Greek Ship Uses

Oxford First Ancient History

The people of ancient Greece were only able to produce olive vines and grapes from their land, because of this, trading was very important. The Greeks only exported a few things, olive oil, wine, and pottery; in contrast, they imported all kinds of goods. Grain, metals, hides, and slaves are only a few of the many things that Grecians gathered from all parts of the Mediterranean Sea. However, Greeks did not only use their boats for trading, they prided themselves on having professionally trained rowers, who carried the Greek generals all over the Mediterranean. You may think that soldiers and generals were the only ones who ever did any fighting; yet, the rowers played a major part in defeating an enemy. They would lift up their oars and with these, try to wrench the enemy’s oars out of their hands. If this failed, the captain would have to use the prow and stick it into the enemy’s ship, all the same, without the rowers, fighting off of land would have been very hard. Occasionally, we have found remains of sunken ships, in one, we found a few large, clay containers, containing wine. However, all of the wine was spoilt, not at all fit to drink. It is true, we have found sunken Grecian ships, but for the most part, Greeks were very careful about sailing in sight of land, and it is quite rare to find a sunken Greek ship. As you can see, trading was very important to the Greeks, it was a way to survive, and to interact with other cultures.