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SAILING SHIPS

SAILING SHIPS

THE STORY OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY

BY

E. KEBLE CHATTERTON

WITH A HUNDRED AND
THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

SIDGWICK & JACKSON, LTD.

3 ADAM STREET, ADELPHI, W.C.

1909

All rights reserved.

IN PIAM MEMORIAM

PATRIS DILECTISSIMI
QVI ME
AD MARIS NAVIVMQVE
STVDIVM
PRIMVS EXCITAVIT

PREFACE.

This history of sailing ships has been written primarily for the general reader, in the hope that the sons and daughters of a naval nation, and of an Empire that stretches beyond the seas, may find therein a record of some interest and assistance in enlarging and systematising their ideas on the subject, especially as regards the ships of earlier centuries. It is not necessary to look far—no further than the poster-designs on advertisement-hoardings—to observe the errors into which our artists of to-day are liable to fall owing to lack of historical knowledge in this subject; and to put (for instance) triangular headsails with a rectangular sail on the “bonaventure mizzen-mast” of an early sixteenth-century ship, is an inaccuracy scarcely to be pardoned.

Quite recently one of the chief librarians in one of our biggest national treasure-houses informed me that when an artist, who had been commissioned to illustrate a certain work, came to him for guidance as to the ships of a recent period, he was at a loss where to lay his hands on a book which should show him what he wished to know by picture and description. Only after much search was the requisite knowledge obtained.

I trust that both the yachtsman and sailorman will find in these pages something of the same exciting pleasure which has been mine in tracing the course of the evolutions through which their ships have passed. Those whose work or amusement it is to acquaint themselves with the sailing ship and her ways, and for lack of time and opportunity are unable to seek out the noble pedigree of what Ruskin truly described as “one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of the noblest,” may care to learn what were the changing conditions which combined to bring about such a highly complex creature as the modern sailing ship. Perhaps at some time when handling a rope, a spar, a tiller or a sail, they may have wondered how it all began; what were the origins of all those various parts of a ship’s “furniture”; why some essential portions have scarcely changed; and how other portions are the outcome of time, experiment, and science. I hope that to neither the amateur nor the professional sailor I shall seem impertinent if I have attempted to tell them something about their ship which they did not know before. But if, on the other hand, I shall have succeeded in increasing their love for the sailing ship by outlining her career, I trust that this may be allowed to counterbalance the defects which, in a subject of so vast a scope, are hardly to be avoided in spite of considerable care and the generous assistance of many kind friends.

Finally, I make my appeal to the younger generation, to whom ships and the sea have in all times suggested so much that is bound up with adventure and brave deeds. The present moment sees us at a stage in the history of ships when the Royal Navy as a whole, and the Merchant Service almost entirely, have no longer any convenience for sail. There is a dire need in the latter for both officers and men, whilst on shore the conditions of employment are exactly the reverse. Surely it is only by a mutual adjustment of the two that both problems, on sea and land, can possibly be overcome; and it is only by winning the enthusiasm of the boy who is to become father of the man that the sailor’s love for the sea can be handed on from generation to generation. We have received from our ancestors a splendid heritage, a unique legacy—the mastery of the seas. That legacy brings with it a commensurate responsibility, to retain what our forefathers fought for so dearly. Perhaps to the healthy-minded Anglo-Saxon boy, not yet too blasé and civilised to feel no thrill in reading his Marryat, Cook, Ballantyne, Henty, Fenn, or the glorious sea-fights and discoveries in history itself—perhaps to him this book may be of some assistance in visualising the actual ships of each historical period.

I desire to return thanks to many who, from motives of personal friendship or of love for ships, have so readily lent me their assistance in the course of this work. If I have omitted to include the names of any to whom my obligations are due it is from no sense of ingratitude. Especially I am anxious to return thanks to Dr. Wallis Budge and Mr. H. R. Hall of the Egyptian Department of the British Museum, as well as to the officials in other departments of the same institution, particularly those of the Coin Room, the Print Room, the Manuscript Room, Greek and Roman Antiquities, and British and Mediæval Antiquities: to Mr. Clifford Smith of the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, and to Mr. R. C. Flower of the Public Record Office for assistance in research: to Dr. Hoyle of the Manchester Museum for permission to use photographs of two Egyptian models: to the Board of Education for permission to reproduce photographs of models in the South Kensington Museum: to the Curator of the Royal Naval College Museum, Greenwich, for granting special facilities for studying the collection of models: to the British Consul at Christiania, for assistance in obtaining photographs of Viking ships: to M. Ernest Leroux for permission to use the illustration of the navis actuaria found on the Althiburus mosaic: to the Elder Brethren of Trinity House, jointly with Messrs. Cassell and Co., for allowing me to reproduce Phineas Pett’s Royal Prince: to the Committee of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, Ryde, for permission to reproduce Messrs. West’s photograph of the rare print of the Alarm, Fig. 113: to Captain Roald Amundsen for the plans of the Gjöa: to the authorities of the British Museum for many illustrations either sketched, photographed, or reproduced from their catalogues: to Lieut.-Colonel A. Leetham, Curator of the Royal United Service Museum, Whitehall, for permission to photograph models and prints: to Captain C. E. Terry for the illustration of the Santa Maria: to Mr. A. E. M. Haes for the photograph of the Oimara: to Messrs. Camper and Nicholsons, Limited, for the plans of the yacht Pampas: to Messrs. White Brothers for the lines of the yacht Elizabeth: to Messrs. Fores for the illustrations of the Xarifa and Kestrel: and to Mr. H. Warington Smyth for the Nugger in Fig. 8, the two illustrations of Scandinavian and Russian ships in Figs. 30 and 31, and the American schooner in Fig. 91. I wish also to acknowledge Mr. Warington Smyth’s extreme courtesy in offering to allow me to use any of the other sketches in his delightful book “Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia,” and only regret that circumstances prevented my being able to avail myself more fully of so generous an offer.

The illustrations in Figs. 26 and 27 appear by arrangement with Mr. John Murray: Fig. 51 by arrangement with the Clarendon Press, Oxford: and Figs. 30, 31, 87-90, 92, 93, 95, 102, 104, 106, 111, 112, 114, 115, and the Plans, by arrangement with the editor of The Yachting Monthly. Thanks are also due to two artists skilled in marine subjects—to Mr. Charles Dixon for his two pictures in colour, at once lively and accurate; and to Mr. Norman S. Carr, not only for the initial letters of the chapters, but for thirty or more sketches specially drawn for this book.

Finally, I have to express my thanks to Mr. John Masefield, who has been kind enough to read the proofs, while the book was passing through the press, and to give me the benefit of his valuable advice.

E. KEBLE CHATTERTON.

June 1909.

ERRATA

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PLANS.

(AT END OF VOLUME.)

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.

A short time ago one of our Naval Museums came into possession of a certain model of a sailing ship. She was a fine vessel, one of the first of the old “wooden walls” to be built in the reign of the late Queen. The Curator wisely determined to have this model fully rigged with all her spars, sails, and gear, just as the original had been in her days of active service. Every detail was correct; every halyard and brace were made of proportionate thickness. Even the right kind of “stuff” was found, after some difficulty, for the cable. An efficient rigger, too, was found, who happened to have served on this same ship.

Finally, when the model was completed the Curator looked at it and said, “Now it will be possible for those who come after us to tell exactly how a sailing ship was rigged; in a few years’ time there won’t be a man alive who will know how to do it.”

It is with a similar desire, to preserve all that can be gathered, that an attempt is made in the present book to collect into one continuous narrative the historical data available concerning the evolution of that fast-disappearing object—the sailing ship. With the advent of steam was hoisted the signal for abolishing sail; and although for a long time the famous old clippers put up a keen fight, yet for commercial purposes, when passengers and mails, merchandise and perishable food, had to be hurried from one side of the world to the other without loss of time, it became impossible for a sailing ship, that depended so entirely on the mercy of wind and weather, to compete successfully with the steamship. By 1840, it will be remembered, steamers had commenced crossing the Atlantic, and within the next ten or fifteen years the sailing ship, except for such long voyages as to China, Australia, and other distant countries, was for ever doomed. Perhaps these beautiful creatures, oversparred and undermanned though they are nowadays, will be allowed, in spite of competition and low freights, to remain with us a little longer. It is probable that the introduction of the motor, instead of assisting to complete the departure of sails, will help in their being retained: for it has now been found commercially profitable to instal the internal-combustion engine in ships of a size not exceeding about seven hundred tons. By this means sail can be used in a fair wind, and the motor can take her along in calms, as well as in tolerable weather against a head wind. In entering harbours and leaving there will also be a saving of the charge for a tug. Perhaps when the marine-motor industry has become more perfect it will be possible to fit a sufficiently powerful motor to a 4000-ton barque.

If that should be possible, then it would be indeed welcome news to hear that the sluicing ebb of sailing ships and sailormen had stopped. (For, of course, no one nowadays, except perhaps the lady passenger, would ever think of honouring the marine mechanics on board a liner or battleship with the title of “sailor,” whose knowledge of seamanship is so elementary that they can as a rule neither sail a boat nor make a splice, let alone go up aloft.) But at present, when it is difficult to get enough officers and men for the steam merchant service, it is doubtful if the sailing ship, except in the case of a few deep-sea vessels and the coasters, fishermen, pilots, and yachts round our coasts, will be encouraged to remain with us.

In setting forth whatever may be of interest in the following pages I have, following the example of that illustrious Elizabethan, Richard Hakluyt, taken “infinite cares,” travelled many miles from port to port to talk with every kind of sailorman—deep-sea, coaster, or yacht’s hand—with fishermen, pilots, shipbuilders, riggers, marine architects, and sail-makers. In addition to this, I have been fortunate in gaining access to libraries containing, in various languages and of both ancient and modern date, invaluable accounts of ships of earlier days. The study of coins (curiously overlooked by some writers on ancient ships) has enabled me to submit some definite knowledge concerning craft of the classical age. The study of old fonts in this country, especially in those churches which were dedicated in the name of St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, has helped to confirm the otherwise scanty evidence for the period between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. But perhaps the most valuable and interesting material is the illustration of an Egyptian sailing ship of the XII. Dynasty. This model, rigged for sailing up and rowing down the Nile, will be discussed in Chapter II. Hitherto we have had to depend for our knowledge of Egyptian ships on the illustrations found on the tombs. Although in recent years some models of boats have been discovered in these tombs, yet that which I am enabled to reproduce (Figs. 5 and 6) is the only one showing the boat properly rigged that has hitherto been unearthed. This model was discovered in the season of 1906-1907 at Rifeh, by Professor Flinders Petrie, and is the finest example that has yet reached England. It is now in the Manchester Museum, and I am indebted to Dr. Hoyle, the Director of the Museum, for his courtesy in enabling me to reproduce this very interesting model here.

Notwithstanding the deplorable fact that there are gaps existing at those critical stages where information would be the most welcome, it is nevertheless possible to construct a fairly continuous narrative of the development of the sailing ship. It will be noticed that in addition to the information to be found in ancient tombs of Egypt we have the evidence of ancient coins, vases, terra-cotta and wooden models, lamps, monuments, excavations in Scandinavia, England, Scotland, Germany. Coming to more modern times, there is the Bayeux Tapestry, with its excellent copy in the South Kensington Museum. We have, too, the pictorial representations on ancient seals and coins of this country. There are some reproductions of ships in old manuscripts; but it is an unfortunate fact that, except in comparatively modern times, it is rare to find the ship commemorated in paintings. Even when it is found, it is often represented with less regard to marine accuracy than to pictorial effect. When one considers the high position both Venice and Genoa occupied during the Middle Ages, alike in respect of art and maritime pursuits, it is difficult to understand why so remarkably few pictures of ships remain to us among the Old Masters. In both religious and secular paintings the ship is conspicuous by its absence. Perhaps it may be that artists had not received sufficient encouragement to paint marine subjects and that the gulf which to-day exists between the landsman and the sailor was equally great then.

However, various painters have seen fit to take the Pilgrimage of St. Ursula as their theme. Memling’s celebrated panels on the reliquary of that saint, now in St. John’s Hospital, Bruges, are of interest for our purpose, for no fewer than four of the six panels contain pictures of ships belonging to the period of the artist. The date of these miniatures is some time not later than the year 1489. Old printed books of the sixteenth century onwards frequently contain illustrations of ships of the time. Among the books, for instance, presented to the South Kensington Museum on the death of Lady Dilke will be found an interesting illustrated French translation of the Acts of the Apostles. The ships (of mediæval design) illustrating the Voyages of St. Paul are of value as showing the rig and details of the craft contemporary with the artist. These and similar illustrations, excepting always when the artist has become too fantastic and imaginative, are important links in connecting the story of the ships of ancient days with the modern full-rigged ship. Coming down to the seventeenth century, the paintings of the Dutch artists Jan Van de Cappelle, of Willem Van de Velde the younger, Bakhuizen, Ruisdael, and Cuyp give us the most interesting details as to rigging and hull. Claude’s picture, in the National Gallery, of the “Embarkation of St. Ursula,” painted towards the end of the seventeenth century, shows the high-pooped ship of his own day. Charles Brooking of the eighteenth century, Turner and Clarkson Stanfield of the nineteenth, show us in their pictures many invaluable minutiæ of sailing ships. And even if Ruskin’s criticism hold good, that Stanfield’s ships never look weather-beaten but “always newly painted and clean,” yet for our purpose this is no disadvantage; and it will be appreciated still more in a few years when our descendants go into art galleries to seek out from contemporary paintings the appearance of ships of the Victorian period.

Happily the ships of our day have been perpetuated by such admirable marine artists as Moore, Wyllie, Vicat Cole, Napier Hemy, Dixon, Somerscales, Tuke, and others. But in addition to pictures, we have at hand some hundreds of models of vessels in the South Kensington Museum, the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, the Royal United Service Museum, Whitehall, in the Louvre, in Continental churches, museums, and arsenals, and in many private collections. Some of these models in Greenwich and South Kensington have been rigged from historical information in the museums themselves. It is impossible to deny the important influence that these wonderful little ships may have on the youthful minds of our nation, which has had the privilege for so many years of being called maritime. But to the student of ships of any age they are the greatest aid in assisting him—far greater, indeed, than pages of description, far greater also than the work of any painter—to realise the vessels that carried our ancestors across the seas. I am as certain that we owe to the Government the greatest thanks for putting these facilities before the public as I am uncertain that the same public appreciates them in the manner they deserve.

From all these sources, then, already enumerated, we are to begin to reconstruct as far as possible the ships of all ages. If we should be accused of arguing at times by inference without actual facts before us, let us be allowed to say this much: there are signs in a ship’s lines and rigging which, to the landsman, are devoid of meaning, but to the man who has been wont to handle ships, and perhaps to design and build them, they are full of significance. Generally speaking, to the former a model is a nicely-carved piece of wood, adorned with a maze of complicated strings. Curves of hull, the position of the masts, the amount of sail area aft or forward, go for nothing. To the expert every inch of rope has its definite value, every line of her design speaks of speed or seaworthiness, or of the opposite. The careful balance of sails will show whether she is, to use sailor slang, “as handy as a gimlet” or as hard-mouthed a beast as ever was governed by a rudder. Therefore, if, in looking at the lines and rig of a ship of the Phœnicians, we should say, without being able to quote any historian of antiquity, that she would never go to windward because her sail area was deficient and her draught of water too slight, and assume from this that the Phœnicians always waited for a fair wind or rowed with oars, we must not be accused of proving too much. This is not a matter for the archæologist, but for the practised mariner with some knowledge of the theory of his art. Any sailor, for instance, on looking at a model or illustration of a Burmese junk (see Fig. 1), would tell you at once that her lines and rig are such as would make her useless for going against the wind. He knows this by inference. As a fact, he learns afterwards that, like the boats of the Egyptians—which she much resembles in general shape, in mast, and in sail—these junks can only sail before the wind (which is usually favourable) in ascending the river Irawadi, and return with the current.

Fig. 1. Burmese Junk.

A nation exhibits its characteristics, its exact state of progress and degree of refinement in three things: its art, its literature, and its ships. Indeed we might go so far as to affirm that these last are but a branch of the first. Just as the house was at first merely a thing of utility, becoming in the course of time adorned with carvings and decoration, so the ship, from being the rough, clumsy dug-out, with the advance of civilisation becomes adorned at first with animals’ heads, with eyes, with a human head, with coloured hull, and at a subsequent stage with sails bearing devices of high artistic merit. Finally, gilded portholes and gilded sterns were added to the ship, so that, to quote the description of Charles I.’s Sovereign of the Seas, “she was so gorgeously ornamented with carving and gilding that she seemed to have been designed rather for a vain display of magnificence than for the service of the State.”

The development of the ship, then, is parallel to the development of the State. In the rude ages she is a rough creature, remaining more like the tree out of which she is made than a thing of being. In the hands of a nation that has reached a high degree of civilisation, though she is still made of oak from the forest, yet she has lost all resemblance to the tree-trunk. Instead, she has acquired a most wonderful personality of her own. The wood of the tree has become merely the means of expressing the most admirable combination of delicacy and strength, of slender lines and powerful masses.

Thus we must go to the East, the birthplace of civilisation, to trace the beginnings of our subject. We shall for this reason start from Egypt and Phœnicia, and, tracing the development through Greek and Roman times, advance to Northern and Western Europe and further west still to America. And in covering a period of roughly 8000 years, in spite of the enormous difference in time, in nations, in geographical and other conditions, we shall find that no feature is more amazing than the extraordinary spirit of conservatism which has spread itself universally over both ships and their sailors. So remarkable are the examples of this, even under widely opposed conditions, that I have thought it worth while here to submit some of the more important ones as being worthy of special consideration.

First, let us take the shape of the Egyptian ship, from which the Greeks and Romans eventually obtained their shipbuilding ideas. The high poop and the rockered bow with its bold sweep aft have, it is not too much to assert, influenced the whole world’s shipping ever since. True, the ancient galleys of the Greeks and Romans possess a straighter keel and a pointed bow. But this was done for a purpose. These galleys were fighting ships; and as the ram had to be placed forward in such a manner that keel, stempost, and strut-frames centred their combined force at the extreme point, the shape of the bow could not follow that of the Egyptians. The keel, too, was flat and straight, because it was the custom of the Greeks and Romans to haul their galleys ashore nearly every night. Again, we must bear in mind that the Roman or Greek war vessel was primarily a rowing boat and not a sailing ship, and that mast and sail were always lowered before going into battle. Yet, for all that, the Greek vases bearing pictures of war galleys still show the Egyptian stern. But when we come to consider the Greek and Roman merchant ships, we find the Egyptian stern and a modified Egyptian bow unmistakably present. And we must remember that the merchant ships were primarily sailing ships and only used their oars as auxiliaries.

Throughout the ages many of these general lines of the Egyptian ships have been followed. We see them appearing in the prehistoric ships of Norway, in the Viking ships of old, and in the ships of the Baltic to-day. We see this conservatism in the ships of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, in the caravels and caracks and galleons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We see it down to about the time of the Royal George in 1746; and even since then, when the great sweep from bow up to the extreme height of the poop-deck was modified until it practically disappeared, yet we find traces of it in the forecastle and raised quarter-deck of the modern sailing ship. And to continue the argument one step further, I suppose if you could by sending a current of electricity through one of the Egyptian naval architects, now lying as a mummy in one of our museums, bring him to life, so that you might take him to see the yachts racing during Cowes Week, he would not hesitate to say that such ships as White Heather II. and the newest Shamrock were based on the designs he had made for his masters under the Twelfth Dynasty. If the reader will take the trouble of comparing the Rifeh model (Figs. 5 and 6) with the lines of the latest British yachts now being built under the new universal rule, and then recollect how many years have passed in the interim, he will not cease to wonder that the same “overhang” at bow and stern is as prevalent on the Solent as it was on the Nile. Whatever else these facts may prove, they certainly show what a high state of civilisation the Egyptian had attained; more, perhaps, than we realise at present. The naval architects of that time must indeed have lacked as little that we could teach them in design nowadays as—we know from subsequent excavations—the shipbuilders of Viking times could learn from our shipbuilders of to-day.

An additional proof of the wisdom and knowledge of the ancients is to be found in the rig of their ships. The squaresail of the Egyptians was very like that used subsequently by the Greeks and Romans, and afterwards by the Vikings and many of the Norwegian and Russian ships to-day. It survived, moreover, beyond the Middle Ages, the only important difference being that three and sometimes two additional masts were provided with squaresails, with a lateen sail on the mizzen and a spritsail and sprit topsail forward. Thus, though the headsails of a modern full-rigged ocean ship have been altered during the last hundred and fifty years, yet the arrangement of her lower courses is practically that of the single sail of the Egyptians, omitting for the present certain details which do not alter the method of harnessing the wind as a means of propulsion. They had in these early times learned the value of stretching a sail on yards. They had, besides, understood where to place backstays and a forestay to support the mast, and they had adopted the use of braces to the yards as well as of topping lifts.

The eyes painted on the ships of the Greeks and Romans still survive to-day in the hawse holes on either side of a ship’s bow. And this belief of the ancients that by means of these eyes the vessel could see her way was but one article in the general creed still shared by every sailor, amateur and professional alike, that a ship, of all the creations of man, is indeed a living thing. Mr. F. T. Bullen, in a delightful little essay, has demonstrated the varying ways in which a ship will manifest her personality. In “The Way of the Ship” Mr. Bullen also remarks: “Kipling has done more, perhaps, than any other living writer to point out how certain fabrics of man’s construction become invested with individuality of an unmistakable kind, and of course so acute an observer cannot fail to notice how pre-eminently is this the case with ships.”

Though you may build two ships on the same yard from the same plans by the same builder, yet their personalities are different. The yachtsmen who elect to have a one-design class know very well that though you may raffle as to the ownership of each ship, yet there will always be one or two of the fleet that will be superior to the rest. But the ancients were before the yachtsmen in discovering that a mere contrivance of wood and metal should have a distinct character of its own.

The decoration of the bow and stern of the ship has existed for many hundreds of years; and though the figurehead was especially prominent during the Middle Ages, it is now fast disappearing both from sailing ships of commerce and from yachts also. On steamers it is hardly ever seen except on the steam yacht. The decorated stern, too, so prevalent up to the eighteenth century, has now vanished; although the final traces of this may be noticed in the old-fashioned architecture to which the modern Royal steam yachts of this country still cling, and in the gold beading which frequently ornaments the name of a steamship under her stern.

In Northern latitudes we find the most extraordinary cases of historical obstinacy; the rig and hull of the Scandinavians have remained practically unaltered for some two or three thousand years. The very word “snekkja,” applied to the ancient longships of the Scandinavians, is still used to-day. Moreover, the “bonnet,” which was attached to the foot of the sail to give additional area—unlaced, of course, in dirty weather—was used by the Vikings; was adopted from them by the ships of mediæval England; and is still used to-day by the ships of Scandinavia, and in England by the Lowestoft “drifters” that go forth to fish in the North Sea, as well as by the pleasure and trading wherries that sail up and down the Norfolk Broads. Fig. 2 shows a Norwegian “jaegt,” with bonnet and bowlines.

Fig. 2. Norwegian “Jaegt.”

The influence of this dogged conservative spirit of the Norwegians is to be seen extending over Great Britain in other ways. No one who has visited the Orkney and Shetland Isles can have failed to have noticed the close similarity between their boats and those of the Norwegian. Until about forty years ago their fishing boat was exactly a Norwegian “yawl,” the most obvious descendant from the lines of a Viking ship. Indeed, until about the year 1860 all the larger fishing boats of the Shetlands were imported in boards direct from Norway ready for putting together at Lerwick. The type is still farther preserved in the whale-boats that are despatched from the mother ships in various parts of the world to harpoon the cachalot. And, not to weary the reader with yet more examples of the great influence which these Viking ships have had on the naval architecture of our country, it is interesting to remark that the latest fashion in yacht design is the so-called “canoe-stern” or “double-ender.” This, of course, derives its inspiration from the Norwegian ships of the present day; and, as we have already said, they in their turn have conservatively held to the models of their ancestors. Whether, as some have thought, the Viking “double-ender” can trace a direct descent from the ships of Egypt is a point that we must defer to another chapter.

Next to the squaresail rig, none has survived so persistently as the lateen. I think that in all probability it was adapted, a few centuries before the introduction of Christianity, from the Egyptian squaresail. Its very appearance and the corner of the world in which it is found as the prevailing rig both suggest that. It is reasonable to assume that in the course of years, when the more experienced Easterns began to discover the art of sailing against the wind and to find that the rig of the Nile boats was not suitable for this, there would be evolved a modification of the Egyptian sail to allow of tacking. This, probably, was the origin of the lateen sail of the dhow. It is of extreme antiquity, and has endured with but little alteration from the time of Alexander the Great, about 350 B.C. The prevalence of this kind of rig in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, off the East Coast of Africa, especially as far south as Zanzibar, is well known. The fact that it is still found everywhere up and down the Mediterranean, on the Nile and on Swiss lakes, shows how firmly established did this lateen rig become in the course of time. As we shall see, at a subsequent stage the lateen sail was adopted by our mediæval ships for the mizzen, and this continued right down till the close of the eighteenth century. It will assist us to realise this conservatism if we remember that the ships of St. Paul’s time were of a similar kind to these Eastern ships of which we are now speaking. Let me here be allowed to quote again from an author who has sailed in every sea and been preserved to tell us in so many charming records what many others have seen but not troubled to notice. In a further essay on “The Sea in the New Testament” Mr. Bullen, referring to the ships in which St. Paul voyaged, remarks:

“On the East African coast, even to this day, we find precisely the same kind of vessels, the same primitive ideas of navigation, the same absence of even the most elementary notions of comfort, the same touching faith in its being always fine weather as evinced by the absence of any precautions against a storm.

“Such a vessel as this [i.e., St. Paul’s] carried one huge sail bent to a yard resembling a gigantic fishing-rod, whose butt, when the sail was set, came nearly down to the deck, while the tapering end soared many feet above the masthead. As it was the work of all hands to hoist it, and the operation took a long time, when once it was hoisted it was kept so if possible, and the nimble sailors, with their almost prehensile toes, climbed by the scanty rigging and, clinging to the yard, gave the sail a bungling furl.” Again, referring to the sailors’ activities on the ship in which St. Paul was sailing, Mr. Bullen goes on: “They sounded and got twenty fathoms, and in a little while found the water had shoaled to fifteen. Then they performed a piece of seamanship which may be continually seen in execution on the East African coast to-day—they let their anchors down to their full scope of cable and prayed for daylight. The Arabs do it in fair weather or foul—lower the sail, slack down the anchor, and go to sleep. She will bring up before she hits anything.” I have received a like testimony from one who has also cruised in those parts within recent years.

The prevalence of the fighting top has been maintained from the time of the Egyptians down to the present day. To mention but a few instances, the fighting top is seen in a battleship of Rameses III. (about B.C. 1200), and it is found on ancient seals of the thirteenth century of the present era, and so on, of course, through the Middle Ages to our latest battleships.

From the times of the Egyptians the stern was always reserved for the owner or captain and officers. This custom was that of the Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings, and the English right down to the building of H.M.S. Dreadnought a short while ago, when the longstanding practice of the officers being quartered aft and the men forward was for the first time broken, to the satisfaction, I understand, of neither officers nor men. There has always been a sense of reverence on the part of the sailor for the poop-deck, and though in the Merchant Service many of the old ways have recently disappeared, yet the custom in the Navy, of “saluting the deck” in honour of the Sovereign is, of course, well known. In ancient illustrations we see the place of honour always placed aft.

Finally we must needs refer to the extraordinary longevity of the Mediterranean galley. Adapted from the Egyptians by the Greeks and afterwards the Romans, it flourished, especially in the Adriatic, up to the sixteenth century in a modified form, and only the advent of steam finally closed its career. Even now the gondola will be recognised as bearing a family likeness, and the prow of the latter still shows the survival of the spear-heads which were used in the manœuvre of ramming.

These, then, are some of the characteristics that have been persistent during the course of development of the sailing ship. Each national design and each nation’s rig are the survival of all that has been found to be the best for that particular locality. The more ships a nation builds, the more they sail to other ports—seeing other kinds of ships, comparing them with their own, and adopting whatever is worth while—so much the faster does the ship improve. This, indeed, has been the custom throughout the history of the English nation. When she sent her ships to the Mediterranean at the time of the Crusades, her sailors returned home with new ideas. Thus, the ships in which Richard, with his large fleet, voyaged to Palestine in 1190 would be still of the Viking type. Only a hundred and thirty years had elapsed since William the Conqueror landed in similar boats, as we know from the Bayeux tapestry. When Richard was in the Mediterranean he was joined by a number of galleys. It is not assuming too much to say that an exchange of visits would be made between the crews of the respective ships. The difference in ships would most certainly be criticised, for of all people who inhabit this planet, none are more critical of each other’s possessions than sailormen. The Mediterranean inhabitants, having reached civilisation earlier than the dwellers of Northern Europe, and having had the advantage of living nearer, both historically and geographically, to the first builders of ships, would no doubt have been far in advance of the shipbuilders of Northern Europe. Therefore, it is fairly certain that the English returned from the Crusades knowing far more of maritime matters than when they had set out. At any rate, it is significant that the illustrations of ships of the date of 1238, or about fifty years after Richard set forth to the East, show the Viking-like ship greatly modified. The beginnings of the stern-castle and fore-castle and of fighting top are now seen. It seems to me highly probable that the idea for these was obtained from the galleys, still influenced in their architecture by the methods of fighting adopted by the Greeks and the Romans.

The English nation, more than perhaps any other, has been characterised not so much by her inventiveness as by her skill in adapting other nations’ ideas. The present age of electricity and other inventions illustrates the general truth of this statement. Thus, her ships of to-day are the result of continually improving on the designs of other nations. From Norway she got her first sailing ships; from the Mediterranean she assuredly derived considerable knowledge in maritime matters generally. Certainly from Spain she learned much of the art of navigation, of rigging and of shipbuilding. From the French, as we go down through time, she acquired a vast increase of her knowledge of ship-designing and shipbuilding. Not the least of this was the importance to a vessel of fine lines. The Dutch taught us a good deal of seamanship and tactics, as we know from Pepys’s Diary. Finally, about the year 1850, after the American clippers had raced all our big ships of the mercantile marine off the ocean, England learned to build clippers equally fast and superior in strength, and so regained the sea-carrying trade she had lost. In yacht designing also she has learned much from American architects, as the Germans within the last few years have learned from us.

Sailing ships are the links which bind country to country, continent to continent. They have been at once the means of spreading civilisation and war. It is a fact that the number of new ships to be built increases proportionately as the trade of a country prospers, and one of the first signs of bad trade is the decrease in the shipbuilder’s orders. But, good trade or bad trade, peace or war, there will always be a summons in the sea which cannot be resisted. It summoned the Egyptians to sail to the land of Punt to fetch incense and gold. It summoned the Phœnicians across the Bay of Biscay to the tin mines of Cornwall. It called the Vikings to coast along the Baltic shores for pillage and piracy. It called the Elizabethans to set forth from Bristol and London in order to find new trade routes, new markets for their goods, fresh sources of their imports. It calls some for trade, some for piracy, some for mere adventure, as in the case of the yachtsman of to-day. It seduces ships from the safety of snug harbours only to be tossed about by the billows of a trackless expanse. The sea ever has been, ever is, and ever will be, uncertain, fickle, unkind. In spite of the fact that for 8000 years and more shipbuilders, designers, and seamen have by experience and invention sought every possible means to overcome its terrors and to tame its fury; in spite of the fact that these men have never succeeded in getting the upper hand, yet the call of the sea will ever be obeyed. When once she has fascinated you, when once you have consented to her cry and got the salt into your veins, you become as much the slave of the sea as any Roman underling that pulled at the oar of an ancient galley. The sea calls you; you hoist up your sails, and come.

CHAPTER II.
EARLY EGYPTIAN SHIPS FROM ABOUT 6000 B.C.

The earliest information that we can find about the sailing ship comes, of course, from Egypt: for although the first signs of the dawn of culture were seen in Babylonia, yet that is an inland country and not a maritime region. Notwithstanding the fact that to the east of the Syro-Arabian desert there flow the navigable rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates, and granting that it is only reasonable to suppose that the earliest inhabitants on the banks of these important streams did actually engage in the building of some sort of boat or ship, yet we are not in a position to make any statement from definite evidence. The age of the Babylonian civilisation is exceedingly remote, and long prior to that of the Egyptians, but that is the most that we can say. What their rowing or sailing craft were like—who knows? The discoveries made in this, the most historic corner of the world, by Layard and his successors have told us something about the craft that breasted the waters of the Tigris, but this information belongs to no period earlier than 700 or 900 B.C. Whether subsequent discoveries may lift up the curtain that hides from our view the remains, or at least the crude designs, of the first objects that were ever propelled by wood or sail is entirely a matter of uncertainty.

Of one thing we may rest assured—that Babylonia was in a comparatively high state of civilisation about six thousand years before the Christian era. For at about this date from the East came Babylonian settlers, who found their way towards the setting sun and, finally halting to the North-West of the Red Sea, colonised the region on either side of the Nile. Here, then, they arrived from Babylonia, not a barbarian wild tribe, but, as we know from the most learned Egyptologists, a highly civilised people, possessing great ability in certain arts and of definite intellectual development. It would be only natural that a band of emigrants that had been living by the banks of the Tigris or Euphrates should eventually settle by a river. An Englishman who has lived all his life on the lower reaches of the Thames, is far more likely to fix his habitation on the shores of a colonial river than to trek inland and ultimately “bring up” in the middle of a grazing country. The new inhabitants of the land that we know by the name of Egypt would feel themselves at home by its river. Whatever knowledge they had possessed of boat-building in Babylonia they carried with them across the Arabian desert and put into practice along the banks of the Nile. The accompanying illustration (Fig. 3) will show to what ability these colonisers or their immediate successors had attained. Here will be noticed the earliest form of sailing ship in existence. The mast, the square sail, the high bow and the curve of the hull are to us of the highest possible interest as showing the first beginnings of the modern full-rigged ship or yacht. This illustration has been taken from an amphora found in Upper Egypt and now in the British Museum. The date ascribed to it by the ablest Egyptologists is that of the Pre-Dynastic period, which for the sake of clearness we may regard as about 6000 B.C.

Fig. 3. Egyptian Ship of about 6000 b.c.

On other vases of this period, some of which may also be seen in the British Museum, are to be found curious crescent-shaped designs that have been sometimes taken for primitive ships by previous writers. Even to the most imaginative it must have been difficult to have given these curious drawings the right to be called boats. The extraordinary erections on what would be the deck, have not any right to be called masts or sails. To any one with the slightest practical knowledge of boats and their ways, it is amusing to find that even these primitive ideas should have been thought to depict any kind of river craft. But I have been enabled to discuss this matter with such eminent Egyptologists as Dr. Wallis Budge, the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, and Mr. H. R. Hall, both of whom are of the opinion that these designs do not represent ships at all. Dr. Budge suggests that they represent “zarebas,” a word that became very familiar to English people during Kitchener’s campaign in Egypt. In that case, the structures that have been mistaken for masts would represent erections to frighten away enemies or wild beasts. Another theory is that the series of straight lines below what was taken for the ship’s hull, and which were wrongly supposed to represent waves, are perhaps the piles on which the dwelling is built. I have, therefore, omitted such designs as not bearing on the subject of sailing ships.

Starting with a definite illustration before us of a sailing boat of about 8000 years ago, our mind naturally wanders back to the period when the first boat was ever made. Picture, if you will, the prehistoric man standing by the banks of the Tigris or Euphrates gazing in utter helplessness and awe at the liquid mass gurgling on its way to the Persian Gulf. He sees the fishes able to swim beneath its surface and the waterfowl to float above. Then when his mind has reached a sufficiently developed state to permit of his being able to reason, he begins to wonder if he—the superior to fish and fowl—could also be supported in the water until he has reached the other side of the river on which he has as yet never set foot. So, on a day, greatly daring, he entrusts his body to the flowing stream, and at length discovers that by certain exercises he is able to float and swim across to the other side. A new accomplishment has been made, a new world has been opened out to him. When he gets back home he begins to reason still further. How can he carry himself, his family, his goods to the other side? One day, perhaps, while hewing down a tree for his hut, a branch falls into the water. Behold! it possesses the ability of the water-fowl—it floats. So he hews down the trunk itself, sits across it, and for sport, launches off from the bank. Lo! the trunk supports both its own weight and his.

Thus encouraged, his primitive mind sets slowly to work. “If I get a bigger trunk and hollow it out, it will carry me, my family and my property across to the other shore.” So having turned the trunk into a boat, he makes of the branch a punting-pole. At a later stage he puts on a cross-piece to one end of the pole and thus propels himself by paddling, until this in turn becomes an oar.

Since human nature differs but little from age to age, and its chief tendency is ever to proceed along the route of least resistance, he begins to seek some means of motion without work. His descendants improve upon the tree-trunk until it has become more shapely and less clumsy. Then while returning home one evening, tired out with paddling and hunting, he rests on his paddle for a moment! Yet still his boat moves. He holds up the blade of his paddle and the canoe moves a little faster. He stands up, and, the larger the space that is exposed to the wind blowing in the direction in which he is travelling, the more quickly still does the little ship run on. Next day he brings with him a stick which he erects in the boat. That will save him standing. To the stick he makes fast a hide and spreading it to the wind sails faster than anything he has ever seen float on the water.

This is all very well in following winds: he can get along, too, when the wind is abeam, although he has to keep helping her with his paddle—such a lot of lee-way does she make; but every time the breeze gets ahead as he winds round the reaches of the Tigris he has to lower the sail and mast. This is too much for him. His mind is not able to conceive of such a manœuvre of tacking: how could a boat possibly go against the wind? It is unthinkable. He would be a fool to try and reason otherwise against a law of nature. Not, indeed, until thousands of years after him is tacking invented. The Egyptians at any rate did not understand it. Their ships were built for sailing up and rowing down the Nile, and there is abundant evidence to show the mast lowered down on to the top of the after cabin and the oarsmen propelling the boat with the stream.

The prehistoric man has thus made almost the same kind of boat that the savage or half-civilised race makes to-day. The American Indian, the Negro and the undeveloped Asiatic races cannot create any boat superior to the dug-out, because their lack of intelligence is a fatal barrier. But just as the first inventors of flying machines have begun by studying the action of birds on the wing, so in navigation as in aviation. The early boatbuilders who followed the rough dug-out gave a shape to their ships that was derived from the creatures of the water. If the reader will look at the “bows” and underbody of a fish he will see how the general lines of the ship began. If, too, he will look at the stern and “counter” of the duck and swan he will easily notice the resemblance to the overhang of the early Egyptian boats. This is not so fanciful as may appear at first sight. The ancients certainly were affected by the waterfowl in their designing of ships, and the graceful neck of the swan was a regular decoration for the stern of the later Roman ships. It is but common-sense that when man is about to study the method of navigating water or air, he should begin by copying from the creatures that spend their whole time in this activity.

For the development of the art of shipbuilding, few countries could be found as suitable as Egypt. Surrounded on the East by the Red Sea, and by the Mediterranean on the North, it had the additional blessing of a long navigable river running through its midst. Of inestimable value to any country as this is, the equable and dry climate of Egypt, the peacefulness of the waters of the Nile, the absence of storms and the rarity of calms combined with the fact that, at any rate, during the whiter and early spring months, the gentle north wind blew up the river with the regularity of a trade wind, so enabling the ships to sail against the stream without the aid of oars—these were just the conditions that many another nation might have longed for. Very different, indeed, were the circumstances which had to be wrestled with in the case of the first shipbuilders and sailormen of Northern Europe. It is but natural, therefore, that the Egyptians became great sailors and builders: we should have been surprised had the reverse been the case.

In earlier times our sources of Egyptian history were limited almost entirely to what could be derived from ancient Greek and Roman writers. Nor was this of anything but a vague and unreliable character. Happily within our own time this has been supplemented, to an enormous degree, by Egyptian exploration. The first beginnings of this are found in the scientific study of Egyptian monuments, which began about the middle of the nineteenth century. The foundation for the interpretation of hieroglyphic inscriptions was laid in the Rosetta Stone, now fortunately in the British Museum. Discovered at the close of the eighteenth century, its bilingual writing in Egyptian and Greek paved the way for future scholars. Englishmen, German, French and American students have since engaged in the fascinating pursuit of systematically and with scrupulous care, excavating the temples and palaces of the older civilisation that lived on the banks of the Nile thousands of years before the Incarnation. Encouraged alike by the settled state of political affairs in Egypt, and by the support granted in the interests of research by the Egyptian and European Governments, the excavation and preservation of these unique monuments have gone steadily on from year to year. It is from the annual reports of these exploration societies, as well as from the explorers themselves, that we are able to present the details of the Egyptian sailing ships.

It would have been strange if a nation with such a vast waterway, and living in such close proximity to the Mediterranean and Red Seas, should not have left behind some memorials of her shipping. Happily we have no need for disappointment, for the information surviving to us is of two kinds. Firstly, we have the wall-pictures of the ancient buildings, which show almost everything that a picture could tell of a ship and her rigging. These wonderful illustrations have been faithfully copied on the spot. But besides these, within recent years have been unearthed most interesting little wooden model boats. These are of two kinds, those made in the form of a funeral bark, and those which are models of the actual ships that sailed up the Nile at the time they were made. In the former the dead man is seen lying under a canopy or open deck-house with or without rowers. These funeral barks, not being sailing boats, are only of interest in pursuing our present subject as showing us the general lines and shape of the hull, together with the steering and rowing arrangements.

It is the models of sailing ships that demand our attention. These were placed in the tombs with the intention of providing the deceased with the means of sailing about on the streams of the underworld. Very touching is the care of the ancients that man’s most beautiful creation—his ship—should not be separated from him even in death. (We shall see, later on, a similar devotion expressed in the burial of the Vikings.) Models of houses and of granaries, with curious little men working away, so that the departed should not be lacking for food while he sailed about the underworld, are also found. Some of these models of ships, granaries and soul-houses are to be seen in the British Museum and the South Kensington Collection. The reader who is interested in the subject will find additional information in the fascinating book by Professor Flinders Petrie.[1] Each boat was provided with masts and sails and elaborately decorated steering oars. Dr. Budge, in his guide to the Third and Fourth Egyptian Rooms of the British Museum, points out that another religious idea was connected with these boats, namely, the conception of the boat of the Sun-god, called the “Boat of the Million of Years,” in which the souls of the beatified were believed to travel nightly in the train of the Sun-god as he passed through the underworld from West to East.

The Egyptians thought that by a use of words of magical power, the models placed in the tombs, whether of boats or houses or granaries, could be transformed into ghostly representations of their originals on earth. “The boat,” adds Dr. Budge, “was considered to be such a necessary adjunct to the comfort of the deceased in the next world, that special chapters of the Book of the Dead were compiled for the purpose of supplying him with the words of power necessary to enable him to obtain it. Thus, ‘Tell us our name,’ say the oar-rests: and the deceased answers, ‘Pillars of the Underworld is your name.’ ‘Tell me my name,’ saith the Hold: ‘Aker’ is thy name. ‘Tell me my name,’ saith the Sail: ‘Nut,’ (i.e., heaven) is thy name,” &c.[2]

But let us make a survey of the development of the Egyptian ship from the time prior to the Dynasties until the third or fourth century before the Christian era. Ancient Egyptian history has been divided by scholars into three periods—the Old Kingdom, the Intermediate, and the New Kingdom. These again have been subdivided into Dynasties, of which the First to the Tenth are covered by the Old Kingdom, the Eleventh to the Seventeenth, by the Intermediate, and the Eighteenth to the Twentieth, by the New Kingdom. Afterwards the various Foreign Dynasties of Mercenaries formed the Twenty-second to the Twenty-fifth. The Twenty-sixth was the time of the Restoration, the Twenty-seventh to the Thirty-first represented the time of the Persians. This will assist us in following the changes that came about in the ships with the progress of time.

We have already drawn attention to the illustration of a ship, or rather sailing boat, in Fig. 3, belonging to that remote period anterior to the Dynasties. There can be no possible doubt as to her being intended by the artist, who painted this design on the amphora, for a sailing vessel of some kind, though the mast and square-sail are set much further forward than is found later in Egyptian ships. There is a figurehead on the extreme point of the stempost. Below is a small platform, possibly for the look-out man whom we see later in Egyptian ships armed with a pole for taking soundings. Right aft is a small cabin for the owner or distinguished traveller. Probably she was a decked ship and steered by one or more oars from the quarter. The reader will notice a great similarity between the stern of this vessel and that of the Bœotian sailing boat shown in Fig. 11.

From the earliest times up to about the year 3000 B.C., the Egyptian craft are less ships than boats. The sailing boats of the third dynasty are decked and fitted with a lowering mast, which when not in use is lifted bodily out of its sockets and rests on the roof of the after cabin. The boat was then propelled by paddles, with a look-out man forward, the steersmen aft, and the commander amidships armed with a thong-stick to urge the rowers on. The sailing boats of the fourth and fifth dynasties become gradually bigger and more seaworthy, but the mast and rigging show only slight advance. The former, from the third dynasty to the eleventh, is in the shape of the letter A. It fits into grooves either in the deck or the side of the ship, and at first has no backstays or shrouds. Being a double mast these are not necessary. The sail at this period is deep and narrow, reaching from the top of the mast down to the deck, being fitted with both yard and boom. Braces are attached to the ends of the yards but no sheets are shown. During the fourth and fifth dynasties, while the A-shaped mast remains, backstays are added, sometimes numbering as many as nine or ten (see Fig. 4). These would become essential as the ship grew larger and her gear heavier. These backstays lead from roughly three-quarters of the way up the mast down to the spot about a quarter of the ship’s length forward of the stern. An additional stay from the top of the mast to the extremity of the stern is also frequently shown. Two or three men are seen steering with paddles, standing on the overhanging counter. On big ships the steersmen number as many as five, and the paddlers with their faces turned in the direction in which the ship was proceeding are shown to be twenty-two or twenty-three on each side. The fact that only one man is shown sitting aft holding a brace in each hand, must be an additional proof of the gentleness of the northerly wind on the Nile and the absence of squalls. No cleats are shown, and in anything much above a zephyr his weight and strength must have been sorely tried. The forestay, the enormous overhang both at bow and stern, the look-out man forward with his pole for taking soundings of the Nile, and possibly for tilting the ship’s head off whenever she got aground—an experience that is far from rare on the Nile even to-day—the presence of the commander with his thong-stick, are still shown in the ships of the fourth and fifth dynasties.

Fig. 4. Egyptian Ship of the Fifth Dynasty.

As showing the wonderful influence which Egyptian ships of this period exercised on the rig of the Far East, and even of the Far North-East, let me be permitted to call attention to the Burmese Junk in Fig. 1. I will ask the reader to note very carefully her A-shaped mast, her squaresail, her steering paddle at the side, and most important of all the general sweep of the lines of her hull, coming right up from the overhanging bow to the raised overhanging poop. This is the Burmese junk of to-day, which, like the Egyptian ships of old, finds the prevailing wind favourable for sailing up against the river Irawadi, and when returning down the stream, lowers her sail and rows down with the current. Between the Chinese and Burmese junks of to-day and the Egyptian ships of about six thousand years ago there are so many points of similarity that we are not surprised when we remember that the Chinese, like the Egyptians, derived their earliest culture from Babylonia, and that India—using the name in its widest geographical sense to include Burma—is mainly, as to its culture at least, an offshoot from the Chinese. Until quite recently, China remained in the same state of development for four thousand years. If that was so with her arts and life generally, it has been especially so in the case of her sailing craft. I am not contending that the Chinese junk is identical with the ancient Egyptian ship, but I submit that between the two there is such close similarity as to show a common influence and a remarkable persistence in type.

But whilst engaged in this present work, I became interested in a half-civilised tribe called the Koryak, dwelling around the sea of Okhotsk, in the North-West Pacific. Here, in this remote corner of undeveloped Siberia, they have remained practically forgotten by the rest of the world, except for a few occasional visits from the land side by the Cossacks, and from the shore side by the American whalers. Recently, thanks to the Russians, a few have begun to embrace Christianity, but for the most part, they remain in their primitive state with habits too repulsive to mention. Naturally, since (as we have already pointed out) a nation exhibits its state of progress in its art, its literature and its ships, we are not surprised to find that the Koryak craft have, at any rate in respect of rigging, several highly important similarities to the Egyptian ship of the fourth and fifth dynasties. Thus, besides copying the ancients in steering with an oar, the fore-end of the prow of their sailing boats terminates in a fork through which the harpoon-line is passed, this fork being sometimes carved with a human face which they believe will serve as a protector of the boat. Instead of rowlocks they have, like the early Egyptians, thong-loops, through which the oar or paddle is inserted. Their sail, too, is a rectangular shape of dressed, reindeer skins sewed together. But it is their mast that is especially like the Egyptians and Burmese. The following description, written by a member of the Jesup Expedition which recently visited the Koryaks, is notable:

“Instead of a mast, they employ a more primitive contrivance. Three long poles are tied together at one end with a thong which passes through drill-holes, and are set up in the manner of a tripod. On one side, the whole length of the sail is sewed to a yard, the middle of which is slung from the top of the tripod by means of a stout thong. The tripod is set up in the middle of the boat by tying both ends of one of the poles to the ribs on one side of the boat, while the third pole is fastened on the other side of the boat. The sail can revolve around the top of the tripod, and is set in the direction required by the wind, by means of braces and sheets made of thong, which are fastened to the rails.”[3]

Lacking the civilisation of the ancient Egyptians, wanting, too, no doubt the wood wherewith to build their boats, the Koryaks’ sailing craft are made of seal skins. But there can be little doubt that their rigging is of European rather than of Asiatic origin. Possibly it came from Egypt to India and China and so further north to the Sea of Okhotsk. At any rate, although the Egyptian ships we have been considering had a double and not a treble mast, yet it must not be supposed that the latter did not exist, for Mr. Villiers Stuart, some years ago, found on the walls of a tomb belonging to the Sixth Dynasty at Gebel Abu Faida, the painting of a boat with a treble mast made of three spars arranged like the edges of a triangular pyramid.

After about the period of the fifth Dynasty the sail, instead of being deep and narrow, becomes wide and shallow. Instead of the several steersmen with their paddles at the stern, we have one large oar in the centre of the stern, resting on a large wooden fork and worked by one steersman by means of a lanyard. If the reader will refer to Figs. 5 and 6, he will see this quite clearly. These are the interesting little models already alluded to as having been discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie, and which are now in the Manchester Museum. This most instructive “find” was made by the British School of Archæology in the season of 1906-7 at Rifeh, whilst excavating the tomb of the sons of an Egyptian Prince belonging to the Twelfth Dynasty. In the coffins were these two excellent little ships, the one, as will be seen, with her mast and yards, braces, topping lifts and halyards for sailing up the Nile; while the other ship shews very clearly the mast lowered in a tabernacle on to the cabin, the foot of the mast being balanced by the weight of a stone—exactly the practice of the Norfolk wherries of to-day, saving that instead of stone lead is used. The steersmen will be noticed and the highly decorated blade of the steering oar. Unfortunately, before being photographed, the oar in Fig. 5 has been placed too high. It should, of course, have been dropped lower beneath the water-line. Notice, too, that the rowers sit now with their backs to the bow. Paddles have been dispensed with, and finding that so much more power could be obtained by putting the whole weight on to the oar, rowing has been taken to instead of paddling. The little figure with a cloak round his shoulders in the bows (Fig. 6), is the look-out man.

Fig. 5. Model of an Egyptian Ship of the Twelfth Dynasty.

Fig. 6. Model of an Egyptian Ship of the Twelfth Dynasty.

In Fig. 5, the look-out man with his pole is also seen forward; the crew are gathered round the mast to haul at the halyards, and get in the sheets and braces; for now that the sail does not reach right down to the deck, sheets have become indispensable. It will also be remarked that the boom has been introduced to make the sail set better. The amount of sheer given to the boat is enormous, although the curve-in of the top of the stern is exceedingly attractive. Assuming that the dimensions of the model are proportionate she must have had precious little grip of the water, and if, when on an expedition to the land of Punt, the Egyptians ever encountered a beam wind, their ships must have made a terrible lot of lee-way. For even a light breeze, coming at right angles to those overhanging bows with no great draught amidships, would drive her head right off the wind. The steersman would naturally stand to leeward, to get a pull on his steering-thong or lanyard in order to luff her up, and prevent her sagging too much to leeward. At a later date, when, as we shall see, an oar was used each side for steering in place of only one at the extreme stern, the helmsman stood on the lee side and worked the lee steering oar. By reason of its size, this would have some of the effects of the leeboards on a Thames Barge or Dutchman.

Although these two models are the finest tomb group that have yet reached England, yet others have been found at Sakkara, and elsewhere, sometimes with a hull painted yellow and a cabin with an awning painted to imitate leather, in which the proprietor, more carefully made and of better wood than his sailors, sat with his box by his side. Another boat model was of light papyrus with flower-shaped prow and stern. It was painted green, and carried a light shelter under which the owner usually stood.[4]

These ships of the Twelfth Dynasty have an additional interest for us, since they belong to the time when Egypt was enjoying the fullest prosperity, and had reached its highest degree of civilisation in its capital of Thebes. But it is in the illustrations of ships afforded by excavations in connection with the Temple of Deir-el-Bahari that we find the most detailed information. The south wall of the middle terrace of this building is most informative, depicting as it does the naval expedition to the land of Punt. In Egyptian history various expeditions are mentioned to Punt. One occurred as early as the fifth Dynasty, for it is recorded in a tomb of a dynasty later. During the eleventh Dynasty, a similar expedition was made under Sankh-kara, and Ramases III. also sent an expedition. These last two voyages are said to have started from a harbour on the Red Sea which was reached from Koptos, probably the modern Kosseir, and to have returned there.

Although it is now thought by some Egyptologists that Queen Hatshopsitu did not send an expedition to Punt, but that she was only copying the expedition of the eleventh Dynasty, and that these Punt reliefs are merely replicas of other reliefs still to be discovered in the older temple, depicting an expedition under Nebkheruna, yet it is a doubtful point and by no means settled by critics.

But supposing these are the ships of the Egyptian Queen of the eighteenth Dynasty, they are seen with fifteen oarsmen a side, whilst two look-out men are standing forward in a kind of open-work forecastle. The general shape of the ship by now has become considerably modified. Whilst there is still considerable overhang both at bow and stern, yet she is long on the waterline. The bow resembles nothing so much as that of a modern gondola. There is a beautiful line sweeping up aft to a raised poop with an ornamentation curving gracefully inboard to another open-work castle or cabin. These illustrations of the eighteenth Dynasty show how thoroughly the Egyptians had mastered the art of shipbuilding. When a ship is sailing on the sea, she is thrown up by the motion of the waters till she rests pivoted on the crest of a wave. The middle of the ship is thus supported, but the bow and stern, not being waterborne, have a tendency to droop while the centre of the ship tends to bulge up. This is technically known among naval architects as “hogging.” In the case of ships with an enormous overhang, unsupported by water, such as was the case of the Egyptian ships and is now the fashion with our modern yachts, this hogging would need to be guarded against. Only recently the writer saw on the south coast a modern yacht with no beam but considerable length and overhang. She had been badly built and the “hogging” was very noticeable a little forward of amidships. Her skipper gave her a very bad name altogether.

In the Hatshopsitu ships we see the “hogging” strain guarded against by a powerful truss of thick rope. This truss leads from forward, sometimes being bound round—undergirding—the prow: sometimes it is made fast inside, perhaps to the deck or to the floors. It then leads aft, being stretched on forked posts until it reaches the mast, where it is wound round in a sort of clove-hitch, and then continues aft again being stretched on other forked posts until it is finally girded round the counter. This truss was as large as a man’s waist, and has been calculated by Commander T. M. Barber of the United States’ Navy to have been able to withstand a strain of over 300 tons.[5]

The manner of steering from the centre of the stern with one oar has given way to that of using an oar on each quarter. Each oar rests on a forked post rising above the head of the steersman who works the oar with a thong loop. As already pointed out, it is noticeable that he uses the lee steering oar always. It is probable that going to the land of Punt, the prevailing North wind favoured them. But returning, if the wind was foul, they would have to row. Even had they understood the art of tacking at this time they would have had some difficulty. As far as one can gather from the look of a ship of this kind, as soon as ever the lee oar was pushed over so that she came up into the wind, she would get into stays and not pay off on to the other tack except with the aid of the oarsmen.

In these Punt pictures, too, will be noticed the fact that the rowers have their oars in thongs instead of the later invention—pins or rowlocks. These ships were certainly decked, but that was probably only down the centre, for though we see the ship crowded with all sorts of merchandise, yet the rowers’ bodies are only visible from the knees upwards. They were probably placed on a lower platform.

Just as in the course of time the double and treble mast gave way to the single spar, and the deep, narrow sail to the broad, shallow square-sail, so later, about the year 1250 B.C., we find that the boom was discarded, and therefore at any rate, by now, sheets must have been introduced. But before we pass from Hatshopsitu’s ships (about 1600 B.C.) let us examine the sail of that time. So much confusion exists in the mind of many who see occasional pictures of these early vessels that it may be well to make an effort to clear this matter up. The yard was of two pieces lashed together in the middle; the same statement applies to the boom. Pulleys not being yet invented, the two halyards that raised the yard, led through two empty squares formed by a framework of wood acting as fair-leads. These halyards led aft, and being belayed well abaft the mast were used as powerful stays to the latter. Let it be understood at once that the boom remained fixed, being lashed to the mast by thongs. From the top of the mast below the yard depended a series of topping lifts about seventeen in number. These coming out from the mast at varying angles spread over the whole length of the boom, and took the weight of the latter, supporting also the sail and yard when lowered. Contrary to the subsequent practice of the Greeks and Romans, the yard was the spar that was raised or lowered by the halyards. Thus, when sail was struck the two halyards would be slacked off, the yard would descend on to the boom, the sail would be rolled up while the topping-lifts would hold the entire weight. The two braces, leading down not quite from the extremities of the yard, a single sheet made fast a little forward of the middle of the boom, a forestay and also a single backstay were also used, but side rigging never.

From about the year 1250 B.C. onwards, the sail was no longer furled by slacking away the halyards, but, having dispensed with the boom, brails of about four in number usually hung from the yard which was now not lowered but a fixture. Consequently on coming to an anchorage the brails would be used for furling the sail to the yard—still standing owing to the weight and consequent exertion needed to hoist it again. This, then, remained the accepted rig of the Phœnicians, Greeks and Romans for over a thousand years as we shall see from the evidence of coins and vases.

The importance of the various expeditions of the Egyptians to Punt cannot be over-estimated. They are the earliest attempt at organising a fleet of powerful ships to voyage far away from home waters. Exactly where Punt was situated it is not possible to say, because the name was given to various regions at different times. Sometimes it is the modern Somaliland, or the shore opposite: at other times it is somewhere in a more southerly direction. But wherever Punt may have been, it was either to the East or South of Egypt. The real motive of these expeditions was to increase the commerce of Egypt, to open up trade with the neighbouring countries, and especially to obtain incense for the burials of the Egyptians. Such commodities as ivory, leopard skins, ostrich feathers and gold were also brought back.

I am indebted for much information with reference to these expeditions to a most interesting publication of the Egypt Exploration Fund,[6] and to the work of a German scholar.[7] In the illustrations of the Punt expedition as depicted in Hatshopsitu’s Temple, we see five ships arriving. Two have struck sail and are moored. The first ship has sent out a small boat which is fastened by ropes to a tree on the shore, while bags and amphora, probably containing food and drink, are being unloaded to present to the chief of Punt. The other three ships are coming up with sail set, showing us the most interesting details as to their rigging. On one of them the pilot is seen giving the command “To the port side.” There is an inscription annexed to this illustration, which, as stated above, can now be deciphered. It reads thus:—“These are the ships, which the wind brought along with it.” And again, “The voyage on the sea, the attainment of the longed-for aim in the holy land, the happy arrival of the Egyptian soldiers in the land of Punt, according to the arrangement of the divine Prince Amon, Lord of the terrestrial thrones in Thebes, in order to bring to him the treasures of the whole land in such quantities as will satisfy him.”

We see, too, the ships being loaded with the produce of Punt. The Egyptians are bringing the cargo across a gangway from the shore to the ship. There are bags of incense and gold, ebony, tusks of elephants, skins of panthers, frankincense trees piled up in confusion on the ships’ decks. Monkeys, too, have been obtained, which have been truthfully depicted as amusing themselves by walking along the truss. Any one who has ever taken a monkey on board a sailing ship knows that the first thing he does is to run up the rigging. It is a small point this, but it shows that the artist was anxious to be truthful and exact in his details.

The hieroglyphic inscription accompanying this illustration is virtually the bill of lading. It gives a detailed and accurate account of all the articles destined for transport. The translation of this according to Dr. Duemichen is: “The loading of the ships of transport with a great quantity of the magnificent products of Arabia, with all kinds of precious woods of the holy land, with heaps of incense-resin, with verdant incense trees, with ebony, with pure ivory, with gold and silver from the land of Amu, with the (odorous) Tepes wood and the Kassiarind, with Aham-incense and Mestemrouge, with Anau-monkeys, Kop-monkeys, and Tesem-animals, with skins of leopards of the South, with women and children. Never has a transport (been made) like this one by any king since the creation of the world.”

Fig. 7. Egyptian Ship (in the Temple of Deir-el-Bahari).

Finally (see Fig. 7) we are shown three vessels of the fleet returning to Thebes richly laden. The accompanying inscription in this case reads: “The excursion was completed satisfactorily; happy arrival at Thebes to the joy of the Egyptian soldiers. The (Arabian and Ethiopian) princes, after they had arrived in this country, bring with them costly things of the land of Arabia, such as had never yet been brought that could be compared with what they brought, by any of the Egyptian kings, for the supreme majesty of this god Amon-Ra, Lord of the terrestrial thrones.”

“If the expedition really landed at Thebes,” says Dr. Edouard Naville, “we must suppose that at that time, long before Ramases II., who is said to have made a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, there was an arm of the Nile forming a communication with the sea, which extended much farther north than it does now.”[8]

When we remember the splendour and gaiety of the court at Thebes, the many gorgeous festivals that were held on the water, the Egyptians’ love of pleasure and their intense joy in living, we are neither surprised to learn of the great fêtes that celebrated the safe return of these voyagers, nor of the fact that a company of royal dancers accompanied the ships to enliven the navigation with song and dance. That the Egyptians dearly loved their ships and set them in high honour cannot be disputed. Besides burying them in the tombs of their rulers, there were times when sacred boats were carried out of the temples on the occasion of high festivals and dragged along by sledges.

Professor Maspero[9] believes that the navigation of the Red Sea by the Egyptians was far more frequent than is usually imagined, and the same kinds of vessels in which they coasted along the Mediterranean from the mouth of the Nile to the southern coast of Syria, conveyed them also, by following the coast of Africa, as far as the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. These ships were, of course, somewhat bigger and more able than the Nile boats, though they were built on the same model. They were clinker-built with narrow sharp stem and stern, with enormous sheer rising from forward to the high stern. They were not open boats but decked, and we find hieroglyphics denoting the pilot’s orders “Pull the oar,” “To the port side.” Heavier, bigger, with more freeboard and no hold, the Egyptian merchant ships, crowded with their cargo and a complement of fifty sailors, pilots, and passengers, barely afforded room for working the ship properly. The length of ships of the size that went to Punt has been thought to be about sixty-five feet, or much smaller than such modern yachts as “Shamrock” and “Nyria.”

We have already mentioned the wonderful influence the rig of the Egyptians exercised to the eastward, but though the old squaresail rig has gone from Egypt, yet to-day we can still see very similar boats and almost the same rig on the Orange Laut of the Malay West Coast. The overhanging bow and stern, the great sheer from forward to the high poop, the large single squaresail, now converted practically into a lug-sail, are still there to keep alive the memory of the ships of the Dynasties.

I have already referred in the previous chapter to the lateen sail having been adapted from the Egyptian rig a few centuries before the Christian era. But it is probable that between the squaresail rig and the lateen there was just one intermediate stage. By tilting the yard at a different angle to the mast, instead of it being at right angles, so that the foot came down lower, and the peak of the sail was pointed higher, it would be found that the ship would hold a better wind. This is amply borne out by the Egyptian “Nugger” (see Fig. 8), which is still in use on the Nile above the second cataract, and is being replaced only very slowly by the lateen. There is a relief on a sarcophagus found in the precincts of the Vatican, and now in the Lateran Museum, which certainly resembles the “Nugger” in its transition from the squaresail to the lateen. (The date of this is about 200 A.D.). The only important difference is that the Vatican relief shows a topsail added. Finally, discarding the boom altogether, the lateen sail comes with the foot of the sail lower still, and consequently the peak much higher, being but an exaggerated form of our modern lug-sail so prevalent in sailing dinghies. This remains, as we have pointed out above, as the characteristic sail of the Mediterranean, the Nile and Red Sea.

Fig. 8. An Egyptian Nugger.

Before we close this chapter one must refer to the vexed question as to when the ancients discovered that wonderful art of sailing against the wind—tacking. In the absence of any definite knowledge, I hold the opinion that this first came into practice on the Nile about the time the nugger, or dhow was introduced as the rig for sailing boats. My reasons for this supposition are: firstly, the squaresail being more suitable for the open sea and making passages of some length, it would be a country having a navigable river that would be likely to discover such a rig as would enable them to sail with the stream against the prevailing northerly wind; secondly, arguing on the theory (which has many adherents) that the dhow came in about the time of the death of Alexander the Great who revolutionised at least one corner of Egypt, leaving behind his name to the port of Alexandria as an eternal memorial, I hold that the invention of this dhow rig made the ship to come very close to the wind—far closer than the old-fashioned squaresail of the earlier Egyptians. Realising, when coming down with the stream, that they could go so near to the wind when approaching the right bank, why—surely it must have occurred to such highly developed minds—could they not do the same when zigzagging across to the left shore? At first, no doubt, they pulled her head round with their oars, until, perhaps, on one occasion, she carried so much way from the last shore that she came round of her own accord—shook herself for a moment, as she hung for a short time in stays—and then paid off on the other tack. After that, the whole art of going to windward was revealed. My third reason is based on the fact that the Saxons, who settled around the mouth of the Elbe and subjugated the Thuringians after the death of Alexander the Great, did possess this knowledge of tacking.

Unless it were with the intention of tacking, it is difficult to see why the dhow, or nugger rig should have prevailed. But we do know that this form of sail was extant about the time of Alexander; therefore, tacking must be at least as old as the death of Alexander in the fourth century B.C. A squaresail-ship whether ancient or modern will go no nearer the wind than seven points, whereas the fore-and-after will sail as close as five. This, as soon as the fact was fully realised on the Nile, would hasten that day when tacking was first found out.

Egypt, after flourishing so mightily for so many hundreds of years, had its decline not less than its rise. Just as the earlier Egyptian sculptures are superior to the later ones in sincerity and fidelity, becoming subsequently more stiff and formal, so her shipping eventually deteriorated, and the mastery of the seas passed into the hands of the Phœnicians.

CHAPTER III.
ANCIENT SHIPS OF PHŒNICIA, GREECE, AND ROME.[10]

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the potent influence exercised by the Phœnicians, as successors of the Egyptians, in being the maritime nation of the world. Happy in their origin by the Persian Gulf, fortunate, too, in having had the Egyptians before them, and so benefiting by the knowledge and experience of the latter, they had developed and prospered through the centuries parallel with the Dynastic peoples. Much that we should wish to know about the Phœnicians is wanting, but we have more than adequate material for the means of realising something of the range and intensity of their sway.

Migrating, like the first Egyptians, westward, they had settled around the Levant, to the north of Palestine. Already, in prehistoric days, they had expanded still further westward into Greece, founding Thebes in Bœotia, and teaching the barbarian inhabitants of that country the elements of civilisation. Everywhere in the ancient world, from remote ages until a century or two before the Incarnation, Phœnician ships were as numerous in the waters of the Mediterranean, as British vessels in all parts of the world are to-day. Possessing a genius for trade, a keen love for the sea and for travel, they had the complete mastery of the commerce and fisheries of the Ægean Sea, until as late as the eighth century B.C. They dragged up from the waters its shell fish to make purple dies; they burrowed into the earth to extract silver; they opened up commerce wherever it was possible, exchanging such products of the East as woven fabrics and highly-wrought metal work. They built factories on islands and promontories, and gave to the towns along the coast-line—especially of the eastern side of Greece—Phœnician names. Troubling but little about inland situations, they made their strong settlements to be their island homes.

Although eventually the Phœnicians were driven out of the Ægean, yet their effect on the inhabitants of Greece was a lasting one. As Greece had received from the Phœnicians her first culture, so she had adopted their religion and their species of ships. We shall see, presently, how very similar the ships of the Greeks and Phœnicians were. But before proceeding thus far, let us remember that, though the Phœnicians were developing while the Egyptians were declining, yet, indubitably, they owed a vast amount to the civilisation of the latter. Why the Phœnicians, more than any other people, were influenced by the Egyptians is not hard to understand if we realise that they alone were allowed to trade to the mouths of the Nile. The Egyptians guarded their kingdom inviolate against all other merchants of the Mediterranean, although Achaian pirates from the North at times swept down to the Nile Delta. Not until the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, when Egypt was reunited, and again made a strong kingdom, were the Milesian and other Greek traders allowed to begin commercial operations with the land of the Pharaohs.

Broadly speaking, the Phœnician ships were identical with those of about the time of Ramases III. (1200 B.C.). The fixed yard, the absence of boom, the brails suspending from the yard, the sweep of the lines aft to the overhanging stern, the double steering oar—these characteristics, which in the last chapter we left with the Egyptians, are all seen in the ships of the Phœnicians. The chief noticeable difference is that the latter have altered the bow so that she has a ram. It was the Phœnicians, too, who invented the bireme and trireme in order that speed might be obtained through increasing the height without adding to the length of the ship. The ships become somewhat larger than those of the Egyptians, for the reason that they have to voyage much further afield. Consequently the sail is sometimes found bigger, too, and instead of four brails, six is the usual number seen. The Phœnician bireme had as many as eleven or twelve rowers each side, sails being only used in a fair wind, but never at all in battle. In addition to its crew of seamen, a Phœnician trireme often carried thirty marines, sometimes of a nation different from the Phœnicians.

Right to the end, even when decline had at last taken the place of a rise, the Phœnicians remained good sailormen. Whenever a superior foe overcame them, they were used by their new master with deadly effect against his next enemy. We have an instance of this in the fifth century B.C., when, Phœnicia and Cyprus having been defeated by Cambyses, the latter utilised the strong Phœnician fleet against Amasis, the Egyptian king. And again, in the following century, when Xerxes had enforced the most rigorous conscription, and every maritime people in his dominions had been compelled to put forth its full strength, we find it recorded that the most trustworthy portion of the fleet, far superior to the Egyptians, was composed of ships of the Phœnician cities, the kings of Tyre and Sidon appearing in person, each at the head of his own contingent. Other things being equal, that side was usually victorious which had the Phœnicians with them. For the Phœnicians had the instinct of sailormen; they knew how to build and design their ships to withstand a fight; they had the ships, they had the men, and, what was more important still, they knew how to use both.

But the Phœnicians were more than mere traders or fighters: they were the world’s greatest explorers—until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of our era. It was they who voyaged out of the Mediterranean across the turbulent Bay of Biscay to Cornwall and perhaps Ireland. I am of the firm opinion that they also continued their travels further eastward across the North Sea: we will deal with that, however, in the next chapter. At any rate about the beginning of the sixth century B.C. they circumnavigated Africa, obeying the orders of Neco, an Egyptian king, “who”—to continue in Hakluyt’s Elizabethan English—“(for trial’s sake) sent a fleet of Phœnicians downe the Red sea: who setting forth in the Autumne and sailing Southward till they had the Sunne at noone-tide upon their sterbourd (that is to say, having crossed the Æquinoctial and the Southerne tropique) after a long Navigation, directed their course to the North, and in the space of 3. yeeres environed all Africk, passing home through the Gaditan streites, and arriving in Egypt.”[11]

It was the Phœnicians, too, who with the Israelites in the time of Solomon sailed down the Red Sea to Eastern Africa, Persia, and Beluchistan. Some, indeed, have thought that the Phœnicians sailed out of the Mediterranean and keeping their course to the westward were the first to discover America. Whether this is true or not is a matter for dispute, but it is quite possible. I have seen a little seven-ton cutter yacht that came across on her own bottom, and she is not half the size of the old Phœnician ships. Nor had she a few dozen galley slaves on board to pull at the oars: still less the room wherein to stow them.[12] There is, then, nothing at all improbable in the Phœnicians having gone so far afield. They were not pressed for time, and could afford to wait till the weather suited them. Given a fair wind they could not have had better shaped canvas for the voyage than theirs. Every sailor will tell you that there is nothing to beat the squaresail for ocean passages, and those who have tried the fore-and-aft rig for deep-sea sailing have lived to wish they had had a rectangular sail set across the mast, so as to avoid the fear of gybing as in a fore-and-after. Lord Brassey, when, in the famous race across the Atlantic in 1905, he commanded his own yacht the Sunbeam, afterwards endorsed these opinions about the respective merits of the square-sail and of the fore-and-aft rig.

Moreover, the Phœnicians had ample brails for reefing. True, the ship would roll considerably with so shallow a keel, but her length would be of some assistance, and no doubt the skipper would see to it that the crew steadied her with their oars.

Either from the Egyptians or the Phœnicians—but almost certainly from the latter—the people down the east coast of Africa learnt the art of navigation pretty thoroughly, for we know from Hakluyt that when, at the end of the fifteenth century of our era, Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and called at the East African ports, he found that the arts of navigation were as well understood by the Eastern seamen as by himself. This would seem to imply that these Africans had years ago reached the state of advancement in sailing a ship already possessed by the more civilised parts of the world.

Our evidence as to the actual shape and rig of the Phœnician craft is of two kinds. Firstly, thanks to the discoveries of the late Sir Austin Layard and his successors, we have one or two representations of ships. One of these is a rowing boat pure and simple, very tubby, and obviously never intended to be used with a sail. Secondly, we have the evidence of coins of the towns of Phœnicia. I have been so fortunate as to be able to reproduce two of the latter, both being of Sidon.

With regard to the first class, these date back to a period of about 700 B.C. On a relief belonging to the Palace of Sennacherib found near Nineveh, and now in the British Museum, and also on a relief of the Palace of Khorsabad, built by King Sargon, there are depicted ancient Phœnician ships. This latter is now in the Louvre. But these reliefs do not tell us very much, though they are of assistance if read in conjunction with the coins. The upper deck of the ship from the Sennacherib Palace was reserved for the combatants while fighting, and for persons of quality when making a passage. We see the latter reclining in the sunshine, and the look-out man in the bows. A mast with forestay, braces and sail furled to the yard, would be also on the top deck, but these would be of no considerable size. A row of shields ran round as a protection against the enemy’s darts, and the stem ended in a powerful ram. At least seventeen oarsmen in two banks on each side worked the ship, while a couple of steering oars, after the manner of the Egyptians, kept her on her course. This was a bireme for war purposes.

Fig. 9. Phœnician Ship.
From a coin of Sidon, c. 450 B.C.

But the ship depicted in the Palace of Khorsabad, while not showing any sail, indicates very clearly a mast with stays leading fore and aft to the bow (which ends in a horse’s head) and to the stern. The shape of this craft, if it was anything like the Phœnician ships, which came to Northern Europe, would certainly seem to prove that the Phœnicians continued their voyage further east to Norway; for here, with the high tapering stern and bow, and the decoration of the latter, is what could very easily be taken for the early design of the Viking ships. She is entirely different from the Egyptian type of ship, though she has evidently been based on the latter.

Passing now to the two coins of Sidon, these are both probably of about the year 450 B.C. Fig. 9 is from a coin in the British Museum. It is a little indistinct, but the Egyptian stern is still seen, though the ram, as already referred to, is at the bows. The double steering oars are faintly visible, though the long line of shields, which survived well into the middle ages, is clearly defined. The curve of the keel-line is very beautiful, and she must have been very fast, as indeed we know from historians similar shaped vessels in Greece were. Although such a ship was of great length, yet by reason of the curve of the keel, having the greatest depth amidships, and because of the design of the stern, she would probably steer pretty easily. This, of course, was essential in the naval manœuvres that were undertaken in fights. As to the sails, if the reader has already followed us in the previous chapter, these call for but little explanation again. The yard is ordinarily kept fixed. The sails hang apparently in two sections like so many curtains, being divided at the mast. The same peculiarity is to be seen in the Irrawadi junks referred to previously.

For shortening sail in a blow, or for stowing when coming to anchor, the six brails seen depending from the yard would be wound round the sail, once or twice, by sending a couple of men to the top of the yard, the crew below throwing up the rope to be passed round sail and yard. It was a clumsy method, but it sufficed. The reader may remember that the Dutchmen have used this principle since the sixteenth century, and the Thames barge of to-day still follows the general idea. The only real difference is that in the Dutchman and Thames barge, being fore-and-aft rigged, the brail comes horizontally—at right angles to the mast—instead of vertically, and parallel to the mast, whilst, of course, going aloft is unnecessary. Even this Dutch brailing system was derived from that used by the lateen-sails of the Mediterranean. (See the mizzen of the Santa Maria, in Fig. 45.) In detail, too, there is a slight difference, for the modern ships we are mentioning have a ring, or fair-lead, for the brail to come through, one end being fastened to the sail, the standing part passing through the ring on the leach of the sail and so back to the mast.

What we have said regarding this illustration is applicable also to Fig. 10. But happily this shows us some important details in the stern. First, the staff with crescent-top denotes that she was the admiral’s flagship. The curved-line immediately below represents part of the structure called the aphlaston (ἀ + Φλαζω = I crush). This was placed as a protection for the ship against the terrible damage that might be done by the enemy charging into her and ramming her. A still better example of this detail will be noticed in Fig. 14. One can easily trace this as having come from the Egyptian ships of the eighteenth dynasty that went to Punt. Immediately below this, in Fig. 10 again, and hanging down, may be either a protection against the enemy or, as will be seen in the ship of Odysseus (Fig. 16), a kind of decoration resembling some rich carpet, to ornament the stern where the admiral was located in authority. This second Phœnician illustration is from a coin in the Hunterian Collection, Glasgow.

Fig. 10. Phœnician Ship.
From a coin of Sidon, c. 450 B.C.

It has been said that some of the larger Phœnician ships were as long as 300 feet, though this statement needs to be taken with caution. At any rate, it is accurate to describe them as being long, straight, narrow, and flat-bottomed, and as carrying sometimes as many as fifty oarsmen. Although the crescent-shape had for so long a time been almost a convention for the design of the ship, yet the nation that could found so important and prosperous a colony as Carthage, and that built ships both for Egyptians and Persians, would not be likely to be held down too tightly by custom where their own clever genius and invaluable practical experience taught them otherwise. By completely modifying the bow as it had been customary in the Egyptian ships, the Phœnicians started a new fashion in naval architecture which, permeating through Greek and Roman history, is still found in the galleys of the Adriatic as late as the eighteenth century of our era. Those bows, with or without the ram, even on a Maltese sailing galley, show their ancient Phœnician ancestry in an undeniable manner.

Our information regarding ancient Greek and Roman ships is derived from the following sources: the writings of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Cicero, Cæsar, Tacitus, Xenophon, Lucian, Pliny, Livy, Æschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Plutarch, Sophocles, and others; the inventories of the Athenian arsenals of the fourth century B.C.; ancient Greek vases; reliefs discovered in Southern Europe at various periods; monuments and tombs; mosaics found in North Africa, ancient coins; the Voyages of St. Paul; and finally ancient remains such as fibulæ, terra-cotta models, and earthenware lamps.

From these diverse channels of information we find that the Phœnicians who invented the bireme and the trireme, who had adopted the Egyptian stern and rigging for their ships, handed these features on to the Greeks, and they, in turn, to the Romans. The earliest Greek ships were afloat in the thirteenth century B.C., and by about the year 800 B.C. maritime matters had taken the greatest hold on the dwellers in the Greek peninsula and the western coasts of Asia Minor. The fierce race for wealth which to-day we see going on in America had its precedent in the eighth century before the Christian era in the north-eastern corner of the Mediterranean. Very quickly the contestants found that the shortest route to affluence was viâ the sea. Indeed, following the example of their first teachers, the Phœnicians, so zealously did they keep to their ships that the Milesian sea-traders formed a party in the State known as “the men never off the water.” In the seventh century, if not earlier, the Greeks were prosperously fishing in the Black Sea; and though the dangers of rounding Mount Athos in the Ægean were in those days to some extent analogous to the perils which a sailing ship to-day suffers in doubling Cape Horn, yet in the fourth century B.C., Xerxes, rather than risk a series of shipwrecks to his fleet in the stormy seas at the foot of this mountain, had the sandy isthmus connecting the mainland pierced with a canal.

Greece lacked the advantage to be found in a Tigris, a Euphrates, or Nile. Her rivers are so short, and their descent to the sea so rapid, that navigation was utterly impossible. But for what she missed in rivers she was amply compensated in respect of the peculiar formation of the coast. Endowed with the same blessing that makes the west coast of Scotland so attractive (but happily without the drawback of the Atlantic immediately outside the lochs), Greece had her delightful inlets and arms of the seas running far up into the land. The peaceful waters of the Grecian archipelago, the mildness of its climate, the absence of tides, the comparative smoothness of the water—except for occasional squalls with a nasty short sea—these were factors every bit as encouraging for the art of navigation as ever the conditions that smiled on the Egyptians. In some respects they were more stimulating in proportion as the sea makes a better sailor than even the biggest river. Add to this that there was at hand an ample supply of good wood and that the southern shores of the Euxine were rich not merely in timber but in iron, copper and red-lead. Could the shipbuilder’s paradise possibly be more complete?

There was just one drawback from which, as it seems to me, the nations on the Mediterranean compared with the inhabitants of Northern Europe have always suffered: even till to-day, or at any rate up to the introduction of steam, the tendency of the Mediterraneans has been to build sailing boats rather than sailing ships. The very conditions that prompted naval architecture at all limited their scope. I mean, of course, that whereas along the coasts washed by the Baltic, the North Sea and the English Channel, the sea-farers had either to build a ship or nothing, the case in the Mediterranean was different. The treacherous waters of the North Sea or Baltic, the existence of dangerous sand banks and rushing tides, were an unfair match for delicately designed craft accustomed to sun-speckled seas. Although the Viking craft had their full complement of rowers, yet they were far abler ships than the over-oared boats of Greece and those of the early days of Rome. Right down to the time of the Spanish Armada, and after, the tendency was ever for the galley or galleass—the rowed ship rather than the sailing ship—to linger as long as possible, whereas in the North the reverse has been the case. I attribute the prevalence of the “galley” type of craft to two causes—the geographical conditions of Southern Europe and the abundance of slaves. When any amount of physical rowing power could be got with such ease and absence of expense, it was not likely that the sailing ship, per se, would advance. I think there can be no doubt at all that this condition of affairs kept back both the rig and design of shipping for very many years. The Southerner’s first aim was to create a craft that would be fast; the Northerner’s object was to have a ship that would be seaworthy. The difference between being able to ride out a gale and that of being able to manœuvre with all possible despatch in comparatively sheltered waters, will be found to be the basis of the characteristic features that separate the craft of Northern and Southern Europe.

Fig 11. Greek Ship.
From Bœotian fibula of the eighth century B.C.

In Fig. 11 we have some indication of a Greek sailing ship or boat of about the eighth century, when, as we have just said, there existed the great passion for the sea as a means to wealth. This illustration has been sketched from a Bœotian fibula, made of bronze, and now in the British Museum. The boat has not the appearance of being particularly seaworthy, although it is perfectly clear that she is a sailing craft. The aphlaston already alluded to will be noticed at the stern. The bow shows the Phœnician influence with its ram-like features, and this characteristic continued to exist with similar prominence till at any rate the beginning of the Christian era. Opinions differ as to whether the teeth-like projections at bow and stern are just the extending horizontal timbers. Personally, I believe they are separate fixtures with bronze or iron tips, those at the bow for preventing the ram going too far into the enemy’s ship; those at the stern affording a protection against being rammed by the enemy. The forestay leads down to what is apparently a primitive forecastle, and the man in the stern is standing on a platform, but so crude is the draughtsmanship that it would be unsafe to affirm that this was raised as high as the forecastle. Some have thought that this stern arrangement may denote a latticed cabin, but this seems doubtful. However, it is quite clear that the skipper is either steering or rowing with his foot as the primitive gondolier, while his mate is busy as the look-out. The design at the top of the mast has been thought to be a lantern, but it might also be a flag.

Fig. 12. Greek War Galley.
From a vase, c. 500 B.C.

Although not shown in this example, many of the early Greek ships had two forestays and a backstay. The mast was supported at its foot by a prop, and when lowered it lay aft in a rest, being raised and lowered by means of the forestays, like the custom of the Thames barge and the Norfolk wherry-man. Fig. 12 represents a war-galley taken from a Greek vase of about 500 B.C. It will be found in the Second Vase Room of the British Museum. The sail (ἱστίον) will be seen hanging from the yard, together with the brails as already described. The two halyards come down on either side of the mast. We should presume that, having the brails, the Greek ships were accustomed to reefing: but we have actual evidence from the expression used by Aristophanes “ἄκροισι χρῆσθαι ἱστίος,” “to keep the sails close-reefed.” Similarly Euripides has the phrase “ἄκροισι λαίφουσ κραπέδοις,” “under close-reefed sails” (lit. “with the outermost edges of the sail”). The reefing method is better shown in Fig. 13. If it came on to blow two hands would be sent aloft to go out along the yard. The brails one by one would be thrown up to the men, who would pass each brail once or thrice round the yard, according to the number of reefs required to be taken in. Fig. 13 shows a ship close-reefed. That this is no fanciful picture will be seen by the reader who cares to compare the relief on the tomb of Naevoleja Tyche at Pompei,[13] on which will be noticed one man on deck getting ready the brails to throw them up, while two other members of the crew are already out on the yard, and two more still are climbing up the rigging to help them, probably by taking up the ends of the brails.

Each yard was composed of two spars lashed together as in the Maltese galley and Japanese junk of to-day. The Latin word for a yard was always used in the plural—antennæ—to signify the two parts lashed in one. The boar’s head—a very favourite symbol for this purpose in early ships—will be noticed at the bow of the war-galley in Fig. 12. Above it is the forecastle, and running thence astern is a flying deck, in order that the fighting men might not hinder the work of the rowers. The two banks of oars will be immediately noticed. Astern sits the steersman with his two steering-oars. That which hangs from the stern below is the gangway for going aboard. The crew either hauled their ships ashore at night, or, laying out anchors from the bows seaward, carried stern ropes ashore to a rock. The gangway shown was lowered to the land side, and the crew came aboard from aft. The reader who is familiar with the Yorkshire cobble and the method adopted for beaching by the fishermen on the coast above the Humber will find additional interest in this.

The ship in Fig. 13 is a merchantman. The gangways are very noticeable. So also is the Egyptian stern with the steering oars. Amidships will be seen the wattled screens or washboards, acting as bulwarks for keeping out the spray. A similar arrangement was customary on the Viking ships, and remains to this day on Norwegian ships of that kind. At the stern of both this ship and that of the previous figure will be noticed an ornament resembling some plant. Perhaps to us moderns the most striking feature of the ship is her beautiful bow: indeed, had one not seen the actual vase, one might easily have said that the design was taken from a modern schooner bow. There are so many points about this merchant ship that attract us in looking at her that we wonder, not unnaturally, if we have advanced so much after all during these fourteen hundred years since she was designed, for such a bow and such a stern would win applause in any port.

Fig. 13. Greek Merchantman.
From a vase, c. 500 B.C.

The war-galleys were called longships, and the merchant vessels roundships. This aptly describes the chief difference which separated them. Whilst the former were essentially rowing-ships, depending on oars only as auxiliaries, the merchant ship was primarily a sailing vessel. Nevertheless she carried twenty oars, not so much for progression as for turning the ship’s head off the wind, and perhaps for getting under way and in entering harbour. These trading ships were generally built throughout of pine, while the war galleys were of fir, cypress, cedar, or pine, according to the nature of the forests at hand. The merchantmen had keels of pine, but were provided with false keels of oak when they had to be hauled ashore or put on a slip for repairs or other reasons. It was the custom, however, to keep the merchant ships afloat. We have already pointed out that the galleys, on the contrary, were usually hauled ashore at night, and since the friction of their keels would tend to split the wood it was customary for these latter to be of oak. The masts and yards and oars were of fir or pine. The timber for the keel was selected with especial care, as indeed with so much hard wear and tear it was necessary. Among other woods that were also used may be mentioned plane, acacia, ash, elm, mulberry and lime—these being employed especially for the interior of the hull. Alder, poplar and timber of a balsam tree were used also. Like the Koryaks and the very earliest inhabitants of Northern Europe, in some outlandish districts of the Mediterranean the sides of the ship were of leather instead of wood, but this would be only in cases where the inhabitants were still unlearned or there was a scarcity of timber.

The ancients did not allow the timber to season thoroughly, because it would become thereby too stiff to bend. Steaming boxes apparently had not come into use in shipbuilding. However, after the tree was felled it was allowed some time for drying, and then, when the ship was built, some time elapsed for the wood to settle. The seams were caulked with tow and other packing, being fixed with tar or wax, the underbody of the ship being coated with wax, tar, or a combined mixture, the wax being melted over a fire until soft enough to be laid on with a brush. Seven kinds of paint were used, viz., purple, violet, yellow, blue, two kinds of white, and green for pirates in order that their resemblance to the colour of the waves might make them less conspicuous. As we shall see in Fig. 21, elaborate designs were painted along the sides, but this appears to have been a later custom. The latest discoveries in Northern Africa show this decoration round the side to be very frequent about the second century of the Christian era. Earlier Greek ships had only patches of colour on the bows, blue or purple, or vermilion; the rest of the hull was painted with black tar like many of the coasters and fishing smacks of to-day. The painting on the bows was probably to facilitate the recognition of the direction taken by a vessel. Ships were not copper-bottomed, but sometimes a sheathing of lead with layers of tarred sail-cloth interposed between was affixed to the hull.

Fig. 14. Stern of a Greek Ship (c. 600 B.C.).

Nails of bronze and iron, and pegs of wood were used for fastening the planking, the thickness of the latter varying from 2¼ to 5¼ inches. In order to fortify the warships against the terrible shock of ramming, she had to be strengthened by wales running longitudinally around her sides. Fig. 14 shows the stern of a Greek ship of about the fifth century B.C. The wales or strengthening timbers just mentioned will be easily seen. Fig. 15 exhibits another example of the boar’s-head bow. These two illustrations are taken from a coin of Phaselis, in Lycia, now preserved in the British Museum. The aphlaston will be immediately recognised in Fig. 14.

Like the Egyptian ships, these ancient vessels were also provided with a stout cable—the ὑπόζωμα in Greek, tormentum in Latin. The spur for ramming was shod with metal—iron or copper—and was at first placed below the water line, but subsequently came above it. The space between the oar-ports was probably about three feet, each oarsman occupying about five feet of room in width. A galley having thirty-one seats for rowing would have about seventeen feet of beam. The draught of these warships was nevertheless very small—perhaps not more than four or five feet.

Fig. 15. Boar’s-head Bow of a Greek Ship (c. 600 B.C.).

The old method of naval warfare consisted in getting right up to the enemy and engaging him alongside in a hand-to-hand fight, spears and bows and arrows being used. There is an Etruscan vase in the British Museum of the sixth century, which shows this admirably. At a later date this method was altered in favour of ramming. The ship would bear down on the enemy, and an endeavour would be made to come up to him in such a way as to break off all his oars at one side, thereby partially disabling him. But if the enemy were smart enough, he would be able to go on rowing until the critical moment, when with great dexterity, he would suddenly shorten his oars inwards. We have also referred to the protection of the stern against the wicked onslaught of the ram, but the ship ramming, lest her spur should penetrate too far into the enemy’s stern and so break off, had usually, above, a head which acted as a convenient buffer. But we must not forget that sails and mast were lowered before battle, since the galley was much more handy under oars alone. The excitement of a whole week’s bumping races on the Isis must be regarded as very slow compared to the strenuous plashing of oars, the shouts of the combatants, and the ensuing thud and splintering of timbers that characterised a Mediterranean engagement.

The reader will find in Fig. 16 one of the finest specimens of a Greek sailing galley with one bank of oars. It is taken from a vase in the Third Room in the British Museum, the date being about 500 B.C. As many as eight brails are shown here. The number of these gradually became so great that we find in the Athenian inventories of the fourth century B.C. that the rigging of a trireme and quadrireme included eighteen brails. No doubt, as time went on, it was found more convenient to be able to brail the sail up at closer intervals. In the present illustration the sail is furled right up to the yard and the rowers are doing all the work. Before passing on to another point we must not fail to notice the fighting bridge or forecastle, the shape of the blades of the oars, and the decoration of the stern previously alluded to. A capital instance here is afforded us of the ever watchful eye which we mentioned in our introductory chapter as being a notable feature of the ancient ship. It is worth while remarking, as showing the extent of this practice, that a representation of an eye is still to be found as a distinguishing attribute on the Portuguese fishing boats to-day.

Fig. 16. The Ship of Odysseus.
From a Greek vase of about 500 B.C.

At the very first, on the Greek as on the Egyptian ships, thongs were used for rowlocks, but subsequently holes were left, as seen in the illustration, for the oars to be passed through. Because the mast had to be taken down before battle, the war galleys were not fully decked all over. Amidships she was open, but, as we have already seen bridges or gangways extended fore and aft on either side of the mast, so that the fighting crew should in no way interfere with the oarsmen. Partial decks were also found at bow and stern. Even in the time of Cæsar, we find that completely covered vessels were not in general use. These flying bridges were placed on supports and then covered with planks as shown in Fig. 12, leaving the intermediate hold undecked. The sail was made of several pieces of white canvas or cloth. Not infrequently they were coloured, a black sail being a universal sign of mourning, while a purple or vermilion denoted the ship of an admiral or sovereign. Just as pirates were wont to paint their ships the colour of the sea, so in the time of war, on board scout-ships, both sails and ropes were dyed of that hue. One can easily understand that with the powerful rays of the southern sun their disguise would have been effectual.

Ropes were made of twisted ox-hide, or fibres of the papyrus plant. This was the usual practice for many years also in other parts of Europe. The edges of the sail were bound with hide, the skins of hyena and seal being especially used for this purpose, as the sailors believed this would keep off lightning. The Koryaks, also, still employ seal-hide for sails and ropes. Later on, windlasses were introduced for working the halyards and cables of the larger ships. After the crew had gone aboard the galley, and everything was ready for getting under way, the gangway would be slung from the stern, and three poles would be used for pushing off from the shore. It is interesting to remark that the word used for this pole by Homer—κοντὸς.—is still found in the word “quant,” given to a long pole for pushing the Norfolk wherries in calms along the banks.

Fig. 17. Terra-cotta Model of Greek Ship of the Sixth Century B.C.

The vessel shown in Fig. 17 is a terra-cotta model of a merchant ship. The socket for the mast will easily be seen. The high stern aft must not be supposed to have been raised to such an altitude solely for the convenience of the steersman. The greatest foe that the merchantman had to contend with was the pirate who swept down and robbed him of his cargo. Therefore, to obtain some protection, these traders were usually fitted with turrets of great height, by means of which missiles could be hurled down on to the enemy below. It is possible that the side “castles” shown were also used as some protection for the steersmen, one standing in each with the protection of a roof over him. Probably, too, on these occasions the score of oars would be brought out in order to manœuvre quickly. A merchant ship sometimes carried as many as eight of these turrets (two in the bows, two in the stern and four amidships). They were easily movable and were known to have reached to a height of twenty feet. The model here shown belongs to the sixth century B.C. It will be noticed that she has a very flat bottom, but this would be a convenience whenever she had to be beached, for there were only two sailing seasons—in the spring, and in the months between midsummer and autumn. After the setting of the Pleiads, the ship was beached and a stone fence built around her to keep off wind and weather. This custom, then, would somewhat modify her lines below the waterline. It was, further, the custom to pull the plug out when laying up for the winter, so that the water should not rot the bottom. Tackle and sail and steering oars were carefully stored at home until the fair weather returned once more. These were the customs as far back as 700 B.C.

The model we have just alluded to was found in Cyprus, and is now in the British Museum. Many others similar to this have also been found. There is an amusing legend that Kinyras, king of Cyprus, having promised to send fifty ships to help the Greeks against Troy, sent only one, but she carried forty-nine others of terra-cotta manned by terra-cotta figures.

Although the Phœnicians probably must be credited with the honour of having invented the trireme, a ship with a triple arrangement of oars, yet the Greeks were responsible for having developed the use of this to a considerable extent, especially after the fifth century B.C. Eventually the word “trireme” denoted not necessarily that she had this triple arrangement, but became a generic expression for warships. We have in later history similar instances of the same designation remaining to a ship even when she has entirely altered the right to her previous definition. Thus the galleass, which was essentially a rowing vessel, frequently bore the same name during the Middle Ages, even when she was a sailing ship proper. A similar instance may be found in the different meanings which the words “barge,” “wherry,” “yawl,” “cutter,” and “barque” denote at different times.

Triremes had two kinds of sails and two kinds of masts, but before battle the larger sail and the larger mast were always put ashore. Such enormous yards and masts would be very much in the way on boats of this kind. Regarding the arrangement of the oars of the trireme much controversy has been raised. The theories of thirty or more banks of oars have now been pretty well dismissed. The amount of freeboard that this would have given to a ship must necessarily have been colossal, and militated against the very object they had in view, viz., handiness. It is highly probable that the crew consisted of two hundred rowers, sixty-two on the highest tier, fifty-four on the middle and fifty-four on the lowest, in addition to thirty fighting men stationed on the highest deck. The upper oars would thus pass over what we now call the gunwale, the second and third rows being through port holes. Even when very large numbers of oarsmen are mentioned, we must not suppose that there were so many lines of rowers as that; several men were needed to each oar. Considering their weight and the size of later ships, this would seem to be very necessary.

Before we pass from the subject of the trireme, it is not without interest to mention that in the year 1861 Napoleon III. had constructed a trireme 39 metres in length and 5½ metres in beam. She carried 130 oarsmen, who were placed two by two. Of these forty-four were on the first row, the same number on the second, and forty-two on the top. Like her ancestors she had a three-fold spur, a rostrum, and two steering oars. But to us a far more important piece of information lies in the fact that she was actually experimented with on the sea at Cherbourg in good weather. It was found that she bore out all that had ever been written by the ancient historians concerning her: for she was both very fast and could be manœuvred with great ease.[14] According to the ancients, a trireme could average as much as seven and a half knots an hour, covering one hundred and ten during a day. The merchant ship was going at a good pace when she reeled off her five knots an hour. Her average was about sixty knots in a day: but during a whole day and night, with a favourable wind, she was capable of doing as much as a hundred and thirty. Comparing this speed with the craft of to-day, it may be worth noting that the average day’s run of a moderate-sized coaster would work out at a hundred or hundred and twenty knots. The speed of the ships of the Mediterranean was not slow, then, though they would appear ridiculous if compared with some of the marvellous passages made by the famous old clippers of the second half of the nineteenth century of our era.

The navigation employed by the Greeks was that of coasting from port to port, from one headland across a bay to another. There was no such thing, of course, as being able to lay a compass course from one point to another out of sight. The system of buoyage was also non-existent, but there were lighthouses, as we know from designs on ancient pottery and reliefs. On certain points of the land the Greeks erected high towers, the most ancient of these being at the entrance to the Ægean Sea—about 800 B.C. Later, about the period of 300 B.C., a tower was raised on the island of Pharos, near Alexandria. At its summit two wooden fires were kept burning constantly, so that the flame by night and the smoke by day might aid the primitive navigators. In the fourth century B.C., however, Pytheas, by means of an instrument called the gnomon, which indicated the height of the sun by the direction of the shadow cast on a flat surface, determined the day of the summer solstice, to which the greatest height of the sun corresponds. He thus succeeded in fixing the latitude of Marseilles.

Fig. 18. A Coin of Apollonia, showing Shape of Anchor.

We have already mentioned that when a galley was cleared for action she sent her big spars and sails ashore. One set of double halyards of course served for these, the larger sails and spars being no doubt for fair weather when near the shelter of the land. Mr. Torr in his excellent little book,[15] which is a mine of information, the result of considerable classical research, gives the name of akation to the smaller gear—mast, sail and yard included. He mentions the very interesting fact that the expression “hoisting the akation” became synonymous with “running away” from the enemy. Aristophanes made use of the phrase in a play produced in 411 B.C.

The names dolon in 201 B.C. and artemon found mentioned about 100 B.C., were also used to indicate the smaller masts and sails. We shall refer to this latter again presently. Anchors are supposed to have been among the inventions of Anacharsis. In the earliest times they were, as one would expect, merely a heavy weight of stone. Then they were made of iron, and later on of lead. Fig. 18 shows that the shape was a cross between a modern “mushroom” anchor and the ordinary one in everyday use. The triangular space at the crown was used for bending on a tripping line. The illustration is of a coin found in Apollonia (in Thrace), and now in the British Museum. The date is about 420 B.C. Two anchors were carried by galleys, and three or four by merchantmen. Even in those days the mariners understood the usefulness of marking the position of their anchors with cork floats. The cables were of chain and of rope. Flags and lights were used on the admiral’s ship, three being allowed for the latter and one for galleys.

Fig. 19. A Roman Warship.

The illustration in Fig. 19 has been taken from De Baïf’s book,[16] not so much because it gives a representative picture of what a Roman warship was like, as for the fact that the various parts of the ship may by this means be made somewhat clearer than if we had an ancient relief before us. I have, up till now, throughout this chapter, included Roman vessels under the description given to the Greek ships, there being for a long time but little difference. In Fig. 19, A is the fighting top; BB are the ends or “horns” of the sail yards; CC are the antennæ or yards; D is the mast; E is the carchesium or upper part of the mast to which the halyards led; F is the trachelus, being half-way up the mast; G is the pterna or heel of the mast; HH are the opiferi funes or braces; I is a rope—calos (ladder); KK are the backstays; L is the figurehead, the parasemon or distinguishing mark, so that in a fleet of ships, each alike as to rig and size, this would be very necessary; M is the stern; N is the turret or forecastle already discussed above; O is the prow; P is the all-vigilant eye which the ship was supposed to possess; Q is the rostrum, beak or boar’s head, while R is the rostrum tridens with its three-toothed ram; S is the epotides or cathead whence the anchor was let down. The word is used by Euripides and Thucydides. T is the katastroma or flying deck, that the marines might be able to fight without hindering the rowers; V, of course, shows the oars, X the hull; Y is the dryochus which properly means one of the trestles or props on which the keel for a new ship is laid; Z is the clavus or handle of the tiller; “&” refers to the tiller itself.

Fig. 20 is also taken from De Baïf, and is reproduced here not as being an accurate representation of a Roman sailing ship, but because it well illustrates by its exaggeration several points not easily discernible in other reproductions. The inclined mast in the bows carries the artemon sail, but it is out of all proportion. A is the steersman; BB are the oarsmen; C is the πρωράτης, or in Latin proreta—the look-out man; D represents the beak—τα ἀκρωτήρια, the extremities of the ship; E is the θρόνος, or seat of authority for the steersman. (Compare a similarity in the illustration of Furttenbach’s galley, in Fig. 58.)

Fig. 20. Roman Ship.

Coming now to the ships of much later date, the dimensions were sometimes pushed to vast extremes. Exulting as we rightly are in these days of magnificent liners of immense tonnage and luxurious comfort, it seems astounding that the ancients, when they had embraced self-indulgence whole-heartedly and set forth to throw away their fine energies in wasteful and extravagant pleasures, should at so early a date have built mammoth ships fitted with the most luxurious deck-houses, with bronze baths and marbled rooms, with paintings and statues and mosaics in their sumptuous saloons, with libraries and covered walks along the decks, ornamented with rows of vines and fruit trees planted in flower-pots. Even the ample luxury and the small trees on the decks of the Mauretania have not yet reached to such excesses of civilisation. Throughout the third century B.C., several of these monstrosities were built by the kings of Sicily, Macedonia, Alexandria and Asia. The size of one of these “floating palaces” (to use here aptly a much abused expression) may be gathered from the dimensions of one of them, which was 280 cubits long, 38 cubits wide, while the stem rose to a height of 48 cubits above the water. Nevertheless, her draught, in spite of so much top-hamper, did not exceed 4 cubits, and she carried seven rams, was fitted with a double and stern, and had no less than four steering paddles.

Could we but see some of these ancient mammoth ships, could we but wander through their saloons looking up at the wonderful statuary, marvelling at the spaciousness of the tiled galleries, how interesting it would be! How we should thrill with delight at being once more transported into the ships of Roman times! Of course, you will say, such a thing is impossible. Even if representations are preserved on tomb or mosaic of contemporary ships it would be ridiculous to expect that the ships themselves should still exist. But we all know that truth is sometimes wonderfully romantic, and in the history of ships there are some amazing surprises always ready for our attention. Let us say at once, then, that two of these floating palaces of the time of Caligula are in existence to-day in Italy. Their details are interesting to the highest degree, and the following account, based, as will be seen, on actual experiences of those who have been into the ships, agrees with the historical descriptions already referred to. For the valuable particulars of these two ships of Caligula, I am indebted to Mr. St. Clair Baddeley and to Señor Malfatti.[17]

Caligula possessed that overpowering passion for water and ships which throughout the world’s history has always manifested itself in explorer or privateer, yachtsman, or whomsoever else. Suetonius[18] says that this megalomaniac had built two galleys with ten banks of oars, each having a poop that blazed with jewels and sails that were parti-coloured. These “galleys” were fitted with baths, galleries, saloons, and supplied with a great variety of growing trees and vines. In one of these ships, Caligula was wont to sail in the daytime along the coast of Campania, feasting amidst dancing and concerts of music.

Now, in the northern end of the Lake of Nemi, not far from the Campanian coast, there still lie to this day, at right angles to each other, two such galleys as Suetonius describes. Recent research beneath the water has revealed much that is invaluable to us in the study of the sailing ship. From the inscriptions on several lengths of lead piping laid for the purpose of supplying the galleys with water, and which have been brought up by divers, it is proved that these belonged to Caligula, and that therefore they are of the remote period of 37-41 A.D. And this date has been further corroborated by the discovery of tiles and bronze sculptures found on board.

The history of the efforts to make these galleys speak to us from the depths of their watery grave is almost as interesting as their very existence. During the fifteenth century, owing to the fact that fishermen on the lake frequently in their nets drew ashore objects of wood and bronze, divers were sent below and discovered the undoubted existence of a ship of some sort. At last ropes were made fast and endeavours were made to draw the vessel to shallow water, but these efforts were only crowned with the unfortunate result of breaking off part of the stem. However, the nails were found to be of bronze, whilst in length some were as much as a cubit. The wood was discovered to be larch, and the vessel to be sheathed with lead, covering a stiff lining of woollen-cloth padding fastened on by bronze studs. It is important to note that the ancients in 37 A.D. had the good sense to realise what Sir Philip Howard, and other naval authorities in the time of Charles II., did not discover until the year 1682, that lead sheathing round a ship, used with iron nails, was bound to set up corrosion.[19]

Further operations on Lake Nemi were suspended until the year 1535, when an expert went below to the ship again. A large amount of her wood was brought to the surface, and was found to consist of pine and cypress, as well as the larch previously noticed. The pegs were of oak, and many bronze nails in perfect preservation were rescued from the deep. These, said the diver, fastened the plate of lead to the hull of the ship. There was also a lining of linen between the lead and the timber, whilst within the ship were pavements of tiles two feet square, and segments of red marble and enamel. He also makes reference to the rooms of this watery palace. As to her size, this was found to be about 450 feet long, and about 192 broad, whilst the height from keel to deck was about 51 feet.

Various attempts were made in 1827 by means of a diving bell, but no success resulted, and it was not until September of 1905 that a fresh search was made by divers, when both galleys were located at a depth of thirty feet of water. “By attaching long cords with corks to the galleys, the divers,” says Mr. Baddeley, “sketched out in outlines on the surface the shape of the vessels.” The length of the other vessel was found to be 90 feet by 26 feet beam. The decks were paved with elaborate mosaic work in porphyry, green serpentine and rosso antico, intermingled with richly-coloured enamel. The bulwarks were found to be cast in solid bronze and to have been once gilded, for traces of the latter were manifest. From the other vessel lying nearer in-shore, the divers brought up various beautiful sculptures. The outer edge of the vessel is covered with cloth smeared with pitch, and over this occur folds of thin sheet lead, doubled over and fastened down upon it with copper nails.

It is thought that these galleys were designed by their builder Caligula in imitation of those he used along the Campanian coast which, though sailing ships, were rather of the nature of floating villas. As to their purpose, it is probable that they were connected with the worship of Virbius and of Diana. There, then, at the bottom of Lake Nemi, these two galleys lie—still in existence, though owing to their long immersion and the depth of the water their ultimate recovery is extremely doubtful.

Among the many interesting items of marine information which we are enabled to gather from the voyages of St. Paul, we find[20] that the lead-line was in use, for we are told that “they sounded and found it twenty fathoms: and when they had gone a little further they sounded again and found it fifteen fathoms.” Also they “were in all in the ship two hundred threescore and sixteen souls,” so she was a vessel of considerable size. Then in the morning, having espied a snug little creek with a good shore for beaching, “when they had slipped their anchors they left them in the sea, at the same time loosing the rudder bands, hoisted up the artemon, and made towards the beach.” They had, no doubt long previously, learned the action which has saved many hundreds of ships, at all times of the world’s history, from foundering, by detaching the cable from the ship and not waiting to heave up the anchor. Moreover, they had found a nice beach under their lee, so the artemon or foresail was hoisted up the small foremast, and she would be able to make the beach without too much way on, and without the enormous amount of work that would have been necessary had the mainsail been set—a proceeding, considering the weather about, that they were not anxious to attempt. “Artemon” is the word used in the Greek of the New Testament: the translation of this as “mainsail” in the authorised version is of course quite wrong. The later ships were fitted with a mainsail and mast, but also a small foremast tilted at an angle of perhaps twenty-three degrees projected out from the bows, on which another small square sail was set. This was the artemon or foresail, and it would be in just such a manœuvre as this, or for giving the ship a sheer when getting up the cable or when coming into port even in fine weather, that this headsail would be found of the greatest use. We must not forget that this kind of foremast and foresail continued right till the beginning of the nineteenth century on all full-rigged ships, in the form of bowsprit and spritsail, until the triangular headsails with which we are so familiar nowadays came in. Finally, before we leave the voyages of St. Paul, we must not omit to notice the reference to the statement that after the anchors had been slipped they loosed the rudder bands. Instead of leaving the rudders to get foul of the stern cables when they had put out the four anchors, or to run the risk of being dashed to pieces by the waves, the ropes extending from the stern to the extremities of the steering oars would be hauled up so that the blades were quite clear of the water. It was a similar operation to a Thames barge hauling up her leeboards. Therefore, having cast off their anchors and being under way again, the rudder-ropes would necessarily be lowered. The same method of “rudder-bands” obtained among the Vikings. If the reader will turn to Fig. 29, of the Gogstad Viking ship, he will readily appreciate this point.

I am not going to enter here into any discussion as to the authorship of the Acts of the Apostles, but whoever he may have been had an accurate knowledge of the ships of his time, for we are able to see just the same kind of ship as St. Paul’s in a merchantman of about the year 50 A.D. and another of seventeen years later. The artemon mast and sail are well shown. It was, of course, the artemon mast that was the forerunner of the modern bowsprit. One can estimate the size of the mercantile ships of the Mediterranean of about the first and second centuries from Lucian, who refers to a merchantman engaged in the corn-carrying trade between Egypt and Italy. Her length was 180 feet, her breadth a little more than a quarter of her length, while her depth from upper deck to bottom of hold was 43½ feet. The registered tonnage of the largest trading ships was about 150.

Fig. 21. Roman Merchant Ships.

We have in Fig. 21 a very instructive illustration of two Roman merchant ships of about the year 200 A.D. This has been copied from a relief found near the mouth of the Tiber. The advance in shipbuilding since the times of the Egyptians has continued. The great high stern is still there, the bow remaining lower than the poop. The steering oar is very well shown, together with the “rudder bands” that we have just spoken of. They will be found to be two in number, coming down from the ship’s quarter, and passing through holes bored in the blade of the rudder. The tiller is of considerable length. The decoration under the stern with classical figures is very beautiful, while above is the familiar swan’s neck which accentuates the general duck-like lines of the ship. Three bollards aft and four forward, are seen for mooring purposes. The shape of the stem is worth noting for this must have been fairly common in big ships, and we shall find something very similar in the vessels of Northern Europe up to the fourteenth century. The rigging shows to what knowledge they had attained by now. The dead-eyes for setting up the shrouds, the purchase for getting the powerful forestay down tight, together with a similar arrangement on the artemon mast, are deserving of careful notice. The mainsail will be seen to be hoisted by two halyards, foot-ropes apparently being provided for the men sent up to furl it. I have noticed that in most of the old illustrations depicting men going aloft, the sailors usually ascend naked. This will be observed in the present illustration. The obvious conclusion is that they wished to be perfectly free and unfettered in their movements and to run no risk of their garments being caught in the rigging. The ships are moored to the quay by taking the stay of the artemon ashore. There is a different figurehead on the bows of each ship, while in the background, to the left of the middle of the picture, will be seen the warning beacon previously alluded to, the building below it with small windows being probably the leading lights for coming into the harbour. The sail has a triangular topsail in two pieces without a yard of its own. The yard of the mainsail appears now to be made in one piece instead of two, but the point where, owing to the binding together of the two pieces, the yard was thickest, is still so in the centre. The sheets and braces will be recognised at once, but we must say a word regarding the brails that were now employed. If the reader will examine the sail shown set in this illustration, he will find that the brails pass through rings on the fore-side of the canvas, then either through the top of the sail or just over it, between the yard and the edge of the sail itself, and so down to the stern. In the picture three of the brails are seen coming down so as to be within reach of the steersman. The action of brailing or reefing, then, must have been somewhat similar to the process of drawing up the domestic blinds that are familiar to us by the name of Venetian. The reader will no doubt have seen many drop-curtains in our theatres of to-day worked on the same principle as these brails worked the Roman sails.

Fig. 22. Roman Ship entering Harbour.
From an earthenware lamp in the British Museum.

The sails were not infrequently ornamented. The present illustration shows a sail bearing the devices of a Roman emperor. Topsails had come into use quite a hundred and fifty years before this ship, but they were far more popular on the Mediterranean than in the more boisterous waters of Northern Europe.

Fig. 22, taken from an earthenware lamp in the British Museum, shows another ship of this period entering harbour. The sail is furled to the yard, there is a crew of six on board, one of whom is at the helm, one is at the stern blowing a trumpet announcing their approach—an incident that one often sees depicted in the early seals of English ships—three men are engaged in furling the sails, and the man in the bows is standing by to let go the anchor. At the extreme left of the picture will be seen the lighthouse. I am sorry it is not possible to give the reader a better illustration of this lamp, but it is of such nature as almost to defy satisfactory reproduction. Fig. 23, taken from another lamp in the same museum, represents a harbour with buildings on the quay in the background. A man is seen fishing from his boat in the foreground, with another man ashore about to cast a net into the water.

Fig. 23. Fishing-boat in Harbour.
From an earthenware lamp in the British Museum.

I am fortunate in being able to supplement our previous knowledge of ships of this period by some important information that has been brought to light through excavations and discoveries near Tunis in Northern Africa. These were completed by M. P. Gauckler only as recently as the year 1904, and I am indebted to his very interesting account[21] for much of the information to be derived from these. In a building at Althiburus, near to Tunis, a mosaic was unearthed containing about thirty representations of several kinds of sailing and rowing boats. Below nearly every one the artist has thoughtfully put the name of each craft, usually in both Greek and Latin. Not one of these is a war-vessel. This is exceedingly fortunate, since hitherto we have possessed far less information of the trading vessels than of the biremes, triremes and Liburnian galleys. But the ships in the Althiburus mosaic all belong entirely to the mercantile marine. The discovery, in fact, has brought to light the most complete and precise catalogue we possess of ancient ships of Rome. M. Gauckler thinks that this list has been taken from some glossary or nautical handbook written about the middle of the first century before our era. He fixes the date of the mosaics as about 200 A.D., and the evidence of the ships themselves certainly confirms the view that they belong to some period not much before the time of the birth of our Lord.

The mosaic includes a number of craft that were not sailing ships, such as the schedia or raft, the tesseraria, a rowing boat called the paro, the musculus or mydion, and the hippago, a pontoon for transporting horses across a waterway. But whether sailing or rowing boats, they all bear unmistakable traces of the influence of the Phœnician, Greek and Roman war-galleys. Almost every craft shows an effort, not altogether successful, to break away from the design that had dominated the Mediterranean so long, for we must not forget that it is an historical fact that the Romans, though they brought the war-galley as near perfection as possible, did this at the expense of the merchant ships, which they sadly neglected. It is only natural, of course, that a nation that is always at war has no time to expand its merchant shipping. The reverse was the case with the Egyptians, who, being more of a peace-loving nature, developed their cargo ships far more, for it was not until fairly late in Egyptian history that the warship was attended to; we may even go so far as to assert that it was not until the time of the Middle Ages that the merchant ship both of the Mediterranean and the North of Europe, made any real progress. As long as civilisation was scanty and pirates were rampant on every sea, commerce was bound to remain at a standstill. Indeed, in the time of the early Greeks, it was thought no act of discourtesy to ask a seafaring stranger whether he was a pirate or merchant. So accustomed are we in these days to peace and plenty that we have need to remind ourselves constantly that there were no trade routes kept open, no policing of the seas, no international treaties nor diplomatic relations to prevent a peaceful merchant ship from disappearing altogether on the high seas, or staggering into port with the loss of her cargo and most of her crew.

The Egyptian stern still survives in these mosaics with modifications, but the greatest difficulty the naval architects appear to have had was with the bow. What to do with the ram-like entrance has obviously been a source of great worry. In the end, so that the merchant ship might not look too war-like, a curve has been added above the bulwarks at the bows to balance the curve at the waterline of the ram. The rowing arrangements exhibit a square hole in the gunwale for the oar to pass through.

Of the sailing boats and ships depicted in mosaic the corbita shows a freer design than the others. She is more or less crescent-shaped and not unlike the earlier caravels in hull. A ship of burthen, she has a mast, and the steering oar is seen at the starboard. Another illustration of this type of “corvette” is shown with a steering oar at each side, the sail furled to the yard, a couple of braces and the mast supported by six shrouds—three forward and three aft. The mast has a great rake forward, and there appears to be a narrow platform running round the hull as a side-walk, a relic, no doubt, of the flying deck that kept the marines separate from the rowers.

Another sailing ship called the catascopiscus obviously derived her name from the corresponding Greek word meaning to reconnoitre or scout; for she was famous as a light, fast-sailing ship. Her mast and sail are shown in the mosaic, as well as the halyards and the brailing lines.

The actuaria was a light, easily propelled ship, similar to the last. The mosaic (reproduced in Fig. 24) shows the sail furled to the yard and, what is significant, a rope-ladder, up which one of the sailors is ascending. Of the other two men one is sculling with two oars, while the captain is seen in the bows holding a mallet, which he knocks on the boat that the sculler may keep correct time and rhythm in a manner not very far separated from the exhortations of the “cox” of our University eights. This was the kind of ship which Cæsar employed during an expedition to Brittany, and will be referred to again in the next chapter.

Fig. 24. Navis Actuaria.
From a mosaic at Althiburus, near Tunis.

Another sailing ship, called by the artist a myoparo, shows two halyards, and the sail divided curtain-like as we saw in the Phœnician ships. She also has the Egyptian stern and a modified galley bow. The myoparo was a light, swift vessel, chiefly used by pirates. The stem of the English word “peir” (meaning to attempt to rob) is thus found in the name of the ship. Plutarch makes use of the name of this species of ship. The prosumia contains just such a sail as we saw in Fig. 21, the brails being very clearly shown. A sailing ship called a ponto has a small artemon foremast and main. The former has shrouds to support it, but the yard and sail are not shown. They would be kept in the hold somewhere, and only fitted when specially needed. This ship is of Gallic origin, and is mentioned by Cæsar, who refers to the “pontones quod est genus navium Gallicarum.”[22] Finally, in these mosaics, we have the cladivata, a ship that resembles the vessel referred to by Mr. Torr in his “Ancient Ships” as having been found at Utica, and belonging to about the year 200 A.D. This cladivata has also two masts and sails of similar size, with the brailing arrangement of this period as already shown. There is some uncertainty concerning the derivation of the word, but it possibly owes its origin to being named after Claudius.

Such, then, was the development of the sailing ship in the waters of Southern Europe. We shall now, leaving behind the first ships that sailed the Mediterranean, proceed in our enquiry to the shores of Northern Europe, and consider what was the nature of their ships which had to voyage under conditions far less encouraging than those of the warm southern seas.

CHAPTER IV.
THE EARLY SHIPS OF NORTHERN EUROPE.

The evidence that we possess, in order accurately to judge, of the early ships that sailed the seas of the Baltic, German Ocean, Bay of Biscay, and English Channel, is both conclusive and diverse. We have in the writings of Cæsar and Tacitus, many details of ships that are of considerable interest. This literature is supplemented by the old Sagas[23] of Scandinavia, which, though highly informative, err on the side of exaggeration. Rock sculptures existing in the land of the Vikings, though somewhat the subject of controversy, are, in the writer’s opinion, of real, valuable help in the study of sailing ships. There is also some evidence of later ships in the old coins of Northern Europe. But it is when we come to the important excavations that have revealed—nearly always accidentally—the ships of a bygone age, many hundreds of years old, that we are confronted with the most undeniable and complete source of information that one could desire.

These excavations have revealed discoveries of two kinds, which we shall deal with as we proceed. In Great Britain, and in Germany, various examples of the prehistoric “dug-out” have been unearthed. The Museums of Edinburgh, York, Bremen, and Kiel, happily contain these interesting craft, preserved for the wonder of future generations. The second class is more valuable still, and far more picturesque, for thanks to the burial customs of the old sea-chiefs, there have been excavated from certain mounds in Norway, wonderful old Viking ships in a state of preservation that is remarkable when we consider how many centuries they have lain under the earth. Therefore, fortunate as we deemed ourselves in being able to have such sources of information as models and reproductions of the ships of Southern Europe, we are far more happy in our present section for we can go to the fountain head direct—the ships themselves.

To us members of the Anglo-Saxon race, the importance of the forces at work during the period we are about to consider cannot be lightly estimated. The influence of the Viking, or double-ended type of ship, dominated the whole of the coast-line from Norway to the land as far south as the northern shores of Spain, right from the period that followed the construction of mere dug-outs, until almost the close of the fifteenth century of our era. That is to say, as soon as ever the North European became sufficiently civilised to build rather than to hew his craft: as soon as he undertook the making of ships rather than of boats—he came under the power of that naval architecture, which we see illustrated in the ships of the Veneti and Scandinavians; and, irrespective of geographical position, of language, of tribe or of nation, the civilised inhabitants living on that vast stretch of littoral, from the North Cape to the southern boundary of the Bay of Biscay, continued in the same conventions of design and build for many hundreds of years. It is a striking proof of the accurate knowledge in shipbuilding and ship-designing possessed by these early Northerners when we remember that, even to this day, that influence, far from disappearing, shows a strong tendency to increase, at any rate, in the architecture of yachts and fishing boats. Thus, the Egyptians, who moulded for ever afterwards the lines of the ships of the Mediterranean, have in Northern Europe, their counterpart in the Norsemen. What the galley was to the south, the Viking ship has been to us living in colder climes.

The obvious question occurs at this point as to what, if any, is the connection between the Mediterranean galley and the ship of the North Sea. That there is some similarity will be realised when we collect the following characteristics. And first, the very shape of both kinds of vessels—long, narrow, flat-bottomed; then the arrangement of the large squaresail with its braces and rigging; the mode of steering at the side; the pavisado that ran round the ship to protect the men from the enemy; the spur with which they rammed the enemy’s ships; the girdle that went round the ship to prevent damage caused by ramming; the ornamentation of the head of the vessel; their very methods of naval warfare, and finally, their adoption later of fore-castles and stern-castles—what else do these similarities show but that there existed a common influence? With such evidence before us, it becomes somewhat difficult to find agreement with those who contend that between the two classes of ships there is no connection whatever, except such as chance might have brought about. I am not denying that there are important differences between the ships of the two seas, but I contend that such important resemblances to each other need an explanation more scientific than can be ascribed to chance.

But assuming that we are right in our surmise, by what means were these early Norwegians affected by the southern design? Were they influenced by Roman civilisation? That they certainly were not. Then the southerners came to them?[24] Here is our contention. Though we have no actual proof, it seems justifiable to suppose that those great travellers and sea-folk, the Phœnicians, who, we have seen, were unsurpassed in their time for seamanship and shipbuilding; who have been said to have voyaged to the setting sun as far as America, and to have crossed the Bay of Biscay to Ireland and Cornwall, might have taken advantage of the prevailing westerly wind which blows across our land and have held on until they had touched the shores of Denmark or Norway. But why should they, do you ask? We have seen that the Phœnicians were not merely great sailormen, not merely adventurous, not merely eager explorers, but practical business-men, merchants, traders. If they had found ore in Cornwall, would they not have been inclined to seek other lands for what they could barter or wrest ere returning to their own homes? Even supposing the Phœnicians never crossed to South America, we know that they circumnavigated Africa. A land that bred seamen of that daring and ability would not be lacking in the kind of men to discover Norway.

And there is still another reason, it seems to me, why the Phœnicians might have felt tempted to go eastward after Cornwall. Ignorant as they were of the world’s geography, might they not have thought that, just as by sailing round always to the starboard they had encircled Africa, so having performed roughly a semi-circle from the Mediterranean to the English Channel, if they kept their course over the wilderness of sea in front of them, they would ultimately find that Europe, like Africa, was an island, too, and that the nearer they approached the rising of the sun the sooner would they see their homes again?

And if we are told to explain the differences between, on the one hand, the ships of the Phœnicians or their later descendants the Greeks and Romans, and on the other, those of the Vikings, it is but natural that, given a general design which has originated in the smoother waters of the Mediterranean, it must necessarily be somewhat modified for the nasty seas of the Baltic and German Ocean, where sudden changes of wind are but the harbingers of the rapid approach of bad weather. Cæsar, when he came north into Brittany, was struck, in comparing the ships of the Veneti with his own, by the superior seaworthiness of the former, and adds significantly that “considering the nature of the place and the violence of the storms, they were more suitable and better adapted.”[25] There is to-day a far greater difference in England between the sailing ships of one port and another than there was between the old Viking vessels and those of the Phœnicians. If you cruise round from one coast of Great Britain to another, you will find in the Scotch fishing craft, the Yorkshire cobble, the Yarmouth fishing smack, the Lowestoft “drifter,” the Thames “bawley,” the Deal galley, the Itchen Ferry transom-sterned cutters, the Brixham “Mumble Bees,” the Falmouth Quay-punt, the Bristol Channel pilot, and the Manx lugger, a wonderful complexity of designs and rigs, but the reason is always that that particular design and rig have been found to be the most suitable adaptation for each particular coast.

So it was with the Vikings. They modified the Phœnician design to their local requirements, without, nevertheless, neglecting those features essential to a good ship. After they had been shipbuilders for some time they would rapidly learn for themselves the values of length and beam, of draught and sweet lines, of straight keel, with high stem to breast a wave, and high stern to repel a following sea. Double-ended as they were, there was a reason for this essential difference from the Phœnicians. Such seas as they had in the North would not suffer their ships to be beached always in fine weather. So in order that they could be brought to land with either end on, and in order, too, that in sea-fights they might easily manœuvre astern or ahead, the Viking ships were built with a bow both forward and aft.

But long before ever the Phœnician ships came to the shores of Northern Europe there were boats and sailing ships. No doubt the prehistoric man in the north was driven to finding some means of transportation across the fjord by the same stern mother Necessity that first induced that primitive whom we saw learning his elementary seamanship on the Tigris or Euphrates. That ancient Northerner of the Stone Age made a wonderfully historic discovery when he found that he could make an edge to his stone, and that thereby he was able to cut both flesh and wood. “For,” says Mr. Eiríkr Magnússon in his interesting essay,[26] “on the edge, ever since its discovery, has depended and probably will depend to the end of time the whole artistic and artificial environment of human existence, in all its infinitely varied complexity.... By this discovery was broken down a wall that for untold ages had dammed up a stagnant, unprogressive past, and through the breach were let loose all the potentialities of the future civilisation of mankind. It was entirely due to the discovery of the edge that man was enabled, in the course of time, to invent the art of shipbuilding.”

The monoxylon—the boat made from one piece of timber—as fashioned by the early sailorman of the Stone Age, is even still used in parts of Sweden and Norway. Indeed it still bears the name which is the equivalent of “oakie,” showing that it was originally made out of the oak-trunk, which is the thickest and therefore the most suitable trunk to be found in the forests of the North Sea coast, a region, that in the time of the Stone Age was densely wooded with oak trees. Afterwards, this monoxylon or dug-out, in order that she may be made so strong as to carry as many as forty men, is strengthened with ribs, and the flat bottom has the modification of a keel added. The vessel that was found at Brigg in Lincolnshire in May 1886 ([see Fig. 25]) is of this kind. A similar kind of boat was found in the Valdermoor marsh in Schleswig-Holstein during the year 1878, and is now in the Kiel Museum. As there are other similar boats in existence, perhaps it may interest the reader if we deal with these discoveries a little more fully.

The Valdermoor boat has the following dimensions: length 41 feet, greatest width 4.33 feet, depth inside 19 inches, depth outside 20½ inches. The thickness of the wood is 1½ inches at the bottom and 1¼ at the top. The boat had eleven ribs, of which nine now exist. On the gunwale between the ribs, eleven holes were made for inserting oars. Both the stem and stern are sharp. The keel, 6½ feet in length, is worked out of the wood at both ends of the boat, leaving the middle flat. I am sorry not to be able to present an illustration of this before the reader, but the director of the Kiel Museum informs me that the boat is in such a position as to prevent it being photographed.

However, the Brigg boat is very similar to the Valdermoor and may serve the purposes of illustration equally well. This craft was found by workmen excavating for a new gasometer upon the banks of the river Ancholme, in North Lincolnshire. It had been resting apparently on the clay bottom of the sloping beach of an old lagoon. It was obviously made out of the trunk of a tree, and perfectly straight, its dimensions being: 48 feet 6 inches long, about 6 feet wide, 2 feet 9 inches deep. The stern represents the butt end of a tree with diameter of 5 feet 3 inches. The cubic contents of the boat would be about 700 cubic feet. The prow is rounded off as if intended for a ram, and a cavity in the head of the prow appears to have been intended for a bowsprit, whereby the forestay could be made fast. In fact, a piece of crooked oak suitable for this purpose was found adjacent to the prow. Whilst the bottom of this dug-out is flat, the sides are perpendicular and there is a kind of overhanging counter at the stern.

The boat was formerly in the possession of Mr. V. Cary-Elwes, F.S.A.,[27] to whom I have to express my thanks for his courtesy in supplying me with some information regarding the boat here reproduced. The ship was offered by this gentleman to the British Museum, but was declined as being too big. It therefore remains in a small provincial town difficult of access and for the most part unknown. It would be impossible to remove the craft now, without risk of total destruction, but is it not a little humiliating that continental and provincial museums should see fit to harbour similar relics as this Brigg boat, while our great national store-house refuses a gift of such importance? I make no apology to the reader for giving in detail the result of this Brigg discovery, for it is one of the finest if not the most instructive of any craft of this kind that has come to light in Northern Europe. An interesting account has been written by the Rev. D. Cary-Elwes, son of the above, and to this I am indebted for some of the following facts.[28]

Fig. 25. The Viking Boat dug up at Brigg. Lincolnshire.

The boat is hollowed out of one huge oak log, which, from the dimensions given above, would necessitate a tree 18 feet in circumference, and of such a height that the branches did not begin until 50 feet from the ground. Such a tree would be gigantic. The bows are almost a semi-circle when viewed from above, and are rounded off gradually to the bottom and sides, the latter being about two inches thick and the bottom four inches. The stern, however, is no less than sixteen inches. The transom has had to be fixed separately on to the trunk, and the difficulty was to perform such a piece of shipbuilding so as to make this part of the vessel as strong and water-tight as the sides and bottom. The caulking of the joints has been done with moss, the transom fitting into a groove across the floor. In order that the sides of the ship might not give, in bad weather, Mr. Cary-Elwes thinks, a tight lashing was thrown across from one side to the other, coming round abaft of the stern, and so keeping both sides and transom tightly together. This transom was found a little distance away from the boat and is 4 feet wide at the top and 2 feet 5¾ inches deep, there being a projection some 2 feet aft, beyond the transom, so as to form an overhanging counter.

Along the whole length of the boat, close to the upper edge, holes, 2 inches in diameter, have been pierced at irregular intervals of about 2 feet. It is uncertain what these were intended for. Although there are no such evidences as a step for the mast, to indicate whether she was a sailing boat, it is not safe to condemn her as having merely been propelled by paddles. There are evidences of decks and seats, and the primitive man would, no doubt, after he had learned to harness the wind, maintain his mast in position perhaps by thongs to the seat or by means of the decking. It has even been thought that the fragment of rounded wood found with the boat and already alluded to as a probable bowsprit, was a mast. To me this latter supposition seems more likely than the theory of a bowsprit. It has also been surmised that the holes running along the boat were either for lacing to keep the ship’s sides from coming asunder or for receptacles of pegs to hold washboards in bad weather. Personally, I think the latter is the more probable, for it was a very early custom. We have, in a former chapter, mentioned it as being a practice on the Mediterranean in classical times, and we shall see presently that the Vikings also used this method for keeping out the spray. It happens also to be the custom among modern savages.

Evidently during her career of activity this vessel had the misfortune to spring a leak, for she has been patched, and the work of the boatbuilder is most interesting to us of to-day. On the starboard bilge a rift of 12 feet long has been made. To repair this, wooden patches and moss have been used. The biggest patch is 5 feet 8 inches long and 6½ inches wide in the middle, tapering gradually to a point at either end, and is of oak. The patch was let into the rift from the outside until perfectly flush with the outer part of the boat. On the inner side of the patch, three cleats a foot long and four inches deep, with a hole in the centre of each, have been attached. Wooden pins were passed through these holes, so that pressing firmly against the solid wood on either side of the rift, they kept the repair in position. Besides this, holes three-eighths of an inch in diameter were made along the outer edges of the patch, corresponding holes being also made in the fabric of the boat by means of which the patch could be sewn to the ship with thongs. This custom, it seems to me, would have survived in the most natural manner from the time when the shipbuilder sewed the seams of his skin boat. Finally, all holes and crannies were caulked with moss. Mr. Cary-Elwes has carefully preserved a small portion of this lacing material, which appears to be of some animal substance, and probably twisted sinews. He has also taken some of this caulking moss from the boat and finds that it is of two kinds, both of which grow on sandy soils in woods, and are now largely used in the manufacture of moss-baskets and artificial flowers.

The important fact must not be lost sight of that while all the repairs have been made either by wood pegs or thongs, not a trace of metal was found in the fabric of the boat. This coincides with the argument that we have been proceeding on, viz., that such ships as these belong not to the age of metals but to that of stone. And, as if to convince those who scoff at the possibility of being able to fell trees—and oak trees especially—by means of stone implements, Mr. Cary-Elwes refers to the interesting fact that the Australian aborigines, a type of humanity as low and primitive as one could wish to find, had all their tools of agriculture, war and forestry, made of stone or wood, iron being unknown to them; yet indeed they knew how to fell the giants of the forest, such a tree as the Jarrah red gum, now used for paving London streets, being every bit as hard as our oak. “Within quite recent times,” adds the same author, “the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands worked exclusively with stone implements. I came across a good collection of these old time weapons in New Zealand, and what is more to the point here, sundry canoes and boats hollowed by their means. My father, who was with me, and who is a member of the Society of Antiquaries, and not unlearned in these matters, pointed out to me not only the similarity that existed between these stone weapons and the prehistoric adzes and axes of the stone age, but also the interesting fact that the canoes hollowed out by fire or stone tools were as cleanly cut and as cleverly wrought as the old Brigg boat.” The same writer, from the evidence of the geological strata where she was found, concludes that the age of the Brigg boat must be between 2600 and 3000 years, which would bring the date to between 1100 and 700 B.C.

In addition to the Brigg boat other dug-outs have been found in various parts of our country. In 1833 one was discovered near the river Arun in Sussex. Her length was 35 feet, breadth 4 feet, depth 2 feet. Her sides and bottom were between 4 and 5 inches thick. There are also other similarities to the Brigg boat. In 1863 a smaller, but similar boat, 8 feet 2 inches by 1 foot 9 inches, was also unearthed. She had washboards like those we have attributed to the Brigg boat. Another craft a foot smaller still was found near Dumfries in 1736, containing a paddle. In 1822 near the Rother in Kent an immense ship of this class measuring 63 feet long, and 5 feet broad was unearthed also. It is interesting to remark that it was caulked with moss in the manner already described. On the south bank of the Clyde another of these craft was found having an upright groove in the stern similar to that in which the sternboard of the Brigg boat was fixed. There is also a twenty-five footer in the Museum at York.

This Brigg Boat, and the Valdermoor one, probably belong to the class ascribed by Tacitus[29] in 70 A.D. to the Batavians and Frisians. Some have also thought that it was in such boats as these that the Romans crossed from Gaul to Britain. At any rate there can be no doubt that boats of this kind were to be found at this time still existing in Britain and along the shore washed by the English Channel and North Sea.

In addition to those dug-outs already enumerated, a similar craft was found in 1876 in Loch Arthur, about six miles west of Dumfries. She is 42 feet long and like all the others is hollowed out of oak. Her width and other characteristics show her to resemble very closely the Brigg boat, and accentuate still more the existence of a prevailing type of craft in Northern Europe during prehistoric times. The prow, like that of the primitive Koryaks, is shaped after the head of an animal. Unfortunately not the whole of this relic is preserved, but at least one third of her, and that the bow end, is to be found in the Museum of the Antiquarian Society of Edinburgh. More than twenty canoes of this same class have also been found in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. Almost all were formed out of single tree-trunks of oak and afford evidence of having been hollowed out by blunt tools such as the people of the Stone or Bronze Age would possess. Two obviously later boats were dug up in 1853 and were found to be of more elaborate construction, planks having now been introduced. The prow resembled the beak of an ancient galley, the stern being formed of a triangular piece of oak. For fastening the planks to the ribs oak pins and metallic nails had been used. For caulking, wool dipped in tar had been employed. Boehmer in his exceedingly valuable and careful paper on “Prehistoric Naval Architecture of the North of Europe,”[30] to which I am greatly indebted for some important facts, points out that in the bottom of one of these canoes a hole had been closed by means of a cork-plug, which Professor Geikie remarks could only have come from the latitudes of Spain, Southern France, or Italy. The inference is, of course, that notwithstanding their island home, even the very early inhabitants of Great Britain were in communication with distant parts of the Continent.

There can be no doubt that, at any rate among the least progressive peoples of Northern Europe, this dug-out, monoxylon type of boat lasted till very late, for an account is given by Velleius Paterculus, who about the year 5 A.D. served under Tiberius as prefect of cavalry. He distinctly refers to the Germanic craft as dug-outs, “cavatum, ut illis mos est, ex materia.” Pliny the elder speaks of the piratical ships of the Chauci, one of the most progressive of the coast tribes of Northern Europe, as having visited the rich provinces of Gallia. These ships were dug-outs and carried thirty men. This fact is interesting, as being the first time the Teutons had ventured on the open sea.

During the years 1885 to 1889, while excavations were being made at the port of Bremen at the mouth of the Weser, as many as seven of these dug-outs were found in the alluvial land at depths of from 6½ feet to 13 feet below the present level of the surface. They were made of oak-trunks, and had apparently been fashioned by axes. They were as usual flat-bottomed, without keels, but with prow cut obliquely and with holes for the insertion of oars. Of the seven four were entirely demolished, but of the remaining three the dimensions were respectively: 35 feet long by 2 feet 6 inches wide; 33 feet 4 inches long by 3 feet 6 inches; 26 feet 7 inches by 3 feet 3 inches. The height varied from 1 foot 5 inches up to 2 feet 2 inches. Several specimens of this type are preserved in the municipal museum of Bremen.

So much, then, for the earliest type of craft. We have seen that the dug-out in the course of time became strengthened with ribs. The next stage in the advancement of the prehistoric shipbuilder is to dispense with the strenuous work which necessitated the hollowing out of a whole tree trunk of hard oak. The affixing of ribs has given him an idea. So, utilising the hides of the wild animals which he has shot whilst hunting, he stretches these over the same framework that he had used for strengthening his oak-trunk. He is still in the Stone Age, so nails are not yet invented. The skins have to be sewn together to fit the framework, and the result is precisely that of the coracle even now used in Wales and off Connemara. If the reader should happen never to have seen one of these, a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum will quickly clear up any misunderstanding. Though we have no actual specimens of ancient skin-ships existing—and indeed we should not expect such a relic—yet the interesting survival of the boat-building language of that primitive time is found both in the Norwegian and English language of to-day. Thus, when you have allowed a ship to lie high and dry in the summer sun so that the planking warps and daylight can be seen through, what is the expression you would use to express this? Would you not remark that she has opened her seams? Now “seam” is an Anglo-Saxon word connoting the joining together of two edges of some texture by means of a needle. But let us take a further instance. Do you not constantly hear shipbuilders and designers refer to the planking that covers a ship’s ribs as her skin? Thus we have still in common use the very words which our sires employed in reference to the sewn hides of their primitive craft. Indeed, when one considers that all through history, even until now, shipbuilding has been an industry apart from ordinary occupations, and that both ships and seamen are, as we said in our introductory chapter, the most conservative of all peoples or created things, this survival is not so unnatural as might seem at first. We could continue to give other examples in the pertinacity of ancient seafaring expressions, but that would only be to digress from the immediate subject before us. We need only make reference to the interesting fact that Cæsar during his first Spanish campaign in the civil war, when he required some boats at the banks of the river Sicoris to get across, ordered the soldiers to make boats of the build that they had learned in former years from the British use. Thus first the keel was obtained and ribs were fashioned of light stuff; the rest of the boat’s body being then woven together of osiers and finally covered with hides.[31] According to Pliny the Britanni also in the first century of our era put to sea in wicker vessels done round with a covering of ox hide. In such vessels they would take a six days’ voyage to the Island of Mictis, whence the tin came.

We come now to the Bronze and Iron Ages. With the advent of metals we find a revolution scarcely inferior to that caused by the discovery of the edged stone. For whereas the latter could cut, yet its efforts were confined within narrow limitations. It was capable of felling a tree and of hollowing out its trunk with the expenditure of considerable labour and tediousness, yet that was its highest achievement in the department of shipbuilding. But now that the introduction of metals, of iron and bronze, is made, the primitive man finds that his sphere of energy is vastly widened. Instead of hollowing out the tree he cuts it up into planks. Instead of having to sew the outside together with thongs of hide, he has metallic nails as fastenings. To the same kind of ribs that framed his skin-boat, he can now nail down planks of oak and fir. He has a lighter and more easily propelled boat than the dug-out, and a stronger and more seaworthy ship than that made of stretched skins, although it is only fair to observe that the hide-boat was capable of far more than one would suppose. Mr. Jochelson in the account of the Jesup Expedition already referred to, relates his experience of being taken for a sail in one of the skin-boats of the Koryak. He was delighted by the endurance which the skins (of seal) exhibited. Not the least remarkable feature was the fact that the skin was capable of sustaining enormous weights without bursting. But in Europe our ancestors must have been glad to be able to discard the hide for that of wood, since the wear and tear in beaching on rock, pebble, or snag, exposed them to instant uselessness.

Although shipbuilding proper comes with the Metallic Age, we must not assume that the change was made universally or at once. The transition would be made rapidly or but slowly in proportion as the tribe or nation were enthusiastically maritime or otherwise. In some parts of Europe the skin-boat or even the dug-out would be in use, while other shores were seeing built vessels of planks and ribs. The first historic account that we possess of these more modern vessels is to be found in Cæsar’s account of the Naval Campaign against the Veneti in the year 54 B.C. From this narrative we learn that the ships of the Veneti were somewhat flatter than those of the Romans, so that they could more easily encounter the shallows and ebbing of the tide.[32] The prows, we are told, were raised very high, and the sterns likewise—“proræ admodum erectæ atque item puppes”—so that they were suited for the force of the waves and storms which they had been constructed to sustain. We have, then, here a new design in naval architecture recorded—the Viking type of ship—although it had been in existence for a considerable time in the North. The high prows and sterns would immediately impress those who had come from the more peaceful waters of Italy. Further it is said that these ships were built of oak throughout and designed to be enormously strong. The crossbeams, made of logs a foot thick, were fastened by iron spikes as thick as a man’s thumb. The anchors were made fast by iron chains instead of cables, while their sails were made of skin and dressed leather. These were used because they lacked canvas or the knowledge to apply it to such a use, or more probably because they thought canvas would be of too little strength to endure the tempests of the ocean and violent gales of wind, and that ships of such great burden could not be managed by them. Perhaps in the use of hides for sails, we have the parent of the practice of using tanned sails so common in our fishing fleet and barges. The relative character of the two kinds of ships Cæsar points out, as we mentioned earlier in the chapter, was that the Roman fleet excelled in speed alone and in oarsmanship. Otherwise the ships of the Veneti were, considering the nature of the place, and the violence of the storms more suitable and better adapted on their side. Nor could the Roman ships injure severely the ships of the Veneti by means of their beaks, so strong were they. And further, so high were these ships that the Romans found great difficulty in hurling weapons at them. Whenever a storm arose and the ships of the Veneti ran before the wind, they could weather it more readily and heave-to safely in the shallows, and when left by the tide feared nothing from rocks and shelves, for—“the risk of all such things,” ends the account pathetically, “was much to be dreaded by our ships.”

Those who are familiar with the terrible tides and treacherous coast of northern France[33] will readily understand how such able Viking-like ships as the Veneti possessed, appealed to the Romans with their fast but unsuitable craft. The difference would be that between the smart Thames skiff and the tubby though seaworthy dinghy of a North Sea fishing smack. For we know pretty accurately now, thanks to the Althiburus mosaics referred to in the previous chapter, just what Cæsar’s craft were like. Hitherto we have known them as naves actuariæ—that is, light vessels of surpassing speed. But if the reader will refer back to Fig. 24 he will find that the navis actuaria, whilst propelled both with oars and sail, was nevertheless not much of a ship to be caught in off the rocks and narrow channels in a breeze of wind. Although these actuariæ were neither freight ships (onerariæ) nor war-vessels properly speaking, yet they still possessed rams and were used on this expedition for a war-like purpose. There cannot be much doubt that the Veneti had obtained their design and ideas of shipbuilding from the Norsemen who relentlessly swept down from their colder climes and plundered and pillaged from one end of the coast of Northern Europe to the other. As we shall see presently, this design was prevalent for many years before Cæsar came, and as we shall also see from the following chapter it had altered but little at the time when William the Conqueror left the French shores for England in the eleventh century.

In the year 15 A.D. we learn from Tacitus[34] that Germanicus had built near the mouth of the river Rhine a thousand ships with sharp bows so as to be able to resist better the waves. Some had flat bottoms to enable them to take the ground with impunity. Some had a steering apparatus at both bow and stern in order that thereby they could be rowed in either direction. Many were decked for the accommodation of throwing machines. They were equally useful as rowing and sailing ships, and just as in the mediæval times ships were built with towering decks for “majesty and terror of the enemy,” so as early as this period these vessels were imposing as to their size whilst inspiring confidence to their own soldiery. Good serviceable ships as they were, yet after defeating the Cherusci at the mouth of the Ems they were shipwrecked in a storm although the wind blew from the south. It is only fair to add, however, that the ancients, especially the Romans, were wont to build their vessels very quickly[35] and consequently they erred, no doubt, in constructing them too slightly. The Saxons who, after the death of Alexander the Great, came to the mouth of the Elbe and subjugated the Thuringians, and who are said to have possessed the art of tacking, already referred to, had such light vessels as belonged to the stone age. They were wonderfully light, made out of willows and covered with skins, but had a keel of knotty oak; yet these daring navigators, without compass or chart, and with but a feeble knowledge of the stars, managed to find their way to the Orkneys.

We pass now from the English Channel and the Rhine to consider that land which has given birth to a long line of robust, vigorous ships and men, who after the Phœnicians are the finest race of seamen that ever sailed a sea. A little clumsy like their ships the Scandinavians have always throughout history stood for manliness and strength. And if we were right when we submitted that a nation’s character exhibits itself in a most marked degree in its ships, surely of no people could this remark be made with greater truth than concerning the inhabitants of that Northern peninsula who, in the early days of our own country, harassed our forefathers beyond all endurance, but left behind to us the heritage of a love of the sea.[36] There is in the Viking ship and its descendants not so much beauty as nobility, not prettiness but power. The first mention of these Northerners is by Tacitus[37] who refers to them as the Suiones. (Tacitus died A.D. 108.) As Cæsar was struck by the difference between the Roman ships and those of the Veneti, so Tacitus remarks that the ships of the Suiones differ from the Romans’, too. Although these were not sailing ships—nec velis ministrantur—yet they were of the same design as those which were fitted with mast and sail. Double-ended, they could easily be beached and in battle could the more rapidly manœuvre ahead or astern.

Fig. 26. Ancient Scandinavian Rock-carving, showing Viking Ship-forms.

But we have much earlier information than the writings of the Roman chronicler. We have history written in stone, obvious, illustrative and imperishable. In many parts of the Scandinavian coast, beginning as far north as Trondhjem and extending right round to the isle of Gothland, are to be found many rock sculptures depicting the forms of both ships and men. A few have also been found in Denmark as well as on the shores of Lake Ladoga in Russia. These rock-carvings are really history set forth in picture language, primitive yet intelligible. In spite of all the hundreds of years that have rolled by, and the winds and rains that have dashed against them, they are still quite decipherable. Professor Gustafson in his book on Norwegian antiquities[38] gives several interesting pictures of these rock-carvings, and I am able here to reproduce one for the reader who will no doubt agree that the evidence here afforded is exceptionally striking. Fig. 26 shows the Viking-like ship beyond all doubt. Frequently these carvings are represented in groups and it has been thought that they record naval battles fought in the vicinity, the several representations of ships denoting fleets. The human figures perhaps are there as an eternal memorial of their admirals who perished or distinguished themselves in the fight. There are two kinds of craft in these carvings, Magnússon[39] points out. First there is the ship with the very high stem, and stern, and there is the other kind of vessel which lacks just these features. The former appears to have a double keel which makes it look as if the ship were put on a sledge. There is at the bow end a structure which is most probably a ram. As to the sledge-like formation below the body of the ship, I am inclined to think it may have been a removable keel to be attached to the ship when sailing and so give her flat-bottomed hull greater stability. In an old-fashioned part of the world, which is not so very far removed from Norway and which was in earlier times over-run by the Norsemen, in whose inhabitants to-day the flaxen hair and blue eyes and the Norwegian name are still to be found—in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk—the trading wherries have just such an arrangement as this. When they have a full cargo on board and come to a shallow part of the river, they unhook the whole length of keel which is attached to bow and stern by an iron band, and leave it on the bank until they return down stream. Until quite recently not much change has taken place in the craft of this neighbourhood for ages, and it is quite possible that this double-ended wherry was as much swayed by Norwegian as by Dutch influence.

On some of these carvings a mast amidships is shown and their date belongs either to the Stone or the Bronze Age, though more probably the latter. Professor Montelius discourages the idea that the Phœnicians established themselves on the Baltic for the reason that the bronze culture found its way up to the North overland from the shores of the Mediterranean and especially the Adriatic. But in spite of this argument these sculptured forms show many points of resemblance to those of the Phœnicians’ ships as the reader will not fail to notice. Many northern archæologists think that these sculptures have been wrought by the hands of foreigners, and Mr. Magnússon suggests that in that case they may have been the work of the Veneti. Be that as it may, and let it be disputed whether they belong to the year 1500 B.C. or as late as 50 B.C., whether they were carved by the Vikings or the enemies of the Vikings, there they are still to be seen, admittedly of great antiquity and corresponding to the description of the ships of the Suiones as given by Tacitus.

But long before this latter date the Suiones must have been afloat. They could not suddenly have become owners of a mighty fleet—classibus valent. The very prefix “Nor” which is so common in this region—in the words “Norge,” “Nordheimsund,” “Norse,” to give but the first instances that come to one’s mind—signifies ship. It is the same stem that is found in the Greek ναυς and the Latin navis. In the Irish language noe also means ship and is found in the oldest tractates of the ancient laws of Ireland. We have already mentioned the important fact that Pytheas of Marseilles led an expedition in the fourth century B.C. by sea to Norway in the interests of the commercial community of Marseilles. This rather goes to show that the Gauls and Scandinavians had met on trading terms before and that one or both of the parties had journeyed to each other’s shore previously.

We know that the Norsemen sailed in early times frequently along the Eastern shores of the Baltic. We know that they voyaged to Denmark, Jutland, Germany and Russia, for they have left behind them unmistakable relics. For just as we are indebted to the funeral customs of the Egyptians for so much important knowledge of their ships, so to the burial rites of these hardy Northerners we owe a great debt of thanks for information as to their vessels. There were three kinds of burials adopted by the Norsemen. First, and this is the one we wish to draw immediate attention to, there was the custom of cremating the deceased Viking. His ashes, together with his personal property, were buried on land in a boat-shaped grave. The outlines of long, narrow, pointed shapes formed by a single line of stones in the countries just mentioned indicate the ship-shape resting places of these men who were so faithful to their vessels, who revered them so highly for having carried them during their lives safely across the turbulent sea, that even in death they desired not to be separated from them. Thus on land the very design of the stones was after the lines of that which is the noblest and most beautiful of all the creations of man.[40]

But there were two other modes of burial, each in its own way magnificently impressive and in keeping with the vigorous character of the Viking spirit. Of these two the first consisted in placing the body of the deceased in his own ship, then, setting the whole thing ablaze, the ship and its owner were carried out to sea a red, glaring mass, flaming up against the dark background of the horizon. This kind of obsequies, magnificently as it appeals to our imagination with its suggestion of colour, of grandeur and solemnity, has been inimical to the pursuit of historical knowledge. But even in spite of this, remains of unburned ships have been found among both the outer and inner shores of Trondhjem Fjord.[41]

Fig. 27. Viking Ship-form Grave.

But it is the third kind of burial that tells us as much about the Viking ship as the Brigg discovery taught us about the primitive dug-out. For instead of sending them out to sea there was also the custom of dragging the huge ship ashore, and placing the distinguished seaman’s body in the bow, a sepulchral chamber (clearly shown in Fig. 28) of wood was erected above. Together with his horse, his dogs, his weapons and other belongings he was left to sleep in peace. Finally over the whole boat a huge mound was raised towering to a great height, and the proceedings were completed. Now, within recent years some of these mounds have been excavated with results of remarkable historic value. Ever since the beginning of the nineteenth century the Norwegians have taken a real interest in their national antiquities, and these ancient craft have been treated with the care and reverence to which they have every right. But besides Norway these ships have been found elsewhere. Even in England relics of a Viking ship 48 feet long, 9 feet 9 inches wide, and 4 feet high were found near Snape in Suffolk during the year 1862. Viking remains have also been discovered in the Orkneys. In 1875 an enormous specimen was found at Botley, a charming little place up the river Hamble which flows out into Southampton Water opposite Calshot. This was probably a Danish ship and a relic of one of her nation’s incursions against our shores. She has been thought to belong to the year A.D. 871 when the Danes invaded Wessex. At any rate she was in length 130 feet while her upright timbers measured 14 feet 10 inches. The caulking was found to be of ferns and moss and indeed the impression of the leaves of the former was still visibly outlined on the wood. The timber was oak as far as could be discerned, and bore evidences of having been burned. Nowadays there is not enough water at Botley to float such a ship, but at high tide, and allowing for the silting up of the river it would have been as snug a place as ever could be found along the south coast, after the Vikings were wearied with fighting and the buffeting of the waves.

Of the other Viking ships discovered we shall give to each for convenience the name of the district where she was found. The Nydam ship was discovered in October, 1863, in the Nydam Moss to the north-east of Flensburg in the Duchy of Schleswig. Nydam is in a dale and was once part of a bay of Als Sound, and in former times was navigable. Systematic diggings were undertaken at the expense of the Danish Government and afterwards the ship was placed in the hands of an expert restorer. She is as usual built of oak, her lines being very similar to the Scotch fishing boats that flourished on our coasts up to the middle of the nineteenth century, and resembling the boat well known as a whaler. The rudder was placed on the starboard about 10 feet from the stern and was about 9½ feet in length. She is sharp at both ends with high stem and stern posts; 77 feet long, as much as 10 feet 10 inches across her midships, she was clinker-built of eleven oak planks. The keel is an inch deep and eight inches thick, being broad at the middle but diminishing gradually toward the sternpost. The planks were fastened with large iron nails and caulked, as was the custom, with some woollen stuff and pitch. She had twenty-eight oars, was flat-bottomed, and her date has been estimated as about the middle of the third century of our era. I admit she is not entitled to be called a sailing ship, but as she will be found to belong so closely to the sailing class we cannot afford to neglect her. With her was also found another similar ship but of fir and armed with a ram low down at each end. Remains of another boat were also discovered with her as well as bronze brooches, silver clasps, wooden boxes, bone combs, many shield boards or pavisses (also seen in the Gogstad ship, Fig. 28), 106 iron swords, spear shafts and heads, 36 wooden bows, iron bits still in the mouths of the skeleton horse-heads, pots, bowls, knives, axes, clubs, and thirty-four Roman coins, belonging to dates between 69 and 217 A.D.[42] These composed the personal property, already alluded to, that was always buried with the Viking. Professor Stephens (see note) was of the opinion that one or more of these three boats had been scuttled and sunk in order to avoid capture by the enemy, and goes on to refer to the fact that in the twelfth century the Wends and Slavs employed the same means when pursued. Their tactics included dragging the ship ashore, scuttling her and then decamping and seeking shelter.

The Tune ship was found in Norway, near the town of Frederikstad in the year 1865. She is of especial interest to us as being the first specimen of a sailing craft that we have from the North. She was found under the funeral mound that had been raised over her, and measured 45½ feet long; her width is supposed to have been 14½ feet, for not the whole of the hull was rescued. Her height from keel to bulwark has been estimated as about four feet. Clinker-built of oak, there were found just abaft the mast the unburnt bones of a man and his horse. From internal evidence this ship has been thought to belong to the Iron Age, and is obviously a Viking ship.

About the year 1873 the Brosen ship was found near Danzig. She was 57 feet long, 16 feet wide, 5 feet high and pointed at both ends. Her planking was 1½ inches thick of oak and clinker-built. The caulking consisted of the hair of elk, bear, or some other wild animal, with an application of tar. The bottom was flat. In 1890 the Gloppen ship was found during excavations of a mound on the fjord of that name near to Bergen. I understand that the remains are preserved in the Bergen museum.

But far surpassing any of these we have already mentioned is the great Gogstad ship discovered in the year 1880 near to Sandefjord. The mound in which she lay was 18 feet above sea-level, and the prow was placed looking seaward, as if ready for a voyage again. The condition in which this fine old ship was found is nothing short of marvellous, and is attributable to the fact that the blue clay in which she was embedded had preserved her from the air. The upper part has unfortunately been damaged, owing (thinks Du Chaillu) to the clay being mixed with sand, and so allowing the air to penetrate. She is clinker-built, entirely of oak, and caulked with cow’s hair spun into a sort of cord. Her planking is of oak, 1¾ inches thick, and her length over all is 79 feet 4 inches, beam 16½ feet, and depth 6 feet amidships, but 8½ feet at the extremities. She weighs about twenty tons, displacing about 959 cubic feet. Her gunwale above water is amidships 2 feet 11 inches, while at bow and stern it rises to 6½ feet. Her draught is only 3 feet 7 inches. In many respects she resembles the Tune ship, but this is indeed a sailing vessel. There is a step for the mast, and thirty-two oars were carried—sixteen on either side—the oar-holes being provided with shutters so as to keep out the sea. Through the courtesy of the British Consul at Christiania I am enabled here to show two excellent photographs of the ship as she now lies in the keeping of the Royal Frederiks University, Christiania. Professor Gabriel Gustafson has been instrumental in preserving the ship from further decay, and the reader who desires a complete description of the Gogstad ship is referred to the latter’s publications concerning her. It is quite evident from her construction that her builders possessed the greatest experience and that her designer, whoever he may have been, thoroughly “understood the art, which was subsequently lost, to be revived in modern times, of shaping the underwater portion of the hull so as to reduce the resistance to the passage of the vessel through the water.”[43] It is the opinion of experts in naval architecture that for model and workmanship this vessel is a masterpiece, nor for beauty of lines and symmetrical proportions could she be surpassed to-day by any man connected with the art of designing or building ships.

As rebutting the statement of those who would limit the possibilities of these early ships to short voyages, it may not be out of place to mention that at the end of the nineteenth century an exact replica of this Gogstad ship was built, and sailed across the Atlantic on her own bottom. She proved to be a capital sea-boat and was for some time a source of great attraction at the Chicago exhibition. From the various articles of antiquarian interest that were found in the Gogstad ship, as well as from the style of carving with which the vessel was decorated, she has been given the date of somewhere between the years 700 and 1000 A.D. According to the Sagas such a ship as this would carry two or more boats propelled by from two to twelve oars. It is therefore interesting to remember that fragments of three were found within this mother ship.

Photo. O. Voering, Christiania.

Fig. 28 shows the bakbordi or port side looking forward from the stern. The dark triangular erection towards the bows is the sepulchral chamber in which the old sea-chief was laid. The unfortunate break in the ship’s side below was evidently the work of thieves bent on stealing some of the articles of value while the ship was under the mound. The wooden shields, or pavisado to protect the oarsmen from the enemy, are much in evidence, and the beautiful lines of her stern cannot fail to be admired. She has a somewhat flat floor amidships for greater stability, but the general sweep of her lines is exquisite. Fig. 29 is even more interesting still as showing the stjornbordi or starboard side looking forward. The height of the stern, and the planking, are here clearly discerned: but especially claiming our attention is the rudder. Here it is now a fixture, having developed like the Mediterranean ships from a loose oar at the side. It remained as we see it here until the beginning of the fourteenth century. In this Gogstad ship the rudder is fixed to a projection of solid wood, on which it is pivoted. Into the neck of the rudder a tiller was fitted, which we shall see quite clearly in the illustration of the seal of Winchelsea in the following chapter. Even nowadays, while in the modern Scandinavian ships the rudder is at the end and not at the side of the ship, the steering helm comes round at the side so as to avoid the high sternpost. Figs. 30 and 31, which have been sketched from modern Norwegian and Russian ships, will show not merely how wonderfully has this Viking type prevailed up till to-day, but how the tiller also has altered only very slightly. From the stern of the Gogstad ship will be noticed the rope for pulling up the rudder clear of the water-line (as in St Paul’s ship) so as to avoid damage when beaching. The steering side was of course always the starboard, whence this word originates. On this side the reader will notice the oar-holes mentioned above. The class to which this Gogstad ship belongs is that of the skuta, which was extensively used in Norway. Such craft as these, though they were not the biggest of the Viking ships, were nevertheless of great speed. The actual word skuta indicates “to shoot,” in the sense of passing speedily. No doubt the familiar Dutch craft schuyt is, at least in name, derived from this.