Corvus

The corvus, Latin for crow, is a boarding device fitted to Roman warships during the First Punic War against Carthage in the third century BCE, consisting of a hinged wooden gangway with a heavy iron spike on its underside that could be raised and then dropped onto an enemy ship's deck, where the spike bit into the timber and locked the two vessels together. Roman tradition credits its introduction, around 260 BCE, with letting Rome's newly built fleet neutralize Carthage's superior seamanship and ramming tactics by turning naval engagements into boarding actions fought by Roman legionaries, a form of combat Rome's land-based military strength was much better suited to than open naval maneuver. The device is credited with contributing to major early Roman naval victories such as the Battle of Mylae, but its height and weight made ships that carried it dangerously top-heavy in rough seas, and ancient historians associate the corvus's abandonment later in the war with a series of disastrous storm losses to the Roman fleet, after which the device largely disappears from the historical record.