Book Notices | Building the Trireme by Frank Welsh

Frank Welsh, Building the Trireme

Amazon   I read this one for my current project, but, unusually, I really did read it cover to cover. Welsh was one of the three men who came up with the idea, in the early 1980s, of building a reconstruction of an ancient Athenian trireme. The others were ancient historian John Morrison and John Coates, a naval architect. Coates designed a ship based on Morrison's ideas, and the trireme was built by the Greek navy and launched in 1987. A series of trials at sea followed during which the capabilities of the vessel were tested. Welsh tells the background story of all this. A more technical summary of the goings on is published by Morrison, Coates, and Boris Rankov as The Athenian Trireme.