So I'm not sure if I should be separating this into separate threads but I have a few questions on naval warfare in the first Punic war that I was wondering if anyone could give me some insight into.
Whom primarily crewed the Carthaginan fleets? The wikipedia artical says that it was primarily Carthaginan citizens unlike their army, is this true? Were people like Libyo-Phoenicians represented in any significant numbers?
I understand that the Roman preference for boarding actions was because they couldn't compete with the Carthaginians in other forms of naval warfare but what was the primary weapon in the Carthaginian arsenal? Ranged weapons or ramming? And if the former what was that, bows, slings, javelins, larger mechanical crossbows and small siege weapons? Were they aiming to kill the crew or did they often try to set ships alight?
How probably is the story that the Roman's designed their fleet based on a Carthaginian ship that was grounded in a storm?
How significant was Corvus for the Romans? I was given to believe it gave the Romans a significant edge when it came to achieve a successful boarding actions and thus narrowed the gap between the qualities of their fleets but I talked to someone the other day who say its significance was significantly exaggerated and that the heavy bridge left Roman ship over balanced and was largely abandoned as a result.
If you can answer any of these questions you help would be appreciated.
Like many things of the period, there are very few reliable sources to go on. For the Punic wars we mostly have Polybius, who wasn't contemporary, but was less not-contemporary than the others. The other source is usually Livy, and a lot of his history is significantly more fanciful. I'm going to be quoting a lot of Polybius here.
As to the demographics of Carthage, I don't have a decent source for that. It makes a lot of sense that the crews would have been made up of the same people as their significant merchant navy, which would suggest citizenry.
The first, and possibly most fundamental problem is that we still don't know what a Quinquereme (a "five") looks like. Since this was the most common vessel on both sides of the 1st Punic war, this is a major issue. The debate is usually whether the term means that there were five banks of oars (a Trireme has three), or whether there were five rowers per oar. Since there were ever-increasing numbers designating these ships, going up to "a fourty", it seems impossible that these could be just banks of oars.
Galley warfare (which lasted up to the renaissance) is significantly different to naval warfare in other periods. Oars as a primary motive power (often with sails as a backup) fundamentally changes how the ships move and affect each other. Sailing backwards is possible, as well as staying more-or-less stationary or turning on the spot.
This means that galley warfare looks an awful lot more like linear land battles than you might expect. Multiple lines of ships and defined "flanks" are common. Ramming and boarding were the major weapons, with ranged combat being secondary. Usually ranged combat was handheld missile fire, bows and slings and was trying to reduce the enemy crew, but in later periods there were advances to include more siege-like weaponry and incendiary ammunition. With the focus being on ramming and boarding, there was a tendency for battles to end up clustered together, intentionally or otherwise.
As a snapshot of this, from Polybius we have: (this a single ship vs single ship, an account of breaking a cease-fire in the second punic war)
When they came up to the Roman quinquereme they could not ram her as she avoided the strokes, nor could they board her as her crew made a gallant resistance. 13 But running alongside of her and circling round her they kept on shooting the men on board and killing a number of them, until the Romans, seeing that the men from their own camp who were foraging on the coast were running down to the beach to assist them, managed to run their ship ashore. 15 Most of the men on board had been killed in the action, but the ambassadors, wonderful to say, escaped.
"Avoiding the strokes" implies an impressive level of control here, as does circling the Roman ship. It also suggests at least one boarding action, which was repulsed. Being able to ground their own ship to meet the ground situation implies that this is happening within sight of the shore.
In terms of copying the ship design, that's from Polybius:
When they first undertook to send their forces across to Messene not only had they not any decked ships, but no long warships at all, not even a single boat, 14 and borrowing fifty-oared boats and triremes from the Tarentines and Locrians, and also from the people of Elea and Naples they took their troops across in these at great hazard. 15 On this occasion the Carthaginians put to sea to attack them as they were crossing the straits, and one of their decked ships advanced too far in its eagerness to overtake them and running aground fell into the hands of the Romans. This ship they now used as a model, and built their whole fleet on its pattern; 16 so that it is evident that if this had not occurred they would have been entirely prevented from carrying out their design by lack of practical knowledge.
Is it plausible? Possibly. It's certainly the first recorded naval endeavour of the Romans, and the Carthaginians would have been the preeminent naval power in the Med., so it doesn't seem unlikely that this was copied one way or another.
The mention of the Corvus is also from Polybius.
After this the Romans approached to coast of Sicily and learning of the disaster that had befallen Gnaeus, at once communicated with Gaius Duilius, the commander of the land forces, and awaited his arrival. 2 At the same time, hearing that the enemy's fleet was not far distant, they began to get ready for sea-battle. 3 As their ships were ill-built and slow in their movements, someone suggested to them as a help in fighting the engines which afterwards came to be called "ravens". 4 They were constructed as follows: On the prow stood a round pole •four fathoms in height and three palms in diameter. 5 This pole had a pulley at the summit and round it was put a gangway made of cross planks attached by nails, •four feet in width and six fathoms in length. 6 In this gangway was an oblong hole, and it went round the pole at a distance of •two fathoms from its near end. The gangway also had a railing on each of its long sides as high as a man's knee. 7 At its extremity was fastened an iron object like a pestle pointed at one end and with a ring at the other end, so that the whole looked like the machine for pounding corn. 8 To this ring was attached a rope with which, when the ship charged an enemy, they raised the ravens by means of the pulley on the pole and let them down on the enemy's deck, sometimes from the prow and sometimes bringing them round when the ships collided broadsides. 9 Once the ravens were fixed in the planks of the enemy's deck and grappled the ships together, if they were broadside on, they boarded from all directions but if they charged with the prow, they attacked by passing over the gangway of the raven itself two abreast. 10 The leading pair protected the front by holding up their shields, and those who followed secured the two flanks by resting the rims of their shields on the top of the railing. 11 Having, then, adopted this device, they awaited an opportunity for going into action.
There's a lot of debate as to how plausible this is. Grappling hooks and grappling poles were an older invention, and this would have either been 24 feet or 36 feet long, probably, and wide enough to walk over. There's debate as to the stability of this device as well. It seems to have been abandoned after the first punic war, so it can't have been all that great. At at guess, I'd suggest that it was a fairly crude. long device that made grappling easier, so could wipe out the quality advantage in crews that the Carthaginians presumably must have had. Galley warfare descends into chaos without too much help, so I can see why having something that can force this situation faster could be an advantage.