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| Keleustes, the drum, Oar Master |
| A Keleustes is the man who marks time for the rowers. He strikes a great copper drum with a leather cushioned mallet to call time. He may also use a pounding block instead of the drum. He can mark a variety of different types of time, depending on how fast the ship needs to go. He is also known as the hortator. He reports directly to the oar-master. The oar-master reports to the captain. Only free men row war ships. Slaves may row on merchant ships. Gorean seamen recognize ships with the same ease they recognize faces. Pirates are a threat on Thassa and the rivers of Gor. Green is the color of pirates because in the bright sun, reflecting off the sea, green ships are nearly invisible. They make their entire ships green including the hulls, sails, oars and ropes. The exact expressions port and starboard do not exist in Gorean though there are equivalent expressions. Sailors of Cos refer to the left side of the ship by its port of destination and the right side by port of registration. This changes when both ports are the same and then the left side is the "harbor side." There is a common ritual done before a ship leaves port. They say "Ta-Sardar-Gor and then "Ta-Thassa" and finally pour wine, oil and salt into the sea. This is to wish the ship luck on its journey. |
| Tersites: Tersites is a half-blind shipwright, considered to be mad by most Goreans. He has been long scorned on Gor though he may be a genius. His radical ideas on ship design have been sometimes accepted and sometimes ignored. He created shearing blades which are used by many different navies. He also created a new ship design, one extremely different from conventional Gorean ship design theory. The ship is deep-keeled and square rigged as most ships are not. It carries a foremast though it was a ramship. It also possessed great oars that requires multiple men to handle rather than a single man per oar. It carries a single oar slung at the vessel's sternpost and not the normal double rudders. Its ram is carried high out of the water. This ship was intended to sail beyond the World's End. Samos of Port Kar believes Tersites to be a genius and commissioned him to construct that ship. Before the ship can be completed though, Tersites burns the ship, destroying all of the ship's plans as well. He then vanishes afterwards. No one knows why he did what he did. That mystery is never resolved in the books. |
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