From this description, there is no difficulty in understanding the character of the uniremes; it is only when we come to inquire what was meant by biremes, triremes, and so forth, and how they were propelled, that the most conflicting statements are met with. Although Scheffer,[388] General Melvill, and others, have bestowed an immense deal of learning in their endeavours to prove that each oar was rowed by one man only, and that the banks were placed directly one over the other, the bulk of the testimony of ancient writers, confirmed by experience, is opposed to any such views. Besides, the most casual inquiry will show that it would be impracticable to row any galley with more than two banks of oars on the plan suggested. Every additional rank adds to the difficulty in a greatly increased ratio; and if hexiremes were efficient ships, which, on the authority of Polybius they were,[389] it would have been altogether impracticable to propel them by oars on the plan suggested. [Sidenote: General Melvill’s theory.] It might be unnecessary to offer any further remarks on this branch of the subject, had not Mr. Mitford, the celebrated historian of Greece, expressed so strong an opinion in favour of it. “The most satisfactory conjectures,” he remarks, “that I have met with by far, are those of General Melvill.”[390] It may, however, be here explained that General Melvill, in common with other writers, had previously entertained the opinion that the number of banks were measured by the number of men at an oar. That is to say, a unireme, he considered, had only one man placed at an oar, a bireme two, a trireme three, and so forth, up to the great ship of Ptolemy Philopator, which had, according to this theory, forty men to each of its fifty-seven feet oars. As the General on examination found such a theory to be untenable, he conceived the idea that in no case was there more than one man to an oar. “He,” then,[391] “set himself to investigate the subject for confirmation of this opinion on fact, as he should find that fact to turn out in the descriptions of sea-fights and other naval transactions, as given by the ancient authors, particularly Polybius, Cæsar, Livy, and Florus.” Impressed with his new idea, it occurred to him, that “the indispensable requisites were, that in the arrangement of the rowers within, each side ought to have been such as to admit of the greatest number possible, that they should be so placed as not to impede each other; that they should be enabled to row to the best advantage; and that the highest tiers, both in respect to length and weight, should be sufficiently manageable: from these grounds the discovery immediately resulted to him, which was, that by a combination of two obliquities between the galley and a rower’s gallery running along its waist part, projecting outwards from a small distance above the water’s edge, with an angle of 45°, and rows of horizontal seats of about two feet in