(such as the turuma or pojama) and xebecs, and after the 1790s with various types of gunboats. Both the Russian and Swedish navies were based on a form of conscription, and both navies used conscripts as galley rowers. This had several advantages over convicts or slaves: the rowers could be armed to fight as marines, they could be also used as land soldiers and invasion force, and were more skilled than forced labor. Since most naval conscripts came from coastal parishes and towns, most were already experienced seafarers when they entered the service. Construction Galleys have since their first appearance in ancient times been intended as highly maneuverable vessels, independent of winds by being rowed, and usually with a focus on speed under oars. The profile has therefore been that of a markedly elongated hull with a ratio of breadth to length at the waterline of at least 1:5, and in the case of ancient Mediterranean galleys as much as 1:10 with a small draught, the measurement of how much of a ship's structure that is submerged under water. To make it possible to efficiently row the vessels, the freeboard (the height of the railing above the surface of the water) was by necessity kept low. This gave oarsmen enough leverage to row efficiently, but at the expense of seaworthiness. These design characteristics made the galley fast and maneuverable, but more vulnerable to rough weather. The documentary evidence for the construction of ancient galleys is fragmentary, particularly in pre-Roman times. Plans and schematics in the modern sense did not exist until the 17th century and nothing like them has survived from ancient times. How galleys were constructed has therefore been a matter of looking at circumstantial evidence in literature, art, coinage and monuments that include ships, some of them actually in natural size. Since the war galleys floated even with a ruptured hull and virtually never had any ballast or heavy cargo that could sink them, not a single wreck of one has so far been found. The only exception has been a partial wreck of a small Punic liburnian from the Roman era, the Marsala Ship. On the funerary monument of the Egyptian king Sahure (2487–2475 BC) in Abusir, there are relief images of vessels with a marked sheer (the upward curvature at each end of the hull) and seven pairs of oars along its side, a number that