The galleys were fearsome, but they were also unsteady. Low, open sides brought the sea flooding in all too easily. They rarely survived an impact. Instead, Themistocles looked for threats and better chances, resting his rowers. The strait was filled with ships as far as the eye could see. Beyond them, the bulk of the Persian fleet still manoeuvred, seeking the slightest gaps, jammed up hard against one another as the narrowing coast funnelled them into the strait.

Themistocles had honestly lost track of the number of actions he and his crew had fought. Only a splash of watery blood that ran along the planking of the deck showed what they had done. There were a few arrow stubs near one of the helmsmen and some of the men had wounds they could not properly tend in the damp and spray. A knotted strip of cloth was all they had. He had lost another man moments before sighting Xanthippus, a hoplite from his home deme in Athens. The soldier had been made faint by a great gash no one had noticed. Without even a cry, the man had slipped into the ship’s wake, snatched down by the weight of his armour.

The crew were all veterans by then, battered and weary. They had fought and they would fight again, but the signs were rubbed away by sea and salt. Themistocles found himself longing for land underfoot, where the dead didn’t just vanish as if they had never been.

The thought made him glance over to the strange audience gathered on the shore of the island of Salamis. The entire population of Athens had been brought across the waters, hundreds of galleys rowing back and forth all night to evacuate the city. It had meant men snoring on the rowing benches as the sun rose, licking bowls of stew clean like ravenous wolves – just as the Persian fleet had rounded the tip of the coast.

In the distance, Themistocles saw his people watching, close enough to wave and be seen. Women and children of ten thousand households, more. They gathered on the cliffs like seabirds to watch their fate decided. In that instant, Themistocles did not envy them. He knew he faced death every time a Persian archer bent his bow, or an enemy galley tried to smash their oars and board, with snarling warriors clashing swords and shields. Yet he chose his fate. At least he could die swinging. Those on the shore had no such comfort. The Persians had brought eight hundred ships to that coast. If they triumphed, there would be no second place to run, not for the women and children of Athens. They would have trapped themselves on an island shore, ready to be picked up and herded into slavery.