

But smaller. We're not talking about these enormous sort of Quinker Marines and Polyremes, which they use in the Punic Wars and against the Hellenistic kingdoms. These are much smaller, much more suited to nipping in and out of coastal waters. And the reason why they're better here, actually, when you look at what the Navy was doing, because in its principal warfighting sort of role, its combat role, it wasn't fighting sort of symmetrical conflicts against opponents in the sort of open ocean,

you know, sort of in a blue water context in, let's say, the North Sea or Atlantic approaches. It was much more sort of literal based, going around the coast, etc. Principally in a military context for the Classical Britannica, supporting the army as over, let's say, a period of 60 or so years. It went through its period of conquest in Britain, and then supporting the campaigning, let's say, in the north, working very closely with the legions, etc., in the campaigns, let's say, of Agricola, and then under Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius in the second century. And then there's a huge campaign with Severus, Septimius Severus as well, in the early second century. And then there's a huge campaign with Severus, Septimius Severus as

well in the early third century. We always forget, I think, that look at Alexander the Great, for example, that was the Navy played an absolutely crucial part in Alexander the Great's campaign of conquest in the Middle East. Presumably the same thing was happening in Britain. So as the Roman legions marched north, there would have been as much amphibious support were there on either coast as possible there were dan let's go back to the numbers there were 900 ships created for the um classic britannica with 7 000 personnel so this is a this is a big force bear in mind britain for the majority of the roman empire had an exponentially large military presence anyway probably in the second century 12 of the entire military presence of the whole empire in

what was four percent of the geographical area given that the north and the west of britain was effectively the wild west of the roman empire anyway with constant campaigning so what the regional fleet did here the classic britannica let's look at the campaigns of agricola when he sort of marched north into scotland you'd have the legionary spearheads following largely a sort of a coastal route, and then the Classical Britannica bolted onto the maritime flank, providing support, supply, making sure that when these legionary and auxiliar spearheads ran their way through enemy territory, there were fortified harbours ahead of them already,

where the fleet had already sort of secured a base, and there were stores ready, so that the following day you had ongoing this process of legionary and auxiliar spearheads smashing forward and then linking up with the fleet at the end of the day's march the supplies were all there there's a harbour there's a base etc and the littoral is completely controlled so there's no way that the caledonians in that case could actually go around the flank of the the roman spearheads either because the romans have got complete control of the littoral. And again, the Libernia and the smaller Scafa and Myoper cutters and skiffs were sort of nipping forward to make sure that they were doing all the scouting. And then behind them, you have the

ponderous merchantmen bringing all the sort of supplies and transporting goods and allowing amphibious support. And presumably the geography of Britain, I've never really thought about that before, but the geography of Britain is quite suitable for that because you've got this spine of mountains in the middle and as you progress up you've got rivers, the Trent and the rivers for example coming down from the Mersey, that you could actually you could advance up either side of Britain and have pretty much constant naval amphibious literal support couldn't you? You could, if you look at the, I mean it's another great point that if you are by the side of Britain and have pretty much constant naval amphibious literal support, couldn't you?

You could. If you look at the, I mean, it's another great point that if you look at the campaigns of conquest all the way from the Claudian invasion in AD 43, there's a river crossing battle, which I think is on the River Medway near where I live, where the navy would have been involved. There's a crossing of the Thames to enable the Romans to get into Essex, where they then get to what later became modern Colchester. And then Claudius arrives, again brought over by the Classical Britannica and the province is

declared so the navy's involved there if you look at the campaigns of Vespasian the later emperor is an absolutely fabulous sort of series of campaigns in the southwest they're a coastal route so the Vespasian legions these legionary spears are moving along the south coast and they go into the southwest the navy's bolted onto the flank all the time if you go then the campaigns go up into the sort of bristol channel into the irish sea it's the navy again the campaigns of conquest in wales the navy's around the coast again then you get the two the campaigns against the brigantes and again they go on an east coast and a west coast track and on each coast you get the navy bolted on again that's why this is a really good

interesting untold story because almost it's telling the story of roma britain from a perspective that no one's ever touched upon before and yet there's this fleet of 900 ships and 7 000 men which is in a very substantial sort of component to the roman ministry here you know this reminds me a bit out of context but um that the legendary historian nick Roger, the naval historian, points out in at least a couple of his books, the only successful invasions of Scotland have been naval invasions of Scotland. So where you've got a strong army, of course, marching up, but it's got proper naval support on its flanks, and they're the only ones that work.

It's important to remember with Scotland, with the Romans, the Romans never obviously fully conquered the north of Scotland, but they had a number of major campaigns. The two we know best of are Agricola's campaigns, made famous by Tacitus, obviously, which, by the way, is the first time we know in the historical record that Britain was circumnavigated by the Classus Britannica. But also this major campaign with 60,000 men,

which Septimius Severus mounted in the early 3rd century, where he increased the storage capacity at South Shield, which was a major base on the northeast coast for the Classical Botanica, by tenfold to actually enable the supplies there to get the 60,000 men to campaign. It was a desperately hard campaign over two years. And although, again, there was no political will for the Romans to actually remain there and fully conquer the north of Britain after that campaign there was 80 years of peace on the northern border which to my from for my memory as an historian with a wide-ranging interest in

military history is probably the longest period into in the pre-modern era you actually had any peace on that northern border and again it's the Navy facilitating all these campaigns, going into the Firth of Forth, going into the Tay, going around the top into the Moray Firth. And all the time as they're going, they're building these fortified harbours, many of which we know of today. I mean, that's fascinating stuff. So what evidence of the Classus Britannica do we have now left to us

in the archaeological record? You mentioned these fortified bases in Scotland, but I understand there's some stuff down the south uh east coast there's loads and loads of different things actually there's the epigraphic record so you've got a lot of epigraphy about it a lot of the epigraphy by the way is in boulogne now it's very interesting that boulogne sorry to be stupid epigraphy is what um writing right yeah yeah funerary monuments writing on funerary monuments okay and a lot of it's in boulogne, and that's because Boulogne was the headquarters of the Classical Britannica, because the Classical Britannica not only had responsibility

for, let's say, the North Sea Basin, the English Channel, the Atlantic Approaches, the East and West Coast, the Irish Sea, but it also had responsibility, intriguingly, for protecting the northwestern continental coast of the Roman Empire up to the Rhine as well, which reflects the way the Romans viewed the Rhine as well which reflects the way the Romans viewed the English Channel and the North Sea in a different way to us because for

them it wasn't the barrier which we see from military history and in recent times it was actually a sort of a point of connectivity and a motorway by which Roman Britain remained a fully functioning part of the Roman Empire so you have epigraphy in boulogne you also have uh things in the archaeological records so we we we um we know where a lot of the fortified harbors were uh we have some beautiful graffiti so one of my friends uh supplied a piece of graffiti on some waste lead uh from i think it's from caister by from one of either caister by nourish or case to by sea which shows a Roman galley being graffitied by somebody who was clearly drawing this from having seen one so there we have an absolutely wonderful piece of first-hand evidence of somebody drawing what they saw as a Roman galley in the

Classical Britannica but intriguingly you also have the written record of course there are lots of references and i'll come back to that but intriguingly the classic britannica was also employed like an army service corps as well as a military force because it reported to the procurator in britain not the governor so therefore it was there also to make the the province pay into the imperial ficus the treasury so it ran some of the metalla industries as well and one of the big ones was the iron industry in the wheel through to the mid-third century which made a lot of the iron which went to the northern borders to to enable the military to operate and the the big iron working sites which were monumental in scale but the factory size to us today near the coast near

hastings they were run by the classic britannica and we know that because all the buildings have got tiles stamped with the classic britannica but I'll come back to the written record if I may Dan very quickly because you have two really interesting pieces of in the written record firstly the first time the navy's mentioned at all so we know it was formed in AD 43 but the first time we it's mentioned at all is in the Flavian period in the context of a failure in AD 69 69 70 the classic britannica is recorded by tacitus as taking a british legion across to the rhine to help fight um civilis uh and his revolting batavians uh who were auxiliaries who were revolting against the roman empire and causing problems on the rhine border so this legion got to the rhine estuary, debussed off the ship, was marched off by, obviously,

a rather rash legate senator, and he forgot to put any guards on the ships. So you can imagine this invasion force effectively carrying a whole legion in the Rhine estuary, being left overnight with no guards. And hey presto, the local Germans burnt it to a ship.

For the first time it's mentioned, it's in ignominy. It's sort of a classic sort of failure and it was rebuilt very quickly obviously but finally in terms of the written record i'll go back to epigraph epigraphy the last time it's ever mentioned the classic botanica is in ad 249 in the context of a funerary stelae of one saturninus who was a nearchus a captain of the classic britannica who was buried and this is in ad 249 interestingly he's from north africa as well which shows how cosmopolitan the roman empire was and that's the last time it appears in history that is amazing isn't it just shows that the the britain who went on to colonize the rest of the world was itself initially

colonized by people from and we have we have records of i think people from syria and iraq up around hadrian's wall as well it was such an incredibly cosmopolitan empire there's a need there's a need that there's loads and loads of interesting sort of references up there including of course to the classic britannica who who um there is a pigraphy along hadrian's wall of them actually building parts of hadrian's wall when it was built and also maintaining it as well there's a great reference after the time of the Classical Britannica in South Shields towards the end of the Roman Empire in Britain where we have some tigress

boatmen acting as barges on the time. So it genuinely is a sort of a very, very cosmopolitan empire. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows

where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week. The Roman fleet, would they have served their entire career here or would they have then switched over to serve in the Eastern Mediterranean or something, presumably knowing that the water, the tide, the conditions was absolutely vital to being a good naval officer? Absolutely right.

So, I mean, you're looking at two different things here. So if you look at the officers themselves, the officers were very cosmopolitan and often moved between posts. the auxilia sort of in the principate where the officer that the senior officers uh like the profectus who was in charge of the clatic britannica and his senior uh nearchus sort of captains they would have come from the equestrian um aristocratic uh route and background as opposed to the senatorial one which uh the legion legionary commanders came from so it's very much on a par with the auxilia and intriguingly remember it reports not that the regional fleet didn't report to the governor, who was the military boss and the legal boss of a Roman province, later provinces in Britain.

He reported to the procurator who was in charge of making the province pay. So it was a very dual kind of role. On the one hand, sort of this military role, and on the other hand this sort of um this service corps role sort of doing administration doing engineering so we know they were building bits of agent's wall and running running the industry as well so the fleet's founded in ad43 you've got 900 ships the chances are they would have recruited some of the experienced sailors from the mediterranean to help that get going but afterwards they would have recruited local sailors with local knowledge so if you're going back to as an example this journey for 127 kilometers from the quarries in the upper medway valley to london carrying loads of 50 tons of ragstone that's a difficult journey

right that's not an easy journey at all and you're attacking backwards and forwards and pre-modern sailing ships through the medway estuary into the thames estuary so you need to be really experienced sailors and absolutely knowing the water's dead on. During their campaigns, do you have any sense of them dealing with specifically a maritime threat from perhaps Jutland, Northern Europe, Scandinavia? Are they fighting

any sea battles in this period? For the majority of its existence, no, simply because there's no symmetrical threat. So it's not like the Punic Wars where you get these huge fleets of polyureheum galleys fighting these massed sort of battles most often these battles by the way are within sight of the coast but nevertheless they're there to control

the blue water environment, the access to the blue water environment. If you go beyond the campaigns of Septimius Severus in the early 3rd century and look at the gap between then so let's say from AD to 1520 through to the middle of the century when the navy disappears that's when you start to begin to see the beginning of Saxon

let's say let we'll call them Saxons but German North Germanic raiding across the North Sea and across the down the down the continental coast and across the English Channel not on the levels that you saw later but that's when it And interestingly, this is when we begin to see the early Saxon shore forts being built as well. So, for example, the one at Reculva. So the chances are that for the last 30 years of its existence, the Classis Britannica suddenly found itself

doing something almost completely different to the role that it had fulfilled, supporting legionary spearheads in the littoral, and it found itself actually operating in the Blue Ocean Zone in the North Sea. But we don't have any accounts of that particularly. We don't, but what we can use is analogy, so we know where the other regional

fleets, what they were doing. We know the raiding was taking place from the archaeological record, and we know anecdotally it was taking place because the early Saxon shore forts were being built, and these aren't small forts, these are very substantial investments in time and manpower and money to actually build these forts so you're not building them for nothing um the early Saxon shore forts are all built sort of to give control to um sort

of riverine access so there's a there's definitely a threat they're being built for and we know what the other regional fleets were doing sort of around this time as well. So, for example, you start to see the Gothic raiding into the eastern Mediterranean sort of around the same time. So I'm personally convinced that that is exactly what the Classical Britannica was doing. Why do we see this expansion of Saxon or Northern European fleets? I mean, are they learning from the Romans? Are the Romans getting weaker? Is the Classical Britannica being weakened by political division or just what's happening here you're pulling me on some of my favorite subjects then so what you have well there's a number of things there so firstly in the middle of the third third century

you have the crisis of the third century so a lot from the assassination of alexander severus in ad 235 through to the accession of diocletian in ad 284 you have lots of turmoil politically and economically in the Roman Empire, particularly in the West anyway. So there may be a sort of a weakening there which people north of the lines in Germany could exploit. But also you often find when you have an economic superpower with a border, there is always a flow of wealth across that border which then changes the political structure north of the border so you tend to find a pattern where the there are there are a lot of um small political organizations north of the border

but gradually certain leaders amass wealth from contact of what some sort with the roman empire and so there's a co-coalescence of power behind bigger and bigger and bigger political units certain leaders amass wealth from contact of some sort with the Roman Empire. And so there's a coalescence of power behind bigger and bigger and bigger political units. So that's why after, that's why from, let's say, the middle of the third century onward, you start seeing these big confederations sort of creating friction along the border, ultimately sort of bursting into Gaul and into Germany. And the Saxon raiding we'll call it saxon raiding but let's say it's germanic raiding from a variety of peoples um it's probably a reflection of that you know they have the maritime i think they probably had their own

maritime technology anyway because it's different to the roman maritime technology but they would have found out that there was this fabulously wealthy province of britain especially the south and the east um where you know there were opportunities for them and there was this fabulously wealthy province of Britain, especially the south and the east, where there were opportunities for them and there was a coalescence of power and then you end up with the raiding starting. And at the same time, the Roman central government was able to spend a little bit less on the fleet, I suppose. And they were fighting, well, fighting themselves.

And also because you have economic pressures as well. Let's look at what happens politically in Northwestern Europe at this time. You have the turmoil of the crisis of the third century and then AD 260, you have Posthumus initiating his Gallic Empire. So that pulls Britain and Northwestern Europe away from the Central Empire for up to 10 years.

And then you have my favorite Roman of all, the pirate king, Corosius, who creates his north sea empire from ad 2862 ad 296 intriguingly of course corosius is initially brought in by the emperor as an experienced naval warrior to clear the north sea of pirates which is an example of showing how the classic britannica by that time had disappeared because these Saxon pirates were becoming endemic in their raiding. Then of course Corrosius gets accused by the emperor of pocketing the wealth from all these raiders that he's successfully kicked out of the North Sea and therefore he usurps and creates his own North Sea empire from northwestern Gordon

Britain. So you're saying that after the crisis of the 3rd century, in which the Romans, I suppose they come fairly close to collapsing in certain parts of the empire, they never really get the Classus Britannica back after that? No, it disappears then. It disappears before that. The last reference we have is in AD 249. So at some stage from AD 249

through to the accession of Corrosius, when we know that there was endemic raiding in the North Sea and therefore no fleet in uh in britain um the navy disappears and that's where the great mystery is why that why this navy disappears um there are a number of reasons why it could have been one could be an economic reason because the the military was becoming increasingly expensive to run at a time of economic crisis but i think actually it fell foul of um a usurpation in one way shape or another um it's got the crisis of the third century anyway so it could have backed the wrong horse at the wrong time and then being punished by the winner and specifically you have the the gallic

empire uh posthumous where you have a number of uh gallic emperors some usurping themselves and then being brought back into the fold by the Roman Empire in the West within a decade anyway. So at any stage, the prefectors of the Classical Britannica could have backed the wrong horse and they were punished by being disbanded.

What you're really reminding us here is something that I'd never thought about in terms of the Roman Empire before but you see it in early modern history, which I know a bit more about, which is you can imagine, you can turn, you can sort of, you can invent legions quite quickly. But what you can't do in history is will into being maritime force, because you need a logistics, you need boat yards, you need skilled craftsmen laborers you need wood that has been properly treated and and left to be prepared all of that takes

generations and certainly decades so so actually once you lose that capability it's quite hard to just reimagine it again it's totally it's absolutely true i mean there's so much skill involved not only in in running a fleet and operating it, but also building it. I'm always minded of a quote from my second favourite admiral of all time, Cunningham, in the Second World War, when he was offered the opportunity of withdrawing the Royal Navy from evacuating troops and taking them to Egypt. And he quoted, and I'm going to misquote it, but effectively he said, it takes three years to build a ship, but 300 years to build a reputation. We fight on.

Which still sends a tinglet at my spine every time I read that. For the Roman settlers, it would have been the same as well. But remember, let's go back to my point earlier about the status of Britain within the Roman Empire. It's one of the farthest places you can go in the Roman Empire, from Rome and the centre of britain within the roman empire it's one of the farthest places you can go in the roman empire from rome and um the sort of center of political power even when powers sort of distributed elsewhere later in the empire it's still the furthest from rome you can go in the west uh it's always a frontier zone the north and the west is never is always a militarized

border zone so although it was part of the province later provinces of britainia it wasn't the same as the south and the east which were fully functioning full fat parts of the empire the north and the west was a border zone if you're an aristocrat that wants to make your name fighting you can go either to the the the northern border in britain or you go to the persian frontier um um so so it i mean i mean so britain genuinely was i think sort of the north and the west, was the wild west of the Roman Empire. Well, that is, you've given us, you've really helped to change the way I think about the Roman Empire and certainly its conquest and policing of Britain. And I guess, I suppose finally, I should say, obviously, the fleet was never reconstructed after that bizarre break in the third century. And so the last hundred years or so of Roman rule here, I suppose the growth of those Saxon shore forts is actually a sign of a weakness of naval power.

You only build forts on the land if you can't stop people getting to your coastline at sea. Absolutely. I mean, if you look at some of the forts, so for example, the one at Dover, the Saxon Shore Fort at Dover was built on top of an earlier Classis Britannica fort. So there were some Classis Britannica forts, but they were very much aligned with the actual fleet as opposed to sort of being these huge structures of these Saxon Shore forts.

So if you want to go to somewhere like Richborough, you can see the scale of some of these Saxon Shore forts, which is, I go back to my point they're intense investments in in um from the roman state to build these things um and in terms of the naval we do know that there was naval stuff happening just from the written record if nothing else so for example the emperor julian in the ad 360s built 700 ships in britain and gaul to help take grain over from britain to help feed his army on the rhine the army that fought the battle of strasbourg um but this isn't this isn't the integral fully functioning full fat navy which we had until the mid-third century these are one-off

events so a fleet is constructed to do a specific thing you may have local coastal sort of forces dotted around here and there, but not this homogenous, major sort of 7,000-man, 900-ship navy which existed for, well, 200 years of Roman rule. Well, like the Victorians who built all those follies outside Portsmouth and around various ports around the UK, wasting money on shore defences when they had battleships out at sea. It's an over-the-horizon

deterrence, much better. So actually, the last 100 years of Roman rule in Britain feels like it would have been quite vulnerable because they didn't have control of the waters. It suggests they didn't have control of the waters around the coast. You had Saxon raiding. You had forts around the south and the east coast, which are called by the Romans, the forts of the Saxon shore. Now, however you define what the Saxons were, whether the Saxons were the raiders or whether the Saxons were being brought over

as foederate mercenaries, they were coming over here. And that does indicate in some way, shape or form that control of the North Sea towards the end of the empire had been lost. We even know that there's a great conspiracy sort of invasion where a number of the opponents of the Roman empire from north of the empire have been lost we even know that there's a great conspiracy sort of invasion where a number of the opponents of the roman empire from north of the border from ireland

and from from from germany uh hit the north of the province i think it's in from this is from memory i think it's in the ad 360s you may be a little bit later but we know for a fact that for probably one of the first times part of that invasion from all those places was to send natives from the borders by sea around Hadrian's Wall to get to the northeast coast that would never have happened with a Clastridge Botanical in existence. Well as you approved and I hope I have gone on about endlessly on this podcast. If you wish to have a healthy, happy and affluent life on this island of ours, you need to keep the Navy strong. Thank you so much, Simon. Tell us, your book is?

It's called The Seagulls of Empire, The Classes Britannica and the Battles of Britain, published through the History Press on the 3rd of August, and it's available in all good bookshops and on all outlets as we speak well you you write as enthusiastically and knowledgeably as you speak and everyone this is a fantastic book i urge you to buy it and simon i hope you'll come on again to the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand

if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating

and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful.

Thank you. you