As Ptolemy's fleet came into view of the city right after dawn on the day of the battle, they found Demetrius' fleet deployed and waiting for them. His fleet augmented to some 180 vessels with ships captured in Cyprus, Demetrius concentrated the bulk against Ptolemy, leaving only 10 quinqueremes under Antisthenes to blockade the narrow exit of the harbour of Salamis and prevent or at least delay Menelaus' intervention. Demetrius had gathered his best ships—the seven Phoenician heptereis, the Athenian squadron, and behind them 10 hexereis and 10 quinqeremes—on the left, under command of the admiral Medius of Larissa. Medius was apparently the actual overall commander of the fleet, although Demetrius himself was also present on the left wing on his flagship, a hepteres. His centre comprised the lightest vessels in his fleet, under the command of Themison of Samos and Marsyas of Pella, while the right was entrusted to Hegesippus of Halicarnassus and Pleistias of Cos, the chief pilot ("archikybernetes", the second-in-command after Medius) of the fleet. Ptolemy quickly matched his fleet to mirror his opponent's dispositions: he ordered the transports carrying his army to fall back, and massed the largest ships of his fleet on his own left, which he commanded in person. As the historian Richard Billows writes, "the battle was in effect a race to see which of the two dynasts could first defeat the enemy's right wing and turn to attack the enemy's center", with the "added question of whether or not Menelaus would succeed in breaking out of Salamis in time to intervene".