Sea Control - Sea Control 420 - Building an Ancient Naval Ram with Stephen DeCasien

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Links1. The Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation (CMAC), Texas A&M University.2. “How a Grad Student Resurrected an Ancient Naval Weapon Not Seen in 1,500 Years,” Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, January 31, 2023.3. Stephen DeCasien Website.4. Stephen DeCasien Twitter.

Hello, and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today, Dr. Ed Salo speaks with Stephen DeSassion, a Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M University studying nautical archaeology. DeSassion led a team in building the first trireme-sized naval ram in 1,500 years. This episode was edited and produced by David Suhita. CIMSEC is looking for a volunteer to join our technical team and support our web operations. We're looking for someone with a background in WordPress implementation and support, as well as knowledge in web hosting and networking. Some knowledge of identity management and security operations is also helpful.

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You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. and welcome to Sea Control. My name is Ed Salo, and today we have the pleasure of speaking with, well, a different kind of guest. We're going to be talking about archaeology today and naval archaeology. Today, our guest is Stephen DeSession, who is a, I guess you're a graduate student at Texas A&M? That's correct, yep, PhD student. All right, and you're going to be talking about a project you guys worked on you worked on designing and building a naval ram that is correct yeah all right naval ram so let's before we get to the um the cool aspect which i'm not saying you're not cool but let's talk a little about you and the members of your

team tell us a little about yourself for the project tamu there were uh three project contributors, main contributors, myself, Stephen Sashen, Dr. Christopher Dostal, and then Glenn Greco. My name is Stephen Sashen. I'm a nautical archaeology PhD student at Texas A&M University. I study mainly Greco-Roman maritime history and archaeology, specializing in naval rams, naval warfare. I also study sex and gender and antiquity as it applies to navies, ancient navies, and naval monuments. Let's see, I attended the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 2018, and also the American Academy of Rome in 2022. And I currently run communications for RPM Nautical Foundation, which conducts underwater archaeological surveys at the

Battle of the Egadi Island site in Western Sicily. So that's just a little background about myself. The other two contributors, again, are Dr. Dostal and Glenn Greco. Dr. Dostal is the Director of the Conservation Research Laboratory, the Analytical Archaeology Laboratory, and the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation, as well as being an assistant professor at Texas A&M University in the anthropology department. And then our other contributor, Glenn Greco, is the director of the CMEX Ship Model Laboratory at Texas A&M, and he's arguably the best ship builder model alive. We're a good team.

Question. How did you come up with this project? And what got you interested, I guess, going back to your origin story? How did you get into this form of archaeology? or archaeology in general? How did I get to, you know, building the first naval ram in like 1,500 years? It really starts with a book called The Age of Titans, The Rise and Fall of the Great Hellenistic Navies, written by Dr. William M. Murray. The book covered aspects of Hellenistic naval warfare, the massive warships built by the successors of Alexander the Great,

and more importantly, it covered naval rams. So my fascination with this book led me to apply to the MA program at the University of South Florida, where I got to work with Dr. Murray. But it wasn't until I was actually in his class and experienced Dr. Murray's like over enthusiasm about naval rams, that I also began to have this passion to study naval rams. And it became my obsession to know everything about naval rams. So that led me to apply to the PhD program in nautical archaeology at Texas A&M, where I continue to study ancient naval warfare and naval ramps. How do we actually get to the creation of this naval ramp? In the fall of 2019, I was invited by James Gould, who is the chairman of RPM Nautical Foundation that

was founded by George Robb Jr. to be part of the organization and participate in the Battle of the Agadir Islands project. So in essence, the Battle of the Agadir Islands project is a collaborative effort between the Sopra Intendenza del Mare of Sicily, our Pymnautical Foundation, and the Society for Documentation of Submerged Sites. The Egadi battle site in western Sicily is the only known ancient naval battle ever discovered thus far. Hopefully we discover more, but it's the only one so far. The project has resulted in the recovery of 26 Roman Carthaginian naval rams, as well as a variety of associated artifacts that came from the battle that occurred on March 10th, 241 BCE. I was going to be a part of that project and go during the summer of 2020, but unfortunately

COVID struck, right, and no one could go do any archaeological field work, which was really sad. So during the spring of 2021, the following year, I was in a class called the Conservation of Archaeological Resources led by Dr. Christopher Dostal, and as I sat there in the class thinking about casting techniques and different ways to conserve metals, you know, I really thought to myself, if I can't see any navel rams due to COVID, you know, what if I just make my own? It's a crazy idea. And I thought it through for a little bit. But then I was like, you know what, let me just pitch my insane idea to Dr. Dostal and see what he says. I had no proposal when I first came to him, no plan on how we do it. But without hesitation, he was like, let's do it.

You got it. You can achieve it. We could definitely do this here at Texas A&M. This is definitely the perfect place to do it. So almost after two years, myself, Dr. Dawson, Glenn Greco, were able to achieve this with the help of the Pyrology Foundry in Bastrop, Texas. So we actually accomplished making the first trireme-sized navel ram in over 1,500 years based on ancient methods. Going back a little bit, what exactly is a navel ram and kind of how was it used in ancient times? for every question. So in essence, a naval ram was a penetrating weapon, right? It was placed at the bow of an ancient warship near the waterline. Rams were used in both offensive and defensive naval maneuvers to strike or ram other warships to cause damage that could lead

to an enemy ship being sunk, swamped, or completely destroyed. The ram developed, likely developed from an extension of the timbers that made up the bow of earlier warships. So the combination of this protrusion, sometimes called a forefoot or cut water, and a bronze covering became the basis for naval rams in antiquity. By the mid-6th to early 5th century BCE, the ram had developed to its so-called final form, referred to in modern times as the three-bladed waterline ram. That's the type of ram that we created at Tex A&M. So the three-bladed waterline rams, three-bladed waterline rams are characterized by their three fin profiles that were actually used to split and puncture enemy warship hulls that were held together by pegged Morrison-Tennant joinery. So eventually, three-bladed waterline rams like those built during the Hellenistic and later Roman Republican eras were used to break through harbor siege defenses and even ram enemy ships, not just on the sides or in the back, but head on and striking the frontal face of a warship or directly ram to ram. So naval warfare becomes highly intense and rams become produced in excess during the late Hellenistic and later Roman Republican eras.

The ram, it was a dominant naval weapon for almost 1,000 years, right? This is kind of a rare thing to have such an important weapon be dominant for almost 1,000 years. It begins at some point in, you know, the 500s BCE and ends around somewhere in the 500s CE, right? So the decline of the naval ram probably began at the Battle of Actium that we all know, the famous Battle of Actium between Mark Anthony and Cleopatra against Octavian. So this engagement was the last great battle of antiquity where we saw the use of ramming tactics, the deployment of massive warships, and the use of large Hellenistic-style naval rams. So after the Battle of Actium, the Romans controlled basically the entire Mediterranean basin with no direct naval competitors left to contest their control of the seas. So as the Roman Navy changed its purpose from fighting other navies to protecting grain ships and patrolling the Rhine and Danube rivers, the use of the naval ram steadily declined. So at least by the third and into the fifth century CE, the Roman Navy ceased to exist, with only the eastern part of the Roman Empire fielding a very ineffective fleet, actually.

So building rams and warships became costly. They became time consuming. And the techniques of building ships actually changed, which affected the use of the ram. So the historian Procopius, which some people know, is the last one to directly mention the ancient Greek word for the naval ram, which is embolos, right? Embolos means to throw into. He mentions the last use of the naval ram in the Battle of Senegalica, which occurred in 551 CE.

however it is unclear these are like the rams from antiquity the three-bladed waterline rams we don't know really really know what he's referring to so when i say we casted the first ram in 1500 years i'm talking about that is the likely end point of the ram at the battle of senegal in 551 yeah i'm a historian full disclosure i worked for cultural resources management firm So I'm used to doing research with archaeologists, did some help with some underwater and maritime projects. But what kind of research did you do before you started producing this? You know, I took a look at textual evidence, including Thucydides, Herodotus, Diodorus, just reading about naval ramps, how they're used, trying to get a feel for how they how they look in the text. But mostly, having pictures and access to actual authentic naval rams was the most important thing.

There's around 31 archaeologically attested naval rams that we have from antiquity. 26 of them come from the Battle of the Agadie Islands, but most of them are these three-bladed waterline rams that we discussed. You know, the research part of the project was not too difficult, but it's rare to have these rams. And before Agatee, before the Agatee battle site, we barely had these rams. We had the famous athlete ram, which was found in the 1980s, which is almost a thousand pounds of bronze. So it's a big ram. It's not a tri-ram size ram. It's probably a warship ram that fits on a polymium warship, which is any warship bigger than a tri-ram. You know, while it's known that the ancients used the lost wax casting method to produce these large objects,

the intricate details of the process as it relates to ram production is actually highly debatable. Several bronze rams found across the Mediterranean with their intact bowel timbers showed that the ram served as an integral part of warship construction and really a complex naval weapon system. So based on ancient rams, it has been argued that they were cast in bronze, to the highest standards using the beeswax model in the direct lost wax casting method. The lost wax casting method is a method where molten bronze is poured into a mold that has been created by means of a wax model in the direct loss wax casting method the original wax model is lost and therefore only one model can be created from one beeswax mold so each ram really built in

antiquity was completely unique to the warship it was placed on and fit tightly around the bow timbers to be an effective weapon so based on textual iconographic and archaeological information I used this to create my ram and to recreate a triumph-sized naval ram based on a three-step process, right? So the project consisted of creating a false bow, creating a beeswax model, and then having it loss-wax casted. So a bunch of research went behind it, and the real purpose of this experimental reconstruction was to better understand the time, manpower, and materials needed to create ancient rams, which can inform us really about the economic, social, and political apparatuses of many ancient natives. was that research difficult since we were going through the covid period or was the reports easy to gain it's easy to find the ancient sources online right you have perseus and things of that

nature and the library at texanum was semi-open through covid so i had access to books and stuff like that but it really helped to see pictures of these rams that were brought up by rpm at the Agadie Islands, which is shared on their website. So seeing them, I had a reference point. I never, before I built this ram, I had never seen a naval ram in person. It wasn't until after I built the ram this summer that I saw at least 28 naval rams out of the 31. Wow. You did the research, got everything. And tell us a little about the production of the ram. uh the three-bladed waterline ram that was built at texan m and cast at the pyrology foundry bastrop texas we call it the cessation ram right uh it's named after myself because i put in the

most work i did a lot of work to it so i you know i just i claimed it as mine which is i think everyone's fine with but it's an original design right this is unlike any ram that we have from the ancient world textual archaeological and iconographic evidence was used to inspire its overall construction, right? But it's an entirely original design. So like I said, more than 31 naval rams survived from antiquity, many of which are considered this style, like this three-bladed waterline ram. They include like those at Egadie, right? The 26 at Egadie, the Athlete, Aquadroni, Brammerhaven, Bologna and Piraeus rams. These are all three-bladed waterline rams. And each one of these really provided a base for how to construct this experimental naval ram. The first step of

the project was actually to construct a trireme-sized ramming bow to serve as the beeswax model's core, right? So I had to build the front of a warship before I could start anything. So the bow that I constructed was based on a culmination of archaeologically-attested ramming bows, such as those found in the Aquedrone Athlete Negati rams. So in those three rams, we have remains of warships that I used as an example to build my own ramming bow. And this ramming valve consisted of six major timbers uh the ramming timber the port and starboard whales the keel the chalk and also the stem so that was the first part right just building this this wooden section this ramming false valve took a few months to actually build we planed

everything by hand flan greco uh helped me every step of the way there because he's the boat boat builder model he you know thinks and shapes so he really knows how to work a valve together but the second step of the project right involved the use of beeswax to fashion a model of a trireme size ram onto the false bow itself and the beeswax model was used was made using various ancient methods which include we had to coat the bow and pitch right to actually hold the wax to the surface of the bow because if you put beeswax directly onto wood it permeates the wood and gets stuck so probably what they did in antiquity is put pitch on the bow so i did various pitch experiments pine resin pine resin experiments seeing which one would work kiln burn pitch

horse pitch right baseball pitch right these things that you know people use to like stick them basically to see you know what could hold the wax but also when i'm done could release it but building the model you know we melted the beeswax in the blocks in the sheets in the semi hot half blocks using pre-made molds and then mostly using handmade sheets for the model's body fins and then the inscriptions that are on it but each section was sculpted to a desired thickness and smoothed together using different sculpting tools that would have been used in antiquity so i tried to stay as true to the ancient boat builders as true to the ancient ram creators as possible then of course the last step of the project was to cast the beeswax model which took

place at pyrology in texas the foundry used a similar method to the one used in antiquity to cast the model, right? So several sprues and channels were added to the beeswax model to allow the molten bronze to be poured in for casting. The beeswax model was placed in a casting slurry, right, which created a protective shell around the model. The shell was then heated to melt the beeswax out of the model, which left an empty shell behind with the sprues and channels still intact. The molten bronze was then poured into the shell, filling the areas where the beeswax once was uh therefore the bronze was then allowed to cool and the shell was broken open which left behind the exact replica of the beeswax model in the bronze behind pretty cool process

yeah what is next for the ram you guys going to use it go out there and so ship or something i would i'd love to see that so the you know the project has already informed us about the complexity of building you know such a unique ancient weapon including how much beeswax take how to work the beeswax how much beeswax it was needed to make an average size tri-ring ram and the manpower needed to do so as well as the working hours needed to finish this job right it didn't take as long as it did antiquity took me almost two years to do this but i logged every hour to try to figure out how much working time there is so the next step for the ram itself right the bronze ram that we have at texan m is to weigh it get the official weight so we

know how much it actually weighs it probably weighs almost 400 pounds which is within the ballpark of what we have from the archaeological record 3d scan it so i can put it up on sketch fab and people can look at it etc and then x-ray it to compare it to other naval ramps from the ancient world once those steps are finished we plan to actually place it back on the bow to see if it fits on the false bow that we built for it which is would be interesting uh we have to check if there's any shrinkage that occurred during the casting process so hopefully didn't shrink at all and it'll fit back on but you know many of my colleagues and numerous people following the project would like our team to test it like you said against replica ships someone said i could

hit it with pig carcasses uh and just other objects uh but we're still trying to figure out what we should do next with the naval ram maybe we'll test it maybe we won't because like i said we only had one shot to build it the beeswax model once it's gone it's gone so i can't really build another one if it breaks and i i don't know if i'm ready to part ways with it just yet what's your next project for you all uh i think right now just getting you know the weights the scans the the official measurements the x-rays of the naval ram getting that done coming together to write the publication uh that will hopefully come from this and finish that off and then you know down the line of you know we can get a grant or

convinced that ramming uh a ship or ramming pig carts is ramming other any other object would be useful we might do that as well so uh jury's still out on the ramming thing but the ram was just casted right a few weeks ago so we're just finally getting our eyes on it to see what it can tell us more about the ancient rams as we find out more about it what else are you working on so like i said uh i'm a phd student so i'm taking my preliminary exams next week actually but i'm Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. But I'm currently working on my dissertation, which is called The Naval Ram History, Production, and Symbolism in the Greek and Roman Cultures. So I'm investigating the ram's significance in warfare, naval industry, gender discourses, and political iconography through multiple periods of antiquity. I aim to address how the ram was not only a prolific weapon, which we talked about, but also a key cultural artifact for both the Greeks and Romans.

I'm also working on the rams from the Battle of the Agadir Islands with RPM Nautical Foundation. So it's actually really exciting to see real rams and not reconstructions like my own. Real rams look a lot better. Mine's a little rough, first time going, but the Agadir rams that I get to work on are truly amazing pieces of bronze and cultural artifacts for at least the Romans and Carthaginians. is there uh anywhere that our listeners can follow you or on social media or related to this or just your research in general you know if anyone's interested in keeping up the project or naval rams in general you can find me at my website which is just my name steven de sassion.com uh or you can follow me on twitter which is at s de sassion right s d e c a s i e n

test the session that's where you can find if you want to i post about rams all the time so you might get tired of it but that's my that's my job it's pretty cool um well thank you for being on and uh we'll put all that information in the show notes and we look forward to maybe having you back on later when you guys decide what you're going to do with it and maybe we can do some kind of get involved in there if you guys do use it we get the video or something not that Of course. I mean, thanks for having me. Thank you so much. ¶¶