Archimedes invented a device which could roll the roman war ships over in the water.
A Discovery program tries to find out how to build such a device.
They try to build a crane. 17 meter long boom with a truss support.
I have a better idea. Take a very strong rope, attach a metal hook, with 4 hooks. (Like a giant 4-pronged fishing hook.) Throw the hook out over the ship, let 300 men hold the other end of the rope. When the hook has landed in the water on the far side of the boat the
300 men start running and pulling the rope.The hook grabs the ship's side and the power in the rope rolls the boat over, drowning soldiers and destroying equipment.
Keep pulling until the hook loses its grip, or the hook is lost and we need to replace it at the end of the rope.
The throwing mechanism can be a catapult.
This weapon can be fired once every 2 minutes, and can roll any boat which comes within range, and that range should be something like a hundred meters.
The stone wall against the sea has to be fitted with a low friction crest, wet and greasy timber, for example. So the rope glides against it without getting caught of damaged.
If all of the seafront of the city is fitted like this we can have many teams guarding their sections of the seafront and they can quickly move sideways to cover more of the beach.
The ancient texts tell us that Archimedes built a weapon, a giant "claw" which was swung out over the stone wall, and others think it must be a crane with some kind of claw in a rope at the end of the crane beam. I think my idea is a good alternative.
I watch the program as I write, and right now I saw them use this rope method to try to lift a small boat. Rows of men tugging at a rope. But only as an experiment to find out how much their crane will have to lift. Even that event does not wake the idea in their minds that they could use this method as the very weapon they are trying to reconstruct.