And they got a bit too used to it. To the point they struggled a bit with other seas; Caesar’s first attempt to conquer Britannia, in 55 BCE, highlights it.

When the Romans were close to the coast of what’s today Kent, from Pas-de-Calais, the Britons were waiting for them on the hills. Full of love, hugs, and arrows. No problem: boats are fast, right? Just look for another open beach, it’s shorter to go through the sea, the Britons won’t catch you! What could go wrong?

…except it is not shorter. This is not the Mediterranean, sea surrounded by land; it’s an island, land surrounded by sea. It was really easy for the Britons to protect any potential landing spot, while the Romans took the long way.

Eventually the Romans said “Per Hercle… let’s land anyway in this muddy island”. With boats built by the Veneti. Who lived in Brittany (the continental peninsula). Great shipmakers, they often did the Gallia-Britannia route to trade tin, their boats were little wonders of engineering: built of sturdy oak, with thick nails holding planks together, leather sails… what could go wrong?

The Veneti shipped between Brittany and Cornwall. It’s mostly open sea, and deeper than between Pas-de-Calais and Kent. The Romans had a hard time landing, because their ships couldn’t go too close to the shore without getting stuck. The Romans knew a lot about the geography of the Mediterranean, but those lands? Hic sunt bibitores loti dracones.

But hey, eventually the Romans did land. They fought there, encamped there. The ships were beached… without taking into account high tides. Because unlike in the Mediterranean tides are a big deal down north. Caesar got storms, high tides, some ships were full of water, some hit each other and became useless, then the Britons saw all of that and said “They can’t go back! The suckers can’t go back! They got almost no supplies and they can’t get more! Attack!”

For the want of a nail that fucker wouldn’t go back to cross the Rubicon. Sadly he did. And he got praised for landing.

I’m sharing this mostly as history trivia.