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Tersites of Port Kar, the controversial inventor and shipwright, had advocated more than one man to an oar but, generally, the southern galleys utilized one man per oar, three oars and three men on a diagonal bench, facing aft, the oars staggered, the diagonality of the bench permitting the multiplicity of levers. - (Marauders of Gor, Chapter 2, Sentence #138)

It was a twenty bencher, but this nomenclature may be confusing. There were twenty benches to a side, with two men to each bench. It carried, thus, forty oars, with two men to each oar. Tersites of Port Kar, the controversial inventor and shipwright, had advocated more than one man to an oar but, generally, the southern galleys utilized one man per oar, three oars and three men on a diagonal bench, facing aft, the oars staggered, the diagonality of the bench permitting the multiplicity of levers. The oars were generally some nineteen feet in length, and narrower than the southern oars, that they might cut and sweep with great speed, more rapidly than the wider bladed oar; and with two men to each oar, and the lightness of the ship, this would produce great speed. As in the southern galleys the keel to beam ratio was designed, too, for swiftness, being generally in the neighborhood of one to eight. Forkbeard's ship, or serpent, as they are sometimes called, was approximately eighty feet Gorean in length, with a beam of some ten feet Gorean. - (Marauders of Gor)