The Classis Britannica and the Northern Battle Zone was the subject for Dr. Colin Martin, who put forward an argument for the aggressive use of the Classis Britannica by Agricola during his push towards Scotland and then the continued use of the navy to maintain and support the army's conquest of the northern territories. Dr Martin maintained that the navy constructed and defended advanced supply bases from Dundee to the Moray Firth thereby enabling the Roman army to march carrying less food and equipment and thus, with smaller baggage trains, to remain less restricted tactically. He calculated that a fleet of twenty-four liburnae (60 man patrol-craft), each carrying around five tons of cargo, could keep about 1,400 men supplied daily. The great northern supply facility of South Shields had the capacity to hold three months' supply of grain for 40,000 men and on the River Tay the navy built a supply base which acted as a camp for 3,000 men of Legio II Avgvsta. Concluding, Dr Martin suggested that no place in Scotland was more than 40 miles from the sea or a major river and that the Roman Army used this fact to require the navy to control the 'searoads' and water-ways of the north, in the same way that the Vikings did centuries later.
Gustav Milne spoke on The Classis Britannica & the Provincial Procurator's Office. The approach in this paper was not a military one but an exploration of the unique relationship between the Provincial Procurator's office and the top position in the British fleet - the naval Praefectus. He argued that, when the Romans first arrived, the province of Britannia was so backward - and thus un-productive - that serious thought had to be given to organizing the initial infrastructure of southern Britain. The army required fortified camps and inter-connecting roads, which they duly proceeded to build. The civil administration, however, needed the structures of power, government and commerce, none of which existed. The solution adopted by the Romans, Gustav Milne proposed, was to make the naval Prefect and Provincial Procurator one and the same, thus giving the Governor a coherent 'haulage and construction company', with the capability to swiftly create 'Rome' in Britain. This argument was backed up with a couple of logical points - that the navy became the State's mining corporation and that the wall of Londinium, when eventually built, contained 45,000 tons of Kentish Ragstone, all of which must have been quarried and shipped by a contractor with massive resources - and that contractor was the navy. There was no evidence at present for any small, medium or large scale native British merchant fleet and this was further evidence supporting the argument that the navy must have been the prime instrument for the initial building phase of Roman Britain - and the reason why the offices of Procurator and Prefect of the Navy were combined.
Mark Hassall's subject was Epigraphy and the Roman Navy based on his research into the grave stelae of Roman naval personnel, particularly in Britain. He had been able to establish , for example, that the Praefectus of the Classis Britannica - the Commander-in-Chief - was one of the Centenarii, that is those earning100,000 sesterces a year. He confirmed what Chester Starr had written sixty years ago - that there were 'sailing officers' and 'fighting officers' on board Roman warships. The sailing officers were the Trierarchus (ship's captain) and the Gubernator (coxswain/navigator/ helmsman). The fighting officers were the Centurio (marine commander) and his Optio. Other ship's personnel included remiges (rowers), velarii (responsible for rigging and sails), milites (marines), medici (medics) and haruspices (priests/augurs/soothsayers). Mark Hassall stated that there was still no evidence one-way or the other as to whether the milites, velarii and the remiges were interchangeable duties, but logic suggested that they were, since all nautae (sailors) were also milites (marines).
To the left is a Roman barge being towed by bargemen. The individual tow ropes can be distinguished as can the (walking) sticks which were used. There are references to bargemen typically chanting to keep rhythm during the laborious work. (Relief courtesy of the Musée Calvet, Avignon.)
