Quickie History: Caligula Had Ships Built That Out-Engineered Everything Until the 19th Century

Jamie Chaos

August 18, 2021

Quickie History: Caligula Had Ships Built That Out-Engineered Everything Until the 19th Century

Fun Fact of the Day: Sex-and-gore-crazed autocrat Caligula had two ships, the Nemi ships, built in the 1st century AD that had tech on them not rediscovered until the Middle Ages, and some that was originally believed to date to the 18th century (when discovered in the 1929). That’d be like finding a mechanical computer dating to the Romans on par with IBM’s ENIAC from 1945, or finding out the fax machine was invented by the Romans rather than in 1843.

Yeah, the fax machine was invented in EIGHTEEN FORTY-THREE, which must be why boomers still love the thing… reminds them of of cowboy movies or something 🤣

That tech included, but wasn’t limited to:

nails made of electroplated copper,
hot and cold running water using a valve pump system,
a folding timber stock anchor that closely matched the design of the Admiralty pattern anchor re-invented in 1841
hand-operated bilge pumps that worked like a modern bucket dredge (the oldest example of this type of bilge pump ever found)… and the pumps were operated by what may have been the oldest crank handles yet discovered!
platforms mounted on caged bronze balls that use thrust ball bearings. They’d previously been thought to have been first theorized and drawn by Leonardo da Vinci but developed much later.

The ships were dredged up in 1929 and reconstructed and then destroyed during WW2 😭. Bits do remain, however, and that’s where we’ve learned all of this cool shit. 🤘

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Jamie Chaos

I am a former all-time, all federation world record holder in raw powerlifting at 181lbs, a record I broke just to say fuck you to the internet’s “lifting” community and the powerlifting community at large. Over the last ten years I’ve written over 500 articles on strength training, nutrition, and supplementation, and continue to do so simply to fight the tide of weakness and sadness that currently pervades the scene I’ve called home for the better part of three decades. I’ve got personal trainin certs, BodyPump and BodyCombat certs, a BA in History and East Asian Studies from the University of Arizona, and MBAs from the Vienna University and University of South Carolina on my side, in addition to some sick lifts and a hell of a lot of rage. What the fuck have you got?

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