The Secret Weapon
It was almost the nadir of Byzantium's fortunes. By 941 AD the eastern provinces were lost to the encroaching forces of Islam, the west was overrun by the barbarian hordes and even the homeland, the Balkans and northern Greece, was under threat from Bulgars, Huns, Pechnegs and other wild tribes. Embattled Byzantium stood almost alone - and now news arrived of yet another threat.
Coming down from the north was a vast horde of Russians, not advancing overland where at least the Byzantine armies could march out to meet them, but paddling south in a fleet of hundreds of small boats - canoes, as Luitprand of Cremona called them. The mighty chain which barred the Golden Horn to larger vessels would be useless against these light craft.
The Basileus and his counsellors anxiously followed the approach of this swarm of canoes as it landed each evening on the shore a little nearer the Bosphorus. Each evening the horde of Russians devastated another estate, spreading out across the countryside in search of food and loot and then, in the morning, relaunching their canoes to paddle another ten miles or so closer to Byzantium.
The dockyards where the once mighty Byzantine fleets had anchored were empty and of all that grand array of naval power, only fifteen old ships, barely sea-worthy, remained. Yet, with nothing else available, these were all that stood between Byzantium and the advancing Russians and for the next few days the dockyard resounded with the bustle of preparation as the ships were readied for action. The rigging was repaired, the caulking renewed, and then barrel after barrel of Byzantium's secret and most deadly weapon were carried on board, while extra armaments for its use were fitted to the sides and stern of the vessels.
At last the day came. The Russian canoes had entered the Bosphorus and were paddling down its narrow waters, hurried along by the current. By daybreak, if not sooner, they would be in sight of Byzantium. The great chain was lowered and the fifteen ships were rowed out into open water and turned towards the north.
A couple of hours later they saw the dark mass of the fleet of canoes advancing towards them. The sailors strained at their oars as a great shout of savage joy rose from the Russians. Swiftly the canoes surged across the water and within minutes the fifteen widely separated ships were surrounded, their oars useless amid the press of small craft. At first their tall sides served as a wall against the men below them and for a long moment short, swarthy Greeks in steel helmets and armour looked down into the blue eyes and fair hair of the tall Russians with their leather armour.
Suddenly a roar split the air and long jets of flame shot out from front, sides and stern of the Imperial vessels. The salt-encrusted, sodden wood of the canoes blazed wherever the flame touched, woollen cloth and leather armour smouldered and turned to ash and naked flesh blistered and disintegrated. Screaming men leaped overboard into the cold waters of the Bosphorus, only to discover to their horror that the terrible fire burned as fiercely under water as above.
The canoes turned to flee and at once the oars came out and the four ships, transformed into monsters of destruction, cruised effortlessly back and forth, the jets of flame picking off one small boat after another. Within minutes all that was left of that vast Russian fleet was a shambles of overturned, smouldering canoes and a tide of blistered bodies.
Ignis Graecus, the terrible Greek Fire, had won another victory for its possessors, leaving us today with the mystery of exactly what it was, for the Byzantines, wiser in their day than we are in ours, refrained from selling their technological superiority to their enemies and kept all knowledge of how the Fire was made a closely guarded secret.
From the many descriptions we have of Greek Fire in action, we know that it was a liquid, sometimes described as "sticky", which produced intense heat and thick black smoke. It was thrown from tubes called "siphons", usually in the front of ships, and these tubes could be swivelled up, down and from side to side. Incredible as it sounds, the sources even assert that Greek Fire burned under water.
Speculation has been rife ever since Byzantium ceased to exist as to exactly what were the ingredients for Greek Fire. Sulphur, quicklime and saltpetre have all been suggested as the basis for Greek Fire, but all attempts to recreate this deadly weapon have failed - to such an extent that some have even suggested that the whole Greek Fire thing was nothing more than clever Byzantine propaganda designed to spread fear among its enemies but having no basis in fact.
John Haldon, Professor of Byzantine History at Princeton University, has been conducting research into Byzantium's most famous weapon and he noticed a curious coincidence: Greek Fire was first mentioned in connection with the Arab blockade of Constantinople in 674 AD and is last mentioned explicitly in the 1180s (though there are further hints of its use in the following decade). By 1204 AD, when Byzantium faced its greatest threat and finally fell to the vandals of the Fourth Crusade, there is no mention of Greek Fire and the Venetian ships were able to approach the walls of Constantinople with impunity.
The coincidence was that around 1180/1190 the Byzantines lost control of the Crimea, partly due to the arrival of the Cumans, a wild tribe who were enemies of the Byzantines, partly because of Venetian and Genoese control over the sea lanes and, most devastating of all, the arrival of the Mongols in the 1220s.
This prompted Professor Haldon to investigate the products which came out of the Crimea. Wheat, hides and gold, while useful in their way, were clearly not what he was looking for. However in an old document called De administrando imperio (On Governing the Empire) he found a list of wells and springs in the Crimea which supplied what the writer called "naphtha". A little research in modern sources showed that the Crimean oil wells produce a particularly light and flammable oil.
Putting all the evidence together, Professor Haldon came up with his own recipe for Greek Fire: 20 gallons of Crimean oil and 6 lbs of pine resin. He then teamed up with Andrew Lacey, a sculptor with experience of bronze casting, and Colin Hewes, a mechanical engineer and together the three of them produced a bronze nozzle, mounted so that it could be swivelled and aimed, and fed by stitched leather pipes from a hand-operated pump, which in turn was fed from a brazier where the oil/resin mix was heated to 60ºC. (The heating was necessary both to help mix the oil and resin and to keep the mixture liquid.)
The next step was to put theory into practice. It took a little experimentation, but the results were beyond their wildest expectations. The jet of liquid from the nozzle easily caught fire from a bundle of smouldering flax held to the mouth of the nozzle. The result was a jet of flame that burned with a roaring sound and produced thick clouds of black smoke - and which could be projected 45' or more. It was so hot that even the man behind the nozzle needed protection - and the Byzantine sources clearly indicate that the same was true of Greek Fire.
The final step was to get hold of an old wooden fishing boat and use it as a target for their weapon. Attended by a film crew, Haldon, Lacey and Hewes loaded their nozzle and its attendant apparatus onto one boat while the target vessel was anchored at a safe distance off shore. When the cameras were ready they sailed up to the old fishing boat and the nozzle operator took a firm grasp of his weapon.
Just as the old manuscripts describe, there was a roar as the jet of orange flame shot out across the water. Black smoke billowed up into the still air and the fishing boat's sails burst into flame, followed almost immediately by its timbers as, for the first time in a thousand years, Greek Fire at 1,000ºC reached its target.
<© Kendall K. Down 2009
