A little piece of military history. Signed by some of the lecturers, including Paul Kennedy and Donald Kagan. Pretty interesting!

Already spotting ancient warships in Yale’s architecture! This one is at the entrance to Sterling Memorial Library. Phoenician ship inspired? Straight from the Kouyunjik relief?

A fragmentary stele depicting an ancient warship with a three-bladed waterline ram at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, # 1987.297. Nice to finally see this one in person!

Hiding!

Four years ago today! Nearly 100°F, not a cloud in the sky, and I spent the day searching all over Ostia for this stone ram. Of course, it turned out to be tucked away in a back corner. This was during the AAR Classical Summer School, and it was definitely worth the hunt.

Proof day! 🏺⚔️🌊 Just received the proofs for my upcoming chapter on Odysseus and the Sirens. It explores how ancient artists adapted the myth to reflect the naval warfare of their time, helping us understand the development of bronze warship rams. Almost perfect timing for Nolan’s The Odyssey!

Yay! Just accepted in IJNA! ⚔️ 🌊 I argue that Murray (2001/2002) was right that the ram is small and likely belongs to a trireme, but that its design is better understood through the Cimmerian Bosporus rather than the Ptolemaic or wider Mediterranean world.

When the ROV hit the bottom and the cameras came on, there it was… a new ram. E27. That moment where instinct, a lot of luck, and a whole team’s effort all collide is hard to beat. I’ll never forget that moment!

What’s your favorite day in the field doing archaeology? Mine goes back to the Egadi Islands survey work for RPM Nautical. It was my first time out there and planning/picking the underwater targets for the day. I went with this small shadow on the sonar, well away from the main cluster of rams.

Second: House of the Dragon shows an odd three-pronged ram style prow, more like later Byzantine inspired ship design. Ramming does happen, but too much damage for that type of ram. 3/10.

This week in naval rams in popular culture! First: Rick and Morty goes with a kind of three-bladed waterline ram on a single level galley, reads Egyptian/Levant inspired in overall shape and iconography, but pushed hard into sci-fi exaggeration. No ramming though! 6/10.

The largest bronze fragment recovered near the rostral wall of the Actian Victory Monument. Among the few surviving relics of the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), it may have originated from one of the massive warships that served in the fleets of Antony and Cleopatra.

Originally published online in December 2025, this article is now available in print in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. For fellow enthusiasts of naval rams 🌊 🐏

I really wonder what the ram cakes looked like….semi-related cake a colleague made for me a few years ago!

In the Histories, we encounter both a “boar” or "boar's head" prow (Hdt. 3.59) and the more standard embolos (ram, generally), which may have been either chisel-shaped or three-bladed, perhaps even preserving earlier ram forms (e.g., Hdt. 1.166).

The other ram designs you said likely persisted in smaller numbers and probably preceded the main 3-bladed type. I think only Hdt. mentions two types (boar’s head and a generic embolos), and Appian hints at variation within the three-bladed form. Here is a rough timeline that still needs work.

For the Pelop. War, I think we have 3-bladed rams & what I call chisel rams—rams without fins but with a vertical post, like the head of a chisel (picture). Similar to the Siren vase or the drawing of the front of the Lenormant relief & other iconography. I have a chapter coming out on this idea.

Forthcoming chapter by W.M. Murray either this year or next explains why he found his initial trireme theory to be incorrect. This is hinted at in Murray and DeCasien 2025 n.1. We (Murray and I) are working on a reclassification of the collective ram evidence.

Just as an example of that scale, compare a relatively small ram from the Egadi Islands (241 BCE), likely from a trireme, to the massive “10-class” ram from Actium (31 BCE). The difference is staggering and really drives home what Octavian’s fleet was up against. (even if his fleet was mostly "5"s).

You have to give serious credit to Octavian and Marcus Agrippa’s naval forces at the Battle of Actium for not panicking when they saw the size and scale of the ships Mark Antony and Cleopatra brought. Visit the Actian Victory Monument and you understand it immediately.

forgot the pic!!!

I love the Olympias trireme, but it still bothers me that they used the Athlit ram design. Even the publication admits the mismatch. Still, it was an ambitious experimental project and some compromises were inevitable. Maybe time for a quinquereme build next with an Egadi ram?

Got a chance between teaching classes to explore the historic shipyard where China’s first aircraft carrier (the Liaoning) was commissioned. The story behind it is honestly wild. This place once produced a significant number of Chinese naval vessels (also the Shandong aircraft carrier).

Warships with rams are everywhere in antiquity! Here’s another one I didn’t include in my article on naval ram portrayals (DeCasien, 2025). A small bone "appliqué", mentioned by Casanovas et al. (2021), shows a warship prow with a ram, likely part of a Punic decorative lectus.

Thanks to the Anthropuzzled podcast for having me on to talk about nautical archaeology! Episode comes out in July!

The evidence shows the intense, devastating nature of naval warfare. By this stage of the First Punic War it was a ‘swan song’ for both sides, and they truly slugged it out. We see rams split in half, bent fins, and wood still lodged between the fins.

The finds include coins, sword concretions, amphorae, and other ship-related remains. Most striking of all are the 27 bronze naval rams that once armed the warships engaged in the final battle of the First Punic War.

According to the ancient historian Eutropius (Brev. 2.27), today marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Egadi Islands, fought on March 10, 241 BCE. I have the privilege of working on the battle site itself, where excavations have recovered a remarkable range of material!

Whoever made this graphic hates ancient warships….

I have the proofs in hand to review, but unfortunately the release isn’t scheduled until 2027! Slowly but surely getting all my ram ideas onto paper and out into the world. Honestly, I’ll take any excuse to talk about ancient naval warfare.