timelets

Their ships were poorly equipped and sluggish, and some- one suggested that their chances in battle would be improved by the device that subsequently came to be known as the ‘raven’. This was a cylindrical pole, four fathoms long and with a diameter of three palms, fixed upright on the prow of a ship, with a pulley at the top. Its base was surrounded by planks nailed together at right angles to one another, so as to form a gangplank, four feet wide and thirty-six feet long. The pole projected through an oblong hole in the middle of the gangplank, twelve feet in from the end. This structure also had a rail, at about the height of a man’s knees, on both of its longer sides. On the end of the structure there was fixed a pestle-like iron spike, with a ring at the top, so that the whole thing looked quite like a device for pounding grain. In a ramming run, a rope that was tied onto the ring and passed through the pulley on top of the pole raised the raven, and then released it onto the deck of the enemy ship; the device was either deployed straight over the prow or it could be swivelled around if the ships collided side to side. Once the raven was stuck in the planking of the enemy ship’s deck, it joined the two ships together; if the ships were broadside on men could leap onto the enemy ship from every- where, while if they had collided prow to prow, men could cross to the other ship over the raven itself, two by two in a constant stream. The leading pair would protect the exposed front by holding their shields out before them, while those behind them would secure the sides by holding the edges of their shields over the rail. The Romans decided to make use of this device, and then waited for an opportunity for battle to be joined.

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As the Romans approached, the Carthaginians could see the ravens nodding aloft on the prows of every ship, but they had never seen any- thing like these strange devices before and did not know what to make of them. Nevertheless, since they felt nothing but contempt for their opponents, the leading ships sailed fearlessly into the attack. But when battle was joined, their ships were held fast by these devices, and the Romans used them to swarm across and fight the men on the decks. Terrified by the transformation of the conflict into a kind of land battle, the Carthaginians who survived the slaughter surrendered.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

Picture from wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marines#History