Ep. 0291: “Farted Upon & Showered with Excrement” (A Sneak Preview of “Wooden Walls on the Water”)

I mean, we should definitely assume that in these days of no gold bond powder, no A&D ointment, no Desitin, no Tinactin, no Preparation H, all these sorts of things, that all kinds of nasty chafing, you know, skin rashes, as well as skin fungal infections and hemorrhoids, like all these sorts of things were occupational hazards for these rowers.

Howdy everybody, this is CJ, your humble hazardous history helmsman, here with a fairly small microdose of dangerous historical samizdat.

And I hope you're doing at least as well as you can in these very interesting times.

This episode is actually like a little preview, a small sample as it were, of the main DHP thing that I've been working on since I put out the Mad Dream of Conquest Part 3.

Which, if you've listened to it, I hope you have enjoyed it.

I've gotten a good amount of positive feedback so far on it and, you know, I'm really happy with how it came out and I feel like the enormous amount of hard work that I put into that episode was not in vain in terms of the, you know, final product.

But anyway, the main thing I've been working on since I put that episode out is the bonus episode that I've mentioned a few times since I started the Mad Dream of Conquest series and this is going to be one that will be exclusive just to my supporters on Patreon at the Journeyman Scholar Warrior level or higher.

A real deep dive on ancient Greek, primarily Athenian, naval warfare in the 5th century BC.

So it'll primarily be talking about the era of the Peloponnesian War and kind of the years leading up to it, but it'll also talk a little bit about the Greek naval operations, again chiefly Athenian, that occurred during the Second Persian Invasion that the Persians launched in 480 BC because there were a couple of major Athenian victories over the Persians that were very important to the Greeks eventually winning that war and causing the Persians to go home.

Those who weren't already dead anyway.

This bonus episode is going to be several hours long.

It probably will not be anywhere near as long as the Mad Dream of Conquest Part 3 was, but you know, it'll probably be at least, I would say, two to three hours.

And I'm going to go into a lot of stuff that I've found as I've been reading up on the Peloponnesian War and the Sicily operation and doing the first big kind of re-deep dive into ancient Greek history that I've done in probably around 20 years, including rereading stuff I had read long ago and reading new stuff.

But in working on that, I've come across all kinds of interesting stuff about Greek naval warfare in the era of the trireme.

And so for all the excellent individuals who help keep the Dangerous History podcast rolling at the Journeyman Scholar Warrior level or higher, I decided I would put together this bonus episode and share all this interesting stuff that you really don't find in very many books or history documentaries about ancient Greece, if they even make those anymore.

You often just kind of get vague statements, you know, oh, the Athenian navy attacked the Persian navy at the Battle of so-and-so and won.

And you don't really get a huge amount of detail of like, what did it actually look like? What were these ships like? What was it like to be on one of them? What was it like to go into battle on one of these ships? As well as things like, how the hell could an Iron Age economy produce and maintain ships that were as sophisticated as triremes and, you know, maintain crews large enough to operate them if, like Athens, you had a large fleet? So it will go into things including, but probably not limited to, the design and construction of the triremes, the crews of the triremes, you know, what was the complement of men, how did it break down into different categories and, you know, their jobs and what it was like and so forth.

And I will get into as well the politics of the navy in Athens and the finances and logistics behind it because for Athens to build and maintain this huge dominant fleet in the eastern Mediterranean for most of the 5th century BC was a gigantic financial and logistical burden.

So we'll talk about that and we'll talk a bit about how eventually during the Peloponnesian War the enemies of Athens were able to finally gain the upper hand in naval battles, which was what ultimately led to the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.

But in this segment that I'm going to be sharing with you here today, it's going to be about the crew specifically.

You know, how many men were on the ship, how were they broken down into different, you know, jobs and ranks and things, and what was it like, what did they experience 2,400 years ago on these very, very, to our eyes, strange and interesting ships that were for quite a long time The dominant design of warship in the ancient Mediterranean world.

So anyway, I'm sharing this little sample as kind of like a teaser.

And if you're already someone who is a supporter of mine on Patreon at the Journeyman Scholar Warrior level or higher, you'll be getting this as, you know, a little bit of a teaser, an appetizer for the main course, which is going to be, you know, many times longer than just this one segment that I'm putting out now while I'm still working on the rest of the episode.