As far as the Parisii themselves, for this Irelied heavily on Caesar’s Commentaries, for the simple reason thatI don’t believe that their customs, style of dress, and the waythey groomed themselves would have changed all that much in theroughly 50 years between Caesar’s expedition and Gnaeus’ shipwreck.I also made some assumptions, which is the luxury an author ofhistorical fiction has, and that is how, given the seemingconnection to the Parisii along the Seine, I endowed the BritonParisii with a Celtic/Gallic personality, although I made sure togive them chariots, unlike their mainland relatives.
This brings us to the other part ofthis story where I was in uncharted waters (forgive the pun), andthat was in nautical matters. While I was able to find severalexamples of what a trireme ofthe type that might have been used by Rome in general, andGermanicus in particularly might look like, when it came to theinterior, I was in vain. Those few examples of interiors I couldfind seemed to be for ships made for war and not transport, so Iwas left with my imagination on what such a craft might have lookedlike on the inside.
There had to be sleeping space for not justthe crew, but the passengers; as lacking in comforts as life forthe Legions of Rome may have been, I am hard pressed to believethat these men would have been expected to sit on benches. Besidesthat…where would those benches be aboard a ship powered by oars? AsI envisioned the layout, the only way I could see it working was tohave hammocks, in tiers, strung from the bulkhead to the center ofthe ship, which I describe as a walkway that runs down the middleof the part of the ship where the rowers were located. During thisinvention process that took place completely in my head, I recalledsomething I learned when I was in the Regional Museum of Arles, in2010, very soon after the discovery of a shipwreck in the RhoneRiver that contained, among other things, what is considered to bethe last, or one of the last, likenesses of Julius Caesar in theform of a bust. However, it was a more mundane cargo, and when Ireviewed the video and saw the double rows of amphorae that werearranged down the middle of the wreck, I realized that it waslikely the area under the walkway that provided space for thestorage of cargo, or in the case of a troop transport, the gearcarried by the men being transported.
Now, as to the men who were doing therowing, Tacitus states that some of the ships were crewed by theLegionaries themselves, but nowhere did I find any indication thatthey provided the crews for every single vessel. Also, while slaveswere definitely used to crew ships, from everything I’ve read, itwasn’t nearly as straightforward as that, and there were shipscrewed by freedmen or, in that area, free Gallic natives. Whatreaders might notice was I don’t mention the use of chains, atleast when these men are at the oars. As I researched further, itbecame clear to me that the practice of chaining men to the bencheswasn’t a feature of the ancient world, and when one thinks of therelative scarcity of iron, that makes sense to me, along with thefact that weight would always have to be a consideration. And,especially for seagoing vessels, unless a slave crew couldcoordinate a mutiny, one or a handful of slaves wouldn’t be able toovercome a crew.
And, not surprisingly, close quarters,especially during a period of time where hygiene was…less thanperfect, being in a closed compartment would create an olfactoryexperience that tends to stick in one’s mind. This is somethingwith which I have experience, and what becomes apparent is thatfairly quickly a group of people in an enclosed space, or in asituation where they can’t bathe, become accustomed to it to thepoint they don’t notice…until they leave that group, or they’reinformed by someone else, as I and twelve of my fellow Marines whohad been in the field for three weeks were ordered to report to theclinic that served active duty and dependents on Camp Pendletonfound out, when a little girl about five years old, turned to hermother and said, “Oh, Mommy, they smell horrible…” right before she threw up. This isn’tnecessarily historical, but since I try to immerse myself in thatage as I write as much as possible, it was definitely somethingthat crossed my mind.
The process of relief that I describe iscompletely my own, and again is based in my immersion in the storyas I write it, and I think, “How would I do that?” As far as themeans by which men seated on benches in three tiers would moveabout when they weren’t rowing, again the series of smallerwalkways, really nothing more than lengths of lumber about fourinches wide and at three different levels seemed the way it wouldwork. Having two men manning one oar on the lowest level is basedin my somewhat limited knowledge, and every depiction I’ve seen thelowest oars are the closest to the hull and as a result the rowerswould have less leverage because of a shorter oar. Hence, my guessthat it would take two men for an even distribution of power.
My description of the crane is based on themodels that I have seen, but one early mistake I made was in theassumption that it could swivel; that wouldn’t show up for severalmore centuries. Consequently, the question then becomes, how couldone raise up a ship, either from the ground where it’s beingconstructed or repaired, and get it into the water, or vice versa?Again, this is based in a slightly analogous experience when Iworked as an ironworker, and there was a situation where for somereason I can’t recall, the crane we were using was stuck in asingle position and couldn’t swivel. Using a series of cables andropes,
