The Greek navy has a commissioned full-scale replica of an ancient trireme, the super-sleek ancient warship with three banks of oars, named Olympia, which was build in the late 1980s. At its peak, the Athenian navy had over 200 of these ships, which were instrumental in the defeat of Xerxes’ invasion force around 480 BC.
Here are a few resources, if you’re interested:
➧ A broad overview from The Vintage News
➧ History and photos from the Greek navy
➧ Olympias on Wikipedia
➧ General history of the trireme on Wikipedia
Sea Trials of the Trireme Olympias (1990)
A little slow getting started, but pretty fascinating overall!
Protecting Tomorrow - The Athenian Trireme ‘Olympias’
A short promo video for the company who made the antifouling paint used below the waterline (in case you need any of that), but features some hi-def video shots of the ship in action.)
Armies and Tactics: Ancient Greek Navies
Here if you’d like a little bit of general history. 😁
Fun Fact:
In 1985, I bought my first insanely complicated table-top war game, AvalonHill’s Trireme: Tactical Game of Ancient Naval Warfare 494 BC—370 AD (none of your lame 450s-era warships here, thank you) after doing a report about triremes for school. I punched out all the pieces, fooled with the maps, and pored over the rulebook, but alas, it was never played, and is now somehow lost (forever?).
It was soon replaced by Avalon Hill’s Titan, which was played multiple times (sometimes in epic 8-hour sessions) and remains on my shelf to this day. (But doesn’t get played…)
