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The Naval Battle of Salamis: a Fundamental Example of Coalition Naval Warfare Dr

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The Naval Battle of Salamis: a Fundamental Example of Coalition Naval Warfare Dr The Naval Battle of Salamis: a fundamental example of Coalition Naval Warfare Dr. Zisis Fotakis, Assistant Professor in Naval History, the Hellenic Naval Academy The Naval Battle of Salamis, Seminars 2020, Greek Community of Melbourne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV2zOKRWsvw The Persian Wars constitute an early and prime example of coalition naval warfare, making their study indispensable for all students of history and strategy. This paper focuses on the influence of Coalition Naval Warfare upon History, as evidenced in the Battle of Salamis. Naval warfare has been important in European history because Europe is a peninsula. Greece is located on the Mediterranean shoreline of Europe, which is sufficiently separated from the rest of the continental landmass by mountain chains. Much of the Mediterranean African coast is also guarded by the Sahara desert and the swamps of the upper Nile. At its western end, the inland sea opens into the Atlantic through the Strait of Gibraltar. This relative geographic isolation of the Mediterranean enclave, saved it from major incursions until the last days of the Roman Empire, except for those made by the Persian Empire and its successors, the Parthian and the Sassanian kingdoms.1 The Persian Empire occupied the Near East and Thrace during the 6th century BC and was the first power to introduce the trireme into its Navy during the reign of Kambusis. All major Mediterranean navies adopted the trireme shortly afterwards, because it was the most cost-efficient, speedy and manoueverable type of warship. It could also host a good number of Marines, since it possessed much wider battle deck than any other type of warship at the time. Thus, the trireme also served as the best platform for amphibious operations.2 The extension of Persian rule in Thrace, was not welcome in Athens. An Athenian naval squadron was sent to Asia Minor to assist the Greeks of Ionia in their Revolt (499-493 BC) against the Persians. Darius, the Emperor of Persia, realized that his rule in Ionia could only be secured if he subjugated the Greek mainland. Therefore, he campaigned twice against Greece. The first Persian campaign against the Greek mainland took place in 492 B.C. It was not successful because half of the Persian fleet sunk off Mount Athos in northern Greece due to a summer storm.3 Two years later, in 490 B.C., Darius made his final attempt to subjugate Greece. This time, a modest Persian force crossed the Aegean in order to avoid sailing past the dangerous promontory of Mount Athos. It was soundly defeated in Marathon by the Athenians.4 A decade later (480 B.C.), young Xerxes, the successor to Darius, meticulously organized a third, much larger, Persian campaign against Greece. It was then that the Hellespont, the modern day Dardanelles, was bridged, and a canal was cut at the head of the peninsula of Mount Athos.5 Xerxes was able to march into Greece with a big army without devastating the landscapes through which he passed. To be sure, he could not maintain such a force for more than a few weeks in a land as poor in local food supplies as Greece. So, when a handful of Greek cities in the extreme south refused to submit, Xerxes had to withdraw a substantial part of his invading force, because he could not feed it over the winter.6 1 Starr, C. G., The Influence of Seapower on Ancient History (Oxford University Press: New York & Oxford, 1989), 7. 2 Murray, W., "Ancient Navies: An Overview", Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History, vol. 1, 67 and de Souza, Ph. "Ancient Navies: Greece", Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History, vol. 1, 70. 3 Rodgers, W. L., Greek and Roman Naval Warfare (Naval Institute Press: Annapolis, 1937), 13-14. Reynolds C.G., Command of the Sea. The History and Strategy of Maritime Empires (Morrow: Malabar FL, 1974), 35. Cuyler Young, T. Jr, "The consolidation of the empire and its limits of growth under Darius and Xerxes" in Bordman J. et al. (ed.), The Cambridge Ancient History. Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean, c. 525 to 479 B.C. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2006), 69. 4 Rodgers, op. cit., 15-27. Parker, G., Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1995), 15-16. Simpsas, M., Το Ναυτικό στην Ιστορία των Ελλήνων. Πλοία και Ναυτικά Γεγονότα στον Αρχαίο Κόσμο, (Service for Naval History: Athens, 2006), 182. [The Navy in the history of Hellenism. Ships and naval events in the Ancient World] 5 Rodgers, op. cit., 57. Hammond, N.G.L., "The Expedition of Xerxes" in Boardman, J., et. al. (ed.), Cambridge Ancient History: Persia, Greece, and the Western Mediterranean, c. 525 to 479 B.C. (Cambridge University Press: London, 1988), 526-40. 6 McNeill, W., The Pursuit of Power (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982), 3. 1 The passage of Xerxes' army did not interrupt the flow of tax and rent payments in the regions through which it marched. Quite the contrary: it was the regular flow of such income, concentrated into storage magazines along the army's route of march, that immunized the local populations against destructive exposure to plunder. The mutual benefit of such a system of regulated exactions is obvious. The king and his army secured a surer supply of food and could march farther and arrive at the scene of battle in better condition than if they had stopped to plunder along the way. The peasant populations of Greece, likewise, by handing over a more or less fixed portion of their harvest to tax and rent collectors, escaped sporadic destitution and risk of starvation. However difficult it may have been to make such payments-and the condition of the peasantry in ancient empires can be assumed to have approached the minimum required for biological survival-the superior predictability and regularity of taxes and rents made Xerxes' system preferable [than that of any conquering armies in the past]. 7 Indeed, by this system and shrewd diplomacy, Xerxes secured the alliance or neutrality of most Greek city-states. Unlike his father, he personally led a fleet of 1,200 warships and hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Greece, so as to ensure that his men would fight gallantly there.8 Realising the enormity of this force, Artabanus, Xerxes’ uncle, characteristically noted “So far as I know, there is not a harbour anywhere big enough to receive this fleet of ours and give it protection in the event of storms: and indeed there would have to be not merely one such harbour, but many—all along the coast by which you will sail. But there is not a single one.”9 The absence of large safe havens for the Persian fleet in Greece, resulted in many sinkings of its ships due to summer storms. On the opposite side of the Aegean, Themistocles, an influential Athenian leader whose mother was Thracian, convinced his compatriots to build a fleet of two hundred triremes, after this was made possible by the discovery of silver deposits in the Lavrion district of Attica. This was an unprecedented number of triremes for a small, agricultural city like Athens, and laid the foundations for its gradual transformation to a thalassocracy.10 The naval arms race that started in Greece by Themistocles navy law of 483 provoked similar building programs in the Greek west, and, to some extent, Xerxes’s attack against Greece.11 The Athenian safeguard of the sea would help the Greek League to stem the Persian tide in 480-479 BC. This league included twenty two Greek city-states, chief of which were the important maritime powers of Athens, Megara, Aegina, and Corinth, and the militarily strong Sparta. The great fleets of the Greek West did not join the naval forces of the Greek League because the Greeks of Sicily had to repel a Carthaginian attack then. Moreover, the great fleet of Corfu was unable to round Cape Malea against the Etesian winds to join the Greek fleet at Salamis. The army of the Greek League was small, numbering only 10,000 men in 480 B.C.. It was better armed and trained than the Persian army, and the Greek sailors were as skilled and trained, as the Phoenician crews that constituted the cream of the Persian navy. Unlike the Persian expeditionary force, the armed forces of the Greek League were nationally homogenous. On the other hand, the chain of command of the Persian expeditionary force was centralized and compared favorably with the de-centralised, cumbersome decision- making mechanism of the Greek League. The consequent Greek delays would permit the unhindered withdrawal from Greece of much of the Persian expeditionary force in the aftermath of the Salamis naval battle. Sparta led the Greek League both on land and at sea due to Corinthian and Aeginetan antagonism against Athens. King Alexander of Macedon the First, an ancestor of Alexander the Great, warned his Southern Greek compatriots, not to deploy the army of the Greek League at the Tempi Pass in Northern Greece, because Xerxes knew bypasses to it. Following this, the Greek Army was deployed at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece. Eventually, the Persian Army broke through that Pass, having encircled the Spartan and Thespian contingents who fought heroically there, and fell in battle to the last man. 7 Ibid, 3-4. 8 Straus, B., The Battle of Salamis. The Naval Encounter that saved Greece and Western Civilization (Simon & Schuster: New York, 2004), 78-79. Simpsas, op. cit., 186. 9 Payne, L., The Sea and Civilization. A Maritime History of the World (Penguin, New York, 2015), 97.
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