I’ve been thinking about the old joke about the crew of an oared galley complaining that they never got a break. The punchline being, “…the bad news is that the Captain wants to water-ski.”
And while I believe that water-skiing is anachronistic to the age of rowed galleys, I’ve been wondering: Could one get sufficient speed out of such a vessel to pull a water-skier behind it?
Looking at the Wikipedia article on the Olympias, a reconstructed trireme, they claim a top speed from her amateur crew of over 9 knots. What I can’t find is whether that would be fast enough to pull a waterskiier along behind the vessel.
(I’m not worried about power - with over 150 people pulling on the oars, that’s going to be sufficient power for our purposes, I believe.)
Mythbusters did this one. They got a crew team to pull, and Jamie actually did get up on skis for a few hundred yards. The biggest problem is that the pull exerted by oars is not consistent, leading Jamie to rock back and forth.
Thanks for the information! BrotherCadfael, I suspect with a larger crew those individual variations wouldn’t be nearly as important for the skier. But that’s just fine-tuning. The important thing is that the Captain will get what he wants. Again.
As said above, Mythbusters did this. The toughest part was him getting initially pulled out of the water. It not only wasn’t smooth pulling, it wasn’t nearly as strong & fast off the line as an engine. It was one of there best moments. As far as their research could tell, it was the first documented case of doing it!
I don’t think that the Mythbusters really answered this particular question. Jamie was pulled behind a rowing scull: a stripped down shell designed to do precisely nothing besides carry eight guys and go fast. A galley would have been designed to carry troops and cargo and would have significant weight and drag beyond might be necessary just to float and move. I don’t know how fast a rowing eight goes maximum, but the world record is an average of around 12 knots and the maximum is probably faster. So we still need an answer to the question of whether you can ski at 9 knots.
More importantly, how long would it take a big ship powered by rowers to get up to speed. If it takes a half mile, that’s an awful lot of drag to overcome with your arms alone holding on to the rope and I’d imagine fatigue would come into play pretty quickly.
And if you fall down, how long til they can circle around and pick you back up again?