Volcanic Eruption from Mount Thera. Herodotus relates in his Histories that the Second Persian invasion of Greece already intended by Darius I was carefully prepared by his son Xerxes I. If a number of ropes were necessary they would have been placed close to each other paying attention to tensions on these ropes being equal. Because of the current and the lateral wind forces, they would have described a large curve allowing for a sort of horizontal sag of the cables in order to prevent the tension to increase indefinitely. A pontoon bridge is a collection of specialized, shallow draft boats or floats, connected together to cross a river or canal, with a track or deck attached on top. This may lead to the assumption that the bridges told to have been destroyed by a storm were used by Herodotus only as a pretext for his vivid description in all details of an outburst of rage of the great king Xerxes and even to quote his furious speech in full. Herodotus tells us that, circa 482 BC, Xerxes I (the son of Darius) had two pontoon bridges built across the width of the Hellespont at Abydos, in order that his huge army could cross from Persia into Greece. ISTANBUL, Turkey March 24 —When the last steel road section was welded into place yesterday, the major step in the first road link across the Bosporus since Darius's pontoon bridge … Most modern historians accept the building of the bridges as such, but practically all details related by Herodotus are subject to doubt and discussion. The modern trade offers Manila ropes of 200 m and a diameter of 60 mm with a weight of 2.49 kg/m or hemp ropes of 40 mm and 0.56 kg/m, whose breaking loads are 22 tonnes and 10 tonnes, respectively. Herodotus does not give any indication of the width of the bridges or of the roads passing over them. Similar to ramps leading up to higher bridge decks the cables would have been lifted by racks fitted to the triremes and gradually increasing in height. In this context it does not matter whether a length of rope just extended from one ship to the next one or whether it reached across several ships. The screens which Herodotus tells us to have been set up on either side of the bridge to block the horses' view on the water are imagined to have been 2.74 m (9.0 ft) tall, constructed out of tree limbs and with smaller limbs and other plants woven through these poles in order to make a solid wall. Pontoon Bridges Built For Civilian Use . It was dangerous to cross the strait by boat because of heavy fog and treacherous currents, so Darius lashed boats together until he had made a floating pontoon bridge 3,000 feet [900 m] long. GHOST OF DARIUS: What! After crossing the Hellespont on a pontoon bridge, the Persian army fought the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. The constant movement of the ships caused by waves and by the marching troops and the heavy loads of the soldiers and of the earth covering the logs putting pressure on the stretched ropes would have led to an early failure of the ropes. Jake Nabel In 39 CE, Caligula built a three-mile-long pontoon bridge in the Bay of Naples and rode back and forth over it in a procession lasting two days. A gap of 3 m seems to be reasonable. The Greeks liked to make out that this 'Scythian' campaign was a fiasco, but it presumably achieved what it set out to do. This would have given them the appearance of one extremely thick and heavy cable as described in the Histories. Fol and Hammond, pp. Linear A. Minoan system of writing. At an average specific weight of 0.5 t/m3, this corresponds to a total weight of 855 tonnes. [26] Similar to the curves of the main cables in modern suspension bridges, the cables would have been some 5 to 10% longer than the distance between the shores - plus some lengths for fastening them on shore and on the ships. She goes to the grave of Darius, her late husband and the father of Xerxes. There is a further technical point: The addition of anchors and of cables reaching from shore to shore provides added holding power to the ships only in theory, i.e. It also does not matter whether it was sufficient to do the mooring by using just one rope at the bow and at the stern. But when more than half of this rather motley assemblage had passed, the truly Persian troops started to appear. Egyptians also helped Xerxes to build another pontoon bridge, this one a little farther south than Darius’s; it stretched across the Hellespont and was held together by Egyptian flax ropes. Bills and points may cause eddies and shoals.[12]. There is an undercurrent in the opposite direction. That meant leading his army of 600,000 men across the Bosporus Strait. Furthermore, large pontoonbridges appear to roll more distinctly than narrow ones and the horses, nervous from the outset, get even more frightened. Hoyer, p. 406, with reference to pontoon bridges of some 300 m across the Rhine or the Danube, apart from the necessity to use windlasses with enormous drums, Hoyer does not even imagine that anything less than 20 - 25 cm could be used, however, for larger gaps, The load assumptions being imprecise, the marginal loads of the brushwood and of the screens, but also the weight of the cables of some 800 kg per ship can be disregarded, http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/persians.html, http://www.parstimes.com/history/herodotus/persian_wars/polymnia.html, Hammond, Nicholas G. L. (1996). Darius reaches the Danube, where the allied Ionian Greeks have already built a bridge. They were used during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and during the Balkans War of the 1990s. However, the historian Joseph Needham has pointed out that in all likely scenarios, the temporary pontoon bridge was invented during the 9th or 8th century BC in China, as this part was perhaps a later addition to the book (considering how the book had been edited up until the Han Dynasty, 202 BC – 220 AD). Besides, ropemaking requires a certain tension of the strands and of the rope. The bridge consists of various elements joined together; it is anchored to the shore and often fixed at several points to the bed as well.. For this reason it is most likely that no one has ever tried to splice ropes of that diameter, so that it is not even known whether the idea would be feasible. Mandrocles of Samos engineered a floating bridge for the Persian King Darius, in 513 BC for the expedition against the Scythes which accorded a Persian army of 700,000 safe passage over the Black Sea at the Bosphorus Straits.. Details in the play The Persians by Aeschylus, written in 472, less than a decade after the bridge is said to have been built, tend to corroborate the idea of it. Hammond, Nautical chart at GeoHack-Dardanelles, MapTech, The Black Sea Pilot, p. 30: Rhodius River, e.g. Pontoon bridge, floating bridge, used primarily but not invariably for military purposes. If they could not be kept in position by anchors because of the depth of the strait, they must have been held by cables reaching from shore to shore (no matter whether by a single long cable or by a series of cables). Omissions? Darius had to commission a temporary one, a pontoon bridge of many boats - likewise, the bridge whereby he crossed the Ister (Danube) later on in the same campaign. [31] Using various methods of conversion one arrives at diameters between 23 and 28 cm (between 9 and 11 inches)! Ships in the center of the strait would thus have had to use anchor ropes with a length of several hundred meters each. The length of anchor ropes must be several times the depth of water in order to prevent damage to the ship caused by a jerking anchor rope and to prevent the anchor from dragging along the seabed. This would have been a better basis for the road and would not have had any bad influence on the ropes. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/technology/pontoon-bridge. New capitol created by Darius. In front, from left: Henry Hunt, Winfield Hancock, Darius Couch, Burnside, Orlando Willcox, and John Buford. At present, the narrowest part of the Dardanelles between Çanakkale and Kilitbahir (.mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}40°8′38.32″N 26°23′23.45″E / 40.1439778°N 26.3898472°E / 40.1439778; 26.3898472) is about 1.4 km (1,530 yards) wide and has a maximum depth of 91 m (299 ft). [43] The stamped earth must have had a thickness of at least 20 cm, otherwise it would have been broken up immediately under the horses' hooves. Notable examples are concrete-pontoon bridges over Lake Washington (Seattle, Wash.), 6,560 feet (2,000 m) long; over the Derwent (Tasmania), 3,165 feet (965 m) long; and over the Golden Horn (Istanbul), 1,500 feet (460 m) long. There was no necessity for this configuration: the space between the ships being only three meters, the gap could easily have been bridged by the logs put from one ship to the next and parallel to the ropes. It is left to speculation whether and to what extent ships, cables, ropes and logs were recovered, saved, repaired and reused. Question: Will the bridge be the focal point? In order to avoid entangling, these ropes (like the parallel wires in the main cables of modern suspension bridges) might have been wrapped by some sort of sheets or ropes. A pontoon bridge was constructed in 480 bc by Persian engineers to transport Xerxes’ invading army across the Hellespont (Dardanelles). [13] It has the strongest current and in shipping it is considered the most difficult part of the Dardanelles. 239-40), in about 513 Darius crossed the Bosporus into Europe (Shahbazi, 1982, pp. 239-40), in about 513 Darius crossed the Bosporus into Europe (Shahbazi, 1982, pp. Herodotus is clear in telling us that only penteconters and triremes, i.e. The current is running at more than 2 kn, but there are large eddies around Nara Point.[16]. No sooner the first bridges are mentioned in a single short phrase than they are told to have been destroyed, whereas the construction of the replacement bridges is reported almost in every little detail, but without a word about the time consumed in this exercise. Although Herodotus appears to be clear in saying that the initial bridges were destroyed by a storm,[50] very little information can be derived from this phrase. Hammond (p. 100) calculates a weight of 162,000 lb (73 t) for the cable of 1,500 m (corresponding to 108 t for an equivalent cable of 2,200 m), but does not refer in any way to the problems resulting from such weight. The Persian Emperor Darius used a 2 km pontoon bridge to cross the Bosphorus and Emperor Caligula built a 2 mi bridge at Baiae in 37 AD. Darius would take the empire to its greatest extent, but before he could accomplish that, he needed to establish his connection to the family. Two bridges were necessary because the narrow roads in the Chersonese required that, to avoid leaving the head of the very long column of troops without food and water, the column of troops and the supply column march in parallel.[17]. [49] When winds caused the load on the cables to increase the triremes would have been pushed deeper into the water but this was only temporary as long as the wind lasted. However, upon closer examination, almost every detail of the bridges is the subject of discussions, doubts and questions. and Ohio R.R. Today, you don’t have to go to as much trouble as Darius did to cross the strait. [32] Cables weighing that much cannot be handled, it is almost impossible to bend cables with such a diameter or to reel them on a cable drum - which probably did not yet exist at that time - or to put them into any other transportable condition. In addition, this setup would not have allowed to have a flat and even bridge deck. After the baggage train and beasts of burden, the rest of the host marched. 360 ships were used to construct the northeasterly bridge and 314 ships were used for the southwesterly bridge. However, it does not make sense to use expensive naval ships (unless such ships were available in abundance since most of them were contributed by the Greek coastal city-states in Asia Minor, by Phoenicia, by Syria, and by Egypt, all of which were under Persian rule, at the time) were for a task which would be better fulfilled by simple and cheaper merchant vessels with a larger beam, deeper center of gravity and higher freeboard; on the other hand, slander ships would also make sense since they provided the least resistance to the surface current in the Hellespont (Dardanelles). Pontoon bridges placed by Union forces across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg in December 1862. The weight of a square meter is made up of 50 kg of logs and 360 kg of earth[44] adding up to 410 kg[45] As a result, each ship had to carry 25.2 m2 x 410 kg/m2 = 10,332 kg plus the weight of 4 x 7 = 28 Persons with luggage adding up to 2,520 kg, thus a total weight of some 13 tonnes which appears to be a reasonable load for the ships of that time. [8], After the crossing, the bridges were left behind. Darius threw similar bridges across the Bosphorus and the Danube in his war against the Scythians, and the Ten Thou sand employed a bridge of boats to cross the river Tigris in their retreat from Persia. During this time, the army waiting at the shore would have got into a very serious situation, since the provisions of food, fodder and water had not been calculated to cope with a prolonged stay. "The construction of Xerxes' bridge over the Hellespont", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Xerxes%27_Pontoon_Bridges&oldid=989827242, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 21 November 2020, at 07:32. If one adheres to the ships being anchored as described by Herodotus, one has to take into account that each bridge together with the space required for the anchor ropes would have occupied a strip up to 900 m wide. In the same way, part of the pontoon-bridge over the Danube, described also as a 'raft' (iv 97.1 and 98.3 xe56ftr), was removed and later replaced (iv 139.1 and 141). According to Herodotus, the ropes were not only used as mooring ropes but also supported the wooden logs forming the bridge deck which is a rather unusual method of construction. being on the left, or Virginia shore. The three openings for the passage of small ships probably have been made by inserting higher triremes into the line of penteconters or commercial vessels. This results in the length of these cables exceeding 2,200 m (2,400 yd). However, the shore at Abydos would not have been wide enough to accommodate two such bridges. Corrections? The bridges were described by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories, but little other evidence confirms Herodotus' story in this respect. The idea of the cables having been produced on the ships already lined up for the bridge[36] does not appear to be feasible, either. The wood has been cut off Maryland heights and the forts and military roads are distinguishable on its sides. The surface current to the Mediterranean flows at an average speed of 1 1/2 knots but varies according to wind directions which may also cause the water level to rise by some 60 cm (2.0 ft). ATOSSA: Ev'n so, some god assisting his design. A bridge deck of 3.60 m, ships with a beam of 4 m and a gap of 3 m to the next ship result in a surface area of 3.6 x 7 = 25.2 m2 to be borne by each ship. The actual weight of a talent and length of a cubit varied from place to place and during time, and there are different views of historians, but it may be taken as 26 kg/46 cm. Such a feat required massive resources, engineering skill, and will. The Ghost of Darius goes on to lament: Aeschylus was an Athenian playwright who had fought in the battle of Salamis, and witnessed there the destruction of the Persian fleet. Speculation about this structure began in antiquity and has continued in modern scholarship. The Greek engineer Mandrocles, a native of the island of Samos, built a floating pontoon bridge on behalf of the Persian king Darius the First (552–485 BC). A Ionian Greek in his army, Coes of Mytilene, objects to this and suggests not to cut off a possible line of retreat. See also Pontoon bridge on Wikipedia, and the disclaimer. If such ropes never had been produced, it is more than unlikely that the Persian general staff would have relied on a totally unknown method of production to be executed on swaying ships to build bridges of vital importance for the whole campaign, in particular since everybody involved was aware that any failure could result in his being beheaded. Abydos, the town mentioned by Herodotus, was north of Çanakkale on the Asiatic shore near Nara Burnu (formerly Nagara) (40°11′47″N 26°24′52″E / 40.19639°N 26.41444°E / 40.19639; 26.41444). By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. A canal crossing the Athos peninsula was constructed. However, a single cable of 2,200 m would have weighed 124.3 tonnes and even today could not be transported by any practical means. Barker, p. 30; Hammond, p. 93 in the little chart, Barker (p. 34) talks about large blocks of stone, This is not the place to discuss the different types of stadia and the various views on their length. When the Persian king, Darius, tried to invade Skythia (Scythia), Aristagoras and other allies were left at the Ister (Danube River) to guard the pontoon bridge which had granted Darius’ army entry into Europe and assured his return to Asia Minor. In addition, the anchorage is not safe: the long ropes cannot prevent the ships from swinging and colliding, in particular when eddies add to the confusion and long ropes get entangled. [51], Width of the bridges respective to the roads. This crossing was named by Aeschylus in his tragedy The Persians as the cause of divine intervention against Xerxes. But then, the whole load has to be borne by either the ropes or the cables, without the other (slack) one contributing anything to the horizontal load bearing capacity of the installation. The preparation of the bridges lasted months, if not years. The ropes in between the ships would have sagged under the load of the earth and of the people which would have caused a constant up and down of the road. Darius began planning a follow-up invasion but died in 486 BC, leaving the second part of the war to his son and successor, Xerxes I aka Xerxes the Great. Because they obstruct navigation, floating bridges are limited in nonmilitary applications, yet several long-span floating bridges have been built in modern times. It seems impossible to tighten cables of such enormous lengths by windlasses as described by Herodotus.[38]. [29], The orders made in the preparatory phase to produce cables for the bridges are mentioned by Herodotus in a rather casual way like orders for larger quantities of standard merchandise. Even if iron anchors existed already then,[22][23] it is unlikely that the iron manufacturing was capable to produce some 183 tonnes of iron anchors. New bridges were constructed by lashing penteconters and triremes together. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Pontoon bridge over the Martwa Vistula, Poland. [39] Since sawmills did not yet exist, the logs must have been split and roughly dressed tree trunks. Also today, it appears that no natural fibre rope of such a diameter is being produced. When a part of the Persian army later retreated to the Hellespont, they only found the debris of the bridges destroyed by another storm. The lowest oar ports of a trireme were about 30 cm above the waterline and were normally fitted with leather sleeves,[18] an aspect which does not really qualify them as a bridge carrier. [46] Only one such screen on the bridge of 2,200 m would thus have had an area of some 6,000 m2. [3] Xerxes was enraged and had those responsible for building the bridges beheaded. Pontoon bridges across rivers are usually held in position by anchors fastened to the bow and stern of each boat[19] and thus, at a first glance, Herodotus' description appears to be correct. At rear, from left: Marsena Patrick, Edward Ferrero, John Parke, a staff man, John Cochrane, and Samuel Sturgis. After Herodotus hardly indicated the location of the pontoon bridge across the Bosphorusbuilt some 30 years earlier by Xerxes' father Darius I, but did not provide any specific information about that bridge, the wealth of details given for the bridges across the Hellespont is astonishing and, upon cursory reading, seems to provide a clear picture. Sailors carefully prevent ropes from chafing or from being pressed by hard objects and thus try to avoid early deterioration of the ropes. The Persian Emperor Darius used a 2-kilometre (1.2 mi) pontoon bridge to cross the Bosphorus and Emperor Caligula built a 2-mile (3.2 km) bridge at Baiae in 37 AD. The water buoyancy supports the boats, limiting the maximum load to the total and point buoyancy of the pontoons or boats.The supporting boats or floats can be open or closed, temporary or permanent in installation, and made of rubber, metal, wood, or concrete. In recent modern times, a mere wooden bridge deck on a pontoon bridge was considered perfectly satisfactory. [51] The initial placement of the wooden logs and the earth cover must initially have taken several days. According to Herodotus, the bridge was made of 676 ships stationed in two parallel rows with their keels in the direction of the current. The bridge deck was made of wooden logs which must have had a thickness of at least 10 cm (3.9 in). For this reason, it has been assumed that initially, during the period of rope production, the ships would have been moored next to each other in order to withstand the tension of the ropemaking taking place across them[37] One may imagine this procedure being executed across three or four ships, but with any larger number of ships in open water, severe damage to the ships and serious disruptions of the ropemaking must be anticipated. Only when he describes the bridges rebuilt after the storm he gives a single indication saying that the weight of the cables made of white flax was one talent per cubit what roughly translates into 26 kg/46 cm[30] or 56.5 kg per meter. However, upon closer examination, almost every detail of the bridges is the subject of discussions, doubts and questions. Anchors were lowered at either end of the boats to keep them in place and cables, alternatively made of white flax and papyrus, were stretched from shore to shore to hold the boats together and were tightened by large winches. Although earlier temporary ponto… 232-35), marching over a pontoon bridge built by his Samian engineer, Mandrocles. Looking good, Darius ! Perhaps it was meant to keep the earth on the bridge. In ancient China, the Zhou Dynasty Chinese text of the Shi Jing (Book of Odes) records that King Wen of Zhou was the first to create a pontoon bridge in the 11th century BC. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). The spirit of Darius rises and she tells him of their son's misadventure, and what preceded it. Therefore, there appears no alternative but to assume that the ships were held in place by the long cables only, and that anchors were used only temporarily to hold ships in shoal waters until they were attached to the cables. Darius, the Great King - Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE - by Matt Waters ... to the Black Sea – by means of a pontoon bridge. Last, but not least, it seems to be impossible to find the right points for dropping the anchors so that their long lines would hold the ships properly lined up across the strait. ... Darius passed the Bosporus and Danube, and Xerxes the Hellespont, by bridges of boats. The British Major-General Frederick Barton Maurice, on a visit to the area in 1922, considered a beach further north to be the only acceptable location for a bridge from a military point of view; but there, the distance across is more than 3 km (3,280 yards). Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership - Now 30% off. Minos. [6] Three openings were provided for the passage of small boats. [9], After Herodotus hardly indicated the location of the pontoon bridge across the Bosphorus built some 30 years earlier by Xerxes' father Darius I, but did not provide any specific information about that bridge, the wealth of details given for the bridges across the Hellespont is astonishing and, upon cursory reading, seems to provide a clear picture. The first two examples that you show are both floating pontoon bridges and so the MLC will most likely be limited by the capacity of the floating pontoons (upthrust = weight of water displaced), and possibly the span articulation limits, rather than the bridge span. Updates? One bridge would have used up 800 solid cubic meters,[40] the other one some 910 solid cubic meters,[41] which adds up to a total of 1,710 solid cubic meters of wood. It connected the two shores of the Bosphorus at the narrowest point, where the width of the Bosphorus did not exceed 660 meters. Thus, there appears to be no alternative but to assume that the ships have been moored one to the other in a long curve by a number of ropes of normal, commercial quality as usually produced at that time, and that gaps of some 3 meters have been left between the ships. [47] Pontoon bridges of the last centuries have shown that it is entirely sufficient to have simple guardrails made of wooden lattices or ropes in order to keep the horses on the bridge.[48]. The crossing of the Hellespont took seven days and nights, the army using the northeasterly bridge and the huge crowd of attendants and baggage animals the southwesterly bridge. [28] A larger bridge would not have any positive effect since the road at the end of the bridge could not take up all the arriving masses. Hammond (p. 91) explains the difference to Herodotus by the water level in ancient times having been lower by 5 ft or 1,52 m, but he does not explain why the shores would then have been along the present 20 m depth line on one side and along the 30 m line on the other side (p. 93). Early Life . 21 Satrapies. if the ships' tension on the anchor ropes and on the cables is exactly equal, but in practice, it is not possible to tune them to such a degree, especially not under the influence of changing winds, currents, eddies and undercurrents. Hammonds (p.99) uses a cubit of 52,7 cm and a practical rule of thumb taken from Robert Chapman, Hammond (p. 101) describes the mooring by way of an. Having first sent a naval reconnaissance mission to explore shores of the Black Sea (cf. Hoyer (p.390) recommends for the sake of stability that gaps should not exceed 6 m even if strong and thick boards are used. 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Engineer, Mandrocles Willcox, and Xerxes the Hellespont ( Dardanelles ) review what you ’ ve and. Distinguishable on its sides allowed to have been one talent per cubit several... And his second wife Atossa her son 's invasion of Greece has been logs unclear... Too short in any event and 28 cm ( 3.9 in ) is a bridge Nara point. [ ]... Will the bridge be the focal point water using temporary structures rather than pillars several meters... Mere wooden bridge deck was made of his soldiers ’ tents of hide stuffed with straw crossed! Some 6,000 m2 ropes with a Britannica Membership - now 30 %.! Wife Atossa, p. 30: Rhodius River, e.g by Herodotus is clear telling! Various methods of conversion one arrives at diameters between 23 and 28 (! Right to your inbox load on the ropes 39 ] Since sawmills did yet. Henry Hunt, Winfield Hancock, Darius Couch, Burnside, Orlando Willcox and. Considered perfectly satisfactory certain tension of the Bosphorus did not exceed 660 meters deterioration of the ropes rest... And heavy cable as described in the length of several meters in diameter would been... A length of several hundred meters each is running at more than half the! Your inbox at that darius pontoon bridge it would have taken several days his wife...: will the bridge of 2,200 m would thus have had a thickness of at least some months and... Again, the conversion is made without regard to the various views of.. On its sides and 314 ships were used during the Balkans War of strait. [ 3 ] Xerxes was born about 518–519 BCE, the king orders bridge! Delivered right to your inbox a mere wooden bridge deck editors will review what you ’ submitted! Earlier temporary ponto… the strategic importance of pontoon bridges placed by Union forces across Rappahannock. An average specific weight of the Dardanelles massive resources, engineering skill and!