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SHIPS AND WAYS
OF OTHER DAYS

A SHIP OF YESTERDAY

(A Tea-clipper before the Wind)

SHIPS & WAYS
OF OTHER DAYS

BY
E. KEBLE CHATTERTON
(Author of “Sailing Ships & Their Story”)

WITH ONE HUNDRED AND
THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
SIDGWICK & JACKSON, LTD
3 ADAM STREET, ADELPHI, W.C.
1913

All rights reserved

PREFACE

SHIPS AND WAYS OF OTHER DAYS

PREFACE

I desire to acknowledge the courtesy of the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge, for having permitted me to reproduce the three illustrations facing pages [212], [228], and [230]. These are from MSS. in the Pepysian Library. The [Viking anchor and block tackle] are taken from Mr. Gabriel Gustafson’s Norges Oldtid, by permission of Messrs. Alb. Cammermeyer’s, Forlag, Kristiania. The two illustrations on pages [123] and [132] are here reproduced by the kind permission of Commendatore Cesare Agosto Levi from his “Navi Venete.” The [Viking rowlock and rivet] are taken from Du Chaillu’s “Viking Age,” by the courtesy of Mr. John Murray. To all of the above I would wish to return thanks.

E. Keble Chatterton.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“The sea language is not soon learned, much less understood, being only proper to him that has served his apprenticeship: besides that, a boisterous sea and stormy weather will make a man not bred on it so sick, that it bereaves him of legs and stomach and courage, so much as to fight with his meat. And in such weather, when he hears the seamen cry starboard, or port, or to bide alooff, or flat a sheet, or haul home a cluling, he thinks he hears a barbarous speech, which he conceives not the meaning of.”

(Sir William Monson’s Naval Tracts.)

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

In “Sailing Ships and their Story” I endeavoured to trace the evolution of the ship from the very earliest times of which we possess any historical data at all down to the canvas-setting craft of to-day. In “Fore and Aft” I confined myself exclusively to vessels which are rigged fore-and-aftwise, and attempted to show the causes and modifications of that rig which has served coasters, pilots, fishermen, and yachtsmen for so many generations.

But, now that we have watched so closely the progress of the sailing ship herself, noting the different stages which exist between the first dug-out and the present-day full-rigged ship or the superb racing yacht, we can turn aside to consider chronologically what is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of all. On the assumption that activity is for the most part more interesting as a study than repose, that human activity is the most of all deserving in its ability to attract, and that from our modern standpoint of knowledge and attainment we are able to look with sympathetic eyes on the efforts and even the mistakes of our forefathers on the sea, we shall be afforded in the following pages a study of singular charm.

For, if you will, we are to consider not why the dug-out became in time an ocean carrier, but rather how men managed to build, launch, equip, and fit out different craft in all ages. We shall see the vessels on the shipyards rising higher and higher as they approach completion, until the day comes for them to be sent down into the water. We shall see royalty visiting the yards and the anxious look on the shipwright’s face lest the launching should prove a failure, lest all his carefully wrought plans should after months of work prove of naught. We shall see the ships, at last afloat, having their masts stepped and their rigging set-up, their inventory completed, and then finally, we shall watch them for the first time spread sail, bid farewell to the harbour, and set forth on their long voyages to wage war or to discover, to open up trade routes or to fight a Crusade. And then, when once they have cleared from the shelter of the haven we are free to watch not merely the ship, but the ways of ship and men. We are anxious to note carefully how they handled these various craft in the centuries of history; how they steered them, how they furled and set sail, how these ships behaved in a storm, how they fought the ships of other nations and pirates, how they made their landfalls with such surprising accuracy. As, for instance, seeing that the Norsemen had neither compass nor sextant, by what means were they able in their open ships to sail across the Atlantic and make America? In short, we shall apply ourselves to watching the evolution of seamanship, navigation, and naval strategy down the ages of time.

Frigate.

A 74-Gun Ship.

Portsmouth Pilot Cutter

Spithead in the Early Nineteenth Century.

But we shall not stop at that; for we want to obtain an intimate picture of the life lived on board these many ships. We would, so to speak, walk their decks, fraternise with the officers and men, adventure into their cabins, go aloft with them, join their mess, keep sea and watch in their company in fine sunny days and the dark stormy nights of winter. We are minded to watch them prepare for battle, and even accompany them into the fight, noting the activities, the perils, and the hardships of the seamen, the clever tactics, the moves and counter-moves, the customs of the sea and of the ship especially. Over boundless, deep-furrowed oceans not sighting land for weeks; or in short coasting voyages hurrying from headland to headland before impending tempest; or pursued by an all-conquering enemy, we shall follow these ships and men in order to be able to live their lives again, to realise something of the fears and hopes, the disappointments, and the glories of the seaman’s career in the past.

I can promise the reader that if he loves ships, if he has a sympathetic interest in that curious composite creature the seaman—who throughout history has been compelled to endure the greatest hardships and deprivations for the benefit of those whose happy fortune it is to live on shore—he will find in the ensuing pages much that will both surprise him and entertain him. I have drawn on every possible source of information in order to present a full and accurate picture, and wherever possible have given the actual account of an eye-witness. How much would we not give to-day to be allowed to go on board the crack ship of the second century, for instance, and see her as she appeared to an onlooker? Well, Lucian has happily left us in dialogue form exactly the information that we want about the “monster vessel of extraordinary dimensions” which had just put in at the Piræus. On a later page the reader will accompany the visitor up the gangway and go round the ship, and be able to listen to the conversation of these eager enthusiasts, just as he would listen attentively to a party of friends who had just been shown over the latest mammoth steamship. What the captain said of his ship, his yarns about gales o’ wind, how great were her dimensions, how much water she drew, what was the average return to the owner from the ship’s cargo—it is all here for those who care to read it. A thousand years hence, how interested the world would be to read the first impressions of one who had been allowed to see over the Mauretania, or Olympic, or their successors! In the same way to-day, how amazingly delightful it is still to possess an intimate picture of a second-century Egyptian corn-ship!

We are less concerned with the evolution of design and build of ships in this present book than with the manner of using these craft. How, for example, on those Viking ships which were scarcely decked at all, did the crew manage to eat and sleep? Did the ancients understand the use of the sounding lead? how did they lay their ships up for the winter? what was the division of labour on board?—and a thousand questions of this sort are answered here, for this is just the kind of information that the reader so often asks for, and so rarely gets, frequently being disappointed at the gaps left in historical works. Believing firmly that a knowledge of the working and fighting of the ships in history is worthy of every consideration, I have for years been collecting data which have taken shape in the following narrative. Seamanship, like the biggest sailing craft, cannot have much longer to live if we are able to read the signs of the times. Steamanship rather than seamanship is what is demanded nowadays; so that before long the latter will become quite a lost art. It is therefore time that we should collect and set forth the ways and customs of a fast-dying race. Seamanship is, of course, a changing quality, but at heart it is less different than one might at first imagine. I venture to suggest that if by any wonderful means you could transfer the men of a modern crack 19-metre racing cutter to the more clumsy type of Charles II’s Mary, she would be handled very little differently from the manner in which those Caroline seamen were wont to sail her. Similarly, a crew taken from one of the old clippers of about 1870, and transferred—if it were possible—to one of the Elizabethan galleons, would very soon be able to manage her in just the same manner as Drake and his colleagues. It is largely a matter of sea-bias, of instinct, of a sympathy and adaptability for the work. And in such vastly different craft as the Greek and Roman galley, the Spanish carack, the Viking ship of the north, the bean-shaped craft of medieval England, and so on down to the ships of the present day, you find—quite regardless of country or century—men doing the same things under such vastly different conditions.

The way Cæsar worked his tides crossing the English Channel when about to invade Britain in 55 B.C., or the way William the Conqueror a thousand years later wrestled with the same problem but in different ships—these and like matters cannot but appeal to anyone who is gifted with imagination and a keen desire for knowledge. And then—perhaps some will find it the most interesting of all—there comes that wonderful story of the dawn and rise of the navigational science which to-day enables our biggest ships to make passages across the ocean with the regularity of the train, and to make a landfall with an exactness that is nothing short of marvellous considering that the last land was left weeks ago. It is a story that is irresistible in its appeal for our consideration, firstly because of its ultimate value to the progress of nations, and secondly because no finer example could be afforded us of the persistency of human endeavour to overcome very considerable obstacles. It is a little difficult just at first to place oneself in the position of those navigators of the early centuries. To-day we are so accustomed to modern navigational methods, we have been wont so long to rely on them for finding our way across the sea, that it requires a great effort of the imagination to conceive of men crossing the Atlantic and other oceans—not to speak of long coasting voyages—without chart or compass, sextant or log-line. There are many names in history which very rightly have won the unstinted applause of humanity irrespective of national boundaries. These names are held in the highest honour for the wonderful inventions and benefits which have been brought about. But there are two among others which, as it seems to me, the world has not yet honoured in an adequate manner. These two—Pytheas and Prince Henry the Navigator—are separated by thirteen or fourteen hundred years, but their inestimable help consisted in making the ocean less a trackless expanse than a limited space whereon the mariner was not permanently lost, but could find his position along its surface even though the land was not sighted for many a day. Think of the indirect results of this new ability. Think of the subsequent effects on the history of the world—the establishment of new trade routes consequent on the discovery of new continents, the impetus to enterprise, the peopling of new lands, the rise of young nations, the growth of sea-power, the spread of Christianity, the accumulation of fortunes and the consequent encouragement given to the arts and sciences. It is indeed a surprising but unhappy fact that humanity, because normally it has its habitation on land, forgets how much it owes to the sea for almost everything that it possesses. Perhaps this statement may be less applicable to the European continent, but it is in every sense true of all the other parts of the world.

Among the decisive battles of the world, among the discoveries of new lands, among the vast trade routes, how many of these do not come under the category of maritime? And yet in many an able-bodied, vigorous man, who owes most of his happiness and prosperity to the sea in some way or another, you find a spirit of antagonism to the sea, a positive hatred of ships, an utter indifference to the progress of maritime affairs. Hence, too, consistently following the same principle, the world always treats the seafaring man of all ranks in the worst possible manner. It matters not that the sailorman pursues a life of hardship in all climes and all weathers away from the comforts of the shore and the enjoyment of his own family. He brings the merchant’s goods through storm and stress of weather across dangerous tracts of sea, but he gets the lowest remuneration and the vilest treatment. He goes off whaling or fishing, perhaps never to come home again, performing work that brings out the finest qualities of manhood, pluck, daring, patience, unselfishness, and cool, quick decision at critical moments. Physically, too, he sacrifices much; but what does he get in return? And then think also of the men on the warships. But it is no new grievance.

Throughout history the world has had but scant consideration for the sons of the sea, whether fighters, adventurers, or freight-carriers. You have only to read the complaints of seamen in bygone times to note this. One may indeed wonder sometimes that throughout the world, and in fact throughout history, men have ever been found knowingly to undertake the seafaring life with all its hardships and all its privations. To people whose ideas are shaped only by the possibilities of loss and gain, who are lacking in imaginative endowment, in romance and the joy of adventure, it is certainly incredible that any man should seriously choose the sea as his profession in preference to a life of comfort and financial success on shore. Indeed, the gulf between the two temperaments is so great that it were almost useless to hazard an explanation. The plainest and best answer is to assert that there are two classes of humanity, neither more nor less. Of these the one class is born with the sea-sense; the other does not possess that faculty, never has and never could, no matter what the opportunities and training that might be available. Therefore the former, in spite of his lack of experience, is attracted by the sea-life notwithstanding its essential drawbacks; the latter would not be tempted to that avocation even by the possibility of capturing Spanish treasure-ships, or of discovering an unknown island rich with minerals and precious stones.

From a close study of those records which have been handed down to us of maritime incidents and affairs, I am convinced that the seaman-character has always been much the same. It makes but little difference whether its possessor commanded a Viking ship or a Spanish galleon. To-day in any foreign port, granted that both parties have a working knowledge of each other’s language, you will find that there is a closer bond between shipmen of different nationalities than there is between, say, a British seaman and a British landsman. For seamen, so to speak, belong to a nation of their own, which is ruled not by kings or governments, but by the great forces of nature which have to be respected emphatically. Therefore the crews of every ship are fellow-subjects of the same nationality, no matter whether they be composed of a mingled assemblage of Britishers, Dagoes, “Dutchmen,” and niggers.

Old-fashioned Topsail Schooner.

After E. W. Cooke.

So, as we proceed with our study, we shall look at the doings of different ships and sailors with less regard for the land in which they happened to be born than for that amazing republic which never dies, which exists regardless of the rise and fall of governments, which for extent is altogether unrivalled by any nationality that has ever been seen. We shall look into the characteristics, the customs, and the manifold activities of this maritime commonwealth, which is so totally different from any of our land institutions and which has always had to face and wrestle with problems of a kind so totally different from those prevailing on shore.

“That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break,
Yet stayed to strength, and back-stayed into rake,
The life demanded by that art, the keen,
Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean,
They are grander things than all the art of towns,
Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns.”

CHAPTER II
THE BIRTH OF THE NAUTICAL ARTS

Of all the activities of human nature few are so interesting and so insistent on our sympathy as the eternal combat which goes on between man on the one side and the forces of Nature on the other. Conscious of his own limitations and his own littleness, man has nevertheless throughout the ages striven hard to overcome these forces and to exercise his own freedom. But he has done this not so much by direct opposition as by employing Nature to overcome Nature; and there can be no better instance of this than is found in the art of tacking, whereby the mariner harnesses the wind in order to enable him to go against the wind.

Winds and tides and waves are mightier than all the strength of humanity put together. The statement was as true in pre-Dynastic times as it is to-day. For a long time man was appalled by their superhuman strength and capabilities; he preferred to have nothing to do with them. Those nations which had their habitation inland naturally feared them most. But as familiarity with danger engenders a certain contempt, so those who dwelt by the sea began to lose something of their awe and to venture to wrestle with the great trio of wind, wave, and tide. Had they not exercised such courage and independence the history and development of the world would have been entirely different.

It is obvious that the growth of the arts of the sea—by which is meant ship designing and building, seamanship and navigation—can only occur among seafaring people. You cannot expect to find these arts prospering in the centre of a continent, but only along the fringe where land meets sea. And, similarly, where you find very little coast, or a very dangerous coast, or a more convenient land route than the sea, you will not find the people of that country taking to the awe-inspiring sea without absolute necessity. This statement is so obvious in itself, so well borne out by history and so well supported by facts, that it would scarcely seem to need much elucidation. Even to-day, even in an age which has so much to be thankful for in respect of conveniences, we actually hear of landsmen looking forward with positive horror to an hour’s crossing the Channel in a fast and able steamship, with its turbines, its comfortable cabins, and the rest. If it were possible to reach the Continent by land rather than water they would do so and rejoice. So it was in the olden times thousands of years ago; so, no doubt, it will ever be.

Strictly speaking, notwithstanding that the Egyptians did an enormous amount of sailing; notwithstanding that they were great shipbuilders and that their influence is still felt in every full-rigged ship, yet it is an indisputable fact, as Professor Maspero, the distinguished Egyptologist, remarks, that they were not acquainted with the sea even if they did not utterly dislike it. For their country had but little coast, and was for the most part bordered by sand-hills and marshes which made it uninhabitable for those who might otherwise have dwelt by the shore and become seafarers. On the contrary, the Egyptians preferred the land routes to the sea. It is true that they had the Mediterranean on their north and the Red Sea on their east, both of which they alluded to as the “very-green.” True, also, it is that there was at least one great sea expedition to the Land of Punt, but this was an exception to their usual mode of life.

At the same time, though they were primarily river sailors rather than blue-water seamen, yet they had used the Nile so thoroughly and so persistently, both for rowing and for sailing, that on the occasions when they took to the sea itself they were bound to come out of the ordeal fairly well, just as a Thames waterman, accustomed all his life to frail craft and smooth waters, would be likely to make a moderately good seaman if his work were suddenly changed from the river to the ocean. From childhood and through generations they had worked their square-sailed craft on the Nile and acquired a thorough knowledge of watermanship, and when the crews of Thebes manned those ships which carried Queen Hatsopsitu’s expedition to Punt and returned in safety back to their homes, they were able to put their lessons learned on the Nile to the best of use on the Red Sea.

“River sailors rather than blue-water seamen.”

So also on the Mediterranean the Egyptian ships were seen. We know that the galleys of Rameses II plied regularly between Tanis and Tyre. This was no smooth-water passage, for the Syrian sea could be very rough, and on a later page we shall give the actual experience of an Egyptian skipper who had a pretty bad time hereabouts in his ship. Even those skilful seamen, the Phœnicians, found it required a good deal of care to avoid the current which flowed along their coasts and brought to them the mud from the mouths of the Nile. Now it was but natural that when the Egyptians took to the sea they should use, for their trading voyages to Syria or their expedition to Punt, craft very similar to those which they were wont to sail on the Nile. In fact, it was possible for one and the same ship to be used for river and sea. In my “Sailing Ships and their Story,” the appearance of the Egyptian ships has been so thoroughly discussed that it is hardly necessary to go further into that matter at present. It is enough to state that they were decked both at bow and stern, that short, narrow benches were placed close to the bulwarks, leaving an empty space in the centre where the cargo could be stowed, and that there were fifteen rowers a side. There was one mast about 24 feet high setting one squaresail which was about 45 feet along its foot, and in addition to the oarsmen there were four topmen, a couple of helmsmen, and one pilot at the bow, who gave the necessary instructions to the helmsmen as to the course to be taken. Finally, there was an overseer to see that the rowers were kept up to their work and not allowed to slack.

On the whole the Egyptians were a peace-loving nation and not great fighters; but there were times when they had to engage in naval warfare, and on such occasions the ship’s bulwarks were raised by a long mantlet which shielded the bodies of the oarsmen, leaving only their heads exposed. And there were soldiers, too, placed on board these Egyptian ships in time of warfare. Two were stationed on the forecastle, one was in the fighting-top high on the mast, whilst the remainder were disposed on the bridge and quarter-deck, ready to shoot their arrows into the approaching enemy.

The navigation of the Egyptian seamen was but elementary. They coasted for the most part, rarely venturing out of sight of land, fixing their positions by familiar landmarks. This was by day; but at night they lay-to until the dawn returned, when they were enabled to resume their journey. Such methods, of course, demanded a longer time than more able seamen would have required, but the Egyptians were in no hurry, so it mattered not. It is patent enough, from the many representations which we find of craft on the Egyptian monuments which have been unearthed, that ships and boats played a highly important part in the life and habits of the Egyptians; but beyond the funereal customs and the connection which these craft had with their religious ideas, we know but little, if we except those models and those representations of their bigger ships seen with sail and mast. It is unquestionable that the shipbuilding industry was one of the most important activities which these Nile-dwellers engaged in; and illustrations still exist which show a shipwright’s yard of the Sixth Dynasty. We can see the men busily at work, whilst the dockyard manager or superintendent is carried in a kind of Sedan-chair to see how the work is progressing. Some are engaged hammering and chipping away at the wood that is to become a boat; some are fixing the different sections in place; whilst others are setting up the truss which was employed for preventing the ship from “hogging.”

But already by the close of the Third Dynasty, Professor Flinders Petrie says, the Egyptian shipbuilders were using quite large supplies of wood for their craft. In one year alone, Senofern constructed sixty ships and imported forty ships of cedar. When we consider that the Nile was the great national highway of Egypt, it was but natural that shipbuilding should be one of the most important trades. There were, first, the light skiffs which could be easily carried from place to place. There were also the larger freight-carriers which sailed the Nile and the open sea; and lastly, there were the houseboats, a kind of modern dahabeeah. The small skiffs were made of reeds for lightness, and coated with pitch. They were punted along the shallows with a pole, or paddled. They could carry only a couple of people, and were practically ferry-boats or dinghies. But the larger boats were built of wood, and probably sometimes of acacia. The masts were of fir which was imported from Syria, the sails being occasionally of papyrus, but probably also of linen.

The lotus plant played a conspicuous part in Egyptian shipbuilding. We see the smaller craft being strengthened by the stalks of this plant, bundles of which are depicted being carried down to the yard on the backs of the shipwright’s men. The tail-piece, even of the biggest sea-going craft, is shown to be in the shape of a lotus bud or flower. That they knew how to build ships of great tonnage at these dockyards is evident from the fact that Sesostris had a sacred barge constructed that was 280 cubits long. And it was doubtless owing to the great length of the Nile sailing ships, and their consequent inability to turn quickly, that we find it unusual for the Egyptian ships to have only a single steering oar; very frequently there was one each side at the quarter.

More than this it is difficult to state regarding the manner in which they employed their ships. There is indeed very much that we should like to know, and we cannot be too thankful that modern exploration has actually revealed so many pictorial representations. The Egyptians were not instinctively seamen as the Phœnicians and the Vikings, and if there had been no Nile it is probable that the sea and its coast might have meant even less to them than was actually the case. Nor was it any different with the Assyrians, whose kings feared the sea for a long time. They never ventured on its surface without being absolutely compelled. At a later stage, when their victories brought them to the shores of the Mediterranean, they were constrained to admire its beauty, and presently even took a certain amount of pleasure in sailing on its bosom, but nothing would tempt them far from land or to make a voyage.

But then there came a new precedent when Sennacherib embarked his army on board a fleet and went in search of the exiles of Bit-Iakin. The only ships that were at his disposal were those belonging to the Chaldean States. These craft were in every way unsuitable; they were obsolete, clumsy, heavy, bad sea-boats, and slow. During his wars, however, he had seen the famous sailors of Sidon, and noted alike the progress which these seafarers had made in actual shipbuilding, and in the handling of their craft at sea. These were of course Phœnicians, and among his prisoners Sennacherib found a sufficient number of Phœnicians to build for him a fleet, establishing one shipbuilding yard on the Euphrates and another on the Tigris. The result was that they turned out a number of craft of the galley type with a double row of oarsmen. These two divisions of newly built craft met on the Euphrates not far from the sea, the Euphrates being always navigable. The contingent from the Tigris, however, had to come by the canal which united the two rivers. And then, manned with crews from Tyre and Sidon, and Cypriot Greeks, the fleet went forth to its destination; Sennacherib then disembarked his men and rendered his expedition victorious.

Here, then, is just another instance of a non-seafaring people taking to the sea not from choice, not from instinct, but from compulsion—because there was no other alternative; and all the time employing seafaring mercenaries to perform a work that was strange to landsmen, just as in later days at different periods (until they themselves had grown in knowledge and experience), the English had to import sailors from Friesland in the time of Alfred, or Italians in the early Tudor period. The sea was still hardly more than a half-opened book, and few there were who dared to look into its pages.

CHAPTER III
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MARINE INSTINCT

But when we come to the Phœnicians we are in touch with a veritable race of seamen who to the south are in just the same relation as the Vikings are to the north. Whether they took to the sea because they longed to become great merchants, or whether they were seamen first and employed their daring to commercial benefit needs no discussion. They had the true vocation for the sea, and it was inevitable that sooner or later they must become mighty explorers and traders.

They had the real ship-love, which is the foundation of all true seamanship; they were in sympathy with the life and work, and they knew how to build a ship well. They furnished themselves with the finest timber from Lebanon and surpassed the Egyptian inland sailors by making their craft stronger, longer, more seaworthy, and more able to endure the long, daring voyages which it delighted the Phœnicians to undertake. Similarly, their crews were better trained to sea-work, were more daring and skilful than the Nile-dwellers. They minded not to sail out of sight of land, nor lay-to for the darkness to pass away. They were wont to sail the open sea fearlessly direct from Tyre or Sidon to Cyprus, and thence to the promontories of Lycia and Rhodes, and so from island to island to the lands of the Acheans, the Daneans, and further yet to Hesperia. How did they do it? What were their means and methods for navigation?

The answer is simply made. They observed the position of the sun by day. They would watch when the sun rose, when it became south, when it set, and then by night there was the Great Bear by which to steer. Their ships they designated “sea-horses,” and the expression is significant as denoting strength, speed, and reliability. By their distant voyages the Phœnicians began to open out the world, and they contributed to geographical knowledge more than all the Egyptian dynasties put together had ever yielded under this category. Their earliest craft were little more than mere open boats which were partially decked. Made of fir or cedar cut into planks, which were fashioned into craft all too soon before the wood had sufficient time to become seasoned, they were caulked probably with bitumen, a poor substitute for vegetable tar. We know from existing illustrations that the Egyptian influence as to design was obvious in their ships. We know also that the thirty or more oarsmen sat not paddling, but rowing facing aft, and that they used the boomless squaresail and shortened sail by means of brails.

“The first considerable improvement in shipbuilding which can be confidently ascribed to the Phœnicians,” says Professor Rawlinson,[1] “is the construction of biremes. Phœnician biremes are represented in the Assyrian sculptures as early as the time of Sennacherib (700 B.C.), and had probably then been in use for some considerable period. They were at first comparatively short vessels, but seem to have been decked, the rowers working in the hold. They sat at two elevations, one above the other, and worked their oars through holes in the vessel’s side. It was in frail barks of this description, not much better than open boats in the earlier period, that the mariners of Phœnicia, and especially those of Sidon, as far back as the thirteenth or fourteenth century before our era, affronted the perils of the Mediterranean.”

At first the Phœnicians confined their voyages to the limits of the western end of the Mediterranean, but even then, notwithstanding their superiority in seamanship and navigation, they suffered many a disaster at sea. Three hundred ships were lost in a storm off Mt. Athos when they first attempted to invade Greece. And on their second attempt six hundred more ships were lost off Magnesia and Eubœa. In addition to this, it must be presumed that the rocks and shoals of the Ægean Sea, the cruel coasts of Greece, Spain, Italy, Crete, and Asia Minor would account for a good many more losses of ships and men. In those days, too, when one ship on meeting another used to ask in perfect candour if the latter were a pirate, and received an equally candid answer, there was thus a further risk to be undergone by all who used the sea for their living. If the ship were in fact piratical and her commander considered himself the stronger of the two, his crew would waste little time, but promptly board the other ship, confiscate her cargo, bind the seamen and sell them off at the nearest slave market. And be it remembered that a Phœnician ship, inasmuch as she was usually full of goods recently purchased or about to be sold, was something worth capturing. Her cargo of rich merchandise was deserving of a keen struggle and the loss of a number of men.

Nor were the Phœnicians averse from reckoning slaves among their commodities for barter; indeed, this was a great and important feature of their trade. Away they went roaming the untracked seas with their powerful oarsmen and single squaresail and their hulls well filled with valuable commodities, “freighting their vessels,” as Herodotus relates, “with the wares of Egypt and Assyria” for the Greek consumer. Year after year the ships sailed forth from Tyre to traverse the whole length of the Mediterranean and out into the Atlantic northwards to the British Isles, through storm and tempest, to embark the cargoes of tin. To be able to perform such a voyage not once but time after time is sufficient proof of the seamanship and navigation of the crews no less than of the seaworthiness of the Phœnician craft. Even that most wonderful circumnavigation of Africa by the Phœnicians as given by Herodotus is regarded by Grote, Rawlinson, and other authorities as having actually occurred and being not a mere figment of imagination. The story may be briefly summed up thus. Neco, King of Egypt, was anxious to have a means of connecting the Red Sea and Mediterranean by water, but had failed in his efforts to make a canal between the Nile and the Gulf of Suez, so he resolved that the circumnavigation of Africa should be attempted. For this he needed the world’s finest seamen and navigators with the best ocean-going ships available. Accordingly he chose the Phœnicians, who, departing from a Red Sea port, coasted round Africa, and after nearly three years arrived safely back in Egypt. The obvious question which the reader will ask is how could such craft possibly carry enough food for three years. The answer is that they did not even attempt such a feat. Instead, they used to make some harbour after part of their voyage was accomplished, land, sow their grain, wait till harvest-time, and then sail off with their food on board all ready for a further instalment of the journey. And there is really nothing too wonderful in this long voyage when we remember that in Africa what is to-day called Indian corn can be reaped six weeks after being sown; and that three years is not such an excessively long time for a well-manned craft fitted with mast and squaresail to coast from headland to headland, across all the bays and bights of the African continent. A great achievement it certainly was, not to be attempted (unless history is woefully silent) again until towards the close of the fifteenth century, when Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope.

They had for years been wont in the Mediterranean to make voyages by night. They had steered their course by aid of the Polar star. “They undoubtedly,” remarks Professor Rawlinson, “from an ancient date made themselves charts of the seas which they frequented, calculated distances, and laid down the relative position of place to place. Strabo says that the Sidonians especially cultivated the arts of astronomy and arithmetic as being necessary for reckoning a ship’s course, and particularly needed in sailing by night.” Later on we shall again call attention to the great surprise which confronted the dwellers by the Mediterranean when they voyaged into other seas. The Phœnicians, so long as they cruised only in the former, had no tide to contend with; but when they set forth into the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic, and the English Channel, they found a factor which, hitherto, they had not been compelled to encounter. But by such a seafaring race it was not long before even this new consideration was dealt with and utilised in the proper manner. “They noted,” says Rawlinson, “the occurrence of spring and neap tides, and were aware of the connection with the position of the sun and moon relatively to the earth, but they made the mistake of supposing that the spring tides were highest at the summer solstice, whereas they are really highest in December.”

If we omit the Egyptians from our category as being almost exclusively inland navigators, we must regard these Phœnicians as historically the first great seamen of the world, and it is nothing short of remarkable that in an age such as theirs, when there were so few accessories to encourage and develop the marine instinct, they should have essayed so much and succeeded so magnificently in their projects. Remember, too, that they had something of the instinct of the engineer as well as of the seaman in their nature. It was the Phœnicians whom Xerxes employed in 485 B.C. for the purpose of cutting a ship canal through the isthmus which joins Mt. Athos to the mainland. It was they, also, who constructed a double bridge of boats across the Hellespont to form the basis of a solid causeway, and in each of these undertakings they covered themselves with distinction.

They were no amateurs, no mere experimenters. It is certain that, in their own time, they were, even with their primitive ships, very far from primitive in their ideas of seamanship. Read the following exceedingly interesting account of one who went aboard a Phœnician vessel and has left to posterity his impressions of his visit. The descriptive narrative reads so true and seems so perfectly spontaneous and natural that we almost forget the many centuries which have elapsed since it was set down. Here, then, you have the record of no less a person than Xenophon, a man who was far too discriminating to allow any flow of careless words, far too observant, also, to allow anything worth noting to escape his watchful eye. In “The Economist” he makes one of his characters refer to a Phœnician trireme, and he is speaking of that nation’s ships when the Phœnicians were under the Persian system:—

“Or[2] picture a trireme, crammed choke-ful of mariners; for what reason is she so terror-striking an object to her enemies, and a sight so gladsome to the eyes of friends? Is it not that the gallant ship sails so swiftly? And why is it that, for all their crowding, the ship’s company cause each other no distress? Simply that there, as you see them, they sit in order; in order bend to the oar; in order recover the stroke; in order step on board; in order disembark.”

And again:—

“I must tell you, Socrates, what strikes me as the finest and most accurate arrangement of goods and furniture it was ever my fortune to set eyes on, when I went as a sightseer on board the great Phœnician merchantman and beheld an endless quantity of goods and gear of all sorts, all separately packed and stowed away within the smallest compass. I need scarce remind you (he said, continuing his narrative) what a vast amount of wooden spars and cables a ship depends on in order to get to moorings; or again, in putting out to sea: you know the host of sails and cordage, rigging as they call it, she requires for sailing; the quantity of engines and machinery of all sorts she is armed with in case she should encounter any hostile craft; the infinitude of arms she carries, with her crew of fighting men aboard. Then all the vessels and utensils, such as people use at home on land, required for the different messes, form a portion of the freight; and besides all this, the hold is heavy laden with a mass of merchandise, the cargo proper, which the master carries with him for the sake of traffic. Well, all these different things that I have named lay packed there in a space but little larger than a fair-sized dining-room. The several sorts, moreover, as I noticed, lay so well arranged, there could be no entanglement of one with other, nor were searchers needed; and if all were snugly stowed, all were alike get-at-able, much to the avoidance of delay if anything were wanted on the instant. Then the pilot’s mate—the look-out man at the prow, to give him his proper title—was, I found, so well acquainted with the place for everything that, even off the ship, he could tell you where each set of things was laid and how many there were of each, just as well as anyone who knows his alphabet could tell you how many letters there are in Socrates, and the order in which they stand. I saw this same man (continued Ischomachus) examining at leisure everything which could possibly be needful for the service of the ship. His inspection caused me such surprise, I asked him what he was doing, whereupon he answered, ‘I am looking to see, stranger, in case anything should happen, how everything is arranged in the ship, and whether anything is wanting or not lying handy and shipshape. There is no time left, you know, when God makes a tempest in the great deep, to set about searching for what you want or to be giving out anything which is not snug and shipshape in its place.’”

There was something, then, so excellent in arrangement in these Phœnician ships which seemed to Xenophon so superior to the vessels of his own countrymen; and the sailor-like neatness and systematic order were to him so striking that even to his disciplined and orderly mind they were most remarkable. It requires but little imagination to picture from this scant reference the ship’s company doing everything according to drill. The seaman-like care for the running gear on the part of the ship’s husband ready for any emergency is, indeed, highly suggestive.

The importance of the Phœnicians is considerable, not merely for their own sake, but because of their permanent influence on the Greeks. But the latter were rather fighters than explorers as compared with the Phœnicians. At a very early date there was the sea communication between the Mediterranean and the North, and we may date this certainly as far back as the year 2000 B.C., suggests Dr. Nansen, himself an explorer and student of the early voyagers. The only places, excluding China, whence tin-ore was known to be procurable in ancient times, he asserts, were North-West Spain, Cornwall, and probably Brittany. It is significant that in the oldest pyramid-graves of Egypt tin is found, and the inference is that the inhabitants of the Mediterranean from at least this epoch voyaged north to fetch this commodity from Western Europe. And with the tin came also supplies of amber as well. Archæological finds, affirms the same authority, prove that as far back as the Scandinavian Bronze Age, or prior to this, there must have been some sort of communication between the Mediterranean and northern lands. One of the earliest trade routes connecting the Mediterranean and the Baltic was from the Black Sea up the Dneiper, then along its tributary the Bug to the Vistula, and down the latter to the coast. By their sea-voyages to distant lands the Phœnicians contributed for the first time a great deal of geographical knowledge of the world, and in many ways influenced Greek geography. Up till then the learned men who applied themselves to such subjects had but the vaguest idea of the North. But just as in subsequent centuries the Spanish kept their explored regions to themselves and continued most cautious lest other nationalities should learn their sources of wealth, so the Phœnicians did their best to keep their trade routes secret lest their rivals, the Greeks, should step in and enrich themselves. In the absence, therefore, of anything sufficiently definite, there was for a long period a good deal of wild and inaccurate speculation.

But it is when we come to Pytheas of Massilia that we reach the border-line which separates fact from fable. This eminent astronomer and geographer of Marseilles brought together a knowledge of northern countries which was based not on premonition, not on speculation, not on hearsay, but on actual experience. So original, so accurate, and so far-reaching was his work, that for the next fifteen hundred years he dominated all geographical knowledge. We can fix his time if we remember that he flourished probably about the year 330 B.C. He was the first person in history to introduce astronomical measurements for ascertaining the geographical situation of a place, and thus became the founder of the science of navigation—the science which has enabled seas to be crossed in safety and continents to be discovered; which has given to the ship of all species a freedom to employ her speed without sacrificing safety. Indirectly arising from these may be traced the development and civilising and peopling of the world which have so entirely modified history.

By means of a great gnomon, Pytheas determined “with surprising accuracy” the latitude of Marseilles, and in relation to this laid down the latitude of more northerly places. He observed that the Pole of the heavens did not coincide, as the earlier astronomer Eudoxus had supposed, with any star. What Pytheas did find was that it made an almost regular rectangle with three stars lying near it. (At that time the Pole was some distance from the present Pole-star.) And since Pytheas steered by the stars, the Pole of the heavens was obviously of the highest importance to him. A gnomon, it may be explained, was the pillar of projection which cast the shadow on the various Greek forms of dial. In the case under discussion the gnomon was a vertical column raised on a plane.

As to the species of ship in which Pytheas sailed we can but speculate. Most probably it was somewhat similar to the Phœnician type, with oarsmen and one mast with squaresail. But what is known is that he sailed out through the Pillars of Hercules. At that date Cape St. Vincent—then known as the Sacred Promontory—was the furthest of the world’s limit in the minds of the Greeks. He was the first to sail along the coasts of Northern Gaul and Germany. He was the discoverer of at least most of Great Britain, the Shetlands, and Norway as far as the Arctic Circle. And as he voyaged he studied the phenomena of the sea—collected invaluable data as to tides and their origin. Himself a Greek and unaccustomed to tidal movements, he was the first of his race to connect this systematic flowing and ebbing of the sea with the moon. Dr. Nansen, himself the greatest explorer of our times, has not hesitated to describe Pytheas as “one of the most capable and undaunted explorers the world has ever seen.” But as so often happens in the case of a pioneer, Pytheas was ahead of his time, and the description which he brought back of his travels, of the strange lands and unheard-of phenomena, was not believed by his contemporaries. There followed, therefore, a gulf of incredulity for about three hundred years till we come to the time of Julius Cæsar, and from that point we shall, in due course, continue to trace the development of navigational science.

CHAPTER IV
MEDITERRANEAN PROGRESS

But before we proceed further, it is essential that we look carefully into the building, administration, and handling of those fleets of vessels which made history as they scudded across the blue waters of the south of Europe. We want to know, also, something of the composition of their crews, their officers, and the divisions of control, of the tactics employed in naval warfare, of the limitations in manœuvring, the methods of working the oars, of rigging the ships, of steering, and so on.

Greece had accepted the ship as it had evolved in the hands of the Phœnicians with certain modifications. We are no longer anxious to trace that development, but rather to see, in the first place, how the Greeks availed themselves of their inheritance. In the building of their ships the Greeks gave neither sternpost nor stempost. The timbers of the ships were held together by means of wooden pegs (or treenails, as we should call them), and also by metal nails, bronze being chosen in preference to iron nails for the most obvious of reasons. But in those days, as any student of Greek history is aware, not infrequently craft had to be transported. Therefore the fastenings were so placed as to allow of the ship being divided into sections for carrying across land to some distant water. The outer framework of the hull was found in the keel and ribs. The ship’s planking, which varied from the somewhat ample 2¼ inches to 5¼ inches thick, was fastened through the ribs to the beams.

The warships had most necessarily to be built of the utmost strength to sustain the terrible shocks in ramming. To prevent the damage incurred being disastrous, cables—called hypozomata—undergirded the ship. The Greek word signifies the diaphragm or midriff in anatomy, but in the plural it is used to designate the braces which were passed either underneath or horizontally around the ship’s hull. The reader may remember that in “Sailing Ships and their Story” I called attention to the Egyptian ships, which used to be strengthened by stretching similar cables not girth-wise, but direct from stem to stern across the deck over wooden forks amidships. Primarily, then, these braces on the Greek ships were to counteract the effects of ramming; incidentally they kept the ship’s hull from “working” when she pounded in heavy seas.

And then when the shipwright had finished his construction of the ship she was coloured with a composition consisting of paint and wax, the latter serving to give these speedy ships the minimum of skin-friction. The colours chosen were purple, two whites, violet, yellow, and blue. Green, for the sake of invisibility, was used for scouts and pirates. The primitive Grecian ships had only patches of colour at the bows, the rest of the hull being covered black with tar. Occasionally neither wax nor tar was employed, but the hull was sheathed with lead outside the planking, layers of tarred sailcloth being placed in between the two materials. They made their sails either of linen, or, sometimes, of papyrus fibre or flax, and there were two kinds of sailcloth which the Athenian Navy utilised. The bolt-ropes of the sails were of hide, the skins of the hyena and seal being especially employed. The ropes used for the different purposes of the ship were of two kinds. Some were of strips of hide; more frequently they were from the fibre of papyrus or from flax or hemp. The sails were often coloured—black for mourning, purple or vermilion for an admiral or monarch. Topsails were sometimes coloured, the lower sail remaining uncoloured. The green-hulled scouts also had their sails and ropes dyed to match the colour of the Mediterranean. And sometimes the interesting sight would be seen of sails with inscriptions and devices woven in golden thread into the fabric.

There is a Greek word askos, which signifies a leathern bag or wine-skin, from which the word askoma is derived. The latter was the word given to a leathern bag which was attached to the oar so as to prevent the water from penetrating through into the ship, and yet allowed, with only slight friction, the oar to be brought backward and forward. There is something slightly similar to-day in the leather flap which is found on the Bristol Channel pilot cutters, covering the discharge from the watertight cockpits, the motion of the ship through the water causing the flap to be pressed tightly against the hull, and thus preventing any water from entering. But in the instance of the Grecian craft the flap was much bigger. There were no rowlocks, but the oar was fastened by a leathern loop to a thole-pin against which the rower pulled his oar.

Bear in mind that, whereas the Greek merchant-ship mostly relied on sails, the warship was essentially oar-propelled. And because she must needs carry a large number of rowers they needed supervision. Hence a gangway was placed on either side of the ship, both for that purpose and also for the placing of the fighting men. Illustrations on ancient Greek vases clearly show that some warships were fitted with a hurricane-deck above, and this extended down the length of the ship, but not from one side to the other. This hurricane-deck, if we are to give any credence to contemporary illustrations, was a fairly light affair raised on vertical supports of sufficient strength. In addition to the human ballast of the oarsmen, gravel, sand, and stone were used for trimming the ship. For instance, it might be necessary to get the bows deeper into the water so that the ram came into operation; or, after ramming and receiving damage, it might be found advisable to trim the ship by the stern so as to get the bows well out of water. To what extent these craft leaked one cannot say; but one can reasonably suppose that as they were built of unseasoned wood, as the shocks from ramming were very injurious, and as they had to suffer a good deal of wear and tear through frequent beaching, they made a fair amount of water. At any rate, it is certain that they provided against this in arranging an Archimedean screw, worked by a treadmill, or buckets for getting rid of the bilge-water. It is probable, also, that the drinking-water in cisterns or skins would be deposited as low in the hull as possible.

The Greeks, in addition to their technical ability, had inherited a similar sea-instinct to that of the Phœnicians, and this keenness is by no means absent from Greek literature. What, for instance, could be more enthusiastic than the following exquisitely poetic extract from Antipater of Sidon:—

“Now is the season for a ship to run through the gurgling water, and no longer does the sea gloom, fretted with gusty squalls; and now the swallow plasters her globed houses under the rafters, and the soft leafage laughs in the meadows. Therefore wind up your soaked cables, O sailors, and weigh your sunken anchors from the harbours, and stretch the forestays to carry your well-woven sails. This I, the son of Bromius, bid you, Priapus of the anchorage.”[3]

It is an exhortation, at the return of spring, to refit the ships which had been laid up since the winter, tethered to the “soaked cables.” It is an invitation to get the ships properly afloat, to step the masts and set up the forestay in all readiness for getting under way for the sailing season.

Or again, listen to Leonidas of Tarentum in a similar theme.

“Now is the season of sailing,” he says, “for already the chattering swallow is come and the pleasant west wind; the meadows flower, and the sea, tossed up with waves and rough blasts, has sunk to silence. Weigh thine anchors and unloose thine hawsers, O mariner, and sail with all thy canvas set: this I, Priapus of the harbour, bid thee, O man, that thou mayest sail forth to all thy trafficking.”[4]

“Mine be a mattress on the poop,” sings[5] Antiphilus with no less ecstasy of the life on board a Grecian ship, “mine be a mattress on the poop, and the awnings over it sounding with the blows of the spray, and the fire forcing its way out of the hearth-stones, and a pot upon them with empty turmoil of bubbles; and let me see the boy dressing the meat, and my table be a ship’s plank covered with a cloth; and a game of pitch-and-toss, and the boatswain’s whistle: the other day I had such fortune, for I love common life.”

Three thousand years, indeed, before the birth of our Lord there were ships sailing the Ægean Sea, but it was only the progress of time and experience which made these craft and their crews’ ability anything more than primitive. As you look through the poems of Homer you find various significant references to craft, and he speaks of the “red-cheeked” ships, referring to the vermilion-coloured bows, where a face was frequently painted, red being the conventional colour in those early times for flesh. The same idea is still seen in the Chinese junks and the Portuguese fishing craft.

“Mine be a mattress on the poop.”

The earliest Grecian ships were crescent-shaped, and the stern so resembled the horn of a cow that it was called the korumba or point. There is a reference in the Iliad to the high-pointed sterns of ships. From Homer, too, we know that the timber employed in shipbuilding consisted of oak, pine, fir, alder, poplar, and white poplar; that the masts and oars were of fir, that the woodwork of the hull was erected on shipbuilders’ stocks. The word used for the latter was druochoi—meaning the props on which the keel (tropis) was laid. The hull was secured by treenails and dowel-joints, the planking being laid over the ribs. Further, we know also that the ship of Homer had either twenty or fifty oarsmen.

The pre-Homeric Greeks did not use thole-pins, but the oars were fastened to the gunwale by means of leathered hoops. It was not till a later date that the pins already mentioned came into use. It is noticeable, too, that Homer uses the word kleides in referring to the thwarts on which the rowers sat. For the singular of this word means a hook or clasp, and is used in this sense for the thwart or rowing bench which locked the sides of the ship together. Zuga is also used in the Odyssey to signify the same thing. In attempting to piece together these fragmentary details of the Homeric ship, we must bear in mind that below the zuga or rowing thwarts the hold was undecked, but that fore and aft there ran the half-decks—ikria, Homer calls them. The forecastle formed at once a cabin and a look-out post, and helped to keep the forward end protected when butting into a sea. Right aft, of course, sat the helmsman, or kubernetes, and it is supposed that a bench here stretched across the poop on which, as he sat on deck, he could rest his feet and work the oieion or handle of the rudder. A Greek ship usually had two pedalia or steering oars, one being placed on either quarter. These were joined together across the ship by means of cross-bars (zeuglai), to which the tiller or handle was attached. Finally, over the poop rose the tail-piece which is so noticeable in some of the vase-illustrations of Grecian ships, and had its counterpart in the lotus-bud seen in the ships of the Egyptians.

Homer speaks of “stepping the mast” (histos), and apparently the step was affixed as low as possible, its heel being supported by a prop and capable of being easily lowered before the galley went into battle under oar-propulsion alone. The forestays, which just now we saw Antipater urging the sailors to stretch, were two in number. The Homeric word for these is protonoi, though the word was used by Euripides in speaking of the braces which controlled the yards. On the yard which stretched at right angles across the mast both merchantmen and warships set the squaresail, and the use by Homer of the word meruomai for drawing up or furling sails is sufficiently indicative that the ancient Greek sailors stowed sail not by lowering it on deck as in a modern fore-and-after, but after the fashion of a modern full-rigged ship.

We find mention also of the halyards—one on each side of the mast is shown in the Greek vase designs—which supported the yard to the top of the mast, the sail being reefed by means of brailing lines. The same word that we have just mentioned, for “drawing up” or “furling” sails, was also employed for drawing up the cables. And here again there is a further connection. The plural kaloi is used to mean (1) cables, (2) reefing ropes (i.e. brails), or even reefs as opposed to the sheets (podes) and braces (huperai). Euripides employs the expression kalōs exienai, meaning to “let out the reefs.” And (3) kaloi also means not merely generally a rope, but also a sounding line, which again is evidence that these ancient seamen found the depth of water as the modern sailor feels his way through shoal seas. The word just given for sheets was applied to the lower corners of the sail—clews as we nowadays call them—and thus naturally the ropes attached to the foot (or lowest part) were also called podes. The braces were called huperai, obviously because they were in fact the upper ropes.

As we have just seen from Antipater and Leonidas, the mariner used cables and hawsers for securing his ship, these being sent out from both bow and stern. Instead of anchors the early Greeks used heavy stones for the bow cables, whilst other hawsers were run out from the stern to the shore and hitched on to a big boulder or rock. If the former, then there was a hole therein. An endless rope was rove through this perforated stone, so that thus the ship could be hauled ashore for disembarking, or when wishing to go aboard again, sufficient slack of course having been left at the bow cables. A long pole was used for shoving off, while a ladder, which is seen more than once in Greek vase illustrations, was carried at the stern for convenience in descending to the land from the high-pointed sterns.

There were two sailing seasons. The first was after the rising of the Pleiads, in spring; the second was between midsummer and autumn. When, after the setting of the Pleiads, the ship was hauled up into winter quarters on land, she was supported by props to keep her upright, and then a stone fence was put round her. This afforded her protection against wind and weather. The cheimaros, or plug, was then taken out from the bottom so as to let out all the bilge-water. The ship’s gear, the sails, steering oars, and tiller were then stored at home till the time came once more for the sailors to “stretch” their forestays.

About the year 700 B.C. the Greek warships were manned by fifty rowers; hence these craft were called pentekontoroi. With the existence of a forecastle and a raised horned poop, one can understand perfectly well how easy was the transition which caused an upper deck to be added about this century. This gave to the ship greater power, because it allowed two banks of oarsmen, one on each deck. As far as possible these rowers were covered in to avoid the attacks of the enemy. Such shallow-draught vessels as the war-galleys could not possibly be good as sailing craft. They must be looked upon as essentially rowing vessels which occasionally set canvas when cruising and a fair wind was blowing.

The pentekontoroi were single-banked, and for a long time the Greek fleets consisted solely of this type. But then came the additional deck just spoken of which gave two banks, and subsequently the trireme succeeded the bireme. The trireme was very popular till after the close of the Peloponnesian War, when the quadrireme was introduced from Carthage. Dr. Oskar Seyffert[6] asserts that before the close of the fourth century B.C. quinquiremes and even six-banked craft, and (later still) even sixteen-banked vessels are supposed by some writers to have been in vogue. But as to the latter this seems highly improbable.

And before we proceed any further, let us endeavour to get a clear idea as to the nature of a trireme. This species of ship had been invented by those great seamen who hailed from the port of Sidon. About the year 700 B.C. this type was adopted by the Greeks, and then began to supersede all other existing types of war-vessels. Themistocles in 483 B.C. inaugurated the excellent practice of maintaining a large permanent navy. As a commencement he built a hundred triremes, and these were used at the battle of Salamis. In the Greek word trieres there is nothing to signify that it was necessarily three-banked, and it is well to realise this fact from the start. The word just means “triple-arranged,” neither more nor less. It is when we come to the question as to the details of this triple arrangement that we find a divergence of theory. It will, therefore, be best if we state first the prevailing theory of the trireme’s arrangement, and then pass on to give what is the more modern and the more plausible interpretation.

Cast of a Relief in Athens.

Showing the disposition of rowers in a trireme.

The most general idea, then, is that the trireme was fitted with three tiers of oarsmen. In this case the thalamitai were those who sat and worked on the lowest tier; the zugitai, those who sat on the beams; whilst the thranitai were the men who sat on the highest tier. (Homer refers to the seven-foot bench, or thrēnus, which was the seat of the helmsman or the rowers). Each oarsman, it is thought, sat below and slightly to the rear of the oarsman above him, so that these three sections of men formed an oblique line. This economised space and facilitated their movements. A variation of this same theory suggests that the thalamitai sat close to the vessel’s side, the zugitai who were higher up being distant from the side the breadth of one thwart, whilst the thranitai, higher still, were the breadth of two thwarts away. The oar of each rower would pass over the head of the rower below.

But a better theory of the arrangement of the trireme may be presented as follows, and it has the advantage of satisfying all the evidence found in ancient literature and pictorial representation. Banish, then, from your mind all thought of three superimposed tiers, and instead consider a galley so arranged that the rowers work side by side. Each of the triple set of oarsmen sits pulling his own separate oar. But all three oars emerge through one porthole. In front of each bench was a stretcher, and the rower stood up grasping his oar and pulled back, letting the full weight of his body fall on to the stroke till at its end he found himself sitting on the bench. On either side of him, at the same bench, was another rower doing the same exertion. In each porthole there would thus be three thole-pins to fit three oars. In this case, then, the thalamitēs would be he who rowed nearest the porthole. Because he worked the shortest oar and thus had the least exertion he received the least pay. Next to him sat the zugitēs, and next to the latter came the thranitēs, who worked the longest oar, and therefore did the most work, having to stand on a stool (thranos) in order to get greater exertion on to his oar at the beginning of the stroke. It is supposed that the rowers’ benches were not all in the same plane, but that the second would be higher than the first, and the third higher than the second.

The number of oars in an ancient trireme was as many as 170. These oars were necessarily very long, and time was kept sometimes by the music of a flute, or by the stroke set by the keleustes, who was on board for that purpose. This he did either with a hammer of some sort, or his voice. And there is at least one illustration showing such a man using a hammer in an oar-propelled boat for that purpose.[7] The inscriptions which were unearthed some years ago, containing the inventories of the Athenian dockyards, belonging to the years between 373 B.C. and 323 B.C., have been collected and published. And it is from them that we obtain such valuable information as the number of oarsmen which the biremes carried. This number was usually 200, and was disposed in the ship as follows: There were 54 thalamitai, 54 zugitai, 62 thranitai, and 30 perineo. The exact meaning of the latter word is supercargoes or passengers, but they were carried perhaps as spare oarsmen in case any became disabled.

All oars were worked together against the tholes, and as we know from the old depictions there was a space left both at bow and stern beyond the oarsmen, this space being called the parexeiresia. The number of oarsmen just mentioned may seem very large, but having regard to the speed required for manœuvring and for ramming effectively it is not excessive. But when a war-vessel was employed on transport duty so great a host of men was not essential. In the case of a vessel engaged, for instance, in carrying horses in her hold only sixty oarsmen were needed. Had you found yourself alongside one of the war-galleys you would have been struck by its length and leanness more than by anything else. As you passed round by the bows you would have observed the two great eyes, one on either side of the hull, through which in all probability the hawsers passed. Behind these two eyes were very substantial catheads which projected like great ears from the ship, and were used primarily for slinging the anchors just as in the old-fashioned sailing ships of Nelson and after; but, secondly, for convenience when ramming. Thus, when the terrible shock came, the catheads would protect the oars of the ship from damage and allow the utmost speed to be maintained till the last minute—a factor that was naturally of the highest importance. But also they were sometimes strengthened with supports so that they might catch in the topsides of the enemy and do him considerable damage.

As to the ram, which was the pivot of all the ancient naval tactics, there was one projecting spur below, but above it was another ram to catch the attacked ship at a second place. These rams were made of bronze and had three teeth; or if not made of bronze they were of wood sheathed with that metal. The stempost in these craft rose high in the air, and each ship had a distinguishing sign consisting either of a figurehead or some relief or painting at the bows. Of the two kinds of sails which these vessels carried, the larger was put ashore prior to battle, and only the smaller one retained. And as there were two sizes of sails, so there were two sizes of masts to correspond. Besides the halyards, brailing ropes, cables, braces, sheets, and forestay already alluded to, there were also backstays to support the masts. This was up to about the year 400 B.C., but, at any rate, by 330 B.C. triremes had simply mast, yard, sail, ropes, and the loops of brailing ropes, a simplified form of the earlier brails.

Terra-cotta Vase in the form of a Trireme’s Prow.

Showing eye and both upper and lower ram, each with triple teeth.

But additional to the triremes which had been first built at Corinth, were the quadriremes which first appeared in the year 398 B.C. As to their nature, their complement, and other details we know nothing. But it is legitimate to suppose that if the triremes rowed three men to a bench these were manned by four men on each bench rowing four oars in a similar manner. In the same year that first saw the quadriremes were built also quinquiremes. As to their size and complement we know just this much—that at the battle of Ecnomus the Roman and Carthaginian quinquiremes carried about 300 rowers and 120 combatants each. Probably, like the medieval quinquiremes, they rowed five men to each oar; or, alternatively, the five men each pulled an oar through the same porthole.

Some of the later developments of the marine instinct in the Mediterranean and adjacent seas became grotesque. Personal pride and a keen sense of rivalry caused the King of Sicily and his brother sovereigns of Macedonia, Asia, and Alexandria during the fourth and third centuries B.C. to construct men-of-war on a huge scale. A temple in Cyprus commemorates the builder of a twenty- and a thirty-fold vessel. But there was even a forty-fold vessel constructed by Ptolemy Philopator about the year 220 B.C., which was the size of one of our big liners of to-day. Two hundred and eighty cubits she measured in length, thirty-eight she was wide. Her stem rose 48 cubits above the water with only a 4-cubit draught, while the stern-ornament was 53 cubits high in the air. Fitted with a double prow which had seven rams, a double stern with four steering paddles 30 cubits each in length, the largest of her oars measured 38 cubits in length, but they were nicely balanced by weighting them with an equipoise of lead near the handles. Twelve strong cables 600 cubits long girded her together, and her complement was far greater than any vessel of modern times, four thousand oarsmen, 400 sailors, 2850 soldiers, to say nothing of the retinue of servants and the stores which she carried besides. There was also an enormous Nile barge 280 cubits long, built by Sesostris, but such craft as the fore-mentioned must be looked upon less as an opportunity for practising the seaman’s art than as a vulgar display of wealth.

The true war-vessel was made in the proportions of length seven or eight times her width, and drew about 3 feet of water. Light, shallow, and flat, not particularly seaworthy, they were utterly different from the round, heavy, strong, decked merchantman. The war-galley’s triple-spiked ram had come into use as far back as 556 B.C. The galley was most certainly fast and built of fir with a keel of oak. Competent modern authorities agree in estimating the speed of the galley and merchantman in those days as about 7½ to 4 (or 5) knots respectively.

Portions of Early Mediterranean Anchor in Lead found off the Coast of Cyrene.

(In the British Museum.)

When stone was discarded and metal anchors began to be adopted about the year 600 B.C., they were made first of iron. Some idea of the weight of the holding tackle in vogue may be gathered from the statement that an anchor weighing less than 56 lbs. was used in the Athenian navy. (For the sake of comparison, it may be added that this is about the weight of a modern 10-ton yacht’s bower anchor.) Stone and lead were affixed to these anchors by iron clamps near the bottom of the shank. The ships of the Athenian navy carried each a couple of anchors, while large merchant ships carried several, as we know from the voyages of St. Paul. Cork floats were employed for buoying the anchors, as to-day, and also served the purpose of lifebuoys. Usually the ships rode to rope cables, but sometimes to chain ones. It can readily be imagined that when these light ships pitched fore and aft into a sea the two large steering oars at the high stern would be frequently out of the water, and thus quite easily the vessel would not be under command. In such instances another pair was placed at the bows. Like the modern Arabs, the early seamen of the Mediterranean had to go aloft as best they could by climbing the sail, the mast, or hanging their weight on any rope they could find.

“Curiously,” says Mr. Torr in his invaluable little book “Ancient Ships,” to which I am considerably indebted, “the practice was always to brail up half the sail when the ship was put on either tack, the other half being thereby transformed into a triangle with base extending from the middle of the yard to the leeward end of it, and apex terminating in the sheet below.” Apparently, when the yard was braced round the sail was furled on the arm that came aft, but left unfurled on the arm that went forward.

It is quite certain that the ancient Mediterranean seamen did perform voyages at night when they had attained to experience and confidence, and there is at least one plain reference in Greek literature to a lighthouse, as in the following passage: “No longer dreading the rayless night-mist, sail towards me confidently, O seafarers; for all wanderers I light my far-shining torch, memorial of the labours of the Asclepiadæ.”[8]

Some of the early vase paintings show the war-galley not with a ram as developed subsequently, but a pig’s snout, and the korumba or poop extremity, shaped like a cow’s horn, could be lopped off by the victor and retained as a trophy. And in looking at these ancient galleys one must not forget that they were built not as the English shipbuilders of, say, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries laid down ships. Galleys were built far more quickly and easily—whole fleets of them—when the first rumour of war arrived. Capable as they were of being put together with greater dispatch, launched with far greater ease, and needing many tons less material than one of the famous wooden walls which in later years were to sail the seas, it required not quite so much enterprise if the ancients desired ships, and consequently there was no small inducement for men to become expert in the things of the sea. How important was the shipbuilding industry regarded by the Mediterraneans may be seen from the careful arrangements made a long time ahead for obtaining adequate supplies of timber. About the year 380 B.C. a treaty was made between Amyntas III and the Chalkidians regulating the export and import of shipbuilding materials; for it must not be forgotten that southern Makedon, the Chalkidic peninsula, and Amphipolis were the chief sources whence Athens derived its xula naupegesima—ship-timber—for her dockyards. This record is found in a marble which was discovered at Olynthos, and is now at Vienna.

At Corinth and other places there were all the accessories of a shipbuilding yard on a big scale, including proper slips, and even ship-tramways running down to the sea for hauling ships ashore. At such yards long, narrow rowing galleys and round, broad sailing merchant ships were put together with all the skill which the Greeks possessed. Here hulls were built out of pine, cedar, and cypress, while the interiors were constructed of pine, lime, plane, elm, ash, acacia, or mulberry. Here we could have watched the masts and yards being fashioned out of fir or pine, whilst others were busy caulking seams with tow, or heating the wax and tar over the cauldrons.

But the picture of the ancient Greek shipbuilding activity is far from complete owing to the comparatively scant material which exists. In 1834, when the workmen were digging the foundations for a building at the Piræus, they came upon a Roman or Byzantine drain, and discovered it to be lined with slabs of marble which were covered with inscriptions. These were some of the inventories of the Athenian dockyards of the fourth century B.C., and will be found published in August Böckh’s “Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum,” Vol. II, Part II, p. 158.

In any consideration of the Greek seamen we must think of them as existing almost exclusively for one purpose—not for trading or exploring or fishing, but for fighting. Into the latter was poured practically all their seafaring energy. Their general naval strategy consisted of two kinds. The first consisted in reproducing afloat the principles of fighting on shore. To this end the galleys were massed with troops as many as they could hold, and so soon as the engaging combatants could get close enough they attacked each other with spears and shot arrows from their bows. The victory therefore came to that floating army which had the most numerous and ablest soldiers. Brute force rather than tactics: energy rather than skill won the day.

And thus it continued until about the end of the fifth century B.C., when another method of fighting was introduced and developed by the Athenians to its most perfect state. This consisted as follows: The well-manned, quickly-darting galley shot out against the enemy, pecked deeply—viciously—with its beak, and then hurried out of the danger sphere as quickly as it had entered. Connected with the general strategy of ramming there were two distinct schemes of tactics employed. The first was called diekplous, or sailing through. This consisted of breaking the enemy’s line. A single line of galleys would pass between the enemy’s line, make a sharp turn, and then swoop down on to them from astern, doing the utmost damage with their rams. The other was technically known as periplous, or sailing around, and consisted in outflanking the enemy’s ships so as to charge them with the beak against their broadside. Thus it will be seen that neither of these manœuvres involved a direct prow-to-prow attack, for the reason that the Athenian ships were too light as to the bows. Prior to a fight protective awnings of sailcloth or horsehair were spread over the open spaces on these galleys, and every protection that could be afforded the essential oarsmen was provided. Everything points to the fact that the Greek fleets were properly organised and drilled. An admiral’s ship was distinguished by a flag as well as any purple or vermilion sail which she might carry so as most easily to be discernible across the waters. When the fleet was at sea doing a passage before a fair wind bound for the battle area, the admiral’s sail would in itself be sufficient for a sign. But, as already emphasised, sails were lowered before the battle commenced, and it is probable that either the flag was displayed somewhere about the ship in that case, or that some other method, such as the colour of the hull, was employed to cause the discrimination. It is probable that the Greek admiral’s ship at night, like that of the Roman admiral, carried three lights, the other warships having one light each, except the transports, which were distinguished by two.

Shield Signalling.

In battle a national flag was used so as to facilitate recognition of one’s own vessels from those of the enemy. And, as illustrative of the development of the early naval tactics, it is well to notice that there existed a signalling code—the displaying of a purple flag, for instance, being the signal for going into action. Mr. Torr mentions the interesting fact that attempts were made at semaphoring with a single flag, and further at signalling by flashing the sunlight from a shield. In addition to the above, signals were made for getting under way, for altering the formation of the fleet, for bringing-to, as well as for disembarking troops.

Their seamanship was necessarily simple, because their ships had no complicated gear and were primarily rowing craft. We know that they used the sounding lead armed with grease, and the numerous landmarks of the Ægean Sea and the neighbouring waters would be more than well known to those in command of the ships sailing. When one thinks of the bare simplicity of the Mediterranean galley, the fighting ship of Tudor times with all its sails and rigging and running gear points to a far more elaborate species of seamanship with a corresponding increase of anxiety. As to the division in supervising the ship’s work, the officers consisted as follows: The captain of the trireme—called trierarchos—was in supreme command of his ship. Under him came the kubernetes or helmsman. Then forward stood the officer in command of the bow—the proreus or look-out man. Under these three officers the ship was manœuvred in such a manner that either the enemy’s hull might be pierced or, at any rate, his protruding lines of oars smashed into splinters, thus rendering him an easy prey.

For the most part the representations of ancient classical ships have been so carefully made that they have every appearance of accuracy, taking into consideration the possibilities of wind, sails, and sea, but occasionally mistakes are made which show that the artist certainly was not a seaman. In the accompanying illustration[9] we have an instructive picture of a penteconter. She sets two sails with a bowline shown on the mizzen, but interesting as the picture is in many ways, yet the sails are clearly not set in accordance with the wind. The steering oar at the side and the flag on the staff at the bows will be immediately noticed.

Greek Penteconter from an Ancient Vase.

That the artist was not a seaman is obvious from the ludicrous way in which the sails are depicted.

To sum up, then, the Greek seamen evolved their ships as follows: Like the Egyptians and Phœnicians before them, they began with a penteconter, which means that each man pulled an oar and that there was but one tier of twenty-five on either side of the ship. Next, inasmuch as they wanted increased power and speed—possibly because the ships were being built more strongly and thus needed more vehemently to be rammed—so they had to increase the number of their oarsmen and to lengthen their ship. This involved a risk of hogging, so the hull was engirdled; or when that was dispensed with a deck was added to join forecastle and poop, and gave facilities for a second tier of rowers. In the next step we get the introduction of triremes, quadriremes, and quinquiremes, which multiplied the number of men rowing from each bench, but placed all the men on one bench pulling their oars through the same porthole. After this come the monstrosities of the powerful Egyptian, Sicilian, and other kings, in whose ships each oar was probably pulled by any number of men from six to forty. But luxury certainly came afloat at no late date. Professor Flinders Petrie calls attention[10] to the extraordinary analogy between the work of the Mykenæans and that of the Egyptians in the grandly embroidered squaresails painted in the frescoes at Mykenæ. Certainly as far back as 232 B.C. there were mosaics to be seen on the magnificent ship of Hiero II of Syracuse.[11]

Not less interesting were the ships and ways of ancient Rhodes, which in like manner had its dieres, trieres, tetreres, penteres, even up to seven- and nine-fold ships. In addition to these they had a swift type of their own invention, having one bank of oars, called celoces. They were wont, also, to use another fast type of craft called triemioliæ, which had no fighting deck stretching from end to end. The usual Rhodian naval tactics consisted in endeavouring to run through the enemy’s line and break the oars of his ships as they passed. Afterwards the Rhodians would then turn and ram them at the stern or else on the beam, always carrying away something that was essential for working the ship unless they could sink her forthwith.

They were very fond of one device in particular. When they were positively compelled to ram stem to stem they used to make provision by depressing their own bows as deep as possible in the water, so that while the enemy’s ram struck them high above the water-line, the Rhodian teeth holed the other ship well below the water. After the impact was over and the two ships fell apart the enemy was in a sinking condition, whereas the Rhodian could, by removing his ballast and some of his men aft, elevate his bows well above the water-line. But just as was discovered in modern ironclads fitted with rams, it was found that the rammer often came off as grievously as the rammed. At the battle of Chios in 201 B.C. one galley left her ram in the enemy’s ship, promptly filled and sank. At the battle of Myonnesos in 190 B.C., when a Rhodian ship was ramming an enemy the anchor of the former caught in the latter. The Rhodian ship endeavoured to go astern to clear herself, but as she did so the cable got foul of her oars so that she was incapacitated and captured. During this same battle the Rhodians affixed braziers of fire which hung over the bows. In trying to avoid these, the Syrian ships exposed their broadsides to the Rhodian rams, so that it became a choice of two evils.

The Rhodians were fine, able seamen, and well they needed to be. But even with the smart handling of their fast little craft they had all their work cut out to keep off the embarrassing attentions of the Cretan pirates during the second century B.C. On the biggest of their galleys the Rhodians erected deckhouses with portholes for their powerful catapults and archers. The custom of employing fireships, which remained in vogue for many centuries down to the time of the Armada and after, was already being employed by about the year 300 B.C. The Rhodians, too, had their proper organisation in naval matters as distinct from any desultory measures. In the port of Rhodes they had their dockyards, which were kept up at a great cost. And there is something curiously modern in the stringent regulations kept for preserving the dockyard secrets. Any unauthorised person who intruded into certain parts thereof was punished with death. And this strict rule was not peculiar to Rhodes, but obtained at Carthage and elsewhere. In order to protect their harbours against the assaults of the enemy, booms were laid across the entrances, and engines were mounted on merchant ships moored near the harbour-mouth.

The Rhodians were great shipbuilders, and in their sheds was kept many a craft ready to put to sea. But as Britain to-day builds warships for nations other than herself, so it was with Rhodes, and to this end she used to have brought to her immense quantities of timber, iron, lead, pitch, tar, resin, hemp, hair (for caulking), and sailcloth. Even human hair was employed in the service of the ship, and at the time of need the ladies of Rhodes, Carthage, and Massilia cut off their tresses and yielded it up for the making of ropes. The Rhodian squadrons were usually of three ships or multiples of three, and every year a squadron went forth for its sea experiences. The trieres, which carried as many as two hundred men, each voyaged as far as the Atlantic. Fine swimmers, fine seamen, their sea prowess was the cause of the greatest admiration on the part of the Greeks. “It was a proverb,” says Mr. Torr in his “Rhodes in Ancient Times,”[12] “that ten Rhodians were worth ten ships,” and we must attribute their natural instinct and acquired skill for marine matters to that fortunate accident of being an island nation—a circumstance which has always, in all parts of the globe, meant so much to the progress and independence of a nation. Furthermore, the port of Rhodes was an important point on the line of commerce, and this fact also must be taken into account in reckoning up the influences at work for encouraging the marine arts, especially in inculcating an interest and admiration for the things of the sea. For those great merchant ships which used to sail to Egypt and come back to Greece laden with corn were accustomed to make Rhodes their port of call, and we cannot doubt that the sojourn of these big vessels with their impressive bulk and remarkable spars would make a powerful appeal to the imagination of the local sailormen and shipwrights always on the look-out for new ideas. Then, too, they had their own overseas trade, for large quantities of wine were exported from Rhodes to both Egypt and Sicily. Even by the third century B.C. the Rhodians were strong both as a naval and commercial nation. Their maritime laws were so excellent that they were afterwards adopted by Rome, and even to-day much of the world’s best sea law can be traced back to the people of that Mediterranean island.

CHAPTER V
ROME AND THE SEA

Marine development under the Romans was largely influenced by Greek precedent and practice, but there were points of difference.

The transportation of goods across the seas was conducted by shipowners, who formed themselves into corporations under the style of navicularii marini, but from the middle of November to the middle of March navigation was suspended until the finer weather returned. Under the Republic these shipmen worked for the companies of publicani, but Augustus abolished these financial companies, appointing in their stead superintendents who dealt direct with the owners of ships. The latter were regarded as anything but unimportant. On them the victualling of the capital largely depended, and the early emperors granted them, as owners of important merchant vessels, special privileges; but this was conditional on their ships possessing a capacity of 10,000 modii, and on their carrying corn to Rome for the period of six years. Though they were not in the permanent employ of the State, yet they were liberally rewarded for their services. In the corporations of the navicularii marini there was no clear distinction between the shipowner who worked “on his own” and those engaged in working for the State.

From the time of Diocletian, however, the navicularii were all servants of the State, and it was their duty to transport cargoes of corn, oil, wood, and bullion from the provinces to Rome or Constantinople. In their ships the Imperial post was carried. They received a fixed percentage and were responsible to the State for the goods placed in their holds. Membership of these corporations was handed down from father to son. They were allowed to engage in private trade and enjoyed the additional privilege of passing their cargoes duty free through the Customs. Similarly, additional to the overseas traffic, the internal navigation was organised by corporations of merchants and barge-owners. For example, the State employed them to handle the consignments of corn from Egypt on the Nile, Tiber, and the rivers and lakes of Northern Italy, Spain, Gaul, and Germany. So, too, the Rhone and Saône were navigated by them.

The reader is aware that we have had necessity to refer more than once to the corn-ships from Egypt, and in an age that was given up rather to the development of the fighting galley than to the exploiting of the cargo ship these trans-Mediterranean grain-carriers stand out prominently as a class by themselves. It is most unlikely that they altered much during a space of several hundred years, when even that much-petted craft, the galley, remained so little modified. Therefore the following account which has been left to us by Lucian may be regarded not merely as representative of the corn-ship in his immediate period, but as characteristic of the ship for probably five hundred years at least. Lucian lived in the second century, and was born probably about A.D. 120. In the dialogue from which the following extract is taken he taunts his friend Timolaus with being ever fond of a fine spectacle; to which the latter replies that he had had nothing to do, and being told of “this monster vessel of extraordinary proportions putting in at the Piræus,” he goes on to explain that “she is one of the Egyptian corn-ships and bound for Italy.”

The Egyptian Corn-Ship “Goddess Isis” (circa A.D. 120).

Keenly interested, they went on board her by the gangway, and he goes on to refer to the ship’s cabins, which he examined, to the shipwright who conducted them round the ship, calls attention to the lofty mast, stares in amazement at the sailors “as they mounted by the ropes, and then with perfect safety ran along the yards holding on to the halyards.” A hundred and thirty feet long she measured, with 30-feet beam, whilst from deck to bottom of hold she was 29 feet at her deepest part.

“What a mast she has!” exclaims Samippus, one of the friends; “and how huge a yard she carries, and what a stay it requires to hold it up in its place! With what a gentle curve her stern rises, finished with a goose-neck all of gold! At the other end, in just proportion, the prow stands up, lengthening itself out as it gets forward, and showing the ship’s name, the Goddess Isis, on either side.... The decorations and the flame-coloured foresail, and beyond these the anchor with the windlass and capstan, and I must not omit the stern cabins. Then the number of souls would make one think it was a camp. We were told it carried enough corn to feed all the people of Athens for a year. And all we saw had so far been carried safe and sound by a little old man, using a slight tiller to turn that huge rudder. They showed him to me—a bald-pated fellow with a fringe of curly hair. Hero, I think, by name.”

Then Timolaus still further enriches the narrative:

“The passenger told me of his marvellous seamanship; in all seafaring matters he out-Proteused Proteus in skill. Did you hear how he brought his ship home, and all they went through on the voyage, or how the star guided them to safety?” Lucian answers that he has not heard, so Timolaus goes on to inform him.

“The captain told it me all himself—an honest fellow, and good company. Seven days after leaving the Pharos they sighted Cape Acamas without meeting with any very severe weather. Then the west wind proving contrary, they were swept across as far as Sidon; and after Sidon they fell in with a heavy gale; and on the tenth day came to the Chelidonian Islands, passing through the channel, where they had a narrow escape of going down, every man of them. I know what that is, for I once passed the Chelidonians myself, and remember how high the sea runs there, especially when the wind is in the south-west and backing south. For the result of this is that the Pamphylian Gulf is cut in two by the Lycian Sea, and the wave is split up by endless cross currents at the promontory, the rocks there being sheer and worn sharp by the wash of water, so that the surf becomes really formidable and the roar overpowering, and, indeed, the wave (not infrequently) is full as large as the rock it strikes. This, the captain said, was what they were surprised by in the midst of night and literal darkness; but, he added, the gods were moved with pity at their cries, and revealed to them from the Lycian coast the light of a fire, so that they knew where they were; and at the same time a bright star, one of the Twins, took his place at the masthead, guiding the ship to the left towards the open sea, just as it was bearing down on the rock. After that, having once fallen off from their true course, they at length succeeded in crossing the Ægean, and beating up in the teeth of the Etesian winds, only yesterday, seventy days out from Egypt, put in at the Piræus. They had so long been off their course in the lower seas that they missed doing what they should have done, keeping Crete on the right and steering past Malea. Otherwise they would have been in Italy by this time.”

Further on in the course of the conversation, Adeimantus, one of the friends, mentions that after stopping to measure the thickness of the anchor, “though I had seen everything, I must needs stop to ask one of the sailors what was the average return to the owner from the ship’s cargo.” “Twelve Attic talents,” he replied, “is the lowest figure, if you like to reckon it that way.”[13]

I make no apology for giving so full a quotation, for there is in the narrative something so sincere and yet so curiously modern: the whole picture is so full of sparkling bits of colour that it is most pleasing, and we can almost see this mammoth ship with her hefty spars and beautiful curves and “flame-coloured” sails. The intervening space of nearly two thousand years seems to have made but little difference in the type of skippers. I am sure that to many a sailing man to-day the delightful little sketch of the captain of the Goddess Isis corn-carrier as “the little old man,” “a bald-pated fellow with a fringe of curly hair” sitting at his tiller, will at once suggest the very counterpart in the style and appearance of the skipper of a corn-barge—“an honest fellow, and good company.” And the account of the bad weather encountered successfully, the use of stellar navigation, the good seamanship employed, and the proof of the corn-ship’s seaworthiness are all too interesting to be lightly dispensed with. In the present days of accurate charts, ingenious nautical instruments, and big, sound ships, one is a little too apt to imagine that the ships and the ability of their crews in ancient times were scarcely worthy of serious consideration—deserving of little more than ridicule. So many ill-informed artists, who have drawn on their imagination in the past to depict what they believed to be the ships of olden times, have been shown to be wrong and misleading, that there has been such a reaction as to make it difficult to obtain any definite legitimate picture in one’s mind. It is just such accounts written by contemporaries as that of the Goddess Isis that enable us once more to see the ships of the past in their true likeness and proportions.

But we must return to the warships. Prior to the time of Augustus there was no fleet in being. Ships were built or fitted out at the approach of war—a principle that the whole maritime history of the world has always shown to be the most unmitigated naval heresy. But by the year 337 B.C. there were certainly docks at Rome—the word used is navalia—so at least there was some provision made for the accommodation of ships. Knowing what we do of the Romans as magnificent organisers and soldiers ashore, we are not surprised to find that the same spirit was manifested in arranging the commands afloat. The general command at sea was vested in the two consuls. Later on there were appointed two fleet-masters under the designation, “duoviri navales classis ornandæ reficiendæque causa.” There was thus a double squadron consisting usually of twenty ships, ten being under each duumvir. The coming of the Punic War had this effect, however, that it caused Rome to think more seriously of her ships and to become in fact a great naval power. In 260 B.C. there were built 100 quinquiremes and 20 triremes; with these the Romans defeated the Carthaginian fleet of 130 at Mylæ. The method employed was that which thereafter was to be practised for so many centuries down the history of naval fights; that is to say, the device consisted in boarding each other and engaging in hand-to-hand encounter. In the present instance a boarding bridge was held up against the mast by means of ropes and pulleys and let down promptly on to the enemy’s deck for the troops of the Roman ships to rush furiously across. The Greek word for this boarding bridge was korax, the derivative meaning of which was a raven-like beak for grappling. The Latin word was corvus. So powerful had the Romans become at sea that they also defeated with 330 ships the Carthaginian fleet of 350 at Ecnomus. Did a violent storm engulf two or three hundred Roman ships? Then they set to work forthwith to build as many and more by the aid of voluntary effort. She had such extensive resources to fall back on that she was destined to win not exclusively by good seamanship and tactics, but by weight of numbers. The boarding bridges just mentioned had been found of the greatest value, and yet prior to their invention boarding tactics had yet been employed. As far back as 413 B.C. (when they used them against the Syracusans) grapnels had been in use for hitching on to the enemy and then pouring slaughter and death into him.

The “Korax” on Boarding Bridge in Action.

During the second Punic War, Rome had appreciated the value of retaining permanent squadrons with the same commanders. Thus one squadron was based on Tarraco, another—that of Sicily—on Lilybæum. The Adriatic squadron was based on Brundisium. These three squadrons provided a fleet of about two hundred ships. But when war was threatening, new quinquiremes were built and the old ones were refitted. But this excellent system of having a standing navy was subsequently abolished and Rome’s general sea-command disappeared.

During the first Punic War the fleet was commanded by one or both consuls in person. Then the separate squadrons were commanded by prætors or proprætors, though later on by proconsuls or consuls who sometimes deputed the command to a præfectus. The crews consisted of three sections—the oarsmen, the sailors, and the marines, designated respectively remiges, nautæ, and milites classici. It is important to bear in mind that no Roman ever handled an oar, but that the rowers and sailors were supplied from the allies and maritime colonies. This is evidence of the fact that, unlike the Phœnicians or the Vikings, the Romans were not instinctively seamen, but only took to the ocean because it was essential for their safety on shore.

The expression socii navales became the stereotyped phrase for the crew of oarsmen and sailors. Later on—in the third century B.C.—libertini were to a great extent employed in the crews. Slaves were used during the Hannibalian War as oarsmen, and sometimes the ships were manned by prisoners. When it was necessary, the crews were sometimes armed and used as soldiers. But the Roman naval service was never popular, and consequently there were many desertions. The captain of each galley was designated magister navis. He and the steersman (gubernator) were ingenui, the steersman ranking with a centurion. The marines were drawn usually from the Roman proletariat, and there was an arrangement of some sort for the distribution of prize-money. Additional to the triremes, quadriremes, and quinquiremes, there were also scouts—lembi, which were but light craft—and pentekontors.

Sketches of Ancient Ships.

By Richard Cook, R.A., from Montfarreon’s “Antiquities,” showing warships with marines and fighting-platform amidships; the lower sketches show clearly the types of bow and stern.

Great importance was clearly attached to the quinquiremes, for in such craft envoys, commissioners, or messengers of victory were carried. They fought together with the triremes and quadriremes as the capital ships of the Roman navy, and whilst the State depended on the treaty towns and allies for their lighter craft, yet the all-important quinquiremes were kept under immediate control. The description and arrangement of the different kinds of Greek warships is generally applicable to those of the Romans. On the deck of the galley the troops fought, while below them were the oarsmen. These propugnatores were protected by means of bulwarks (propugnacula) as well as by two wooden towers (turres), carried on supports which could be taken down from the ship whenever required.

Three Ancient Coins from Scheffer’s “De Militia Navali” illustrating Types of Rams.

Among the Greeks it was customary to divide ships into kataphraktoi and aphraktoi, according as to whether they were decked in or otherwise. The corresponding Latin expressions were navis tecta or navis aperta respectively. The quinquireme, however, was always cataphract; that is to say, the planking did not end at the gunwale, but was continued to the upper deck so as to afford protection to the rowers from missiles. As to the dimensions and tonnage of the quinquireme it is impossible to make any statement, but they were of such a size that, with some difficulty, they could be hauled up on shore at night.

Bronze Figurehead of Minerva from a Roman Ship found in the sea off Actium.

(Probably belonging to one of the ships which fought in the battle of Actium, B.C. 31.)

Augustus realised that a Roman fleet in being was essential to police the seas and keep down piracy so as to ensure the safe passage of Rome’s corn supply from Egypt. The two fleets which he based permanently on Misenum and Ravenna respectively to guard the Western and Eastern seas were of the utmost utility. He even went so far as to connect Ravenna with the Po by means of a canal. Manned with crews and captains who were either slaves or freedmen, the ships were unfortunately allowed to rot and the service to fall into desuetude, and about A.D. 6 piracy was again rampant, so that it required once more to be checked.

During the first century B.C. two new types of warships appeared in the bireme and the liburnian. The latter was really a lightly built trireme, and originally was a swift lembos with a ram attached. The Romans built liburnians also as biremes, which they employed for scouting and fighting. The name was derived from the Liburnians of Dalmatia, from whom the shape of the hull was borrowed; but later on the expression came to denote simply a ship of war. Just before the dawn of the Christian era the Romans began to build those bigger and stouter ships, mounting heavy catapults, which were probably not very different from the tall ships which the Crusaders had to contend with some hundreds of years later.

Sketches of Ancient Ships.

By Richard Cook, R.A., from Montfarreon’s “Antiquities,” showing Roman Warship under sail; the lower sketches well illustrate species of stems and sterns.

Before the close of the second century A.D. there were afloat not only the Italian fleets, but also those of the Roman provinces. There was the Egyptian fleet based on Alexandria, the Syrian fleet, the Libyan fleet, the Euxine fleet, besides two fleets on the Danube and the Rhine. Furthermore, there must not be omitted the Romano-British fleet—the Classis Britannica—which was based on Boulogne (Gesoriacum), with stations at Dover, Lympne, and Gloucester. This dated from the invasion by Claudius and assisted Agricola in his Scottish expedition in A.D. 83. It circumnavigated Britain, discovered for the Romans the Orkneys, and saw the long line of the outer Hebrides. The classiarii also on shore helped to build Hadrian’s wall. But as to the exact nature of such ships we shall speak in greater detail presently.

Each of the fleets just mentioned was commanded by a præfectus and had also a sub-præfectus. The Egyptian fleet-præfect was sometimes also præfect of the Nile revenue boats. Each ship was commanded by a trierarch, the classiarii being organised as a century under a centurio-classicus, or fleet-centurion. Thus whenever the men had to be put on shore for duty their organisation went with them. The term of service for the classiarii was twenty-five or twenty-six years. The Roman fleets illustrated at an early date in the world’s history what every nation has since been compelled to realise: that a standing navy cannot be dispensed with among the essential attributes of peace and self-defence. Rome’s fleets kept off Carthage and Philip and enabled Rome to be mistress of the sea route between Hannibal and Spain; and, as is usually the case, the decadence of the Government was promptly followed by the decadence of the fleet.

Two Coins depicting “Naumachiæ.”

(From Scheffer’s “De Militia Navali.”)

The influence of the Roman navy on land was seen in a manner similar to that in which the Roman army influenced gladiatorial combats. In Rome there were various “naumachiæ,” which were great reservoirs surrounded by seats like an amphitheatre and were specially constructed for holding naval fights. There was one, for instance,[14] built by Augustus on the trans-tiberine side of the river, and traces of this naumachia were discovered not many years ago. A naumachia consisted of an enormous tank or lake excavated in the ground, and measured 1800 feet long by 1200 feet wide. Within this ample area naval battles containing thirty beaked ships with three or four tiers of oars, together with many other smaller ships were engaged, and no fewer than three thousand fighting men, to say nothing of the rowers, were engaged. It is interesting to add that naval fights were also held in a gigantic reservoir on the site now occupied by the Colosseum.

Representation of a Roman Naumachia.

(See text.)

No consideration of the relation of Rome to the sea can be complete without taking into consideration those important and daring adventures which Julius Cæsar attempted. Adventures they certainly were, for here was a land general trying experiments which belonged rightly to sailormen; and, as was the inevitable result, he made terrible mistakes as he blundered through towards victory. His expedition against the Veneti, “the stoutest and the most skilful seamen in Gaul,” taught him much: taught him that he was matched to play a game whose tricks he did not understand. But the praise belongs to him, a landsman, for his ingenuity and resource in toiling with such signal success against very heavy odds. He recognised quickly that the ships of the Veneti and their allies were so heavy that no Roman galley with its cruel rams could have any appreciable effect on them. They were too high out of the water, too, to enable the legionaries to hurl their missiles with any telling effect. It has been suggested that the design of these powerful Biscayan craft had originally been borrowed from the great Carthaginian merchantmen, “whose commerce in British waters they had inherited, and their prosperity depended upon the carrying trade with Britain, of which they possessed the monopoly.”[15]

It was Cæsar’s opportunity to rise to the occasion, and he availed himself of the chance. Sending instructions to his officers to have a fleet built in the ports at the mouth of the Loire, he also raised oarsmen from the province and collected as many local pilots and seamen as possible. Thus, when the time came, the Roman fleet included ships impressed from the maritime tribes between the Loire and Garonne. The Roman engineers also came to the rescue, and, taking long poles, they armed them at one end with sharp-edged hooks. There was just one feature in which the galleys surpassed the stout ships of the enemy: they were far more mobile. So, when the rival fleets approached, two or more galleys ran alongside the Biscayan craft, thrust out the sharp hooks, caught the halyards, rowed hard away, with the result that the ropes snapped, the yard and sail came tumbling down on to the deck below and enveloped the crew. Springing smartly from the galleys on to this confused crowd, the enemy was soon slaughtered and the ship captured. In principle, though not in detail, the tactic was similar to that used in comparatively modern times when sailing men-of-war aimed to blow away the enemy’s rigging, leaving him so much out of control that complete annihilation was a matter only of time.

But far more interesting than his expedition against the Veneti was Cæsar’s invasion of England. Regarded merely as a naval exploit, it is deserving of great attention; but to those who have had any experience of winds, waves, and tides it is most instructive. Picture Cæsar, therefore, in the summer of 55 B.C. at Gesoriacum, better known to the reader under its modern name of Boulogne. Here was a port that was important in even those early days. From this spot the merchants of Gaul were wont to embark their cargoes and carry them across the Channel to the shores of Kent, and later on it was destined to become one of the naval stations for the Classis Britannica. Think of it in the year we are speaking of as a busy place, lined with shipyards along its banks and many craft in its haven. From the forest above could be hewn and floated down the trees for the making of ships. Every mariner to-day knows that when the heavy north-east gales make it impossible for the cross-Channel packet-steamers to enter Calais, Boulogne can be entered with safety by even sailing craft.

Chart to illustrate Cæsar’s crossing the English Channel.

But inasmuch as the prevailing wind along the English Channel is from the south-west, the reader will observe on consulting a chart that the position of Boulogne for the Gallic traders bound for Dover or the Thames was singularly well placed, inasmuch as it gave the mariner a fair wind outward-bound on most occasions. That fact was doubtless appreciated by Cæsar when he elected to use this port as his starting-place for Britain. He therefore gave orders that his fleet was here to be got in readiness, and then sent forth Volusenus in a galley to reconnoitre the British coast. The ship was a Roman galley manned by oarsmen who had been trained by years of work for the task, and with such a craft as this Volusenus could be independent of wind and accomplish his task with the utmost dispatch. He was away cruising about the English Channel for a period of three days, during which time he had doubtless been able to locate a suitable place where his master’s troops could be disembarked. He had had the opportunity of taking soundings, and—perhaps most important of all to one accustomed almost exclusively to the Mediterranean—of noticing both the range of tide and the force and direction of the strong tidal streams. Similarly, he was able to make a note of the cliffs of Dover and other landmarks. With this knowledge he returned to place himself at Cæsar’s disposal.

On August 25, then, the transports came out from Boulogne. The time was midnight, it wanted five days to full moon, and high water that evening was at 6 p.m., so that the tides were neaps, or at their weakest. We can be quite sure that, acting on the experience of Volusenus in the Channel, it was deliberately intended to avoid spring tides. (It is high water at Boulogne at new and full moon at 11.28.) The transports thus came out of the haven with the last drain of the ebb. But in the offing the tide that night did not make to the eastward till 4 a.m., so there would be the Channel ebb to contend against for some time.

So far all had been splendidly arranged, so that by the time the flood or east-going tide had begun the fleet would all have got clear of the harbour and the oarsmen have been getting into their stride for the passage. Gris Nez and the French cliffs were left behind as the hulls ploughed their way through the heaving sea and sped onwards. But it was not to be a quick passage. The tide, of course, turned against them before they were across, and those transports would not easily be impelled through the waves; but at nine the next morning the oar-propelled galleys which had got ahead during the night approached the cliffs of Dover. Far behind followed the sail-driven transports, so Cæsar let go anchor in Dover Bay, summoned a council of his generals and tribunes, gave them instructions as to the landing-place, told them how to handle both ships and men in disembarking, and then between three and four o’clock that same afternoon the bulky transports wallowed up to join the galleys. Between four and five p.m. the Channel stream off Dover turned to the eastward, and as the wind was favourable Cæsar gave the signal to weigh anchor. Presently the galleys, transports, and the smaller craft were stretched out running past the Foreland with wind and tide to help them. It did not take them long to skirt past St. Margaret’s Bay, and at some point between Walmer and Deal the transports were beached and the journey accomplished. Thus, with careful foresight, Cæsar had got safely across the Channel with his troops and fleet.

These transports had carried his infantry; now the cavalry were starting not from Boulogne, but from Ambleteuse, which is about midway between Boulogne and Cape Gris Nez, and slightly nearer to Dover. Not till August 30 were these descried approaching the British coast. A gale from the north-east sprang up and prevented them from keeping their course, so that some were carried back to Ambleteuse, while others were swept to the westward down Channel. Some anchored for a time, but the north-east wind gave them a lee shore, and they had to put out to sea and make for the Continent. Some scudded past the gale beyond the South Foreland and the high cliffs of Dover, risking disaster every minute. Those which had hauled with the wind abeam over to the Gallic coast managed to heave-to on the port tack, and drifting past Cape Gris Nez, were in fairly sheltered water, so that they could carry on and make port. This they did, and re-entered Ambleteuse without the loss of either a ship or a man. Such a fact proves at once that Cæsar had been able to get together from somewhere a number of men who were not novices, but very fine seamen. We must concede that the Gallic sailors knew their business, at any rate.

Cæsar and his men had already landed near Deal. They had left their galleys and the infantry transports, and gone inland before this had happened. The galleys, as was the Mediterranean custom for centuries, had been hauled up above the mark for ordinary high water; the transports, because of their weight and size, had been left at anchor. Now Cæsar, in spite of what he had gathered regarding tides, had evidently omitted to bear in mind the fact that at full moon or new moon—“springs”—the rise of the tide is greater than at neaps. Neither he nor his officers knew the connection between tides and moon, and there is a difference of several feet on that coast between high-water springs and high-water neaps. It was full moon, and every seafaring man knows that when a gale does occur at that time it is worse than when the moon is not at full or change. High water was somewhere about 11 p.m. Wind and tide rose in great strength on to this lee shore, so that the galleys which had been hauled up were dashed to pieces, while transports broke from their anchors and drove on to the beach.

We have no concern with any operations on land; it is enough for our purpose to add that after spending some time in making repairs to those ships which remained, Cæsar took his ships and men back to Boulogne. The expedition had proved a failure. But in the following year Cæsar again invaded Britain. This time he set forth neither from Boulogne nor Ambleteuse, but from Wissant, which is about midway between the chalk cliffs of Cape Blanc Nez and the sandstone cliffs of Cape Gris Nez, and on the charts of to-day you will still find “Cæsar’s Camp” marked. Wissant was much nearer to the British coast than either of the other two ports, and the Roman evidently was not anxious to make the cross-Channel passage any longer than need be this time. The fleet at Boulogne had been weather-bound for three weeks with a series of north-west winds. Anyone who has sailed along this portion of the French coast knows what a nasty sea a wind from that direction sets up, blowing as it does directly on shore. A north-west wind would have sent a strong swell into Boulogne harbour; but apart from that, even had the ships been at Wissant ready to start it would not have been of much avail, for the course from there to the nearest British shore was about north-west—a dead “nose-ender.” June, therefore, came and went.

But about July 6, Cæsar set sail from Wissant about sunset. As the wind was light from the south-west he had a favourable air. There was no moon, but the nights are warm and not very dark at the beginning of July. The tide probably set him down some distance in the vicinity of Gris Nez, for it did not begin to flow to the north-east till 10 p.m. Good progress was made this time, and by midnight the leading division was getting well up to the South Foreland. The wind, as it so often does on a July night, began to fail and finally dropped utterly, so that the fleet had barely steerage way. The strong Channel flood took hold of them, and about 3.15 a.m. Cæsar was abreast of Kingsdown (a little to the south of Walmer). Eventually he arrived at Sandwich about noon, having no doubt anchored for six hours, since the Channel tide was just about to run to the south-west when he had got to Kingsdown. This time he left his 600 ships not hauled up on the beach, but at anchor, having disembarked his troops. Yet once more a storm rose which caused some of the vessels to part their anchors, others to collide with each other, and others still to be dashed ashore and damaged. Forty were totally destroyed, but the remainder he managed to patch well enough. They were hauled ashore, probably by means of windlasses or capstans, greased rollers being inserted under the keels. They were then surrounded by earthworks so as to be protected efficiently. About the middle of September and about nine o’clock at night, Cæsar and his fleet once more returned from Britain and arrived at Boulogne about daybreak.

He took back with him a great deal of invaluable information on the subject of tides, but the cost of obtaining such knowledge had been by no means small. It is possible that a critical reader may feel disposed to remark that the Channel tides in Cæsar’s time were not identical in direction and force with those of to-day. It is impossible to settle the point with accuracy. Certain it is that for some centuries the coast between Sandgate and Dover has altered a good deal, but, speaking generally, this has not been of much consequence, though a good deal of alteration has taken place between Hythe and Dungeness, which may or may not have affected the tidal stream. Similarly, it is a matter for dispute whether the Channel stream in the neighbourhood of the Dover Straits began to ebb and flow at precisely the same time as to-day. It is more than possible that the changes in the configuration of the coast and of the Goodwin Sands may, during the centuries, have modified the Channel tides hereabouts. Some say that in Cæsar’s time Thanet was an island, that Dungeness did not exist, that Romney Marsh was covered at high water by an estuary 50,000 acres in extent, and that the estuary of the Thames was far wider than to-day. But even when all these points have been taken into consideration, two facts remain true: that the tide ebbed and flowed backwards and forwards along the English Channel, and that because of the narrow neck through which this huge volume of water has to rush by the Straits of Dover there must have been not much difference in strength from that which is experienced to-day.

The geographical information which Cæsar brought back concerning Gaul and Britain after his campaigns cannot be lightly regarded. It was the knowledge which an explorer bestows on a wondering community. Such items as prevailing winds, tides, currents, the influence of moon and the nature of harbours along the coast, the depths of water, and so on, might have been appreciated still more had the Romans been as eager for scientific knowledge as they were for organisation and conquest.

But if the Romans were not great navigators nor even a race of seamen, at any rate they were very fine shipwrights. Expert opinion of to-day, arguing from the evidence of the only Roman craft which are still in existence, gives the highest praise to the art of the Roman shipbuilder. The relics of the craft found in Lake Nemi were discussed by me in another volume,[16] and need be referred to now only slightly. But the other craft which was recently unearthed whilst excavations were being made in 1910 at Westminster, on the site for the new London County Council Hall, is far more instructive, because being above ground it is get-at-able and capable of intimate study. It now lies among the collection of the London Museum in Kensington Gardens. This craft was probably one of the fleet of Carausius, who for a time was admiral under Maximilian and Diocletian, but subsequently rebelled against the Imperial authority and proclaimed himself emperor of Britain in A.D. 287.

Ship of the Roman Period discovered at Westminster.

Sketch showing the Interior of Hull.

This boat was found lying on a shell sand which indicated the original bed of the Thames. The date is approximately fixed by the three coins which were found with the boat: one of Tetricus the Elder in Gaul (A.D. 268–273), the second of Carausius in Britain (A.D. 286–293), and the third of Alectus in Britain (A.D. 293–296). It is possible that there was some ceremony in placing coins in a Roman boat, just as to-day coin of the realm is placed at the laying of a foundation-stone.

She was probably a single-decked war-galley, built in Gaul, but had been dismantled before being abandoned to sink in the waters of the Thames. One expert naval architect, who made a careful inspection of this relic when first discovered, has gone so far as to state that not only is the craftsmanship excellent, that probably nothing built in our own time would look so well after seventeen hundred years’ immersion, but that finer fitting could not be expected to-day. It shows, further, not merely good workmanship, but good design.

It is more than likely that this ship was built at Boulogne on one of the Roman shipyards there, and formed originally a unit in the Classis Britannica. There is a votive tablet preserved in the Boulogne Museum, and found in that neighbourhood, depicting two triremes with the stern steering oar, the beak at the bows, and the banks of oars, which shows how similar these Romano-British ships were to the Mediterranean model. The votive offering in question had been made by the crew of a trireme named the Radians. Possibly the Westminster ship was the flagship of Carausius.

Her timbers were found to have been cut with the grain, and every other one ran to the gunwale. A rubbing strake ran along outside the hull which took the thwart ends, the recesses for the same being still visible. It would appear as if the frames above turned outwards and formed a support for that gangway along which the soldiers were wont to fight. Some think there is evidence to show that the ship had a false keel, and that she carried a mast. As to the dimensions of the vessel, one authority, judging by the run of the stringer, suggests that when she was whole she measured about 90 feet long by 18 feet beam. The material was oak; the treenails, which were perfectly made and fitted, measured 1¼ inches in diameter.[17]

Details of Roman Ship found at Westminster.

The two vessels buried at the bottom of Lake Nemi—from the fragments which have been brought to the surface—belong to the time of Caligula (A.D. 37), and equally demonstrate the first-class workmanship of the Romans. Of these two pleasure craft one measured 208 feet long by 65 feet beam, whilst the other was 227 feet by 80 feet. The planking was of white fir, and the frames were probably of oak. All the metal fastenings below the water-line were of bronze, but above water they were iron. The nail heads were cemented over and the planking canvased, and finally a lead sheathing was laid on with copper nails. It has been ascertained that the builders had been careful to cut out any faulty timber, and to fill up the space with sound material. The metal fastenings connecting the timbers and planking were put through, the points being laid over and turned back into the wood. The planking in the first of the Nemi wrecks was of two thicknesses of 1½-inch stuff. In the larger of the two, three thicknesses of planking were found to exist, the beams for the decks being found to be attached to the gunwale as in the method seen on the Westminster ship.

Even if we allow a great deal for the knowledge in shipbuilding which the Romans acquired from the Veneti and from Gallic shipbuilders, yet everything points to the fact that Italy knew how to build and how to fight ships to such perfection that we cannot but feel for them the keenest admiration. If they were not great explorers such as the Phœnicians, they accomplished a great deal in other spheres of the maritime art, and sometimes in the teeth of great obstacles.

Details of Roman Ship found at Westminster.

Here and there Virgil gives us delightful little sea-cameos which show how keenly the ancients exulted in their ships, and raced them against each other past rock and cliff, through wind and spume. What, for example, could be more interesting than the account of the race of the four galleys in the fifth book of the Æneid? He gives you the names of the swift Pristis, the huge Chimæra, which with her triple arrangement of oars was so big that she seemed like a floating town, the Centaur, and the dark blue Scylla. He draws for you the picture of the captains standing at the sterns, the crew taking their seats at the oars and waiting in eager breathlessness for the trumpet to start them on their race. Almost you can see the strong arms being drawn up to the breast and thrust smartly away again. The blue Scylla wins, but it is a splendid struggle. The little touches of the ship which was “swifter than wind or flying arrow speeds towards land,” and of the disabled galley which moves slowly (like to a snake which has been run over), yet hoists her canvas and enters the harbour’s mouth “with full sails,” are pencilled in by a man who must have often watched a galley doing her work. He speaks of the lofty sterns which these galleys possessed, of Palinurus the pilot bidding his men to reef the sails at the gathering of a “dark storm of rain, bringing with it gloom and foul weather,” and gives orders to “labour at their strong oars, and sidewards turn the sails to meet the wind.” Evidently with the squall came a shift of wind, so that instead of being able to run with the breeze free, under sail power alone, they were now compelled to come on a wind, shorten canvas, and get out oars to prevent such shallow-draught vessels from drifting to leeward.

And in a later passage Æneas, after the sea has calmed down, “bids all the masts quickly to be raised, and on the sailyards the sails to be stretched. All at once veered the sheet, and loosened the bellying canvas to right, to left; at once they all turn up and down the tall ends of the sailyards; favouring breezes bear the fleet along. Foremost before them all, Palinurus led the close line; with an eye to him the rest were bid to direct their course. And now damp night had just reached the centre of its course in the heavens; the sailors, stretched on their hard seats beneath the oars, had relaxed their limbs in quiet repose.”

There is some indication in the Georgics of the manner in which the ancient seamen made use of stars and weatherology. “As carefully must the star of Arcturus, and the days of the Kids, and the bright Dragon be observed by us on land, as by those who, homewards bound across the stormy seas, venture to the Euxine and the straits of oyster-breeding Abydos.” ... “Hence we can learn coming changes of weather in the dubious sky, hence the days of harvest and the season of sowing, and when ’tis meet with oars to cut the faithless sea, when to launch our rigged fleets, and when at the proper time to fell the pine tree in the woods: nor will you be disappointed, if you watch the setting and rising of the heavenly signs, and observe the year fairly divided by four distinct seasons.” ... “Straightway, when winds arise, either the straits of the sea begin to swell with agitation, and a dry crash is heard on the high hills, or far in the distance the shores are filled with confused echoes, and the murmur of the woods thickens on the ear. The wave can but ill forbear to do a mischief to the crooked keels, even when gulls fly swiftly back from the high sea, sending their screams before them.... Oft too, when wind impends, you will see stars shoot headlong from the sky.... But when it lightens from the quarter of grim Boreas, and when the home of Eurus and Zephyrus thunders, then are the dykes filled and all the country is flooded, and every mariner out at sea furls his dripping sails.... The sun also, both when rising and when he hides himself beneath the waves, will give you signs; infallible signs attend the sun ... a blue colour announces rain, or fiery winds; but if the spots begin to be mixed with glowing red, then you will see all nature rage with wind and stormy rain together. On such a night let no one advise me to venture on the deep, or pluck my cable from its mooring on the shore.”

CHAPTER VI
THE VIKING MARINERS

War has always been a great incentive to shipbuilding. But this statement requires modification by excluding both civil war and the merchant ship. Of the former, no better instance could be found than the disastrous Wars of the Roses. Of the latter, the manner in which the Romans and others developed the war-galley at the neglect of the merchant ship is a clear example.

The Vikings, too, were great warriors; hence the wonderful development of their ships was for hostile purposes. But, unlike the Romans, they were equally distinguished as maritime explorers. And it is with their methods on the sea that we are now about to deal. They were so vigorous in their activities, so dauntless and daring, such genuinely strenuous shipmen that they were bound to do great things, or fail where none could have succeeded. “They had neither compass nor astronomical instruments,” as Dr. Nansen reminds us, “nor any of the appliances of our time for finding their position at sea; they could only sail by the sun, moon, and stars, and it seems incomprehensible how for days and weeks, when these were invisible, they were able to find their course through fog and bad weather. But they found it, and the open craft of the Norwegian Vikings, with their square sails, fared north and west over the whole ocean, from Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen to Greenland, Baffin’s Bay, Newfoundland, and North America, and over these lands and seas the Norsemen extended their dominion. It was not till five hundred years later that the ships of other nations were to make their way to the same regions.”[18]

That being so, how did these men succeed in making such long passages? The lodestone or compass did not reach Norway until the thirteenth century. I think that before we attempt a more definite answer we should make a great allowance for that sea-sense which is partly inborn and partly obtained by the experience of long years. I remember once asking a man who had been skipper of a coaster, whose family had lived their lives on the sea or by it, whose brothers had gone down with their ships to the port whence there is no returning—how the captains of such craft managed. Had they any real knowledge of navigation? “No, sir,” my friend answered, “they’re all mostly self-reliant.” In other words, they have a rough knowledge of the problems, and the rest is instinct. Only the other day I was talking to yet another plain, seafaring man. I asked him how he and his mates managed to find their way in by night through a certain very tricky and unlighted channel that was full of dangers and scoured by a strong tide. It was the same answer. “They managed as best they could,” relied on their instinct, sometimes made mistakes and got picked up, but on the whole succeeded in getting through.

I suppose it was much the same with the Vikings. But with this exception: that, being unfettered by book-learning, they possessed the instinctive faculty more thoroughly. They knew the Scandinavian coast-line thoroughly well; and long coasting voyages had taught them the configuration of other nations’ shores. The rising and setting of the sun would assist them in clear weather, and the Pole-star at night. They were wont to carry in their ships a number of ravens, and when they were expecting soon to make a landfall and it was useless to climb the mast, they released these birds, which, flying high, spotted the distant shore and flew towards it. The Viking mariner could thus set his course to follow their direction of flight.

Of course, with such rough-and-ready methods they made egregious mistakes and sometimes found themselves sailing in exactly the opposite direction to that desired, like some amateur yachtsmen who have sailed through the night by the wind and not known that the wind had veered several points. Dr. Nansen gives as an instance of a Viking’s mistake that of Thorstein Ericson, who in starting from Greenland arrived off Iceland instead of America. And, be it added, there are plenty of well-found ships to-day, both sail and steam, which, in spite of all their sextants, their patent logs, and deep-sea sounding leads, have made landfalls miles off their course.

Their sense of time, too, was another instinct which few of us possess to-day. “Several accounts show,” says the same Scandinavian authority, “that on land the Scandinavians knew how to observe the sun accurately, in what quarter and at what time it set, how long the day or the night lasted at the summer or winter solstice, etc. From this they formed an idea of their northern latitude.” It is just possible that they may even have understood how to take primitive measurements of the sun’s altitude at noon with a species of quadrant. But it is not likely that during those long, early voyages they could have been able to take observations of this kind from their ships. Nor can they have understood how to reckon the latitude from such measurements except at the equinoxes and solstices.

From the narrative of a voyage north of Baffin’s Bay, about the year 1267, it appears that they endeavoured at sea to get an idea of the sun’s altitude by observing where the shadow of the gunwale, on the side nearest the sun, fell on a man lying athwartships when the sun was in the south. This shows, at any rate, that the Norsemen did at least observe the sun’s altitude. Even in thick weather they could get along satisfactorily provided that the wind did not shift and send them off their course. But if the breeze veered or backed a few points they would be heading unconsciously in the wrong direction.

The observations of birds were of no little assistance. If the haze hid the land off whose coasts they imagined themselves to be, they could observe the kind of bird which was flying around them. A flight of wild-fowl, a particular breed of sea-bird, the difference in the fauna, and so on, when off such coasts as Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, and Norway, could not fail to assist them greatly. It is true, also, that in their sailing directions they took notice of the whale. Thus, when sailing from Norway to Greenland one should keep at such a distance to the southward of Iceland as to have birds and whales from thence. Similarly, the drift-ice, icebergs, driftwood, floating seaweed, the colour of the sea were all separate units in the whole method which enabled them to perform what they did. The Gulf Stream water, being of a purer blue than the greenish-brown water of the coastal current, must also have assisted them in their long voyages. Like the ancient seamen of the Mediterranean, they relied largely on the sounding lead, and there is a record that Ingolf and Hjorleif found Iceland “by probing the waves with the lead.”

Primitive Navigation of the Vikings.

Finding the ship’s latitude by the shadow of the gunwale.

As to the primitive method, referred to above, for finding the ship’s latitude by observing the shadow of the gunwale, it has been suggested that they might have measured the length of the shadow of the gunwale by marks on the thwart, and determined when the boat lay on an even keel by means of a bowl of water. They could thus obtain a fairly trustworthy measurement of the sun’s altitude. It has been thought possible that the Norwegians might have become acquainted with the hour-glass either from their voyages to Southern Europe, or else by plundering the monasteries. This would enable them to measure the length of day approximately, and so, taken in conjunction with the sun, be able to tell fairly correctly the direction of the cardinal points of the compass.

There are some who scoff at the idea that the Vikings discovered North America. But there are first-rate authorities, among whom may be reckoned Dr. Nansen himself, who are quite convinced that these men did sail across the sea and land there. Certain incredulous people would have us believe that an open craft such as the Viking type would never last out a voyage like that across the Atlantic. But this supposition is immediately refuted by the Norse craft which was built on the lines and to the exact dimensions of the Gogstad Viking ship discovered in 1880. Rigged with a squaresail, with a jib added and without any other ship as convoy, this replica was sailed from Bergen to Newport, Rhode Island, in the year 1893. The voyage began on May 1, and the United States were reached on June 13. She was commanded by Captain Magnus Andersen, who had already, in 1886, crossed the Atlantic in an open boat. Although bad weather was encountered, yet Captain Andersen and his crew of eleven men reached Newport in safety. His ship proved that the Viking type made a very fine seaboat, and furthermore that she was fast even in the deep furrows of the ocean; for she did an average of nine knots easily, but when the seas fitted her exactly she could reel off her eleven knots.

For these old Vikings, intrepid mariners and pioneers of the sea, had by their skill and experience been able to develop an improved type of ship which combined the advantages of speed and seaworthiness. In such craft they voyaged to places as far apart as Palestine and Greenland. By their travels they completely changed the existing ideas of geography. When they ceased to make merely coasting voyages and took to the blue water, they were doing more than perhaps they realised. They crossed the North Sea to the Shetlands and Orkneys, to Britain and Ireland, to the Faroe Isles, to Iceland, to Greenland, and finally to America. Just exactly when first the Northmen crossed the North Sea cannot be determined; but some authorities believe that it was undertaken before the Viking age. As early as the third century of the Christian era, the Eruli sailed from Scandinavia over the seas of Western Europe and ravaged Gaul and Spain, and even penetrated during the fifth century to the Mediterranean as far as Italy. During the sixth century the Vikings voyaged from Denmark to the land of the Franks, but the first Viking expedition began in A.D. 793. In the year 999, Leif, the son of Eric the Red, sailed from Greenland via the Hebrides to Norway. This is the first recorded time that such a lengthy sea voyage was attempted, for prior to this the journey had been made via Iceland. But it is also clear, from the sailing directions which have come down to us for navigating the northern waters, that voyages were made direct from Norway to Greenland. It was this same Leif who, in the year A.D. 1000, discovered America.

The question must necessarily occur (as in the case of the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phœnicians) as to the means of provisioning these Viking ships for such lengthy cruises. If Captain Andersen and his men in 1893 were able to last out, there is no reason why the ancient Norsemen should not, even if we make some allowance for the modern advantages of preserved foods. We know very little as to the methods adopted to ensure adequate food-supplies, but we do know that bronze cooking vessels have been found which belonged to these craft. They used salt meat and salt fish, and these they could obtain by hunting and fishing in the neighbourhood of Iceland, Scotland, Greenland, and so on. Nansen asserts that they certainly took cattle with them on some voyages; and they could also catch seals to keep the pot from running empty. In sheltered waters, such as the Norwegian fjords, when at anchor, the crew erected a triangular awning over the ship and turned-in in leather sleeping bags.

But it is by making a careful study of the Sagas that we are able to get a true idea of the life and methods of these magnificent seamen, and from this source I propose to extract the following interesting data. In these heroic narratives there is much to interest the lover of the sea and ships. There is a continual clashing of shield and sword, a slatting of canvas and a splashing of oars, as the long-ships leap over the cold, silvery seas. The air is full of the deep-throated shouts of the sea-kings; the horizon is bright with the coloured sails and the gilded prows. Every man is a picked fighter and seaman; every craft a thing of beauty and of strength. There are the dark, cruel rocks, and the crimson blood of the vanquished, the sound of the waterfalls coming down from the cliffs, the fluttering of pennants, the hammering of the shipwrights’ men ashore, the cries of the women-folk as they behold the distant battles. There is nothing subtle in the picture; the colours are laid thickly, and the tones are crude as a modern poster. But there is bravery and seamanship, and above all the sweet sea smell which pervades these accounts and stirs the enthusiasm of the reader to its full extent. You feel as you read them that ships and men both seem to have been of the right stuff, that in those days there was a grandeur about the sea which not easily can be forgotten.

The Scandinavians to this day remain, perhaps, the hardiest race of sailors to be found anywhere. They have penetrated to the neighbourhood of both poles, and they put to sea in such leaky, ill-found merchant ships year after year, that it makes you nervous to think of them battling against a breeze of wind in craft which have been condemned by most other nationalities. Even in the Viking days they were great seamen, without fear, unfaltering. But, like the South Europeans, they used to leave the sea alone during the winter, hauling their ships by rollers up the beach in the autumn, and then make them snug in their shed till the spring tempted them again to fit out. But Harald Hairfair is recorded as having set the example of remaining all winter afloat in his warships, a proceeding which was quite contrary to the prevailing custom.

But there were other times when it was fortunate that this type of ship could be moved about so easily. For example, when King Harald had learnt that King Svein “was come before the mouth of the firth with a great host of ships,” the former rowed his vessels in the evening to a narrow slip, and when it became dark he had the vessels unloaded and dragged them over the low land-neck before daybreak, and had “arrayed” the ships again, so that he was able to sail away to the nor’ard past Jutland, and thus escape out of the Danes’ hands. And there are occasions on record when the Vikings dragged their ships for two miles over ice. They loved their ships, these men of the biting north, and even in the time of personal peril dreaded that their craft should fall into the hands of the enemy. When Sigurd was being pursued by King Ingi he was careful to scuttle his ship before abandoning her. He “hewed off stem and stern of his ship, and sheared rifts therein and sank it in the innermost Ægis-firth.” So, too, they would treat an enemy’s ship. Thus Erling Askew “fared away from the land,” “arrayed them for a Jerusalem-faring and fared west over sea to Orkney,” and so to the Mediterranean, where they lighted upon a dromon and attacked her by cutting rifts in her side below, as well as above, the water-mark—“hewed windows” in her, as the old Saga realistically has it.

They were masters of cunning, too. Harek of Thiotta was coming along one evening with his fleet “with the wind blowing a breeze. Then he let strike sail and mast, and take down the vane, and wrap all the ship above the water in grey hangings, and let men row on a few benches fore and aft, but let most of the men sit low in the ship.” This somewhat puzzled King Knut’s men, who wondered what ship it could be, for they saw only few men and little rowing. Moreover, she seemed to be grey and untarred, “like a ship bleached by the sun, and withal they saw that the ship was much low in the water. But when Harek came forth into the sound past the host, he let raise the mast and hoist sail, and let set up gilded vanes, and the sail was white as snowdrift, and done with red and blue bands.”

And here is another instance where the ships kept afloat during the winter. The passage is interesting as showing that they shortened sail by taking in a reef: “On Thomas-mass [December 21], before Yule, the King put out of the haven, there being a right good fair wind somewhat sharp. So then they sailed north coasting Jadar; the weather was wet, and some fog driving about.” But Erling Skialgson sailed after him, and because his long-ships went faster than the others, “he let reef the sail and waited for his host.” But Olaf’s ships “were very water-logged and soaked.” “He let call from ship to ship that men should lower the sails and somewhat slowly, and take one reef out of them.” They slacked away the halyards, then tucked in a reef, and then doubtless sweated up the yard again.

In reading these Sagas, it is necessary to understand the different species of craft which the Norsemen employed. Firstly, there were the warships or dragons. Secondly, there were the long serpent or snake class, which also were men-of-war. Thirdly, there were ships of burden, ocean-going merchantmen, fishing boats, and small fry. The long-ship, which was a man-of-war, was not suitable for freight-carrying on those trading voyages to Ireland and elsewhere. But the kaupskip, broad of beam and with ample freeboard, was built for service on the island-sheltered waters of Norway and the Baltic. So also the knörr, which was used for both ocean trading and overseas warfare, was wont to sail as far away as to the Orkneys. Such a type was so big that she could carry 150 men. It should be borne in mind that this was essentially a sailing ship, while the long-ship was more for rowing. The smallest of the long-ships were of twenty-five benches, i.e. for a crew of fifty oarsmen; in other words, about the same as a Roman penteconter. Some, however, were fitted with only twenty benches for forty oars. The skuta type of warship rowed from fifteen to twenty oars aside, but the snekkja, or long serpent class, carried from twenty to thirty aside, and the skeid from thirty to thirty-five aside. The word “skeid” signifies originally that it was a craft built of split wood, or strake-built. This expression was used doubtless in contradistinction to the craft which were merely hollowed out from the tree. Sigurd, after scuttling his ships, caused Finns to build him two cutters sinew-bound, which had no nails therein but had withies for knees. These craft could each row a dozen men a side. They were so fast that no ship could overtake them. The dragon type was so called from the dragon’s head at the stem-head, and the animal’s tail which ended the ship as the lotus-bud was wont on the ancient Egyptian craft. The earliest mention of the dragon type dates from A.D. 868.

There was a craft named the Crane, which was a long-ship of the snekkja type. She was high in the stem, not beamy, carried thirty benches for her rowers, and had been constructed for the use of King Olaf Tryggvison during the autumn of 998. But the ship which became a prototype and was the envy of all that beheld her, was a vessel presently to be named the Long Worm. Let me tell the story thus: One winter King Olaf gave the order for her to be constructed, and there, under the Ladir cliffs in the cold, bracing air, the shipmen set to work. “Much greater it was than other ships,” records the Saga, “that were then in the land, and yet are the slips whereon it was built left there for a token[19]; seventy-and-four ells of grass-lying keel was it.[20] Thorberg Shavehewer was the master-smith of that ship, but there were many others at work: some to join, some to chip, some to smite rivets, some to fit timbers.... Long was that ship, and broad of beam, high of bulwark, and great in the scantling. But now when they were gotten to the freeboard Thorberg had some needful errand that took him home to his house, and he tarried there very long, and when he came back the bulwark was all done. Now the king went in the eventide, and Thorberg with him to look on the ship, and see how the ship showed, and every man said that never yet had they seen a long-ship so great or so goodly: and so the king went back to the town.”

But early next morning, when the king and Thorberg returned to the ship, and the smiths were already there, the latter stood doing nothing. They exclaimed that the ship was spoilt, for some man had evidently gone round from stem to stern cutting notches with an axe along the gunwale. The king was exceedingly angry, and promised punishment if the offender should be found out. Thereupon, to the surprise of all, Thorberg instantly owned up as being himself the culprit, and he set about planing all the notches out of the gunwale. He went round the side which had been notched with his pattern, but when he had done so, it was generally agreed that the notching, far from being a disfigurement, was in fact an ornament. The king decided that Thorberg’s pattern was an improvement, so his anger ceased, and he bade him to do the same ornamentation along the other side.

This dragon-ship, built after the manner of the Worm which the king had got from Halogaland, was a far more excellent and larger ship than the model; so he named one the Long Worm and the other the Short Worm. On this great vessel were thirty-four benches for the oarsmen. She was most beautifully finished off with all the affectionate care and pride which only a Viking could bestow on a ship. Done all over with gold, with bulwarks as high as on a ship built for sailing the “main sea,” this Long Worm was the marvel of her age. “The best wrought and the most costly was that ship of any that have been in Norway.” Wolf the Red was the man who had the honoured post of bearing King Olaf’s banner in the prow of that ship. Around this valiant standard-bearer were four men to fight for that flag. And the crew were as notable as their ship. As she excelled all other craft, so they excelled all other men. They were picked men, every one of them, reputed to be famous for “godliness and might and stout heart.” With their gleaming shields and fine stature they took up their allotted positions. Looking down the ship from bow to stern, there were the standard-bearer and his company in the prow. Then abaft of them were a dozen forecastle men ready to resist any enemy who thought he might board the Norse ship at that critical part. Next came the thirty forehold men, astern of whom were another company in the mainhold. “Eight men there to a half-berth in the Worm, all chosen man by man.” At the poop was the commander, and immediately below him was the ship’s arsenal, where the arms were kept ready for immediate service.

But the coming of the Long Worm was not to be taken lightly. There was some other whom she had moved to jealousy. “King Harald sat that winter in Nidoyce,” says the Saga. “He let build a ship that winter out at Eres that was a buss-ship. This craft was fashioned after the waxing of the Long Worm, and done most heedfully in all wise. There was a drake-head forward, and a crooked tail aft, and the bows of her were all adorned with gold. It was of thirty-five benches, and big thereto, and the bravest of keels it was. All the outfit of the ship the king let be made at the heedfullest, both sails and running-tackle, anchors, and cables.”

Anchor of Oseberg Viking Ship.

Primitive Blocks and Tackle
employed on Viking Ships.

Rowlock on a Viking Ship.

A leather thong was passed through the
hole to keep the oar from unshipping.

Fastenings of a Viking Ship.

And there were others whose ships were a source of wonder and of admiration. King Knut “himself had that dragon, which was so mickle that it told up sixty benches, and on it were heads gold-bedight. Earl Hakon had another dragon that had a tale of forty benches. Thereon also were gilt heads; but the sails of both were banded of blues and red and green. These ships were all stained above the water-line.” Very keen were these North-men in using the sea as well for pleasure as for service. “Now on a fair day of spring tide was Harek at home, and few men with him at the stead, and the time hung heavy on his hands. So Sigurd spake to him, saying that if he will, they will go a-rowing somewhither for their disport. That liked Harek well: so they go down to the strand, and launch a six-oarer, and Sigurd took from the boathouse sail and gear that went with the craft; for such-wise oft they fared to take the sail with them when they rowed for their disport. Then Harek went aboard the boat and shipped the rudder.... Now before they went aboard the craft they cast into her a butter-keg and bread basket, and bare between them a beer-cask down to the boat. Then they rowed away from land; but when they were come a little way from the isle, then the brethren hoisted sail and Harek steered, and they speedily made way from the isle.”

Both ships and gear were frequently stored in sheds. There is an account of a man who “went down to the water and took the ship of burden which he owned, and King Olaf had given him, and ran out the craft; but all the gear appertaining to it was there in the ship-house.” And again, one of the North-men remarks: “The ship of burden which I have had this while, and here stands in her shed, methinks it is now become so ancient that she rots under her tar.” They hauled these great ships ashore to the sheds by means of rollers:

“... heard how the boardlong
Dane-ships o’er the well-worn rollers
In the south were run out seaward ...”

so sings one of the Sagas. “After Easter,” runs another of these narratives, “the king let run out his ships, and bear thereto rigging and oars. He let deck the ships, and tilt them and bedight them: he let ships float thus arrayed by the gangways.” For it was the fitting-out season, you will realise. The word tilt signifies tent. “He let deck” does not mean quite what it would convey to modern minds; all that it indicates is that he replaced the floor-boards, which had been removed at the end of the previous season so that the air could get down below to the ship. Nor does gangway convey the exact definition. It means nothing more than the pier or jetty alongside which the ships were moored after fitting out.

The naval tactics of these men consisted in laying their craft alongside the enemy, boarding him, and then slashing away at the latter and hewing off the figurehead or the tail of his ship as trophies. As they approached, they threw grappling anchors into the other vessel, just as they were wont to fight in the Mediterranean. Thus there is a reference to the incident when “the forecastle men of the Long Worm and the Short Worm and the Crane cast anchors and grapplings on to the ships of King Svein.” And this method survived in Northern Europe right through the Middle Ages. When they boarded a ship they did their best to “clear” the ship by cutting down the defenders, or driving them overboard or else into other ships. That was their main objective—to get the ship to themselves. “Now in those days,” says one of the Sagas, “the wont was when men fought a-shipboard, to bind the ships together and fight from the forecastle.” “Now the most defence on the Worm, and the most murderous to men was of those of the forehold and the forecastle, for in either place was the most chosen folk and the bulwark highest.” And again—“Erling Askew set upon the ship of King Hakon, and shoved his prow in betwixt it and Sigurd’s ship, and then befell the battle. But the ship of Gregory was swept aground, and heeled over much, so at first they gat them not into the onset.”

Vikings Boarding an Enemy.

The flagship of King Olaf at the battle of Nesiar, in the year 1016, had on the stem a carved head of the king which he himself had fashioned. “That head was long sithence in Norway used on ships which chieftains steered.” At this battle the king had a crew of a hundred in his ship, and most of them carried white shields “with the holy cross laid thereon in gold, while some were drawn with red stone or blue; a cross withal he had let draw in white on the brow of all helms. He had a white banner, and that was a worm. Thereafter he let blow the war-blast, and they set off out of the harbour, rowing in search of the earl.” ... “The king’s men caught the beaks of the [enemy’s] ships with grapnels, and thus held them fast. Then the earl cried out that the forecastlemen should hew off the beaks, and even so they did.”

Ten years later this same Olaf was the owner of a vessel named the Bison, which was “the greatest of all ships,” “which he had let make the winter before.” On her prow “was a bison-head dight in gold.” Aft there was a tail, and the head, the tail, and both beaks were all laid with gold. She was a big craft, for she rowed more than sixty men. Arrows and swords were the weapons with which the Norsemen fought, and the chests or lockers were kept well filled for the fray. “King Olaf Tryggvison stood on the poop of the Worm, and shot full oft that day, whiles with the bow and whiles with javelins, and ever twain at once.... Then went the king down into the forehold, and unlocked the chest of the high-seat; and took thence many sharp swords and gave them to his men.” For the poop consisted of a section of the ship with a floor above the ordinary deck, and commanded a view over the whole of the ship. Valiant were the fights often enough, but there were occasions when the contest was so unequal that there was no alternative but to flee. They would then throw overboard rafts with clothes and precious articles heaped on the top in hopes that, by attracting the cupidity of their pursuers, they themselves would succeed in getting away scot-free.

The capture of the ship Worm—this was the Little Worm, and not her bigger sister—happened on this wise: King Olaf stood to the northward sailing with the land abroad. Wherever he went ashore he christened the unbaptised. The time came when he turned his ships to the southward, but it came to pass that then he was harassed by “a driving storm with brine spray down the firth.” Finally, he spoke to Bishop Sigurd, and asked him if he knew of any remedy. The bishop answered that he would do what he could, provided God would strengthen his hands to overcome the might of these weather fiends. The picture which the Saga suggests is one that I believe has never yet been attempted by any artist, but there is a fine subject for anyone who could depict the northern blue mists, the high rocks, the sea, the great assembly of Viking ships and men, the bright colours contrasted with the sombre hues of atmosphere, the bishop in his vestments surrounded by these stalwart storm warriors. “So took Bishop Sigurd all his mass-array and went forth on to the prow of the king’s ship, and let kindle the candles, and bore incense. Then he set up the rood in the prow of the ship, and read out the gospel and many prayers, and sprinkled holy water over all the ship. Then he bade unship the tilt and row in up the firth.” Thereupon all the other ships followed the lead, and lo, as soon as the men in the Crane began to row, the crew felt no wind whatever. The driving storm was gone. In that sudden calm the fleet rowed quietly the one ship astern of the other, and so they arrived at God Isles. There they came upon Raud the Unchristened, and he was put to death with little enough mercy. His dragon-ship was captured, and Olaf called her the Worm—the Little Worm—“because when the sail was aloft then should that be as the wings of the dragon. The fairest of all Norway was that ship.”

The Viking ships had no use for head winds. “But when they sought east into the Wick,” runs the narrative elsewhere, “they got foul winds and big, and lay-to in havens wide about, both in the out-isles and in up the firths.” Dr. Eirikr Magnusson[21] believes that the Halogalanders were in the art of navigation far ahead of the more southerly Norwegians about the year A.D. 1000; and interprets the following to indicate this much. For myself, I have a vague suspicion that it may signify not so much navigation as seamanship, and that it means that Raud understood the art of beating to windward. No doubt these squaresail craft would not haul any nearer to the wind than seven points, but these ships were in no great hurry to make quick passages. They could go about on the other tack and so have—to quote the Saga’s expression—the wind “at will.” This is the statement under discussion: “Raud rowed out to sea with his dragon, and so let hoist sail; for ever had he wind at will whithersoever he would sail, which thing came from his wizardry.” It seems to me that this is exactly explained by beating to windward when the breeze headed them.

The squaresail was hoisted by the halyard, and the yard was kept to the mast by means of parrals (rakki). The sail when hoisted was said to be “topped,” while its straining at the halyard was poetically alluded to as “wrangling with the tackle.” “Topped sails with tackle wrangled,” is a sentence found among the Heimskringla. There is more than one illuminating reference to the sails of the Norsemen which can claim our attention. “But as they hauled up the sail the halliard broke asunder, and down came the sail athwart the ship, and a long while Thorir and his must needs tarry there, or ever they got up their sail a second time.” It is true that the Vikings relied considerably on their oars, but for long passages it is unquestionable that their large squaresail was their main means of propulsion. Thus, for example, a fleet might sail to the fjord under sail-power to meet their enemies, but the sail would be lowered before the fight. The oar was kept in position against the thole-pin, and prevented from slipping along the gunwale by means of a strap, and the sixty odd rowers, with their fine physical strength and healthy endurance, could make these easy-lined craft leap across the waves with a speed fully equal to that which their coloured sails could give to them. There is more than one reference, too, to the different hues of these sails then prevailing in Northern Europe, the “English king Knut” having blue sails on the yard of each of his ships.

When they voyaged there was nothing of the modern hurry of seafaring life. They were not compelled to perform a certain passage within a specified number of days, and they could wait as long as their commanders wished for a fair wind to spring up. “After that King Sigurd fared to his ships, and made ready to leave Jerusalem-land. They sailed north to that island which hight Cyprus, and there King Sigurd dwelt somewhile and fared sithence to Greekland, and laid-to all his host off Angelness, and lay there for half a month. And every day was a fair breeze north along the main; but he willed to bide such a wind as should be a right side-wind, so that sails might be set end-long of the ship, for all his sails were set with pall, both fore and aft: for this reason, that both they who were forward, as well as they who were aft, would not to look on the unfair sails.” The meaning of this expression is quite obvious to a seaman. Sigurd clearly wanted to make his voyage with the wind in such a direction that it was abeam rather than dead aft. The logical inference from this extract is that his ships sailed best on a broad reach rather than when running free. And if we may judge from the lines and dimensions of those Viking ships which have been unearthed in Scandinavia in such wonderful preservation, it is quite certain that these long, straight-keeled craft would be very fast on a wind.

And how were they steered? The rudder was placed on the starboard side, the round top of it being secured to the gunwale by means of a loop which one may call the rudder-strap. At a proper distance down, says Dr. Magnusson, a cone-shaped piece of wood was nailed to the side of the boat, the top of the cone being plumb with the outside of the gunwale. Through the rudder, where it took the form of a broad oar-blade, a hole was made corresponding to one through the cone-shaped piece of wood which went right through the side of the boat. A cord drawn through the hole in the rudder and the conic piece of wood, and made fast within board, gave to the rudder a fixed position. By loosening the cord the rudder could be lifted at will and taken inboard. Through the neck of the rudder a square hole was made, into which fitted the end of the tiller, by means of which the helmsman moving it towards him starboarded the rudder, and ported it by performing the exact opposite.

There was a plank at the back of the seat of the helmsman against which he could steady himself in handling the helm, just as many a steersman on small craft to-day get support for controlling the tiller in a seaway. This was known as the “staying board.” Thus “Einar shot at Earl Eric, and the arrow smote the tiller-head above the head of the earl, and went in up to the shaft binding. The earl looked thereon, and asked if they wist who shot; and even therewith came another arrow so nigh that it flew betwixt the earl’s side and his arm, and so on to the staying-board of the steersman, and the point stood far beyond.”

We must picture in our minds the Norse steersman sitting with his face to the starboard side, his hand on the tiller. The stjornbordi—or steering side—was the starboard. The bakbordi was the port side. Why bakbordi? Because it was the board at the back of the helmsman when he sat looking to starboard or steering side. And so to this day, although no longer a ship has her rudder at the side, yet the right-hand side of a ship is always the starboard.

Notwithstanding the curious fact that in certain parts of Europe, at an extraordinarily early date, chain cables were actually in use, yet it is quite clear that those of the Viking ships were of rope. These cables were twisted round the beaks of the ships, the beaks consisting of pieces of timber placed upright in and about the prow of the ship. They were similar to the bitts such as you see in a modern lifeboat or yacht. So, whenever the Viking vessel was at anchor, or she was lashed alongside her enemy in pitched battle, the cable of the anchor or the grapnel was made fast to these timbers. In the account of the flight of Earl Svein, it is recorded that “when the earl saw to how hopeless a pass things were come, he called upon his forecastle men to cut the cables and let loose the ships, and even so they did. Then the king’s men caught the beaks of the ships with grapnels, and thus held them fast. Then the earl cried out that the forecastlemen should hew off the beaks, and even so they did.” And again: “Einar Thambarskelfir had laid his ship on the other board of that of the earl, and his men threw an anchor into the prow of the earl’s ship, and thus they all drifted together into the firth; and after that the whole host of the earl took to flight, and rowed out into the firth.”

Ships might not bring-up where they liked. There was decided precedence among the Norsemen, as will be observed from the following incident: “On a summer Earl Hakon had out his fleet, and Thorleif the Sage was master of a ship therein. Of that company also was Eric, the earl’s son, who was as then ten or eleven winters old. So, whenever they brought-to in havens at night-tide, nought seemed good to Eric but to moor his ship next to the earl’s ship. But when they were come south to Mere, thither came Skopti, the earl’s brother-in-law, with a long-ship all manned; but as they rowed up to the fleet, Skopti called out to Thorleif to clear the haven for him, and shift his berth. Eric answered speedily, bidding Skopti take another berth. That heard Earl Hakon, how Eric his son now deemed himself so mighty that he would not give place to Skopti. So the earl called out straightway, and bade them leave their berth, saying that somewhat worser lay in store for them else, to wit, to be beaten. So when Thorleif heard that, he cried out to his men to slip their cables; and even so was it done. And Skopti lay in the berth whereas he was wont, next to the earl’s ship to wit.”

There were a number of small row-boats employed by the Vikings, the size of which did not allow of more than six oarsmen. No doubt these were employed for going ashore when the big ships lay some distance from the shore. But often the Viking craft lay alongside piers. “Gunnstein said that now was the turn of the tide, and it was time to sail. Therewith they drew in their cables.... In this they fared on until they came to Geirsver, the first place where, coming from the north, one may lie at a pier. Thither they came both one day at eve, and lay in haven there off the pier.” The mention is also made of gangways for getting on board from the shore.

But sometimes they lay moored stem and stern in much the same fashion as the ancient Greeks were wont. They let go their bow anchors in deep water, veered out cable, took a line ashore from the stern, and then, each ship having done this, the whole fleet were lashed up together side by side just as to-day you often see a whole fleet of fishermen tethered in a small harbour. There are several passages in the Sagas which call attention to the manner in which their ships were moored. “Forthwith when Karli, and his, got aboard their ship, they swept off the tilts, and cast off the moorings; then they drew up sail, and the ship soon sped off into the main.” Or again ... “said they had seen King Hakon’s host, and all the arrayal thereof; said that they were lying up by the stakes and had moored their sterns to the stakes; they have two east-faring keels, and have laid them outermost of all the ships; on these keels are masthead castles, and castles withal in the prow of them both.”

This last quotation, belonging to the twelfth century, has reference to the mode of fighting which was in vogue during the Middle Ages, when the fighting tops, the castellated structures at both bow and stern, were such significant features on these long, narrow ships. The word “keel” is used not, of course, in reference to any particular portion of the ship’s structure, but to the ship as a whole. The word is still in active use to-day on the Humber as applied to a species of craft which, with its large squaresail as its only canvas, bears some similarity to the old Norse ceols or keels.

Viking Ship with Awning up ready for the Night.

The crews of these ships slept under those “tilts” or awnings which were spread across the ship in an inverted V-shape. In harbour the tilts were spread over the entire vessel. But in less sheltered anchorages, and when at sea, tilts were rigged over only portions of the ship to afford sufficient protection to the men. But in all cases these tilts or tjalds were struck before the ship went into action, for the obvious reason that it was desirable to have the entire ship clear for fighting. The food-supplies, both solid and fluid, were carried in casks, and the mess system is well described in one of the Sagas entitled “The Story of the Ere-Dwellers.” “In those days,” runs the narrative, “was it the wont of chapmen to have no cooks, but the messmates chose by lot amongst themselves who should have the ward of the mess day by day. Then, too, was it the wont of all the midshipmen to have their drink in common, and a cask should stand by the mast with the drink therein, and a locked lid was over it. But some of the drink was in tuns, and was added to the cask thence as soon as it was drunk out.”

We know nothing as to whether these Norse ships possessed bilge pumps. The probability is that they did not, but a bailing butt was certainly part of their inventory. Evidently there was a well some distance aft, into which any water shipped was allowed to drain and thence bailed out, as the reader shall presently see from the following quotation. The description refers to the time when King Harald manned his new dragon-galley. “The said dragon he manned with his court-guard and bareserks,” runs the Saga. “The stem men were the men most tried, because they had with them the king’s banner; aft from the stem to the bailing place was the forecastle, and that was manned by the bareserks. Those only could get court-service with King Harald who were men peerless both of strength and good heart and all prowess; with such only was his ship manned.”

Each oarsman had about three and a half feet to work in. There is more than one reference in these Sagas to the beds and berths on the Viking ships. “When the ship of Magnus was much ridded, and he was lying in his berth,” etc. In the ships of war the rowing benches did not stretch right across the vessel, as this would interfere with the mobility of the fighting men, who must needs be left free to rush forward or aft as the case might be during the battle. The oarsmen therefore had each a bench just roomy enough to sit down and do their work whilst pulling at the oar. Little enough is told us of the commander, but we know that in the ship’s inventory was included his mess-table or “meat-board.”

They were strong of body, these Norsemen, like their ships, brave and valiant fighters, and they were not altogether bereft of wit, as for instance when, wishing to convey an insult, someone fashioned an anchor from a piece of cheese, and said that “such would hold the ships of Norway’s king.” They were adaptable, too, as in such cases when they readily took their anchors ashore, bound them to long staves, and employed them for razing an enemy’s wall to the ground. But, most of all, they were seamen of the very finest type which the world has ever seen.

CHAPTER VII
SEAMANSHIP AND NAVIGATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES

When we consider all the wondrous achievements on the part of the Ancients, when we consider how many centuries they were engaged in maritime matters, it is a matter for some surprise that, with the exception of what was done by the Phœnicians, there was practically no maritime discovery made by them. They were content with the limitations of the Mediterranean, and beyond the Gaditan Straits they did not venture.

At first sight it certainly is a little strange. But the reason is quite obvious. Their seamanship was good enough, but their navigation was of an inferior order. The Romans, for example, were not geographers, and without some knowledge of geography even the crudest navigational methods lose their value. Among the Greeks and Romans there existed curious and uncertain ideas concerning the earth. Some thought that it floated on the water like a bowl. Some believed that it was like to a column or stone pillar; others that it was hollow as a dish. Some said it was as flat as a table; some that its shape was similar to a drum. So with all these conflicting ideas there was no accurate knowledge of the world.

Further, though there were astronomers, yet they were incompetent and of little value from a practical point of view. Lastly, the ancients had yet to learn the essential value of the loadstone. Hence their mariners were not fitted for such long voyages as were to be made later on by the Portuguese. The early Mediterranean mariners were efficient so long as they kept within the confines of their own enormous lake, for their voyaging was practically coastal. Even when they had to sail North and South they had such places as Rhodes to enable them to break their journey and make a good departure from. They could never lose themselves for long, for they knew the aspect of the various promontories and bays. They could “smell” their way through most channels even when the light failed them. And remember, too, that theirs were not big ships if compared with the caravels which were to come later. There were plenty of oarsmen in the warships if it became necessary to claw off a lee shore, and these shallow-draught vessels could float in the most shallow channels.

But if they had been called upon to cross the Atlantic or, rounding the South of Africa, traverse the Indian Ocean, they would have soon lost themselves when out of sight of land for many days; so they kept to their own sea and left the discovering of the world to others who should come centuries later. Hipparchus had been the first to make a catalogue of the stars about the year 150 B.C. Pass over a somewhat barren interval till you come to the year A.D. 150 and you find Ptolemy correcting the tables of Hipparchus. In Ptolemy we have the summit of classical knowledge as reached during the times of the ancients. His account of the universe and the movements of the heavenly bodies had a great influence on the seafarers in the Middle Ages, and so on the world’s discoveries. Now Ptolemy’s geography was based for the most part on “itineraries.” These, in modern parlance, were simply guide-books for travellers: that is to say, they consisted of tables and routes showing the stopping-places. Such data as these afforded had been obtained for the most part from military campaigns—especially Roman—and from the voyages made by sailors, but also from merchants.

Ptolemy made a wonderful improvement in cartographical representation by introducing correction with converging meridians, this method having been commenced by Hipparchus. But Ptolemy was singularly fortunate to have been living at the time when the Roman Empire was at its height, and so enabled to obtain a mass of geographical details through the extensive administration of this far-reaching dominion.