The Dolphin: A Standard Defensive Weapon on Ancient Mediterranean Merchant Ships or a Specialized Weapon for Specific Situations?

Abstract

A long-held belief in classical Mediterranean seafaring is that merchant ships were outfitted with heavy weights called dolphins mounted at the ends of yardarms and were defensive weapons dropped on opposing ships to sink them. A review of the iconographic and textual evidence, however, reveals no evidence to support such a weapon was ever used on merchant ships sailing in the open seas, and instead, the textual evidence allows for the possibility that cranes or even catapults were outfitted on ships as offensive weapons as early as 424 BC and on merchant ships, but only under special conditions, in 413 BC.