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In 213 BC, the Romans sent a large force to capture the strategically vital Greek city state of Syracuse in Sicily. The siege was to go down in history because this mighty force was stopped in its tracks almost single-handedly by one man - Archimedes. The unfortunate Romans were by no means badly armed. Before he arrived in Syracuse, Marcellus made sure that he was equipped with the best available military technology, including a catapult so enormous that it had to be housed on the decks of eight ships lashed together. But the Greeks were able to unleash a number of Archimedes' innovations on their unprepared invaders. Most terrifying of them all was The Claw. Archaeologist Roger Wilson tells the story of the siege as the ancient sources described it. Polybius talks about a battery of weapons directed against the Roman enemy. Catapults with different ranges were fired at them from the walls, but once the Romans had got through this barrage, coming up close to the walls to set up their siege engines, they thought they were out of range. They were wrong. Archimedes had designed great machines that dropped huge stones on the ships and a 'claw' which "lifted the ship's prow out of the water and stood it up vertically on its stern". Then the crane operator "fastened the machine to make it immovable, and then bysome sort of release mechanism, cast off the grappling hook and chain. The ships then either capsized, listed badly or became filled with confusion and much sea-water'. Engineer and expert rock climber Jo da Silva and Brian Austen, an expert in putting up big tops for the circus take on the task of attempting to recreate Archimedes' invention on the sea front in Syracuse. They are assisted by mathematician and Archimedes expert Chris Rorres, who explains how the two great laws of Archimedes - the law of the lever and the law of buoyancy - are used in practice in this ancient war machine. They begin by building a crane strong enough to lift a boat a third of the size of the original Roman warships but, as Jo struggles to get the huge 2 tonne lever balanced she starts to get into trouble. The local fishermen arrive at the eleventh hour to help her out of a potential disaster. Finally, Jo's Claw is put to the test on a local Syracuse fishing boat weighing 25 tonnes which tests the structure to its limit ...
Title from resource description page (viewed Dec. 24, 2013).
London : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 1999