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Roman Naval Trade Essay

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Naval trade in the modern era has been a frontier in modern commerce bringing in billions of dollars of goods and services all around the globe allowing people from all corners of life to live and prosper while also making countries and leaders rich. The Roman Empire was no different in the 19th century Rome had a very sophisticated and diverse means of naval trade. Rome was crisscrossed with trade routes from the Mediterranean Sea expanding to the black sea which gave them an advantage over most of the competition by giving them available routes all over the oceans giving them little trouble or resistance from enemies. After hundreds of years reigning over other civilizations we can look into the trade and see what kept their economy going. …show more content…

Romans were known for having excellent naval forces and were a force to be messed with by pirates and other enemies who despised Rome. An interesting thing to note in 19th century Roman merchant ship were not very big in fact according to research done by George W. Houston an author of a journal on Roman merchant ships and ports “both our comparative and ancient material suggests that small ships-ships of, say, 60 tons burden and less-comprised the vast majority of Roman merchant vessels.” (Houston 1998, 2) Houston believes Romans used these smaller ships because it was easier for them to be beached. Beaching is a method in where ships are brought up onto shore where they could be loaded and unloaded, transport troops, or repair any damages that were caused in battle. Having a smaller ship used for trade would be ideal for using the beaching method because large quantities of goods can be transported and exported off the ship with less worry of damage while also increasing the productivity and speed of loading and unloading. Another bonus to having a smaller ship was being able to produce more trading ships which in return gave the Romans more money because instead of having hundreds of trading vessels they could double those numbers and have twice as many trade ships which would allow them to bring in more

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