While Leonidas was guarding Thermopylæ, the Grecian fleet took its station nearly opposite to him at Artemisium and the coast of Eubœa. The Euripus, the narrow channel extending between that island and the continent, was well calculated for defence by an inferior force; and as the voyage along the seaward side of the island was considered difficult and dangerous in the imperfection of ancient navigation, a reasonable hope was entertained that the progress of the invader might be stopped both by land and sea. His fleet originally consisted of 1208 galleys of war, besides transports and smaller vessels, and had been reinforced by 120 ships from the Thracian Greeks; but this vast armament was considerably reduced on the coast of Thessaly, by a storm, in which, according to the lowest report, not less than four hundred galleys were destroyed. Numerically, the Grecian fleet was little calculated to engage such an enemy, for it reckoned but 271 trireme galleys, with a few of the smaller vessels called penteconters. “The penteconter, the vessel of Homer’s age, had, like the modern rowboat, only one tier of oars, and its complement of rowers was from fifty to sixty. The trireme, it is generally supposed, had three tiers of oars, by which it gained that swiftness so important in the ancient mode of naval action. Its ordinary complement of rowers was, at the time of which we are treating, from 150 to 160; besides whom it commonly carried forty soldiers, and sometimes more, but on emergencies, particularly when boarded, the whole crew acted with arms.”[45] Of the triremes now in the Grecian fleet, no less than 127 were furnished by Athens, and 40 by Corinth; the rest were supplied in smaller quotas by the other Peloponnesians and islanders. With this superiority in force the Athenians were fully entitled to claim the chief command: but such was the reputation of Sparta at this time, that the Peloponnesian states refused to serve except under a Spartan leader; and the Athenians, with a rare and most laudable moderation, waived their claim rather than run the hazard of discord at so critical a moment. The credit of this forbearance is ascribed to Themistocles.