John Coates, 88, Naval architect whose replica of a Greek trireme helped to solve a mystery of classical scholarship

[Hoodoo]

John Coates

John Coates, who died on July 10 aged 88, had retired as chief naval
architect at the Ministry of Defence when he took a central role in the
building of a Greek trireme, the first, fastest and best known oared
warship of the ancient world.

Published: 6:02PM BST 16 Jul 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/7895377/John-Coates.html

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John Coates, front, demonstrating the three-level system of the trireme
with oarsmen from Cambridge University

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Full size replica of a trireme Trireme Olympia

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Triremes were 100ft three-tiered vessels powered by two square sails and
a huge crew of oarsmen. They were used at the Battle of Salamis in 480BC
when the Greeks defeated the Persians (who were led by the emperor
Xerxes), and there are references to them in classical literature and
depictions on pottery relics and coins.

Tipped with a deadly bronze ram to sink enemy ships, the trireme struck
Coates as the ancient equivalent of a guided missile. Contrary to the
Hollywood notion of these vessels being manned by convicts or galley
slaves languishing beneath a brutal lash, triremes were known to have
been rowed by volunteers who brought their own oars and seat cushions.

But exactly how the vessels were rowed, and the configuration of the
oarsmen, remained one of the oldest controversies in classical scholarship.

In 1982 Coates was approached by Professor John Morrison, the
recently-retired president of Wolfson College, Cambridge, who believed
that the trireme had been rowed by 170 oarsmen deployed on three levels,
one above the other, a hypothesis that had provoked a marathon
correspondence in The Times in 1975.

When the author and businessman Frank Welsh suggested that Morrison
should try a full-scale reconstruction to demonstrate the practicability
of his three-tiered oar system, Coates joined Morrison and Welsh in
setting up the Trireme Trust. Coates's challenge was to design a viable
ship which would be true both to the ancient evidence and the laws of
physics.

Under Coates's expert direction, the trust built first a mock-up of a
trireme and then a floating trial piece with 12 oars, which was
displayed at Henley Royal Regatta in 1985. They then persuaded the Greek
Ministry of Culture and the country's navy to fund and build a
full-scale replica in Greece. Named Olympias, the trireme – constructed
of Oregon pine and 25,000 bronze nails – was launched in June 1987 and
commissioned into the Hellenic Navy.

She was rowed and displayed around the Aegean, and between 1987 and 1994
underwent five series of sea-trials at Poros with volunteer
international crews; in 1993 she also visited the Thames in London as
part of the celebrations of 2,500 years of Greek democracy.

Despite her colossal size (she weighed 22 tons fully laden), Olympias
could make 8.9 knots at 46 strokes a minute. Coates found that getting
170 oarsmen on and off the ship in orderly fashion took between 10 and
15 minutes, but could be accomplished at the double in a minute and a
half, with a total emergency evacuation over the side in a mere 24 seconds.

Coates and Morrison scrupulously published the rationale for their
design in numerous books and papers, including The Athenian Trireme in
1987, and in recognition of their work became joint recipients of the
Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum in 1991.

John Francis Coates was born on March 30 1922 and grew up in Swansea,
where his father, Joseph Coates, was Professor of Chemistry at
University College. The city then had active docks, which became the
source of his early interest in all things nautical, in particular
historic and wooden vessels. Educated at Clifton College, Bristol, he
won an Exhibition to Queen's College, Oxford, to read Engineering Science.

After graduating in 1943 he immediately started his cadetship in the
Royal Corps of Naval Constructors at Devonport and Greenwich Naval
College. Coates served part of his required sea time on wartime Russian
convoys and torpedo boats off the Norwegian coast. By 1949 he was
working at the Naval Construction department in Bath where he developed
new inflatable life rafts and life jackets, working with the US and
Canadian navies, for which he was appointed OBE in 1955.

In 1953 he was posted to the Naval Construction Research Establishment
(NCRE) at Dunfermline. Moving back to Bath in 1957 to lead ship-design
work on the County class of guided missile destroyers, he became chief
constructor fleet maintenance; head of forward design; superintendent
NCRE; and finally deputy director of ship design and chief naval
architect before taking early retirement in 1979.

As well as his work on the trireme project, Coates also researched the
oldest seagoing ships discovered in northwest Europe, working from the
remains of oak vessels found by Ted Wright in the Humber mud at North
Ferriby in 1937.

With Wright, Coates determined the most likely workable design and
construction method for these large planked ships, dated 2030-1680BC, in
particular revealing that, in addition to stitched plank jointing,
bronze age man had also learned how to bend wood to achieve "rockered",
or curved, hulls – which improve handling.

In 2000 Coates, Wright and his fellow naval architect Edwin Gifford each
invested £10,000 in the construction of a half-scale replica of the
Ferriby ships. Subsequent sea trials demonstrated that long distance
trade with significant loads was likely in the early bronze age.

Coates was awarded an honorary DSC by the University of Bath in 1989 for
his work in nautical research.

John Coates married Jane Waymouth, a New Zealander, in 1954. They
created a much admired garden in Bath and were enthusiastic visitors to
gardens around the country. She predeceased him in 2008, and their two
sons survive him.

[Hoodoo]

John Coates obituary

Naval architect best known for his work on the reconstruction of an
ancient Greek trireme

Christopher Dodd
guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 August 2010 18.24 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/02/john-coates-obituary

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John Coates with a model of the trireme.

John Coates, who has died of cancer aged 88, stood astride the centuries
as a designer of state-of-the art warships. When he retired in 1979 as
chief naval architect to the Ministry of Defence, where one of his
achievements was the County class guided missile destroyers, he turned
his attention to the trireme, the Hellenic navy's state-of-the-art
guided missile of 450BC. Coates and the archaeologist John Morrison set
up the Trireme Trust and built the Olympias, a working replica of the
ships that enabled Athens to dominate the Mediterranean 2,500 years ago.

Coates grew up by the sea in Swansea, south Wales, and was educated at
Clifton college, Bristol, and Queen's College, Oxford, graduating in
engineering science in 1943. After studying naval architecture at
Devonport and Greenwich Naval College, he served in Russian convoys and
torpedo boats off Norway. At the Admiralty in Bath, he developed new
inflatable life rafts and life jackets, working with the US and Canadian
navies, for which he was appointed OBE in 1955.

Design of the County class began in 1957. Coates supervised construction
on many visits to the shipyards with the simple expedient of carbon
paper; one handwritten copy of the agreed actions to the yard on the
spot and one for his records. There followed posts heading up fleet
maintenance and forward design, and then as superintendent of the Naval
Construction Research Establishment and deputy director of ship design
and chief naval architect.

Coates had enjoyed a lifelong interest in historic and wooden vessels,
which went back to his schooldays in Bristol with Eric McKee, who later
wrote the classic Working Boats of Britain. In 1982 Morrison, a
professor at Wolfson College, Cambridge, asked him to help solve a
long-standing controversy in classical scholarship. Morrison's
hypothesis was that the trireme (or trieres in Greek), rowed by 170
oarsmen arranged on three levels, was the fastest and most important
warship of the ancient world.

Frank Welsh, a banker and writer, set up the Trireme Trust with Morrison
and Coates and charged them with designing a ship in accord with the
evidence and the laws of physics and building a full-scale
reconstruction to show the practicability of the oar-system.

"It's an extreme design, like a fighter aircraft," Coates said at the
time. "The requirement was for something which could escort merchant
ships and clobber any pirate which came along. I would think as soon as
a pirate saw one of these, they would back off. There was a kind of
spider in the convoy that could get any fly that came along."

Build it they did. Morrison dug out archaeological evidence from pots,
accounts of voyages, and a surviving ship shed in Piraeus, while Coates
filled his huge study in Bath with models and plans. A 12-oar section
was tried out at Henley regatta in 1985, and this led to the ministry of
culture in Greece and the Hellenic navy funding and constructing the
Olympias. It is 120ft long with a bronze-sheathed ram weighing half a
tonne and a wetted area of hull per oarsman nearly half that of a modern
racing eight. The Olympias had its first sea trials off the island of
Poros in the searing summer heat of 1987, where a largely British
volunteer crew took Coates and Morrison across the bay twice a day as
they learned how to row, sail and manoeuvre the ship.

Rowers flocked to the Hellenic navy's midshipmen school from every
Athens ferry, while scholars, film crew, media types and the plain
curious poured into the small Hotel Latsi on the island. Debate and
argument of ancient Greece and ancient ships lasted late into the night
and spread to the Olympias when the Greek skipper and the trireme
trustees did not see eye to eye as to how the ship should be sailed. The
captain, Lieutenant Dimitri Papadas, was nicknamed "Pugwash" by his
volunteer crew after he steered into a buoy on the first outing. My role
in peacemaking, as reporter for the Guardian, was to conduct a lengthy
interview with Pugwash on deck while Tim Shaw, the steersman, took the
Olympias through manoeuvres laid down by Coates.

A further four sea trials took place over seven years, and increasingly
experienced international crews, many of them American fixed-seat
rowers, not only proved that the three-level system worked, but
eventually took the Olympias to speeds near to those claimed by the
ancients. Coates amended his design, so that the full-size segment now
on display at the River & Rowing Museum in Henley is the prototype for a
new Olympias, should one ever be built.

The Olympias visited London to celebrate 2,500 years of Greek democracy
in 1993, and put in an appearance at the Athens Olympics six years ago.
It now resides in the Hellenic navy's maritime museum. Coates and
Morrison published the rationale for their design in the book The
Athenian Trireme in 1987.

After the success of the trireme, Coates turned his attention to the
North Ferriby ships, large oak-planked vessels dating from the bronze
age and found in the Humber in 1937. With the naval architects Ted
Wright and Edwin Gifford, he constructed a half-scale replica of the
oldest seagoing ship known in north-west Europe, revealing that
shipbuilders in 2030-1680BC had used stitched plank jointing and were
able to bend wood.

Coates, who rowed at school and in the navy, was a patient craftsman, a
master of engineering and design, a painstaking interpreter of things
ancient and modern, a passionate gardener, and secretary of the Bath
Royal Literary and Scientific Institution between 1998 and 2002. And
great company. He received an honorary DSc from the University of Bath
in 1989 for his work in nautical research and, with Morrison, the Caird
medal of the National Maritime Museum in 1991.

He married Jane Waymouth, a New Zealander, in 1954; she predeceased him
in 2008. His sons, Henry and Julian, and five granddaughters survive him.

• John Francis Coates, naval architect, born 30 March 1922; died 10 July
2010