The Unknown Navy of the Trojans - A Naustathmos

If there is one people whom we know quite a bit about but whom we also simply do not know enough about, it is probably the Trojans -- by which I mean the occupants of Troy during the bronze age. They are famous because of Homer and the Trojan War.  Their citadel has been excavated for 150 years.  We do not know as much about the people who lived there in the bronze age as one might hope based on 150 years of excavations.  Almost no writing has been found.   

One thing I have a hard time accepting is the idea that the Trojans were not a naval power, but a land-based power.  They are known for horses, not boats. I don't know any history of this idea, but I suspect that it grows from the absence of a Trojan navy in Homer. The Greeks land on a shore without a naval battle.  They create a naval station (the naustathmos), they do not attack or take over a naval station. They do not attack or invade a harbor.  Homer discusses a land war.  The Trojans are described as keepers of fine horses.  Cavalry, infantry and chariots are the stars of Homer's show.  He does not mention a Trojan navy, so, there must not be one, or at least not an important one.  The thinking here seems to be: if there was an important Trojan navy, there would be signs of it in Homer, but there are no such signs, therefore, there was not one. 

Well, that modus tollens argument is perfectly valid but its premise is false.  It would be quite possible for there to have been an important bronze age navy at Troy, even though there are no signs of it in a  poem written 500 years later. The proposition that a Trojan navy would necessarily have appeared in Homer is simply false.  

I want to offer a few reasons to discard, or at least withhold assent from, the premise that the people who lived in this valley were not a sea faring people.   

1.  They lived at one end of the passageway between two seas. 

Their opening to the Aegean was 14 miles (23 kilometers) from the narrowest point on the straights at Canakkale.  

The area would have looked different in the bronze age.  There would have been a large bay at Troy. Something like the altered photo below.  

I've added a bay and two circles for the citadel and the city,  

I keep thinking that the crossing point at Canakkale surely became important at some time in the bronze age, and that elites would have thought up the idea of controlling it and grifting off of it.  I believe the same thing about the opening to the Aegean sea in front of Troy: some elites would have sought to gain control and enrich themselves there as well.  If those two things happened, there might have been a point in time at which two groups of elites controlled two locations on the straights 14 miles from one another.  If that condition arose, I predict it would not last long, and that eventually one of the groups would win out over the other, and control the entire area between Canakkale and the Aegean sea. Perhaps a city grows wiser and fatter on that, perhaps it turns foolish and self-destructs.  But as long as  it succeeds, it would have a long-term, secure revenue source in the waters off its shore, because those waters are a crossroads.  

2. A city that grows as large as the city in the plain at Troy would not be able to feed itself from its tiny farmlands, and would be forced to import most of its diet.  Bringing all of that food overland to Troy would require traversing mountains and/or crossing the Dardanelle Straits.  Bringing grain or livestock by boat would be more efficient.  

3. Troy had a very strong incentive to trade (for food) and an excellent opportunity to do so (due to its location). Consider this article: (https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/11/gold-from-ancient-troy-poliochni-and-ur-had-the-same-origin/145391?amp) 

Ever since Heinrich Schliemann discovered Priam’s Treasure in Troy in 1873, the origin of the gold has been a mystery. Professor [Ernst] Pernicka and the international team has now been able to prove that the treasure derived from secondary deposits such as rivers, and its chemical composition is not only identical with that of gold objects from the settlement of Poliochni on Lemnos and from the royal tombs in Ur in Mesopotamia, but also with that of objects from Georgia. “This means there must have been trade links between these far-flung regions,” says Pernicka.

I have marked the areas under discussion on the map below.  

Lemnos is the large island west of the entry to the Dardanelle straits.  I put a dot in the general vicinity of Ur because I am unsure of its exact location on this photo. 

As you can see, these are indeed "far-flung regions".  But gold jewelry examined in these four locations contained metal alloys that are exact matches, and so they probably come from a single source.  

Lemnos, Troy and Georgia could have traded with one another by sea.  Only Ur is landlocked. If Georgia and Lemnos engaged one another in trade by sea, they would have needed to pass through the Troy area to do it.  

Less than fifty miles separated Hisarlik from its probable trading partner in Poliochni.  There are three other islands in this photo. It seems reasonable to assume that Troy would have traded with them as well as with Lemnos.  They are all closer to Troy than Lemnos is.  

Meanwhile, the sea of Marmara is closer than Poliochni, and beyond that lies the entry to the Black Sea.  So, Troy was in easy distance of seven Aegean islands, several islands in the sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus straits at the entry to the Black Sea.  

4. It is doubtful that a great land power/land army could thrive at the entry to the Dardanelle Straits without developing trade links by land and sea alike.  To become a great city they needed great trade, probably with a great many partners.  For this they would have needed a merchant fleet.  Controlling the Dardanelle Straits would have required a military fleet.