What if, part 3
As a kid, I built a working model of Hero of Alexandria's steam turbine. (Imagine that: my parents actually encouraged me to experiment with real fire and live steam, and yet somehow I survived!) My point, though, is that the Romans knew about steam power; they just never thought of anything worthwhile to do with it. But given a little more time...
By the early 9th century, the descendants of the men who'd built the roads and aqueducts of Rome had turned their attention to Egypt, and the ruins of the ancient canal that once joined the Nile to the Red Sea. The work took twenty years and cost the lives of 30,000 slaves, but fortunately, slaves were cheap and readily available, and by the time the canal was finally open for business the first primitive paddle-wheel steamers were ready to make the journey. Absent an Arab monopoly on land routes to the far east, the Romans never found it necessary to develop large sailing ships or deep-ocean navigation skills; absent a Portugese monopoly on the Cape Horn route around Africa, they never felt the need to imagine what might lie on the other side of the cold and dangerous Atlantic. Instead, they made the leap directly from triremes and roundships to side-wheelers, and shortly thereafter to a modified form of Archimedean screw that provided excellent shallow-water speed and maneuverability, and by the mid-9th century the first lumbering steam-driven ferratia (ironclads) were providing security for Roman merchants operating all along the eastern coast of Africa and in the Arabian sea. To support their operations they built a series of heavily fortified trading posts at regular intervals from equatorial Africa to the mouth of the Indus River; these served the dual purposes of providing fueling and way stations for their fleet and scaring the Hades out of the hated Persians.
While their naval explorations of Africa and Asia were slow and methodical, though, the Romans were very quick to realize the military advantages of rapid transportation within their empire, and by the end of the 9th century all of Roman Europe was linked together by a clever system of steam-powered bi-rail thru-ways — a rail-road system, as it were — that extended all the way from Gaul in the west to Byzantium in the east, from Germania in the north to Athens and Andulusia in the south, with convenient ferry connections to Londinium, Anatolia, Sicilia, and Crete. The ability to move legions great distances in a matter of days and deliver them fresh and ready to fight did wonders to improve the internal security of the Empire, while the secondary virtue of providing rapid and inexpensive transportation of trade goods led directly to the spectacular economic boom of the Roaring 10th century.
With all this excitement going on and all these vast fortunes being made, then, it's small wonder that the powers in Rome paid no attention at all to fact that several large parties of Norsemen, eager to be free of the blessings of Roman civilization, had set sail from Iceland and headed west, never to be seen again...
By the early 9th century, the descendants of the men who'd built the roads and aqueducts of Rome had turned their attention to Egypt, and the ruins of the ancient canal that once joined the Nile to the Red Sea. The work took twenty years and cost the lives of 30,000 slaves, but fortunately, slaves were cheap and readily available, and by the time the canal was finally open for business the first primitive paddle-wheel steamers were ready to make the journey. Absent an Arab monopoly on land routes to the far east, the Romans never found it necessary to develop large sailing ships or deep-ocean navigation skills; absent a Portugese monopoly on the Cape Horn route around Africa, they never felt the need to imagine what might lie on the other side of the cold and dangerous Atlantic. Instead, they made the leap directly from triremes and roundships to side-wheelers, and shortly thereafter to a modified form of Archimedean screw that provided excellent shallow-water speed and maneuverability, and by the mid-9th century the first lumbering steam-driven ferratia (ironclads) were providing security for Roman merchants operating all along the eastern coast of Africa and in the Arabian sea. To support their operations they built a series of heavily fortified trading posts at regular intervals from equatorial Africa to the mouth of the Indus River; these served the dual purposes of providing fueling and way stations for their fleet and scaring the Hades out of the hated Persians.
While their naval explorations of Africa and Asia were slow and methodical, though, the Romans were very quick to realize the military advantages of rapid transportation within their empire, and by the end of the 9th century all of Roman Europe was linked together by a clever system of steam-powered bi-rail thru-ways — a rail-road system, as it were — that extended all the way from Gaul in the west to Byzantium in the east, from Germania in the north to Athens and Andulusia in the south, with convenient ferry connections to Londinium, Anatolia, Sicilia, and Crete. The ability to move legions great distances in a matter of days and deliver them fresh and ready to fight did wonders to improve the internal security of the Empire, while the secondary virtue of providing rapid and inexpensive transportation of trade goods led directly to the spectacular economic boom of the Roaring 10th century.
With all this excitement going on and all these vast fortunes being made, then, it's small wonder that the powers in Rome paid no attention at all to fact that several large parties of Norsemen, eager to be free of the blessings of Roman civilization, had set sail from Iceland and headed west, never to be seen again...
posted by ~brb at 9:20 PM
