History of the Peloponnesian War

But many galleys falling close together in a narrow compass (for they were the most galleys that in any battle they had used, and fought in the least room, being little fewer on the one side and the other than two hundred), they ran against each other but seldom, because there was no means of retiring nor of passing by, but made assaults upon each other oftener, as galley with galley, either flying or pursuing, chanced to fall foul.

And as long as a galley was making up, they that stood on the decks used their darts and arrows and stones in abundance; but being once come close, the soldiers at hand-strokes attempted to board each other.

And in many places it so fell out, through want of room, that they which ran upon a galley on one side were run upon themselves on the other; and that two galleys, or sometimes more, were forced to lie aboard of one; and that the masters were at once to have a care, not in one place only but in many together, how to defend on the one side and how to offend on the other; and the great noise of many galleys fallen foul of one another both amazed them and took away their hearing of what their directors directed.

For they directed thick and loud on both sides, not only as art required but out of their present eagerness; the Athenians crying out to theirs to force the passage, and now if ever valiantly to lay hold upon their safe return to their country; and the Syracusians and their confederates to theirs, how honourable a thing to every one of them it would be to hinder their escape and by this victory to improve every man the honour of his own country.