How Big Was the Roman Navy

The Romans, buoyed by their first success, had expanded their fleet so that they now had 330 quinqueremes with a total of 140,000 men ready for battle.

Did the Romans have a strong navy?

The Romans are not remembered as a maritime superpower. In fact, they didn’t have much of a navy to speak of until the First Punic War (264 BCE). It was these wars against Carthage which acted as a catalyst for Rome to develop a naval force to control the entire Mediterranean basin.

Did the Romans have warships?

The ancient Romans built large merchant ships and warships whose size and technology were unequalled until the 16th century CE. Roman seamen navigated across the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean and out into the Atlantic along the coasts of France, England and Africa.