This question is more for Game of Thrones fans. (No Spoilers) Last Sunday's episode featured a visually stunning scene where there were dozens (hundreds?) of ships launching flaming shot into a costal city that was being bombarded. Each ship had a trebuchet on the front deck that was launching a flaming load hundreds of yards into the city center. However, from a practical perspective this strategy seems like.....a remarkably terrible idea - taking a bundled load, dipping it in pitch/tar/unrefined oil, igniting it, slinging it from a wooden trebuchet on the deck of a wooden boat would most likely be a disaster. It just seems like an elaborate way of burning your own fleet to ash. My question is this: is there a real life historical context for this? Was this a real Greek/Roman/[somebody else] strategy in actual naval history? I do recall this being an effective strategy on land, but I've never heard of a naval application. If, yes, there were flaming naval trebuchets, how did they work, how did they control accidental fires and how effective was it given how dangerous it was for the attackers? Thanks!