History of the Peloponnesian War

After this the Syracusians sent out twelve galleys under the command of Agatharchus, a Syracusian. Of which one carried ambassadors into Peloponnesus to declare what hope they had now of their business and to instigate them to a sharper war in Attica. The other eleven went into Italy, upon intelligence of certain vessels laden with commodities coming to the Athenian army, which also they met with and destroyed most of them;

and the timber, which for building of galleys the Athenians had ready framed, they burned in the territory of Caulonia. After this they went to Locri;

and riding here, there came unto them one of the ships that carried the men of arms of the Thespians, whom the Syracusians took aboard and went homeward by the coast.

The Athenians that watched for them with twenty galleys at Megara took one of them and the men that were in her, but could not take the rest, so that they escaped through to Syracuse.

There was also a light skirmish in the haven of Syracuse, about the piles which the Syracusians had driven down before their old harbour, to the end that the galleys might ride within and the Athenians not annoy them by assault. The Athenians, having brought to the place a ship of huge greatness, fortified with wooden turrets and covered against fire, caused certain men with [little] boats to go and fasten cords unto the piles, and so broke them up with craning.

Some also the divers did cut up with saws. In the meantime the Syracusians from the harbour and they from the great ship shot at each other, till in the end the greatest part of the piles were by the Athenians gotten up. But the greatest difficulty was to get up those piles which lay hidden.