Chapter XII #3
It was a great day later that first summer when we opened the locks and allowed seawater to surge between the concrete walls of our freshly dug canal.
With Caesar’s permission, I named the new harbour Portus Julius in his honour.
Its northern shore we set aside for shipyards.
We built slipways and dry docks and began to bring in timber felled from the surrounding pine forests to lay the keels of our new fleet.
I had consulted experts and given much thought to the type of ships we ought to build.
Sextus relied upon small, fast, manoeuvrable sixty-oared liburnians, ideal for raiding.
I decided to create instead a fleet consisting mainly of triremes – one third larger, heavier – which would require twice as many rowers but could carry twice as many soldiers.
If we managed to bring Sextus’s warships within boarding range, we could overwhelm them by force of numbers.
To do this, I made certain modifications to the traditional trireme design, adding a movable gangplank that could be lowered over either side with a metal point that could jam into the enemy’s hull, and a collapsible tower that could be erected once we were within range.
Upon this would be fixed a catapult that fired an iron claw called a harpax, attached by a chain to a windlass.
Using this device, we could grab the enemy’s vessels and haul them alongside, allowing our soldiers to swarm aboard them across the gangplank.
I now needed sailors and oarsmen, and soldiers who could serve as marines.
As the harbour complex neared completion, I began to transfer hundreds of workers each week to train for these new occupations.
Ten thousand veterans eventually signed on to become marines and sailors, and in return for their freedom, some twenty thousand slaves agreed to man the oars.
I set up tiers of practice benches on land for them to learn the techniques of rowing and to strengthen their muscles.
Eighteen months after work began, I was able to inform Caesar that he had a new naval base and a whole new navy.
Caesar sailed down the coast from Ostia at the end of June, in command of the remnants of the old fleet, which was still a sizeable force of more than fifty warships. He anchored off the entrance to the Portus Julius, and I was rowed out to meet him.
During construction, I had gone back several times to Rome to brief him on progress and discuss the plan to invade Sicily.
It was to be a joint operation by the three triumvirs.
Lepidus would cross from Africa with twelve legions and land on the westernmost tip of the island.
Antony would not take part in person – he had his hands full with his duties in Greece – but he had sent a force of two legions aboard one hundred ships under the command of Statilius Taurus, which would attack Sicily from the east. Caesar and I would sail from the Bay of Naples and engage Sextus’s main fleet north of the island as soon as it put to sea.
All three expeditions were to begin moving into position on the first day of July.
I spent the eve of our departure with Caesar aboard his flagship. He was tense, as so often before a battle, constantly searching the night sky for meteor showers and other omens and consulting the fortune-tellers who travelled with him.
At dawn the next morning, we sailed into the harbour, past the great ochre-coloured moles and pillars, and into the basin for the ceremony of purification.
It was an unforgettable sight – the sacrificial fires burning brightly all around the quays in the day’s early light, the priests in their robes standing at the water’s edge, the crews silently lining the decks of the warships.
After the animals had been sacrificed and their entrails inspected, half the offerings were burned with incense on the altars and the remainder were rowed three times around the fleet, in a procession led by Caesar, before being solemnly tipped into the sea with libations of wine and prayers to gentle winds, Saviour Neptune and a calm sea.
An hour later, the oars dipped, and the first triremes began to move out into the Bay of Naples.
The gods do as they please. They heard our prayers and did the opposite. Such is their perversity.
We had made good progress and were within sixty miles of Sicily when on the third day of our voyage, the sky darkened and a gale began to blow.
Caesar quickly succumbed to his usual seasickness and retired to his cabin.
The fleet moved closer to the shore in hope of finding shelter and dropped anchor.
But the currents were too strong. The anchors dragged on the seabed, and despite the frantic efforts of our oarsmen to hold their positions, as the storm worsened our ships collided with one another and smashed against the rocks.
Darkness fell and we passed a wretched night, drenched with rain and thrown about by the waves.
It was the worst summer storm anyone could remember.
At first light, I went up on deck, to be met by an awful vision.
Seventy of our ships, including some of our newest, had been sunk.
Many others were damaged and lying low in the heaving grey sea as their crews struggled to save them.
Never can a man have been more eager to set foot on dry land than Gaius Caesar!
As soon as the storm abated, he announced his intention of going to Vibo, the nearest town, to demonstrate to the citizens that he was still alive.
I went with him, and while he held meetings with the elders and wrote dispatches to Lepidus and Antony reporting the disaster, I arranged for supplies of local timber to be brought to the shore to repair our damaged ships.
Caesar was reluctant to put to sea again. He even spoke of abandoning the operation altogether until the following year. I argued that we should press on. We had been unlucky, I said, not defeated.
Meanwhile, Sextus, hearing of our losses, had dispatched one of his commanders, Menas, with a small fleet of seven liburnians to reconnoitre our position and inflict such damage as he could.
But unknown to Sextus, Menas had a grudge against his chief for failing to recognise his talents and promote him as he thought he deserved.
After some token skirmishing, he sent word to Caesar that he would like to meet him.
We both remembered Menas very well – the treacherous captain of Sextus’s flagship, who had suggested cutting all our throats at dinner. He proposed a secret rendezvous on a tiny island in the Bay of Vibo. We feared a trap, but curiosity overcame us, although we made sure to take a bodyguard.
Menas came alone. He kneeled before Caesar and begged his pardon.
As proof of his sincerity, he offered us the latest intelligence.
Despite heavy losses in the storm, he said, Lepidus had managed to land ten of his twelve legions on Sicily.
Statilius Taurus was in the toe of Italy, preparing to invade with another three. Sextus was hard pressed and anxious.
Hearing this, Caesar recovered his nerve, and as soon as our fleet was seaworthy, our expedition resumed.
We sailed first to Stromboli, a smouldering black rock rising sheer out of the calm blue Mediterranean.
Its summit belched puffs of smoke as we drew closer, and that night, brilliant sheets of red and yellow flame shot from its summit, illuminating our ships with a hellish glare.
The augurs declared that it showed the god of war was with us.
Privately, I thought they might equally have deduced the opposite.
Here, Caesar and I parted company. Our plan was for him to head south-east with a small escort to join Taurus’s forces preparing to cross to Sicily, while I went south-west in search of the enemy’s fleet. My task was simple: to gain control of the sea.
We said goodbye on the middle deck. Neither of us was sure when or if we would see one another again.
I scoured the length of Sicily in the hope of seeking battle.
First I seized the island of Hiera, just off the western tip, without opposition from the garrison.
Then we turned and sailed for several days, hugging the northern coast, until at last we found Sextus’s fleet at the opposite end of the island, in the port of Mylae, close to where Caesar was intending to land.
I drew up our ships and blocked the entrance.
They had little choice except to come out and fight, which they did early the next morning, under the command of Sextus’s deputy, Papias. Sextus himself, I discovered later, was watching from a nearby promontory, using a mirror to flash signals to his fleet.
Papias had much more experience of naval action than I had. His crews were better sailors. His ships were faster and nimbler. But we had stronger vessels and carried more soldiers.
They came at us at full speed, head-on, confident and undefeated – one hundred and fifty liburnians under full sail, trumpets blaring, hammers beating time, oars flashing in the brilliant sunshine, spray rising from their prows.
They passed between us, close enough to slice off some banks of our oars, raking our decks with arrows, and then we put into effect the tactics we had spent so long practising: firing our grappling irons from our high towers, locking onto their hulls, dragging them to a halt and then winching them in for the kill.
Marines crowded our decks. The gangplanks dropped with a thud.