Description
Most of the northern European tribes were not naval powers, but there were still able seafarers to be found amongst them. Shipbuilding techniques were well understood, so while many vessels were small leather-skinned boats for inland and inshore use, bigger sea-going vessels were also made. Shipwrights used heavy planking for hulls, stitched together and then fastened to a wooden skeleton to create sturdy craft able to cope with Atlantic conditions. Julius Caesar was surprised at the quality of the enemy ships when his fleet clashed with the Veneti from modern-day Brittany. The Veneti vessels had flat bottoms to cope with shallows, but were also of heavy oak construction to cope with rough seas. This made them tough opposition for Roman galleys, and capable of shrugging off a ramming attack. Caesar said that the enemy ships "...were constructed of planks a foot in breadth, fastened by iron spikes the thickness of a man's thumb; the anchors were secured fast by iron chains instead of cables”. When the Romans were forced to board, they faced fearsome warriors used to close-quarters fighting at sea.
The Romans called Iberian skirmishers 'caetrati' after their 'caetra'-style shields; there are no records of what, if anything, the Iberians fighting in this style called themselves. The caetra was a small, round, wooden buckler no more than sixty centimetres across. The central handgrip and protruding metal boss meant that it could be used both defensively for protection and offensively to punch enemies in close combat. An experienced skirmisher would, of course, try to stay out of hand-to-hand combat as much as possible, and rely on his javelins to kill the enemy from a safe distance.
