Description

No wrecks of these warships have ever been discovered, compared with the

abundance of findings of trading galleys dating from the same period. This can be explained

by their light weight and the lack of cargo weighing down wrecked ships.

One important element marking these ships was the radical change in naval strategy

with the invention of the corvus, that is a plank for boarding and conquering enemy ships,

by employing a sort of “marine infantry”. This tactic transformed naval battles, which up

to that time had targeted the sinking of the enemy ships by means of ramming them with

the rostrum, into what almost became land battles, in which the ships were boarded and

conquered, thus adding to the numbers of the Roman fleet.