VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM
SCIENCE HANDBOOKS.

A N C I E N T  A N D  M O D E R N

S H I P S.

PART I.

WOODEN SAILING-SHIPS.

BY
SIR GEORGE C. V. HOLMES, K.C.V.O., C.B.,

HON. MEMBER I.N.A., WHITWORTH SCHOLAR.
FORMERLY SECRETARY OF THE INSTITUTION OF NAVAL ARCHITECTS

WITH SEVENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS.

(Revised.)
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE,
By WYMAN AND SONS, Limited, Fetter Lane, E.C.
——
1906.

To be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller from
WYMAN & SONS, Ltd., Fetter Lane, London, E.C.; or
OLIVER AND BOYD, Edinburgh; or
E. PONSONBY, 116, Grafton Street, Dublin;
or on personal application
at the Catalogue Stall, Victoria and Albert Museum, S.W
Price One Shilling and Sixpence in Paper Wrapper, or
Two Shillings and Threepence in Cloth.

PREFACE.

An endeavour has been made in this handbook, as far as space and scantiness of material would permit, to trace the history of the development of wooden ships from the earliest times down to our own. Unfortunately, the task has been exceedingly difficult; for the annals of shipbuilding have been very badly kept down to a quite recent period, and the statements made by old writers concerning ships are not only meagre but often extremely inaccurate. Moreover, the drawings and paintings of vessels which have survived from the classical period are few and far between, and were made by artists who thought more of pictorial effect than of accuracy of detail. Fortunately the carvings of the ancient Egyptians were an exception to the above rule. Thanks to their practice of recording and illustrating their history in one of the most imperishable of materials we know more of their ships and maritime expeditions than we do of those of any other people of antiquity. If their draughtsmen were as conscientious in delineating their boats as they were in their drawings of animals and buildings, we may accept the illustrations of Egyptian vessels which have survived into our epoch as being correct in their main features. The researches now being systematically carried out in the Valley of the Nile add, year by year, to our knowledge, and already we know enough to enable us to assert that ship building is one of the oldest of human industries, and that there probably existed a sea borne commerce in the Mediterranean long before the building of the Pyramids.

Though the Phœnicians were the principal maritime people of antiquity in the Mediterranean, we know next to nothing of their vessels. The same may be said of the Greeks of the Archaic period. There is, however, ground for hope that, with the progress of research, more may be discovered concerning the earliest types of Greek vessels; for example, during the past year, a vase of about the eighth century b.c. was found, and on it is a representation of a bireme of the Archaic period of quite exceptional interest. As the greater part of this handbook was already in type when the vase was acquired by the British Museum, it has only been possible to reproduce the representation in the Appendix. The drawings of Greek merchant-ships and galleys on sixth and fifth-century vases are merely pictures, which tell us but little that we really want to know. If it had not been for the discovery, this century, that a drain at the Piræus was partly constructed of marble slabs, on which were engraved the inventories of the Athenian dockyards, we should know but little of the Greek triremes of as late a period as the third century b.c. We do not possess a single illustration of a Greek or Roman trireme, excepting only a small one from Trajan's Column, which must not be taken too seriously, as it is obviously pictorial, and was made a century and a half after many-banked ships had gone out of fashion.

In the first eight centuries of our era records and illustrations of ships continue to be extremely meagre. Owing to a comparatively recent discovery we know something of Scandinavian boats. When we consider the way in which the Norsemen overran the seaboard of Europe, it seems probable that their types of vessels were dominant, at any rate in Northern and Western European waters, from the tenth to the twelfth century. From the time of the Norman Conquest down to the reign of Henry VIII. we have to rely, for information about ships, upon occasional notes by the old chroniclers, helped out by a few illustrations taken from ancient corporate seals and from manuscripts. From the time of Henry VIII., onwards, information about warships is much more abundant; but, unfortunately, little is known of the merchant vessels of the Tudor, Stuart, and early Hanoverian periods, and it has not been found possible to trace the origin and development of the various types of merchant sailing-ships now in existence.

The names of the authorities consulted have generally been given in the text, or in footnotes. The author is indebted to Dr. Warre's article on ships, in the last edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and to Mr. Cecil Torr's work, "Ancient Ships," for much information concerning Greek and Roman galleys, and further to "The Royal Navy," a history by Mr. W. Laird Clowes, and the "History of Marine Architecture" by Charnock, for much relating to British warships down to the end of the eighteenth century.

5, Adelphi Terrace, W.C.,
January, 1, 1900.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The illustrations marked * are published by kind permission of the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Those marked † are taken from "The History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce," and were kindly lent by Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd. Those marked ‡ are reproduced from "La Marine Française de 1792 à nos jours," by l'Amiral Paris.

ANCIENT AND MODERN SHIPS.

Part I.

WOODEN SAILING-SHIPS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

A museum relating to Naval Architecture and Shipbuilding is of the utmost interest to the people of Great Britain, on account of the importance to them of everything that bears on the carrying of their commerce. Every Englishman knows, in a general way, that the commerce of the British Empire is more extensive than that of any other state in the world, and that the British sea-going mercantile marine compares favourably in point of size even with that of all the other countries of the world put together; but few are probably aware of the immense importance to us of these fleets of trading ships, and of the great part which they play in the maintenance of the prosperity of these isles. The shipping industry ranks, after agriculture, as the largest of our national commercial pursuits. There is more capital locked up in it, and more hands are employed in the navigation and construction of ships, their engines and fittings, than in any other trade of the country excepting the tillage of the soil.

The following Table gives the relative figures of the merchant navies of the principal states of the civilised world in the year 1898, and proves at a glance the immense interest to our fellow countrymen of all that affects the technical advancement of the various industries connected with shipping: —

Number and Tonnage of Sailing-vessels of over 100 Tons net, and Number and Tonnage of Steamers of over 100 Tons gross, belonging to each of the Countries named, as recorded in Lloyds' Register Book.

The part played by technical improvements in the maintenance of our present position cannot be over-estimated; for that position, such as it is, is not due to any inherent permanent advantages possessed by this country. Time was when our mercantile marine was severely threatened by competition from foreign states. To quote the most recent example, about the middle of last century the United States of America fought a well-contested struggle with us for the carrying trade of the world. Shortly after the abolition of the navigation laws, the competition was very severe, and United States ships had obtained almost exclusive possession of the China trade, and of the trade between Europe and North America, and in the year 1850 the total tonnage of the shipping of the States was 3,535,434, against 4,232,960 tons owned by Great Britain. The extraordinary progress in American mercantile shipbuilding was due, in part, to special circumstances connected with their navigation laws, and in part to the abundance and cheapness of excellent timber; but, even with these advantages, the Americans would never have been able to run such a close race with us for the carrying trade of the world, had it not been for the great technical skill and intelligence of their shipbuilders, who produced vessels which were the envy and admiration of our own constructors. As a proof of this statement, it may be mentioned that, the labour-saving mechanical contrivances adopted by the Americans were such that, on board their famous liners and clippers, twenty men could do the work which in a British ship of equal size required thirty, and, in addition to this advantage, the American vessels could sail faster and carry more cargo in proportion to their registered tonnage than our own vessels. It was not till new life was infused into British naval architecture that we were enabled to conquer the American competition; and then it was only by producing still better examples of the very class of ship which the Americans had been the means of introducing, that we were eventually enabled to wrest from them the China trade. Another triumph in the domain of technical shipbuilding, viz., the introduction and successful development of the iron-screw merchant steamer, eventually secured for the people of this country that dominion of the seas which remains with them to this day.

Among the great means of advancing technical improvements, none takes higher rank than a good educational museum; for it enables the student to learn, as he otherwise cannot learn, the general course which improvements have taken since the earliest times, and hence to appreciate the direction which progress will inevitably take in the future. Here he will learn, for instance, how difficulties have been overcome in the past, and will be the better prepared to play his part in overcoming those with which he, in his turn, will be confronted. In such a museum he can study the advantages conferred upon the owner, by the successive changes which have been effected in the materials, construction, and the means of propulsion of ships. He can trace, for instance, the effects of the change from wood to iron, and from iron to steel, in the carrying capacity of ships, and he can note the effects of successive improvements in the propelling machinery in saving weight and space occupied by engines, boilers, and bunkers; and in conferring upon a ship of a given size the power of making longer voyages. Here, too, he can learn how it was that the American clipper supplanted the old English sailing merchantman, and how the screw iron ship, fitted with highly economical engines, has practically driven the clipper from the seas. In fact, with the aid of a good museum the student is enabled to take a bird's-eye view of the whole chain of progress, in which the existing state of things constitutes but a link.

Signs are not wanting that the competition with which British shipowners had to contend in the past will again become active in the near future. The advantages conferred upon us by abundant supplies of iron and by cheap labour will not last for ever. There are many who expect, not without reason, that the abolition or even the diminution of protection in the United States will, when it comes to pass, have the same stimulating effect upon the American shipbuilding industry which the abolition of the old navigation laws had upon our own; and when that day comes Englishmen will find it an advantage to be able to enter the contest equipped with the best attainable technical education and experience.

CHAPTER II.

ANCIENT SHIPS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND RED SEAS.

It is not difficult to imagine how mankind first conceived the idea of making use of floating structures to enable him to traverse stretches of water. The trunk of a tree floating down a river may have given him his first notions. He would not be long in discovering that the tree could support more than its own weight without sinking. From the single trunk to a raft, formed of several stems lashed together, the step would not be a long one. Similarly, once it was noticed that a trunk, or log, could carry more than its own weight and float, the idea would naturally soon occur to any one to diminish the inherent weight of the log by hollowing it out and thus increase its carrying capacity; the subsequent improvements of shaping the underwater portion so as to make the elementary boat handy, and to diminish its resistance in the water, and of fitting up the interior so as to give facilities for navigating the vessel and for accommodating in it human beings and goods, would all come by degrees with experience. Even to the present day beautiful specimens exist of such boats, or canoes, admirably formed out of hollowed tree-trunks. They are made by many uncivilized peoples, such as the islanders of the Pacific and some of the tribes of Central Africa. Probably the earliest type of built-up boat was made by stretching skins on a frame. To this class belonged the coracle of the Ancient Britons, which is even now in common use on the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland. The transition from a raft to a flat-bottomed boat was a very obvious improvement, and such vessels were probably the immediate forerunners of ships.

It is usual to refer to Noah's ark as the oldest ship of which there is any authentic record. Since, however, Egypt has been systematically explored, pictures of vessels have been discovered immensely older than the ark—that is to say, if the date usually assigned to the latter (2840 b.c. ) can be accepted as approximately correct; and, as we shall see hereafter (p. [25]), there are vessels now in existence in Egypt which were built about this very period. The ark was a vessel of such enormous size that the mere fact that it was constructed argues a very advanced knowledge and experience on the part of the contemporaries of Noah. Its dimensions were, according to the biblical version, reckoning the cubit at eighteen inches; length, 450 feet; breadth, 75 feet; and depth, 45 feet. If very full in form its "registered tonnage" would have been nearly 15,000. According to the earlier Babylonian version, the depth was equal to the breadth, but, unfortunately, the figures of the measurements are not legible.

It has been sometimes suggested that the ark was a huge raft with a superstructure, or house, built on it, of the dimensions given above. There does not, however, appear to be the slightest reason for concurring with this suggestion. On the contrary, the biblical account of the structure of the ark is so detailed, that we have no right to suppose that the description of the most important part of it, the supposed raft, to which its power of floating would have been due, would have been omitted. Moreover, the whole account reads like the description of a ship-shaped structure.

Shipbuilding in Egypt.

The earliest information on the building of ships is found, as might be expected, on the Egyptian tombs and monuments. It is probable that the valley of the Nile was also the first land bordering on the Mediterranean in which ships, as distinguished from more elementary craft, were constructed. Everything is in favour of such a supposition. In the first place, the country was admirably situated, geographically, for the encouragement of the art of navigation, having seaboards on two important inland seas which commanded the commerce of Europe and Asia. In the next place, the habitable portion of Egypt consisted of a long narrow strip of densely peopled, fertile territory, bordering a great navigable river, which formed a magnificent highway throughout the whole extent of the country. It is impossible to conceive of physical circumstances more conducive to the discovery and development of the arts of building and navigating floating structures. The experience gained on the safe waters of the Nile would be the best preparation for taking the bolder step of venturing on the open seas. The character of the two inland seas which form the northern and eastern frontiers of Egypt was such as to favour, to the greatest extent, the spirit of adventure. As a rule, their waters are relatively calm, and the distances to be traversed to reach other lands are inconsiderable. We know that the ancient Egyptians, at a period which the most modern authorities place at about 7,000 years ago, had already attained to a very remarkable degree of civilisation and to a knowledge of the arts of construction on land which has never since been excelled. What is more natural than to suppose that the genius and science which enabled them to build the Pyramids and their vast temples and palaces, to construct huge works for the regulation of the Nile, and to quarry, work into shape, and move into place blocks of granite weighing in some cases several hundreds of tons, should also lead them to excel in the art of building ships? Not only the physical circumstances, but the habits and the religion of the people created a demand, even a necessity, for the existence of navigable floating structures. At the head of the delta of the Nile was the ancient capital, the famous city of Memphis, near to which were built the Pyramids, as tombs in which might be preserved inviolate until the day of resurrection, the embalmed bodies of their kings. The roofs of the burial chambers in the heart of the Pyramids were prevented from falling in, under the great weight of the superincumbent mass, by huge blocks, or beams, of the hardest granite, meeting at an angle above the chambers. The long galleries by which the chambers were approached were closed after the burial by enormous gates, consisting of blocks of granite, which were let down from above, sliding in grooves like the portcullis of a feudal castle. In this way it was hoped to preserve the corpse contained in the chamber absolutely inviolate. The huge blocks of granite, which weighed from 50 to 60 tons each, were supposed to be too heavy ever to be moved again after they had been once lowered into position, and they were so hard that it was believed they could never be pierced. Now, even if we had no other evidence to guide us, the existence of these blocks of granite in the Pyramids would afford the strongest presumption that the Egyptians of that remote time were perfectly familiar with the arts of inland navigation, for the stone was quarried at Assouan, close to the first cataract, 583 miles above Cairo, and could only have been conveyed from the quarry to the building site by water.

In the neighbourhood of Memphis are hundreds of other blocks of granite from Assouan, many of them of enormous size. The Pyramid of Men-kau-Ra, or Mycerinus, built about 3633 b.c., was once entirely encased with blocks from Assouan. The Temple of the Sphinx, built at a still earlier date, was formed, to a large extent, of huge pieces of the same material, each measuring 15 × 5 × 3·2 feet, and weighing about 18 tons. The mausoleum of the sacred bulls at Sakara contains numbers of Assouan granite sarcophagi, some of which measure 13 × 8 × 11 feet. These are but a few instances, out of the many existing, from which we may infer that, even so far back as the fourth dynasty, the Egyptians made use of the arts of inland navigation. We are, however, fortunately not obliged to rely on inference, for we have direct evidence from the sculptures and records on the ancient tombs. Thanks to these, we now know what the ancient Nile boats were like, and how they were propelled, and what means were adopted for transporting the huge masses of building material which were used in the construction of the temples and monuments.

The art of reading the hieroglyphic inscriptions was first discovered about the year 1820, and the exploration of the tombs and monuments has only been prosecuted systematically during the last five-and-twenty years. Most of the knowledge of ancient Egyptian ships has, therefore, been acquired in quite recent times, and much of it only during the last year or two. This is the reason why, in the old works on shipbuilding, no information is given on this most interesting subject. Knowledge is, however, now being increased every day, and, thanks to the practice of the ancient Egyptians of recording their achievements in sculpture in a material which is imperishable in a dry climate, we possess at the present day, probably, a more accurate knowledge of their ships than we do of those of any other ancient or mediæval people.

By far the oldest boats of which anything is now known were built in Egypt by the people who inhabited that country before the advent of the Pyramid-builders. It is only within the last few years that these tombs have been explored and critically examined. They are now supposed to be of Libyan origin and to date from between 5000 and 6000 b.c. In many of these tombs vases of pottery have been discovered, on which are painted rude representations of ships. Some of the latter were of remarkable size and character. Fig. [2] is taken from one of these vases. It is a river scene, showing two boats in procession. The pyramid-shaped mounds in the background represent a row of hills. These boats are evidently of very large size. One of them has 58 oars, or more probably paddles, on each side, and two large cabins amidships, connected by a flying bridge, and with spaces fenced off from the body of the vessel. The steering was, apparently, effected by means of three large paddles on each side, and from the prow of one of the boats hangs a weight, which was probably intended for an anchor. It will be noticed that the two ends of these vessels, like the Nile boats of the Egyptians proper, were not waterborne. A great many representations of these boats have now been discovered. They all have the same leading characteristics, though they differ very much in size. Amongst other peculiarities they invariably have an object at the prow resembling two branches of palm issuing from a stalk, and also a mast carrying an ensign at the after-cabin.

Fig. 2.—The oldest known ships. Between 5000 and 6000 b.c.

Some explorers are of opinion that these illustrations do not represent boats, but fortifications, or stockades of some sort. If we relied only on the rude representations painted on the vases, the question might be a moot one. It has, however, been definitely set at rest by Professor Flinders Petrie, who, in the year 1899, brought back from Egypt very large drawings of the same character, taken, not from vases, but from the tombs themselves. The drawings clearly show that the objects are boats, and that they were apparently very shallow and flat-bottomed. It is considered probable that they were employed in over-sea trade as well as for Nile traffic; for, in the same tombs were found specimens of pottery of foreign manufacture, some of which have been traced to Bosnia.

Fig. 3.—Egyptian boat of the time of the third dynasty.

The most ancient mention of a ship in the world's history is to be found in the name of the eighth king of Egypt after Mena, the founder of the royal race. This king, who was at the head of the second dynasty, was called Betou (Boëthos in Greek), which word signifies the "prow of a ship." Nineteen kings intervened between him and Khufu (Cheops), the builder of the Great Pyramid at Ghizeh. The date of this pyramid is given by various authorities as from about 4235 to 3500 b.c. As the knowledge of Egyptology increases the date is set further and further back, and the late Mariette Pasha, who was one of the greatest authorities on the subject, fixed it at 4235 b.c. About five centuries intervened between the reign of Betou and the date of the Great Pyramid. Hence we can infer that ships were known to the Egyptians of the dynasties sixty-seven centuries ago.

Fortunately, however, we are not obliged to rely on inferences drawn from the name of an individual; we actually possess pictures of vessels which, there is every reason to believe, were built before the date of the Great Pyramid.

The boat represented by Fig. [3] is of great interest, as it is by far the oldest specimen of a true Egyptian boat that has yet been discovered. It was copied by the late Mr. Villiers Stuart from the tomb of Ka Khont Khut, situated in the side of a mountain near Kâu-el-Kebîr, on the right bank of the Nile, about 279 miles above Cairo.[1] The tomb belongs to a very remote period. From a study of the hieroglyphs, the names of the persons, the forms of the pottery found, and the shape, arrangement, and decoration of the tomb, Mr. Villiers Stuart came to the conclusion that it dates from the third dynasty, and that, consequently, it is older than the Great Pyramid at Ghizeh. If these conclusions are correct, and if Mariette's date for the Great Pyramid be accepted, Fig. [3] represents a Nile boat as used about 6,300 years ago—that is to say, about fifteen centuries before the date commonly accepted for the ark. Mr. Villiers Stuart supposes that it was a dug-out canoe, but from the dimensions of the boat this theory is hardly tenable. It will be noted that there are seven paddlers on each side, in addition to a man using a sounding, or else a punt, pole at the prow, and three men steering with paddles in the stern, while amidships there is a considerable free space, occupied only by the owner, who is armed with a whip, or courbash. The paddlers occupy almost exactly one-half of the total length, and from the space required for each of them the boat must have been quite 56 feet long. It could hardly have been less than seven feet wide, as it contained a central cabin, with sufficient space on either side of the latter for paddlers to sit. If it were a "dug-out," the tree from which it was made must have been brought down the river from tropical Africa. There is no reason, however, to suppose anything of the sort; for, if the epoch produced workmen skilful enough to excavate and decorate the tomb, and to carve the statues and make the pottery which it contained, it must also have produced men quite capable of building up a boat from planks.

Fig. 4.—Egyptian boat of the time of the fourth dynasty.

The use of sails was also understood at this remote epoch, for it will be noticed that, on the roof of the cabin is lying a mast which has been unshipped. The mast is triangular in shape, consisting of two spars, joined together at the top at an acute angle, and braced together lower down. This form was probably adopted in order to dispense with stays, and thus facilitate shipping and unshipping. It is also worthy of note that this boat appears to have been decked over, as the feet of all those on board are visible above the gunwale. A representation of a very similar boat was found in the tomb of Merâb, a son of Khufu, of the fourth dynasty.

The tombs of Egypt abound in pictures of boats and larger vessels, and many wooden models of them have also been found in the sarcophagi. There is in the Berlin Museum a model of a boat similar in general arrangement to the one just described. It is decked over and provided with a cabin amidships, which does not occupy the full width of the vessel. Fig. [4] is a vessel of later date and larger size than that found in the tomb of Ka Khont Khut, but its general characteristics are similar. From the number of paddlers it must have been at least 100 feet in length. In this case we see the mast is erected and a square sail set. The bow and stern also come much higher out of the water. The roof of the cabin is prolonged aft, so as to form a shelter for the steersman and a seat for the man holding the ropes. Similarly it is prolonged forward, so as to provide a shelter for the captain, or owner. The method of steering with oars continued in use for centuries; but in later and larger vessels the steering-oars, which were of great size, were worked by a mechanical arrangement. The illustration was taken originally from a fourth-dynasty tomb at Kôm-el-Ahmars.

There are also extant pictures of Egyptian cattle-boats, formed of two ordinary barges lashed together, with a temporary house, or cattle-shed, constructed across them. The history of Egypt, as inscribed in hieroglyphs on the ancient monuments, relates many instances of huge sarcophagi, statues, and obelisks having been brought down the Nile on ships. The tombs and monuments of the sixth dynasty are particularly rich in such records. In the tomb of Una, who was a high officer under the three kings, Ati, Pepi I., and Mer-en-Ra, are inscriptions which shed a flood of light on Egyptian shipbuilding of this period, and on the uses to which ships were put. In one of them we learn how Una was sent by Pepi to quarry a sarcophagus in a single piece of limestone, in the mountain of Jurra, opposite to Memphis, and to transport it, together with other stones, in one of the king's ships. In another it is related how he headed a military expedition against the land of Zerehbah, "to the north of the land of the Hirusha," and how the army was embarked in ships.

In the reign of Pepi's successor, Mer-en-Ra, Una appears to have been charged with the quarrying and transport of the stones destined for the king's pyramid, his sarcophagus, statue, and other purposes. The following passage from the inscriptions on his tomb gives even the number of the ships and rafts which he employed on this work:[2]—

"His Holiness, the King Mer-en-Ra, sent me to the country of Abhat to bring back a sarcophagus with its cover, also a small pyramid, and a statue of the King Mer-en-Ra, whose pyramid is called Kha-nofer ('the beautiful rising'). And his Holiness sent me to the city of Elephantine to bring back a holy shrine, with its base of hard granite, and the doorposts and cornices of the same granite, and also to bring back the granite posts and thresholds for the temple opposite to the pyramid Kha-nofer, of King Mer-en-Ra. The number of ships destined for the complete transport of all these stones consisted of six broad vessels, three tow-boats, three rafts, and one ship manned with warriors."

Further on, the inscriptions relate how stone for the Pyramid was hewn in the granite quarries at Assouan, and how rafts were constructed, 60 cubits in length and 30 cubits in breadth, to transport the material. The Royal Egyptian cubit was 20·67 inches in length, and the common cubit 18·24 inches. The river had fallen to such an extent that it was not possible to make use of these rafts, and others of a smaller size had to be constructed. For this purpose Una was despatched up the river to the country of Wawa-t, which Brugsch considered to be the modern Korosko. The inscription states—

"His Holiness sent me to cut down four forests in the South, in order to build three large vessels and four towing-vessels out of the acacia wood in the country of Wawa-t. And behold the officials of Araret, Aam, and Mata caused the wood to be cut down for this purpose.

I executed all this in the space of a year. As soon as the waters rose I loaded the rafts with immense pieces of granite for the Pyramid Kha-nofer, of the King Mer-en-Ra."

Mr. Villiers Stuart found several pictures of large ships of this remote period at Kasr-el-Syad on the Nile, about 70 miles below Thebes, in the tomb of Ta-Hotep, who lived in the reigns of Pepi I. and his two successors. These boats were manned with twenty-four rowers, and had two cabins, one amidships and the other astern.[3] The same explorer describes the contents of a tomb of the sixth dynasty at Gebel Abû Faida, on the walls of which he observed the painting of a boat with a triple mast (presumably made of three spars arranged like the edges of a triangular pyramid), and a stern projecting beneath the water.

Between the sixth and the eleventh dynasties Egyptian history is almost an utter blank. The monuments contain no records for a period of about 600 years. We are, therefore, in complete ignorance of the progress of shipbuilding during this epoch. It was, however, probably considerable; for, when next the monuments speak it is to give an account of a mercantile expedition on the high seas. In the Valley of Hamâmât, near Coptos, about 420 miles above Cairo, is an inscription on the rocks, dating from the reign of Sankh-ka-Ra, the last king of the eleventh dynasty (about 2800 b.c. ), describing an expedition by sea to the famous land of Punt, on the coast of the Red Sea. This expedition is not to be confounded with another, a much more famous one, to the same land, carried out by direction of Queen Hatshepsu of the eighteenth dynasty, about eleven centuries later. Sankh-ka-Ra's enterprise is, however, remarkable as being the first over-sea maritime expedition recorded in the world's history. It may be noted that it took place at about the date usually assigned to Noah's ark.

The town of Coptos was of considerable commercial importance, having been at one end of the great desert route from the Nile to the Red Sea port of Kosseir, whence most of the Egyptian maritime expeditions started. The land of Punt, which was the objective of the expedition, is now considered to be identical with Somaliland. The following extracts from the inscription give an excellent idea of the objects and conduct of the expedition, which was under the leadership of a noble named Hannu, who was himself the author of the inscription:[4]—

"I was sent to conduct ships to the land of Punt, to fetch for Pharaoh sweet-smelling spices, which the princes of the red land collect out of fear and dread, such as he inspires in all nations. And I started from the City of Coptos, and his Holiness gave the command that the armed men, who were to accompany me, should be from the south country of the Thebaîd."

After describing the arrangements which he made for watering the expedition along the desert route, he goes on to say:—

"Then I arrived at the port Seba, and I had ships of burthen built to bring back products of all kinds. And I offered a great sacrifice of oxen, cows, and goats. And when I returned from Seba I had executed the King's command, for I brought him back all kinds of products which I had met with in the ports of the Holy Land (Punt). And I came back by the road of Uak and Rohan, and brought with me precious stones for the statues of the temples. But such a thing never happened since there were kings; nor was the like of it ever done by any blood relations who were sent to these places since the time (of the reign) of the Sun-god Ra."

From the last sentence of the above quotation we may infer that previous expeditions had been sent to the land of Punt. Communication with this region must, however, have been carried on only at considerable intervals, for we read that Hannu had to build the ships required for the voyage. Unfortunately, no representations of these vessels accompany the inscription.

Between the end of the eleventh and the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty, the monuments give us very little information about ships or maritime expeditions. Aahmes, the first king of the latter dynasty, freed Egypt from the domination of the Shepherd Kings by means of a naval expedition on the Nile and the Mediterranean. A short history of this campaign is given in the tomb of another Aahmes, near El Kab, a place on the east bank of the river, 502 miles south of Cairo. This Aahmes was a captain of sailors who served under Sequenen-Ra, King Aahmes, Amenophis I., and Thotmes I. King Aahmes is supposed to have been the Pharaoh of the Old Testament who knew not Joseph. He lived about 1700 b.c.

By far the most interesting naval records of this dynasty are the accounts, in the temple of Dêr-el-Bahari close to Thebes, of the famous expedition to the land of Punt, carried out by order of that remarkable woman Queen Hatshepsu, who was the daughter of Thotmes I., half-sister and wife of Thotmes II., and aunt and step-mother of the famous king Thotmes III. She appears to have been called by her father during his lifetime to share the throne with him, and to have practically usurped the government during the reign of her husband and during the early years of the reign of her nephew.

The expedition to the land of Punt was evidently one of the most remarkable events of her reign. It took place about 1600 b.c. —that is to say, about three centuries before the Exodus. The history of the undertaking is given at great length on the retaining wall of one of the terraces of the temple, and the various scenes and events are illustrated by carvings on the same wall, in as complete a manner as though the expedition had taken place in the present time, and had been accompanied by the artists of one of our pictorial newspapers. Fortunately, the great bulk of the carvings and inscriptions remain to this day, and we possess, therefore, a unique record of a trading expedition carried out at this remote period.

The carvings comprise representations of the ships going out. The landing at the "incense terraced-mountain," and the meeting with the princes and people of this strange land, are also shown. We have pictures of their pile dwellings, and of the trees and animals of the country, and also portraits of the King of Punt, of his wife and children. Lastly, we have representations of the ships returning to Egypt, laden with the precious incense of the land and with other merchandise, and also of the triumphant reception of the members of the expedition at Thebes.

One of the inscriptions relates as follows:[5]—

"The ships were laden to the uttermost with the wonderful products of the land of Punt, and with the different precious woods of the divine land, and with heaps of the resin of incense, with fresh incense trees, with ebony, (objects) of ivory set in pure gold from the land of the 'Amu, with sweet woods, Khesit-wood, with Ahem incense, holy resin, and paint for the eyes, with dog-headed apes, with long-tailed monkeys and greyhounds, with leopard-skins, and with natives of the country, together with their children. Never was the like brought to any king (of Egypt) since the world stands."

The boast contained in the concluding sentence was obviously not justified, as we know the same claims were made in the inscription in the valley of Hammamât, describing the previous expedition to Punt, which took place eleven centuries earlier.

From the frontispiece, Fig. [1], we can form an accurate idea of the ships used in the Red Sea trade in the time of the eighteenth dynasty. They were propelled by rowers instead of by paddlers, as in all the previous examples. There were fifteen rowers on each side, and, allowing four feet for the distance between each seat, and taking account of the length of the overhanging portions at bow and stern, the length of each vessel could have been little short of a hundred feet. They were apparently decked over and provided with raised cabins at the two extremities. The projections marked along the sides may indicate the ends of beams, or they may, as some writers have supposed, have been pieces of timber against which the oars could be worked in narrow and shallow water.

Fig. 5.—Nile barge carrying obelisks. About 1600 b.c.

These vessels were each rigged with a huge square sail. The spars carrying the sail were as long as the boats themselves, and were each formed of two pieces spliced together in the middle. The stems and sterns were not waterborne. In order to prevent the vessel from hogging under the influence of the weights of the unsupported ends, a truss was employed, similar in principle and object to those used to this day in American river steamers. The truss was formed by erecting four or more pillars in the body of the vessel, terminating at a height of about six feet above the gunwale, in crutches. A strong rope running fore and aft was passed over these crutches and also round the mast, the two ends of the rope having been so arranged as to gird and support the stem and stern respectively.

The Temple of Dêr-el-Bahari contained also a most interesting illustrated account of the transport of two great obelisks down the Nile in the reign of the same queen. Unfortunately, parts of the description and of the carvings have been lost, but enough remains to give us a very clear idea of the vessels employed and of the method of transport. Fig. [5] shows the type of barge employed to carry the obelisks, of which there were two. The dotted lines show the portions of the carving which are at present missing. The restoration was effected by Monsieur Edouard Naville.[6] The restoration is by no means conjectural. The key to it was furnished by a hieroglyph in the form of the barge with the obelisks on deck. Some of these obelisks were of very large size. There are two, which were hewn out of granite for Queen Hatshepsu, still at the Temple of Karnak. They may, very possibly, be the two which are referred to in the description at Dêr-el-Bahari. One of them is 98 feet and the other 105 feet in height. The larger of the two has been calculated to weigh 374 tons, and the two together may have weighed over 700 tons. To transport such heavy stones very large barges would have been required. Unfortunately, the greater portion of the inscription describing the building of these boats has been lost, but what remains states that orders were given to collect "sycamores from the whole land (to do the) work of building a very great boat." There is, however, an inscription still intact in the tomb of an ancient Egyptian named Anna, who lived in the reigns of the three kings Thotmes (and therefore also during that of Queen Hatshepsu), which relates that, having to transport two obelisks for Thotmes I., he built a boat 120 cubits long and 40 cubits wide. If the royal cubit of 20·72 inches was referred to, the dimensions of the boat would have been 200 feet long by 69 feet wide. This is possibly the very boat illustrated on the walls of Dêr-el-Bahari; for, it having evidently been a matter of some difficulty to collect the timber necessary to build so large a vessel, it seems only natural to suppose that it would be carefully preserved for the future transport of similar obelisks. If, however, it was found necessary to construct a new boat in order to transport Queen Hatshepsu's obelisks, we may be fairly certain that it was larger than the one whose dimensions are given above, for the taller of her two obelisks at Karnak is the largest that has been found in Egypt in modern times. The obelisk of rose granite of Thotmes I., still at Karnak, is 35 feet shorter, being 70 feet, or exactly the same height as the one called Cleopatra's Needle, now on the Thames Embankment.

The barge shown in Fig. [5] was strengthened, apparently, with three tiers of beams; it was steered by two pairs of huge steering-oars, and was towed by three parallel groups, each consisting of ten large boats. There were 32 oarsmen to each boat in the two wing groups, and 36 in each of the central groups: there were, therefore, exactly one thousand oars used in all. The towing-cable started from the masthead of the foremost boat of each group, and thence passed to the bow of the second one, and so on, the stern of each boat being left perfectly free, for the purpose, no doubt, of facilitating the steering. The flotilla was accompanied by five smaller boats, some of which were used by the priests, while the others were despatch vessels, probably used to keep up communications with the groups of tugs.

There are no other inscriptions, or carvings, that have as yet been discovered in Egypt which give us so much information regarding Egyptian ships as those on the Temple at Dêr-el-Bahari. From time to time we read of naval and mercantile expeditions, but illustrations of the ships and details of the voyages are, as a rule, wanting. We know that Seti I., of the nineteenth dynasty, whose reign commenced about 1366 b.c., was a great encourager of commerce. He felled timber in Lebanon for building ships, and is said to have excavated a canal between the Nile and the Red Sea. His successor, the famous Ramses II., carried on wars by sea, as is proved by the inscriptions in the Temple at Abû Simbel in Nubia, 762 miles above Cairo.

In the records of the reign of Ramses III., 1200 b.c., we again come upon illustrations of ships in the Temple of Victory at Medînet Habû, West Thebes. The inscriptions describe a great naval victory which this king won at Migdol, near the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, over northern invaders, probably Colchians and Carians. Fig. [6] shows one of the battleships. It is probably more a symbolical than an exact representation, nevertheless it gives us some valuable information. For instance, we see that the rowers were protected against the missiles of their adversaries by strong bulwarks, and the captain occupied a crow's nest at the masthead.

Ramses III. did a great deal to develop Egyptian commerce. His naval activities were by no means confined to the Mediterranean, for we read that he built a fleet at Suez, and traded with the land of Punt and the shores of the Indian Ocean. Herodotus states that, in his day, the docks still existed at the head of the Arabian Gulf where this Red Sea fleet was built.

Pharaoh Nekau (Necho), who reigned from 612 to 596 b.c., and who defeated Josiah, King of Judah, was one of the kings of Egypt who did most to encourage commerce. He commenced a canal to join the Pelusiac branch of the Nile at Bubastis with the Red Sea, but never finished it. It was under his directions that the Phœnicians, according to Herodotus, made the voyage round Africa referred to on p. [27]. When Nekau abandoned the construction of the canal he built two fleets of triremes, one for use in the Mediterranean, and the other for the Red Sea. The latter fleet was built in the Arabian Gulf.

Fig. 6.—Battleship of Ramses III. About 1200 b.c.

In later times the seaborne commerce of Egypt fell, to a large extent, into the hands of the Phœnicians and Greeks.

Herodotus (484 to 423 b.c. ) gives an interesting account of the Nile boats of his day, and of the method of navigation of the river.[7]

"Their boats, with which they carry cargoes, are made of the thorny acacia.... From this tree they cut pieces of wood about two cubits in length, and arrange them like bricks, fastening the boat together by a great number of long bolts through the two-cubit pieces; and when they have thus fastened the boat together they lay cross-pieces over the top, using no ribs for the sides; and within they caulk the seams with papyrus. They make one steering-oar for it, which is passed through the bottom of the boat, and they have a mast of acacia and sails of papyrus. These boats cannot sail up the river unless there be a very fresh wind blowing, but are towed.... Down stream they travel as follows: they have a door-shaped crate, made of tamarisk wood and reed mats sewn together, and also a stone of about two talents' weight, bored with a hole; and of these the boatman lets the crate float on in front of the boat, fastened with a rope, and the stone drag behind by another rope. The crate then, as the force of the stream presses upon it, goes on swiftly and draws on the ... boats, ... while the stone, dragging after it behind and sunk deep in the water, keeps its course straight."

In connection with this account it is curious to note that, at so late a period as the time of Herodotus, papyrus was used for the sails of Nile boats, for we know that, for many centuries previously, the Egyptians were adepts in the manufacture of linen, and actually exported fine linen to Cyprus to be used as sail-cloth.

Before concluding this account of shipbuilding in ancient Egypt, it may be mentioned that, in the year 1894, the French Egyptologist, Monsieur J. de Morgan, discovered several Nile boats of the time of the twelfth dynasty (2850 b.c. ) admirably preserved in brick vaults at Dashûr, a little above Cairo, on the left bank of the river. The site of these vaults is about one hour's ride from the river and between 70 and 80 feet above the plain. The boats are about 33 feet long, 7 to 8 feet wide, and 2½ to 3 feet deep. As there were neither rowlocks nor masts, and as they were found in close proximity to some Royal tombs, it is considered probable that they were funeral boats, used for carrying royal mummies across the river. They are constructed of planks of acacia and sycamore, about three inches thick, which are dovetailed together and fastened with trenails. There are floors, but no ribs. In this respect the account of Herodotus is remarkably confirmed. The method of construction was so satisfactory that, although they are nearly 5,000 years old, they held rigidly together after their supports had been removed by Monsieur de Morgan. They were steered by two large paddles. The discovery of these boats is of extraordinary interest, for they were built at the period usually assigned to Noah's ark. It is a curious fact that they should have been found so far from the river, but we know from other sources—such as the paintings found in papyrus books—that it was the custom of the people to transport the mummies of royal personages, together with the funeral boats, on sledges to the tomb.

The famous galleys of the Egypt of the Ptolemies belonged to the period of Greek and Roman naval architecture, and will be referred to later.

From the time of the ancient Egyptian vessels there is no record whatever of the progress of naval architecture till we come to the period of the Greeks, and even the early records relating to this country are meagre in the extreme. The Phœnicians were among the first of the races who dwelt on the Mediterranean seaboard to cultivate a seaborne commerce, and to them, after the Egyptians, is undoubtedly due the early progress made in sea-going ships. This remarkable people is said to have originally come to the Levant from the shores of the Persian Gulf. They occupied a strip of territory on the seaboard to the north of Palestine, about 250 miles long and of the average width of only 12 miles. The chief cities were Tyre and Sidon. There are only three representations known to be in existence of the Phœnician ships. They must have been of considerable size, and have been well manned and equipped, for the Phœnicians traded with every part of the then known world, and founded colonies—the principal of which was Carthage—at many places along the coast-line of the Mediterranean. A proof of the size and seaworthiness of their ships was the fact that they made very distant voyages across notoriously stormy seas; for instance, to Cornwall in search of tin, and probably also to the south coast of Ireland. They also coasted along the western shores of Africa. Somewhere between the years 610 and 594 b.c. some Phœnician ships, acting under instructions from Pharaoh Nekau, are said to have circumnavigated Africa, having proceeded from the Indian to the Southern Ocean, and thence round by the Atlantic and through the Pillars of Hercules home. The voyage occupied more than two years, a circumstance which was due to the fact that they always landed in the autumn and sowed a tract of country with corn, and waited on shore till it was fit to cut. In the time of Solomon the joint fleets of the Israelites and Phœnicians made voyages from the head of the Red Sea down the coasts of Arabia and Eastern Africa, and even to Persia and Beluchistan, and probably also to India. The Phœnicians were not only great traders themselves, but they manned the fleets of other nations, and built ships for other peoples, notably for the Egyptians and Persians. It is unfortunate that we have so few representations of the Phœnician ships, but we are justified in concluding that they were of the same general type as those which were used by the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and eventually by the Romans. The representations of their vessels known to be in existence were found by the late Sir Austin Layard in the palace built by King Sennacherib at Kouyunjik, near Nineveh, about 700 b.c. One of these is shown in Fig. [7]. Though they were obviously rather symbols of ships than faithful representations, we can, nevertheless, gather from them that the warship was a galley provided with a ram, and fitted with a mast carrying a single square sail; there were also two banks of oars on each side. The steering was accomplished by two large oars at the stern, and the fighting troops were carried on a deck or platform raised on pillars above the heads of the rowers.

Fig. 7.—Portion of a Phœnician galley. About 700 b.c. From Kouyunjik (Nineveh).

Shipbuilding in Ancient Greece and Rome.

In considering the history of the development of shipbuilding, we cannot fail to be struck with the favourable natural conditions which existed in Greece for the improvement of the art. On the east and west the mainland was bordered by inland seas, studded with islands abounding in harbours. Away to the north-east were other enclosed seas, which tempted the enterprise of the early navigators. One of the cities of Greece proper, Corinth, occupied an absolutely unique position for trade and colonization, situated as it was on a narrow isthmus commanding two seas. The long narrow Gulf of Corinth opening into the Mediterranean, and giving access to the Ionian Islands, must have been a veritable nursery of the art of navigation, for here the early traders could sail for long distances, in easy conditions, without losing sight of land. The Gulf of Ægina and the waters of the Archipelago were equally favourable. The instincts of the people were commercial, and their necessities made them colonizers on a vast scale; moreover, they had at their disposal the experience in the arts of navigation, acquired from time immemorial, by the Egyptians and Phœnicians. Nevertheless, with all these circumstances in their favour, the Greeks, at any rate up to the fourth century b.c., appear to have contributed nothing to the improvement of shipbuilding.[8] The Egyptians and Phœnicians both built triremes as early as 600 b.c., but this class of vessel was quite the exception in the Greek fleets which fought at Salamis 120 years later.

The earliest naval expedition mentioned in Greek history is that of the allied fleets which transported the armies of Hellas to the siege of Troy about the year 1237 b.c. According to the Greek historians, the vessels used were open boats, decks not having been introduced into Greek vessels till a much later period.

The earliest Greek naval battle of which we have any record took place about the year 709 b.c., over 500 years after the expedition to Troy and 1,000 years after the battle depicted in the Temple of Victory at Thebes. It was fought between the Corinthians and their rebellious colonists of Corcyra, now called Corfu.

Some of the naval expeditions recorded in Greek history were conceived on a gigantic scale. The joint fleets of Persia and Phœnicia which attacked and conquered the Greek colonies in Ionia consisted of 600 vessels. This expedition took place in the year 496 b.c. Shortly afterwards the Persian commander-in-chief, Mardonius, collected a much larger fleet for the invasion of Greece itself.

After the death of Cambyses, his successor Xerxes collected a fleet which is stated to have numbered 4,200 vessels, of which 1,200 were triremes. The remainder appears to have been divided into two classes, of which the larger were propelled with twenty-five and the smaller with fifteen oars a-side. This fleet, after many misfortunes at sea, and after gaining a hard-fought victory over the Athenians, was finally destroyed by the united Greek fleet at the ever-famous battle of Salamis. The size of the Persian monarch's fleet was in itself a sufficient proof of the extent of the naval power of the Levantine states; but an equally convincing proof of the maritime power of another Mediterranean state, viz., Carthage, at that early period—about 470 b.c. —is forthcoming. This State equipped a large fleet, consisting of 3,000 ships, against the Greek colonies in Sicily; of these 2,000 were fighting galleys, and the remainder transports on which no less than 300,000 men were embarked. This mighty armada was partly destroyed in a great storm. All the transports were wrecked, and the galleys were attacked and totally destroyed by the fleets of the Greek colonists under Gelon on the very day, according to tradition, on which the Persians were defeated at Salamis. Out of the entire expedition only a few persons returned to Carthage to tell the tale of their disasters.

The foregoing account will serve to give a fair idea of the extent to which shipbuilding was carried on in the Mediterranean in the fifth century before the Christian era.

We have very little knowledge of the nature of Greek vessels previously to 500 b.c. [9] Thucydides says that the ships engaged on the Trojan expedition were without decks.

According to Homer, 1,200 ships were employed, those of the Bœotians having 120 men each, and those of Philoctetes 50 men each. Thucydides also relates that the earliest Hellenic triremes were built at Corinth, and that Ameinocles, a Corinthian naval architect, built four ships for the Samians about 700 b.c.; but triremes did not become common until the time of the Persian War, except in Sicily and Corcyra (Corfu), in which states considerable numbers were in use a little time before the war broke out.

Fig. 8.—Greek unireme. About 500 b.c.

Fig. [8] is an illustration of a single-banked Greek galley of the date about 500 b.c., taken from an Athenian painted vase now in the British Museum. The vessel was armed with a ram; seventeen oars a-side are shown. There is no space on the vase to show in detail the whole of the mast and rigging, but their presence is indicated by lines.

Fig. 9.—Greek bireme. About 500 b.c.

Fig. [9] is a representation of a Greek bireme of about the date 500 b.c. —that is to say, of the period immediately preceding the Persian War. It is taken from a Greek vase in the British Museum, which was found at Vulci in Etruria. It is one of the very few representations now in existence of ancient Greek biremes. It gives us far less information than we could wish to have. The vessel has two banks of oars, those of the upper tier passing over the gunwale, and those of the lower passing through oar-ports. Twenty oars are shown by the artist on each side, but this is probably not the exact number used. Unfortunately the rowers of the lower tier are not shown in position. The steering was effected by means of two large oars at the stern, after the manner of those in use in the Egyptian ships previously described. This is proved by another illustration of a bireme on the same vase, in which the steering oars are clearly seen. The vessel had a strongly marked forecastle and a ram fashioned in the shape of a boar's head. It is a curious fact that Herodotus, in his history (Book III.), mentions that the Samian ships carried beaks, formed to resemble the head of a wild boar, and he relates how the Æginetans beat some Samian colonists in a sea-fight off Crete, and sawed off the boar-head beaks from the captured galleys, and deposited them in a temple in Ægina. This sea-fight took place about the same time that the vases were manufactured, from which Figs. 8 and 9 are copied. There was a single mast with a very large yard carrying a square sail. The stays are not shown, but Homer says that the masts of early Greek vessels were stayed fore and aft.

Fig. 10.—Fragment of a Greek galley showing absence of deck. About 550 b.c.

It is impossible to say whether this vessel was decked. According to Thucydides, the ships which the Athenians built at the instigation of Themistocles, and which they used at Salamis, were not fully decked. That Greek galleys were sometimes without decks is proved by Fig. [10], which is a copy of a fragment of a painting of a Greek galley on an Athenian vase now in the British Museum, of the date of about 550 b.c. It is perfectly obvious, from the human figures in the galley, that there was no deck. Not even the forecastle was covered in. The galleys of Figs. 8 and 9 had, unlike the Phœnician bireme of Fig. [7], no fighting-deck for the use of the soldiers. There was also no protection for the upper-tier rowers, and in this respect they were inferior to the Egyptian ship shown in Fig. [6]. It is probable that Athenian ships at Salamis also had no fighting, or flying decks for the use of the soldiers; for, according to Thucydides, Gylippos, when exhorting the Syracusans, nearly sixty years later, in 413 b.c., said, "But to them (the Athenians) the employment of troops on deck is a novelty." Against this view, however, it must be stated that there are now in existence at Rome two grotesque pictures of Greek galleys on a painted vase, dating from about 550 b.c., in which the soldiers are clearly depicted standing and fighting upon a flying deck. Moreover, Thucydides, in describing a sea-fight between the Corinthians and the Corcyreans in 432 b.c., mentions that the decks of both fleets were crowded with heavy infantry archers and javelin-men, "for their naval engagements were still of the old clumsy sort." Possibly this last sentence gives us a clue to the explanation of the apparent discrepancy. The Athenians were, as we know, expert tacticians at sea, and adopted the method of ramming hostile ships, instead of lying alongside and leaving the fighting to the troops on board. They may, however, have been forced to revert to the latter method, in order to provide for cases where ramming could not be used; as, for instance, in narrow harbours crowded with shipping, like that of Syracuse.

It is perfectly certain that the Phœnician ships which formed the most important part of the Persian fleet at Salamis carried fighting-decks. We have seen already (p. [28]) that they used such decks in the time of Sennacherib, and we have the distinct authority of Herodotus for the statement that they were also employed in the Persian War; for, he relates that Xerxes returned to Asia in a Phœnician ship, and that great danger arose during a storm, the vessel having been top-heavy owing to the deck being crowded with Persian nobles who returned with the king.

Fig. 11.—Galley showing deck and superstructure. About 600 b.c. From an Etruscan imitation of a Greek vase.

Fig. [11], which represents a bireme, taken from an ancient Etruscan imitation of a Greek vase of about 600 b.c., clearly shows soldiers fighting, both on the deck proper and on a raised, or flying, forecastle.

In addition to the triremes, of which not a single illustration of earlier date than the Christian era is known to be in existence, both Greeks and Persians, during the wars in the early part of the fifth century b.c., used fifty-oared ships called penteconters, in which the oars were supposed to have been arranged in one tier. About a century and a half after the battle of Salamis, in 330 b.c., the Athenians commenced to build ships with four banks, and five years later they advanced to five banks. This is proved by the extant inventories of the Athenian dockyards. According to Diodoros, they were in use in the Syracusan fleet in 398 b.c. Diodoros, however, died nearly 350 years after this epoch, and his account must, therefore, be received with caution.

The evidence in favour of the existence of galleys having more than five superimposed banks of oars is very slight.

Alexander the Great is said by most of his biographers to have used ships with five banks of oars; but Quintus Curtius states that, in 323 b.c., the Macedonian king built a fleet of seven-banked galleys on the Euphrates. Quintus Curtius is supposed by the best authorities to have lived five centuries after the time of Alexander, and therefore his account of these ships cannot be accepted without question.

It is also related by Diodoros that there were ships of six and seven banks in the fleet of Demetrios Poliorcetes at a battle off Cyprus in 306 b.c., and that Antigonos, the father of Poliorcetes, had ships of eleven and twelve banks. We have seen, however, that Diodoros died about two and a half centuries after this period. Pliny, who lived from 61 to 115 a.d., increases the number of banks in the ships of the opposing fleets at this battle to twelve and fifteen banks respectively. It is impossible to place any confidence in such statements.

Theophrastus, a botanist who died about 288 b.c., and who was therefore a contemporary of Demetrios, mentions in his history of plants that the king built an eleven-banked ship in Cyprus. This is one of the very few contemporary records we possess of the construction of such ships. The question, however, arises, Can a botanist be accepted as an accurate witness in matters relating to shipbuilding? The further question presents itself, What meaning is intended to be conveyed by the terms which we translate as ships of many banks? This question will be reverted to hereafter.

In one other instance a writer cites a document in which one of these many-banked ships is mentioned as having been in existence during his lifetime. The author in question was Polybios, one of the most painstaking and accurate of the ancient historians, who was born between 214 and 204 b.c., and who quotes a treaty between Rome and Macedon concluded in 197 b.c., in which a Macedonian ship of sixteen banks is once mentioned. This ship was brought to the Tiber thirty years later, according to Plutarch and Pliny, who are supposed to have copied a lost account by Polybios. Both Plutarch and Pliny were born more than two centuries after this event. If the alleged account by Polybios had been preserved, it would have been unimpeachable authority on the subject of this vessel, as this writer, who was, about the period in question, an exile in Italy, was tutor in the family of Æmilius Paulus, the Roman general who brought the ship to the Tiber.

The Romans first became a naval power in their wars with the Carthaginians, when the command of the sea became a necessity of their existence. This was about 256 b.c. At that time they knew nothing whatever of shipbuilding, and their early war-vessels were merely copies of those used by the Carthaginians, and these latter were no doubt of the same general type as the Greek galleys. The first Roman fleet appears to have consisted of quinqueremes.

The third century b.c. is said to have been an era of gigantic ships. Ptolemy Philadelphos and Ptolemy Philopater, who reigned over Egypt during the greater part of that century, are alleged to have built a number of galleys ranging from thirteen up to forty banks. The evidence in this case is derived from two unsatisfactory sources. Athenæos and Plutarch quote one Callixenos of Rhodes, and Pliny quotes one Philostephanos of Cyrene, but very little is known about either Callixenos or Philostephanos. Fortunately, however, Callixenos gives details about the size of the forty-banker, the length of her longest oars, and the number of her crew, which enables us to gauge his value as an authority, and to pronounce his story to be incredible (see p. [45]).

Whatever the arrangement of their oars may have been, these many-banked ships appear to have been large and unmanageable, and they finally went out of fashion in the year 31 b.c., when Augustus defeated the combined fleets of Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium. The vessels which composed the latter fleets were of the many-banked order, while Augustus had adopted the swift, low, and handy galleys of the Liburni, who were a seafaring and piratical people from Illyria on the Adriatic coast. Their vessels were originally single-bankers, but afterwards it is said that two banks were adopted. This statement is borne out by the evidence of Trajan's Column, all the galleys represented on it, with the exception of one, being biremes.

Augustus gained the victory at Actium largely owing to the handiness of his Liburnian galleys, and, in consequence, this type was henceforward adopted for Roman warships, and ships of many banks were no longer built. The very word "trireme" came to signify a warship, without reference to the number of banks of oars.

After the Romans had completed the conquest of the nations bordering on the Mediterranean, naval war ceased for a time, and the fighting navy of Rome declined in importance. It was not till the establishment of the Vandal kingdom in Africa under Genseric that a revival in naval warfare on a large scale took place. No changes in the system of marine architecture are recorded during all these ages. The galley, considerably modified in later times, continued to be the principal type of warship in the Mediterranean till about the sixteenth century of our era.

Ancient Merchant-ships.

Little accurate information as we possess about the warships of the ancients, we know still less of their merchant-vessels and transports. They were unquestionably much broader, relatively, and fuller than the galleys; for, whereas the length of the latter class was often eight to ten times the beam, the merchant-ships were rarely longer than three or four times their beam. Nothing is known of the nature of Phœnician merchant-vessels. Fig. [12] is an illustration of an Athenian merchant-ship of about 500 b.c. It is taken from the same painted vase as the galley shown on Fig. [9]. If the illustration can be relied on, it shows that these early Greek sailing-ships were not only relatively short, but very deep. The forefoot and dead wood aft appear to have been cut away to an extraordinary extent, probably for the purpose of increasing the handiness. The rigging was of the type which was practically universal in ancient ships.

Fig. [13] gives the sheer draught or side elevation, the plan, elevations of the bow and stem, and a midship section of a Roman vessel, which from her proportions and the shape of bow is supposed to have been a merchant-ship. The illustration is taken from a model presented to Greenwich Hospital by Lord Anson. The original model was of white marble, and was found in the Villa Mattei in Rome, in the sixteenth century.

We know from St. Paul's experiences, as described in the Acts of the Apostles, that Mediterranean merchant-ships must often have been of considerable size, and that they were capable of going through very stormy voyages. St. Paul's ship contained a grain cargo, and carried 276 human beings.

Fig. 12.—Greek merchant-ship. About 500 b.c.

In the merchant-ships oars were only used as an auxiliary means of propulsion, the principal reliance being placed on masts and sails. Vessels of widely different sizes were in use, the larger carrying 10,000 talents, or 250 tons of cargo. Sometimes, however, much bigger ships were used. For instance, Pliny mentions a vessel in which the Vatican obelisk and its pedestal, weighing together nearly 500 tons, were brought from Egypt to Italy about the year 50 a.d. It is further stated that this vessel carried an additional cargo of 800 tons of lentils to keep the obelisk from shifting on board.

Lucian, writing in the latter half of the second century a.d., mentions, in one of his Dialogues, the dimensions of a ship which carried corn from Egypt to the Piræus. The figures are: length, 180 ft.; breadth, nearly 50 ft.; depth from deck to bottom of hold, 43½ ft. The latter figure appears to be incredible. The other dimensions are approximately those of the Royal George, described on p. [126].

Fig. 13.—Roman merchant-ship.

Details of the Construction of Greek and Roman Galleys.

It is only during the present century that we have learned, with any certainty, what the ancient Greek galleys were like. In the year 1834 a.d. it was discovered that a drain at the Piræus had been constructed with a number of slabs bearing inscriptions, which, on examination, turned out to be the inventories of the ancient dockyard of the Piræus. From these inscriptions an account of the Attic triremes has been derived by the German writers Boeckh and Graser. The galleys all appear to have been constructed on much the same model, with interchangeable parts. The dates of the slabs range from 373 to 323 b.c., and the following description must be taken as applying only to galleys built within this period.

The length, exclusive of the beak, or ram, must have been at least 126 ft., the ram having an additional length of 10 ft. The length was, of course, dictated by the maximum number of oars in any one tier, by the space which it was found necessary to leave between each oar, and by the free spaces between the foremost oar and the stem, and the aftermost oar and the stern of the ship. Now, as it appears further on, the maximum number of oars in any tier in a trireme was 62 in the top bank, which gives 31 a side. If we allow only 3 ft. between the oars we must allot at least 90 ft. to the portion of the vessel occupied by the rowers. The free spaces at stem and stern were, according to the representations of those vessels which have come down to us, about 7/24th of the whole; and, if we accept this proportion, the length of a trireme, independently of its beak, would be about 126 ft. 6 in. If the space allotted to each rower be increased, as it may very reasonably be, the total length of the ship would also have to be increased proportionately. Hence it is not surprising that some authorities put the length at over 140 ft. It may be mentioned in corroboration, that the ruins of the Athenian docks at Zea show that they were originally at least 150 ft. long. They were also 19 ft. 5 in. wide. The breadth of a trireme at the water-line, amidships, was about 14 ft., perhaps increasing somewhat higher up, the sides tumbled home above the greatest width. These figures give the width of the hull proper, exclusive of an outrigged gangway, or deck, which, as subsequently explained, was constructed along the sides as a passage for the soldiers and seamen. The draught was from 7 to 8 ft.

Such a vessel carried a crew of from 200 to 225, of whom 174 were rowers, 20 seamen to work the sails, anchors, etc., and the remainder soldiers. Of the rowers, 62 occupied the upper, 58 the middle and 54 the lower tier. Many writers have supposed that each oar was worked by several rowers, as in the galleys of the Middle Ages. This, however, was not the case, for it has been conclusively proved that, in the Greek galleys, up to the class of triremes, at any rate, there was only one man to each oar. For instance, Thucydides, describing the surprise attack intended to be delivered on the Piræus, and actually delivered against the island of Salamis by the Peloponnesians in 429 b.c., relates that the sailors were marched from Corinth to Nisæa, the harbour of Megara, on the Athenian side of the isthmus, in order to launch forty ships which happened to be lying in the docks there, and that each sailor carried his cushion and his oar, with its thong, on his march. We have, moreover, a direct proof of the size of the longest oars used in triremes, for the inventories of the Athenian dockyards expressly state that they were 9½ cubits, or 13 ft. 6 in. in length. The reason why the oars were arranged in tiers, or banks, one above the other was, no doubt, that, in this way, the propelling power could be increased without a corresponding increase in the length of the ships. To make a long sea-going vessel sufficiently strong without a closed upper deck would have severely taxed the skill of the early shipbuilders. Moreover, long vessels would have been very difficult to manœuvre, and in the Greek mode of fighting, ramming being one of the chief modes of offence, facility in manœuvring was of prime importance. The rowers on each side sat in the same vertical longitudinal plane, and consequently the length of the inboard portions of the oars varied according as the curve of the vessel's side approached or receded from this vertical plane. The seats occupied by the rowers in the successive tiers were arranged one above the other in oblique lines sloping upwards towards the stem, as shown in Figs. 14 and 15. The vertical distance between the seats was about 2 ft. The horizontal gap between the benches in each tier was about 3 ft. The seats were some 9 in. wide, and foot-supports were fixed to each for the use of the rower next above and behind. The oars were so arranged that the blades in each tier all struck the water in the same fore and aft line. The lower oar-ports were about 3 ft., the middle 4¼ ft., and the upper 5½ ft., above the water. The water was prevented from entering the ports by means of leather bags fastened round the oars and to the sides of the oar-ports. The upper oars were about 14 ft. long, the middle 10 ft., and the lower 7½ ft., and in addition to these there were a few extra oars which were occasionally worked from the platform, or deck, above the upper tier, probably by the seamen and soldiers when they were not otherwise occupied. The benches for the rowers extended from the sides to timber supports, inboard, arranged in vertical planes fore and aft. There were two sets of these timbers, one belonging to each side of the ship, and separated by a space of 7 ft. These timbers also connected the upper and lower decks together. The latter was about 1 ft. above the water-line. Below the lower deck was the hold which contained the ballast, and in which the apparatus for baling was fixed.

In addition to oars, sails were used as a means of propulsion whenever the wind was favourable, but not in action.

The Athenian galleys had, at first, one mast, but afterwards, it is thought, two were used. The mainmast was furnished with a yard and square sail.

The upper deck, which was the fighting-platform previously mentioned, was originally a flying structure, and, perhaps, did not occupy the full width of the vessel amidships. At the bow, however, it was connected by planking with the sides of the ship, so as to form a closed-in space, or forecastle. This forecastle would doubtless have proved of great use in keeping the ship dry during rough weather, and probably suggested ultimately the closed decking of the whole of the ship. There is no record of when this feature, which was general in ancient Egyptian vessels, was introduced into Greek galleys. It was certainly in use in the Roman warships about the commencement of the Christian era, for there is in the Vatican a relief of about the date 50 a.d. from the Temple of Fortune at Præneste, which represents part of a bireme, in which the rowers are all below a closed deck, on which the soldiers are standing.

In addition to the fighting-deck proper there were the two side platforms, or gangways, already alluded to, which were carried right round the outside of the vessel on about the same level as the benches of the upper tier of rowers. These platforms projected about 18 to 24 in. beyond the sides of the hull, and were supported on brackets. Like the flying deck, these passages were intended for the accommodation of the soldiers and sailors, who could, by means of them, move freely round the vessel without interfering with the rowers. They were frequently fenced in with stout planking on the outside, so as to protect the soldiers. They do not appear to have been used on galleys of the earliest period.

We have no direct evidence as to the dimensions of ships of four and five banks. Polybios tells us that the crew of a Roman quinquereme in the first Carthaginian War, at a battle fought in 256 b.c., numbered 300, in addition to 120 soldiers. Now, the number 300 can be obtained by adding two banks of respectively 64 and 62 rowers to the 172 of the trireme. We may, perhaps, infer that the quinquereme of that time was a little longer than the trireme, and had about 3 ft. more freeboard, this being the additional height required to accommodate two extra banks of oars. Three hundred years later than the above-mentioned date Pliny tells us that this type of galley carried 400 rowers.

We know no detailed particulars of vessels having a greater number of banks than five till we get to the alleged forty-banker of Ptolemy Philopater. Of this ship Callixenos gives the following particulars:—Her dimensions were: length, 420 ft.; breadth, 57 ft.; draught, under 6 ft.; height of stern ornament above water-line, 79 ft. 6 in.; height of stem ornament, 72 ft.; length of the longest oars, 57 ft. The oars were stated to have been weighted with lead inboard, so as to balance the great overhanging length. The number of the rowers was 4,000, and of the remainder of the crew 3,500, making a total of 7,500 men, for whom, we are asked to believe, accommodation was found on a vessel of the dimensions given. This last statement is quite sufficient to utterly discredit the whole story, as it implies that each man had a cubic space of only about 130 ft. to live in, and that, too, in the climate of Egypt. Moreover, if we look into the question of the oars we shall see that the dimensions given are absolutely impossible—that is to say, if we make the usual assumption that the banks were successive horizontal tiers of oars placed one above the other. There were said to have been forty banks. Now, the smallest distance, vertically, between two successive banks, if the oar-ports were arranged as in Fig. [14], with the object of economizing space in the vertical direction to the greatest possible degree, would be 1 ft. 3 in. If the lowest oar-ports were 3 ft. above the water, and the topmost bank were worked on the gunwale, we should require, to accommodate forty banks, a height of side equal to 39 ft. × 1 ft. 3 in. + 3 ft. = 51 ft. 9 in. Now, if the inboard portion of the 57 ft. oar were only one-fourth of the whole length, or 14 ft. 3 in., this would leave 57 ft. - 14 ft. 3 in. = 42 ft. 9 in. for the outboard portion, and as the height of gunwale on which this particular length of oar was worked must have been, as shown above, 51 ft. 9 in. above the water, it is evident that the outboard portion of the oar could not be made to touch the water at all. Also, if we consider the conditions of structural strength of the side of a ship honeycombed with oar-ports, and standing to the enormous height of 51 ft. 9 in. above the water-line, it is evident that, in order to be secure, it would require to be supported by numerous tiers of transverse horizontal beams, similar to deck-beams, running from side to side. The planes of these tiers would intersect the inboard portions of many of the tiers of oars, and consequently prevent these latter from being fitted at all.

If we look at the matter from another point of view we shall meet with equally absurd results. The oars in the upper banks of Athenian triremes are known to have been about 14 ft. in length. Underneath them, were, of course, two other banks. If, now, we assume that the upper bank tholes were 5 ft. 6 in.[10] above the water-line, and that one-quarter of the length of the upper bank oars was inboard, and if we add thirty-seven additional banks parallel to the first bank, so as to make forty in all, simple proportion will show us that the outboard portion of the oars of the uppermost bank must have been just under 99 ft. long and the total length of each, if we assume, as before, that one quarter of it was inboard, would be 132 ft., instead of the 57 ft. given by Callixenos. Any variations in the above assumptions, consistent with possibilities, would only have the effect of bringing the oars out still longer. We are therefore driven to conclude, either that the account given by Callixenos was grossly inaccurate, or else that the Greek word, τεσσαρακοντἠρης, which we translate by "forty-banked ship," did not imply that there were forty horizontal super-imposed tiers of oars.

The exact arrangement of the oars in the larger classes of galleys has always been a puzzle, and has formed the subject of much controversy amongst modern writers on naval architecture. The vessels were distinguished, according to the numbers of the banks of oars, as uniremes, biremes, triremes, quadriremes, etc., up to ships like the great galley of Ptolemy Philopater, which was said to have had forty banks. Now, the difficulty is to know what is meant by a bank of oars. It was formerly assumed that the term referred to the horizontal tiers of oars placed one above the other; but it can easily be proved, by attempting to draw the galleys with the oars and rowers in place, that it would be very difficult to accommodate as many as five horizontal banks and absolutely impossible to find room for more than seven. Not only would the space within the hull of the ship be totally insufficient for the rowers, but the length of the upper tiers of oars would be so great that they would be unmanageable, and that of the lower tiers so small that they would be inefficient. The details given by ancient writers throw very little light upon this difficult subject. Some authors have stated that there was only one man to each oar, and we now know that this was the case with the smaller classes of vessels, say, up to those provided with three, or four, to five banks of oars; but it is extremely improbable that the oars of the larger classes could have been so worked. The oars of modern Venetian galleys were each manned by five rowers. It is impossible in this work to examine closely into all the rival theories as to what constituted a bank of oars. It seems improbable, for reasons before stated, that any vessel could have had more than five horizontal tiers. It is certain also that, in order to find room for the rowers to work above each other in these tiers, the oar-ports must have been placed, not vertically above each other, but in oblique rows, as represented in Fig. [14]. It is considered by Mr. W. S. Lindsay, in his "History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce," that each of the oblique rows of oars, thus arranged, may have formed the tier referred to in the designation of the class of the vessel, for vessels larger than quinqueremes. If this were so, there would then be no difficulty in conceiving the possibility of constructing galleys with even as many as forty tiers of oars like the huge alleged galley of Ptolemy Philopater. Fig. [15] represents the disposition of the oar-ports according to this theory for an octoreme.

Fig. 14.—Probable arrangement of oar-ports in ancient galleys.

Fig. 15.—Suggested arrangement of oar-ports in an octoreme.

It appears to be certain that the oars were not very advantageously arranged, or proportioned, in the old Greek galleys, or even in the Roman galleys, till the time of the early Cæsars, for we read that the average speed of the Athenian triremes was 200 stadia in the day. If the stadium were equal in length to a furlong, and the working day supposed to be limited to ten hours, this would correspond to a speed of only two and a half miles an hour. The lengths of the oars in the Athenian triremes have been already given (p. [42]); even those of the upper banks were extremely short—only, in fact, about a foot longer than those used in modern 8-oared racing boats. On account of their shortness and the height above the water at which they were worked, the angle which the oars made with the water was very steep and consequently disadvantageous. In the case of the Athenian triremes, this angle must have been about 23.5°. This statement is confirmed by all the paintings and sculptures which have come down to us. It is proved equally by the painting of an Athenian bireme of 500 b.c. shown in Fig. [9], and by the Roman trireme, founded on the sculptures of Trajan's Column of about 110 a.d., shown in Fig. [16].[11] In fact, it is evident that the ancients, before the time of the introduction of the Liburnian galley, did not understand the art of rowing as we do to-day. The celebrated Liburnian galleys, which were first used by the Romans, for war purposes, at the battle of Actium under Augustus Cæsar, were said to have had a speed of four times that of the old triremes. The modern galleys used in the Mediterranean in the seventeenth century are said to have occasionally made the passage from Naples to Palermo in seventeen hours. This is equivalent to an average speed of between 11 and 12 miles per hour.

Fig. 16.—Roman galley. About 110 a.d.

Fig. 17.—Liburnian galley. Conjectural restoration.

The timber used by the ancient races on the shores of the Mediterranean in the construction of their ships appears to have been chiefly fir and oak; but, in addition to these, many other varieties, such as pitch pine, elm, cedar, chestnut, ilex, or evergreen oak, ash, and alder, and even orange wood, appear to have been tried from time to time. They do not seem to have understood the virtue of using seasoned timber, for we read in ancient history of fleets having been completed ready for sea in incredibly short periods after the felling of the trees. Thus, the Romans are said to have built and equipped a fleet of 220 vessels in 45 days for the purpose of resisting the attacks of Hiero, King of Syracuse. In the second Punic War Scipio put to sea with a fleet which was stated to have been completed in forty days from the time the timber was felled. On the other hand, the ancients believed in all sorts of absurd rules as to the proper day of the moon on which to fell trees for shipbuilding purposes, and also as to the quarter from which the wind should blow, and so forth. Thus, Hesiod states that timber should only be cut on the seventeenth day of the moon's age, because the sap, which is the great cause of early decay, would then be sunk, the moon being on the wane. Others extend the time from the fifteenth to the twenty-third day of the moon, and appeal with confidence to the experience of all artificers to prove that timber cut at any other period becomes rapidly worm-eaten and rotten. Some, again, asserted that if felled on the day of the new moon the timber would be incorruptible, while others prescribed a different quarter from which the wind should blow for every season of the year. Probably on account of the ease with which it was worked, fir stood in high repute as a material for shipbuilding.

The structure of the hulls of ancient ships was not dissimilar in its main features to that of modern wooden vessels. The very earliest types were probably without external keels. As the practice of naval architecture advanced, keels were introduced, and served the double purpose of a foundation for the framing of the hull and of preventing the vessel from making leeway in a wind. Below the keel proper was a false keel, which was useful when vessels were hauled up on shore, and above the keelson was an upper false keel, into which the masts were stepped. The stem formed an angle of about 70° with the water-line, and its junction with the keel was strengthened by a stout knee-piece. The design of the stem above water was often highly ornate. The stern generally rose in a graceful curve, and was also lavishly ornamented. Fig. [18] gives some illustrations of the highly ornamented extremities of the stern and prow of Roman galleys. These show what considerable pains the ancients bestowed on the decoration of their vessels. There was no rudder-post, the steering having been effected by means of special oars, as in the early Egyptian vessels. Into the keel were notched the floor timbers, and the heads of these latter were bound together by the keelson, or inner keel. Beams connected the top timbers of the opposite branches of the ribs and formed the support for the deck. The planking was put on at right angles to the frames, the butting ends of the planks being connected by dovetails. The skin of the ship was strengthened, in the Athenian galleys, by means of stout planks, or waling-pieces, carried horizontally round the ship, each pair meeting together in front of the stem, where they formed the foundations for the beaks, or rams. The hulls were further strengthened by means of girding-cables, also carried horizontally round the hull, in the angles formed by the projection of the waling-pieces beyond the skin. These cables passed through an eye-hole at the stem, and were tightened up at the stern by means of levers. It is supposed that they were of use in holding the ship together under the shock of ramming. The hull was made water-tight by caulking the seams of the planking. Originally this was accomplished with a paste formed of ground sea-shells and water. This paste, however, not having much cohesion, was liable to crack and fall out when the vessel strained. A slight improvement was made when the shells were calcined and turned into lime. Pitch and wax were also employed, but were eventually superseded by the use of flax, which was driven in between the seams. Flax was certainly used for caulking in the time of Alexander the Great, and a similar material has continued to be employed for this purpose down to the present day. In addition to caulking the seams, it was also customary to coat over the bottom with pitch, and the Romans, at any rate, used sometimes to sheath their galleys with sheet lead fastened to the planking with copper nails. This was proved by the discovery of one of Trajan's galleys in Lake Riccio after it had been submerged for over thirteen centuries.

Fig. 18.—Stem and stern ornaments of galleys.

The bows of the ancient war galleys were so constructed as to act as rams. The ram was made of hard timber projecting

Fig. 19.—Bow of ancient war-galley. beyond the line of the bow, between it and the forefoot. It was usually made of oak, elm, or ash, even when all the rest of the hull was constructed of soft timber. In later times it was sheathed with, or even made entirely of, bronze. It was often highly ornamented, either with a carved head of a ram or some other animal, as shown in Figs. 8 to 11; sometimes swords or spear-heads were added, as shown in Figs. 19 and 20. A relic of this ancient custom is found to this day in the ornamentation

Fig. 20.—Bow of ancient war-galley. of the prows of the Venetian gondolas. Originally the ram, or rostrum, was visible above the water-line, but it was afterwards found to be far more effective when wholly immersed. In addition to the rams there were side projections, or catheads, above water near the bow. The ram was used for sinking the opposing vessels by penetrating their hulls, and the catheads for shattering their oars when sheering up suddenly alongside. Roman galleys were fitted with castles, or turrets, in which were placed fighting men and various engines of destruction. They were frequently temporary structures, sometimes consisting of little more than a protected platform, mounted on scaffolding, which could be easily taken down and stowed away. The use of these structures was continued till far into the Middle Ages.

CHAPTER III.

ANCIENT SHIPS IN THE SEAS OF NORTHERN EUROPE.

Outside the Mediterranean it is known that some of the northern nations had attained to very considerable skill in the arts of shipbuilding and navigation. Cæsar gives a general description of the ships of the Veneti, who occupied the country now known as Brittany, and who had in their hands the carrying trade between Gaul and Britain.[12] As might be expected from the stormy nature of the Atlantic, the Veneti were not able to place any reliance on oars as a means for propulsion. According to Cæsar's account, they trusted solely to sails. Their vessels were built entirely of oak of great thickness. He also mentions that the beams were as much as 12 in. in depth. The bottoms of these vessels were very flat, so as to enable them the better to be laid up on the beach. The hulls had considerable sheer, both at the stem and stern. The sails were of dressed hide, and the cables were iron chains. It is evident from this cursory description that the ships of the Veneti were not based upon Mediterranean models, and it is highly probable that they, rather than the oar-propelled galleys, may be regarded as the prototypes of the early sea-going vessels of Northern Europe.

Although the art of ship construction had attained to great importance amongst the Veneti, their neighbours, the Britons, were still very backward in this respect at the time of the first Roman invasion. Cæsar states that their vessels were of very slight construction, the framework being made of light timber, over which was stretched a covering, or skin, of strong hides. Sometimes the framework was of wicker.

The ancient Saxons, who were notorious as pirates on the North Sea, made use of boats similar to those of the ancient Britons. At the time of their invasion of Britain, however, their vessels must have been larger and of more solid construction, though we must dismiss, as an obvious absurdity, the statement that the first invading army of 9,000 men was carried to this country in three ships only. It is much more probable that the expedition was embarked in three fleets.

The Saxon kings of England often maintained very considerable fleets for the purpose of protecting the coast from the Danes.

Alfred the Great is generally regarded as the founder of the English Navy. He designed ships which were of a better type and larger size than those of his enemies, the Danes. They were said to have been twice as long as the vessels which they superseded. The Saxon Chronicle says, "They were full twice as long as the others; some had sixty oars, and some had more; they were swifter and steadier, and also higher than the others; they were shaped neither like the Frisian, nor the Danish, but so as it seemed to him they would be most efficient." In 897 Alfred met and defeated a Danish squadron, in all probability with his new ships.

Edgar (959 to 975) is stated to have kept at sea no less than 3,600 vessels of various sizes, divided into three fleets, and the old historian William of Malmesbury tells us that this king took an active personal interest in his navy, and that in summer time he would, in turn, embark and cruise with each of the squadrons.

Fig. 21.—Anglo-Saxon ship. About 900 a.d.

Fig. [21] is an illustration of an Anglo-Saxon ship taken from an old Saxon calendar, which is, or was, in the Cottonian Library, and which is supposed to have been written about half a century before the Norman Conquest. It is reproduced in Strutt's "Compleat View of the Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits, etc., of the Inhabitants of England, from the arrival of the Saxons till the reign of Henry VIII.," published in 1775. The proportions of the boat as represented are obviously impossible. The sketch is, however, interesting, as showing the general form and mode of planking of the vessel, and the nature of the decorations of the bow and stern. We see that the vessel was a warship, as the keel prolonged formed a formidable ram. We also may notice that the sail was relied on as a principal means of propulsion, for there are apparently no notches or rowlocks for oars. The steering was effected by two large oars, in a similar manner to that adopted by the ancient Egyptians and other Mediterranean peoples. The extraordinary character of the deck-house will be observed. It is, of course, purely symbolical, and may, at most, be interpreted as meaning that the vessel carried some sort of structure on deck.

In the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era the scene of maritime activity was transferred from the Mediterranean to the North of Europe. The Norsemen, who overran the whole of the European seaboard at one time or another, were the most famous navigators of the period immediately preceding the Middle Ages. Any record connected with their system of ship-construction is necessarily of great interest. The fleets of the Norsemen penetrated into the Mediterranean as far as the imperial city of the Eastern emperors. In the north they discovered and colonized Iceland, and even Greenland; and there are good grounds for believing that an expedition, equipped in Iceland, founded a colony in what are now the New England States five centuries before Columbus discovered the West Indies. Unfortunately, the written descriptions extant of the Norse ships are extremely meagre, and if it had not been for the curious custom of the Norsemen of burying their great chiefs in one of their ships and heaping earth over the entire mass, we should now know nothing for certain of the character of their vessels. Many of these ship-tombs have been discovered in modern times, but it happened in the majority of instances that the character of the earth used was unsuited to their preservation, and most of the woodwork was found to be decayed when the mounds were explored. Fortunately, however, in two instances the vessels were buried in blue clay, which is an excellent preserver of timber, and, thanks to the discovery of these, we have now a tolerably complete knowledge of the smaller classes of vessels used by the Vikings. One of them was discovered, in 1867, at Haugen, but by far the most important was found in 1880, at Gogstad, near Sandefjord, at the entrance of the Fjord of Christiania. Though this vessel is comparatively small, she is, probably, a correct representative of the larger type of ships made use of by the renowned adventurers of the North in their distant expeditions.

In view of the great interest attaching to this find, a detailed description of the vessel is given. The illustrations (Figs. 22 to 26), showing an end elevation, longitudinal and cross-sections, and the half-plan with her lines, are taken from the "Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects."[13] The boat was clinker-built and wholly of oak. Her principal dimensions are: length, 77 ft. 11 in.; extreme breadth, 16 ft. 7 in.; and depth, from top of keel to gunwale, 5 ft. 9 in. The keel is 14 in. deep, the part below the rabbet of the garboard or lowest strakes of the planking, being 11 in. deep, and 4½ in. thick at the bottom. The width across the rabbet is 3 in., while the portion above the rabbet and inboard is 7 in. wide. The keel and stem and stern-posts run into each other with very gentle curves. The keel itself is 57 ft. long, and to it are connected, by vertical scarves and a double row of iron rivets, the forefoot and heel-pieces, which latter are fastened in a similar manner to the stem and stern-post. These posts are 15 in. deep at the scarf, gradually tapering upwards. The framing of the bottom is formed of grown floors resting on the top of the keel, and extending in one piece, from shelf to shelf, as shown on the transverse section (Fig. [23]). There are nineteen of these floors in all, spaced in the body of the boat, on the average 3 ft. 3 in. apart. They are 4 in. in diameter at the garboard strake, and taper in both dimensions, so that they are less than 3 in. at the shelf. They are not fastened to the keel. The planking is put on clinker fashion. There are sixteen strakes a side, the breadth of each, amidships, being on the average 9½ in., including the land of 1 in., and the length of planks varies from 8 ft. to 24 ft. The thickness is generally 1 in. The tenth plank from the keel is, however, 1-3/4 in. thick, and forms a kind of shelf for the beam-ends. The third plank from the top is 1¼ in. thick, and is pierced with 4-in. holes for the oars, of which there are sixteen on each side. The two upper strakes are only 3/4 in. thick, and inside the top one is placed the gunwale, which is 3 × 4½. The planks are fastened together by iron rivets spaced from 6 in. to 8 in. apart. The heads of the rivets are 1 in. in diameter, and the riveting plates 1/2 in. square. The planks are worked down from thicker slabs, and a ledge 1 in. in height is left on the inboard surface of the middle of each plank. The planks bear against each floor at two points, viz. the upper edge and the projecting ledge. Fig. [24] shows a section of a floor and of the plank, with its projecting ledge. The fastenings of the planking to the floors are very peculiar. Two holes are bored transversely in the ledge, one on either side of each floor. There is a corresponding hole running fore and aft through the floor, and through these holes are passed ties made of the tough roots of trees barely 1/4 in. in diameter, crossed on the ledge and passing once through each hole. The only iron fastening between the planking and the floors is at the extreme ends of the latter, where a single nail is driven through each, and riveted at the ends of the floors. The beams rest on the shelf strake and on the tops of the floor-ends. They are 7 in. deep and 4 in. wide. They are connected with the planking by knees (see the section, Fig. [23]), fastened to their upper faces and to the side of the ship as far up as the oar-strake, or "mainwale," by means of oak trenails. The knees are not so wide as the beams, and consequently a ledge, or landing, is left on each side of the latter which supports the flooring, or bottom boards. The top strakes are connected to the body of the vessel by short timbers, shown in the section, Fig. [23]. These are placed in the spaces between the knees. The beams are supported in the middle by short pillars resting on the throats of the floors.

Fig. 22.—Viking ship.

The vessel was propelled by sails as well as oars. It was fitted with a single mast; the arrangements for stepping and raising and lowering the latter were peculiar. A beam of oak, 11 ft. long, 19 in. wide, and 14 in. deep, formed the step. A side elevation of this is shown at s, in the longitudinal section, Fig. [25], and a cross-section in Fig. [23]. The step, as may be seen, is countersunk over the throats of the floors; it is tapered towards the ends, and a piece (c) nearly 12 in. thick, immediately forward of the mast, rises vertically out of it. This piece is fastened to a huge log of oak, 16 ft. long, 38 in. broad, and 14 in. deep in the middle, marked f (Figs. 25 and 26), which rests on a sole-piece about 4 in. thick. The sole-piece is countersunk over the beams. The large log is called by Mr. Colin Archer the "fish," partly because its ends are fashioned to represent the tails of two whales, and partly because the mast partners of modern ships, which take the place of this heavy piece, are to this day called Fisken in Norway. The fish contains a slot (h) nearly 6 ft. long, and the same width as the mast, 12½ in. The mast goes through the forward end of the slot, and when it is in use the slot is filled up with a heavy slab. When the mast is lowered for going into action, or when going against a head-wind, the slab is removed, and the fore-stay slacked off, thus permitting the mast to fall aft. The sail used was a solitary square one. The rudder resembles a short oar. It is hung by a rope passing through a perforated conical chock on the starboard side of the ship. There is an iron eyebolt near the bottom edge, through which a rope probably passed for the purpose of raising the rudder when not in use. The rudder was worked by means of a tiller fitted into the socket at the upper end.

Unfortunately, the two extreme ends of the ship have decayed away, so that it is not possible to determine with accuracy what was the appearance of the bow and stern. It is, however, probable, from the direction taken by the planking towards the ends, that the vessel possessed very considerable sheer. As may be seen from the plan, the character of the lines was extremely fine, and it is probable that the boat was capable of high speed. The remains of the ropes which have been discovered prove that they were made from the bark of trees.

This vessel may be considered as a connecting link between the ancient and mediæval types of ships. Her proportions and scantlings prove that her builders had a large experience of shipbuilding, that they fully understood how to work their material and to adapt it properly to the duty it had to fulfil, and also that they understood the art, which was subsequently lost, to be revived only in modern times, of shaping the underwater portion of the hull so as to reduce the resistance to the passage of the vessel through the water. The only part of the structural design to which any serious exception can be taken is the very slight character of the connection between the top sides and the body of the boat, and even this defect was probably not very serious when we take into account the lightness of the loading, and the fact that it probably consisted chiefly of live cargo, so that there was little dead weight to cause serious straining.

Vessels of the type of the Viking ships were built in Denmark at a very early date. In 1865 three boats were discovered buried in a peat bog in Jutland. Danish antiquaries consider that they were built about the fifth century of our era. The largest is 70 ft. in length and of such an excellent type that boats of somewhat similar form and construction are in universal use to this day all round the coasts of Norway. Such an instance of persistency in type is without parallel in the history of shipbuilding, and is a wonderful proof of the skill of the Norsemen in designing and building vessels. The boat in question is clinker-built, the planks having the same peculiarities as those of the Viking ship just described. It is of the same shape at both ends, and has great sheer at both stem and stern. The rowlocks, of which there are thirty, prove that the vessel was intended to be rowed in either direction. This also is a peculiarity of the modern Norwegian rowboat. The steering was effected by means of a large oar, or paddle. There is no trace of a mast, nor of any fitting to receive one; nor was the vessel decked. The internal framing was admirably contrived. In fact, it would be difficult, even at the present time, to find a vessel in which lightness and strength were better combined than in this fifteen-hundred-year-old specimen of the shipbuilder's art.

CHAPTER IV.

MEDIÆVAL SHIPS.

In the times of the Norman kings of England both the war and the mercantile navies of the country were highly developed. William the Conqueror invaded this island without the assistance of a war navy. He trusted to good luck to transport his army across the Channel in an unprotected fleet of small vessels which were built for this purpose, and which were burnt by his order when the landing had been effected. We possess illustrations of these transport vessels from a contemporary source—the Bayeux tapestry, which was, according to tradition, the work of Queen Matilda, the Conqueror's consort. Fig. [27] represents one of these vessels. It is obviously of Scandinavian type, resembling in some of its features the Viking ship shown in Figs. 22 to 26. Apparently, oars were not used in this particular boat; the propulsion was effected by means of a single square sail. The mast unshipped, as we know from other illustrations on the same piece of tapestry. The steering was effected by a rudder, or steering-board, on the starboard-side. In all the illustrations of ships in this tapestry the main sheet was held by the steersman, a fact which shows that the Normans were cautious navigators. Another ship is represented with ten horses on board.

We possess confirmatory evidence that the ship shown in Fig. [27] represents a type that was prevalent on our coasts in the eleventh and two following centuries, for very similar boats are shown in the transcript of Matthew Paris's "History of the Two Kings of Offa" (now in the Cottonian Library), the illustrations in which are supposed to have been drawn by Matthew Paris himself. The history is that of two Saxon princes who lived in the latter half of the eighth century, and was written in the first half of the thirteenth. We may fairly suppose that the illustrations represented the types of vessels with which the historian was familiar. They were all of the type depicted in the Bayeux tapestry. They are of the same shape at both ends, just like the Viking ship, and it may be added, like the boats to this day in common use along the coasts of Norway.

Fig. 27.—One of William the Conqueror's ships. 1066 a.d.

It must not be supposed that the art of building ships of larger size, which was, as we have seen, well understood by the Romans, about the commencement of our era, was forgotten. On the contrary, though, no doubt, the majority of ships of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were of small dimensions, yet we occasionally meet with notices of vessels of comparatively large size. Such an one, for instance, was La Blanche Nef, built in the reign of Henry I., and lost on the coast of Normandy in the year 1120 a.d. This ship was built for Prince William, the son of the King, and he was lost in her, together with 300 passengers and crew. This number proves that the vessel was of considerable size. La Blanche Nef was a fifty-oared galley. Long before her time, at the end of the tenth century, when Ethelred the Unready was King of England, the Viking Olaf Tryggvesson built, according to the Norwegian chroniclers, a vessel 117 ft. in length.

It may here be mentioned that galleys continued to be used, along with sailing ships, in the various European navies till the seventeenth century.

Another instance of the loss of a large twelfth-century ship occurred in the reign of Henry II., half a century later than the wreck of La Blanche Nef, when a vessel engaged in transport work foundered with 400 persons.

In the reign of Richard Cœur de Lion a great impetus was given to shipbuilding and to maritime adventure in this country by the expedition which the king undertook to the Holy Land. A fleet of about 110 vessels, according to Peter Langtoft, sailed from Dartmouth in April, 1190 a.d. It was reinforced considerably in the Mediterranean; for, according to Matthew Paris, Richard was accompanied on his voyage to Palestine by 13 buccas, 100 "ships of burthen," and 50 triremes, and according to Vinesauf, the fleet consisted of about 230 vessels. The buccas, or busses, or dromons, were ships of the largest size, with triple sails. There were two sorts of galleys; some were propelled by oars alone, and others by oars and sails: the latter were the larger, and, according to Matthew Paris, sometimes carried 60 men in armour, besides 104 rowers and the sailors. He also states that some of them had triple banks of oars like the ancient galleys; but, according to Vinesauf, the majority had not more than two banks of oars, and carried the traditional flying deck above the rowers for the use of the soldiers; they were low in the water compared to the sailing-ships, and they carried beaks, or rams, which, as narrated subsequently, they used to some purpose.

The larger type of sailing-ships carried a captain and fifteen sailors, forty knights with their horses, an equal number of men-at-arms, fourteen servants, and complete stores for twelve months. There were, moreover, three much larger vessels in the fleet which carried double the complement mentioned above.

As an instance of the very large size to which vessels occasionally attained in those days in the Levant, we may refer to a Saracen vessel which was attacked by Richard's fleet near Beirut in Syria, in 1191. It was described by many of the old chroniclers. This ship had three masts, and is alleged to have had 1,500 men on board at the time of the fight. The attack was carried out with great difficulty, on account of the towering height of the sides of the Saracen vessel, and it was not till ramming tactics were tried by the galleys charging in line abreast, that her hull was stove in, in several places, and she went down with nearly all hands, only thirty-five, or, according to other accounts forty-six, having been saved.

These large ships appear to have been used by other Mediterranean Powers towards the end of the twelfth century. For instance, a great Venetian ship visited Constantinople in 1172 a.d., of which it was stated that "no vessel of so great a bulk had ever been within that port." This vessel is mentioned by Cinnamis, Marino, and Filiasi, and others, but her dimensions are not given. It is, however, known that she had three masts. Cinnamis, who was at Constantinople at this very time, states that she received from 1,500 to 2,000 Venetian refugees on board, and conveyed them to the Adriatic. The Venetians are said to have employed another very large ship at the siege of Ancona in 1157 a.d. On account of its size it was named Il Mondo.

The Republic of Venice was, during the time of which we are writing, and for a long subsequent period, the foremost maritime power of the world. It is highly probable that many of the improvements which found their way into mediæval ships owed their origin to its great naval arsenal, which was famed for its resources and for the technical skill of its employés. At one time this arsenal employed 16,000 workmen, and during the great struggle of the Republic with the Turks at the end of the sixteenth century it turned out a completed and fully equipped galley every day for a hundred days in succession. During the Crusades, Venice and the rival Republic of Genoa secured between them the great bulk of the business involved in transporting troops and stores to the East, and they frequently hired out their war and merchant ships to other Powers.

Shortly after the Crusade of Richard Cœur de Lion the trade and shipping of England appear to have undergone great expansion. In the reign of Henry III. (1216 to 1272) the historian, Matthew of Westminster, writes of them in a strain which might almost apply to our own day:—

"Oh England, whose antient glory is renowned among all nations, like the pride of the Chaldeans; the ships of Tarsis could not compare with thy ships; they bring from all the quarters of the world aromatic spices and all the most precious things of the universe: the sea is thy wall, and thy ports are as the gates of a strong and well-furnished castle."

In another place the same historian writes of the English trade as follows:—

"The Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians supply England with the Eastern gems, as saphires, emeralds, and carbuncles; from Asia was brought the rich silks and purples; from Africa the cinnamon and balm; from Spain the kingdom was enriched with gold; with silver from Germany; from Flanders came the rich materials for the garments of the people; while plentiful streams of wine flowed from their own province of Gascoigny; joined with everything that was rich and pretious from every land, wide stretching from the Hyades to the Arcturian Star."

No doubt this expansion was due, in part, to the very large participation which the English fleet took in the Crusade. Great numbers of English mariners were thus enabled to penetrate into seas that were new to them, and had opportunities of studying the commercial needs of the countries which bordered on those seas. Another cause which powerfully contributed to the development of navigation, and consequently of shipbuilding, was the introduction of the mariner's compass into Western Europe during the first half of the thirteenth century.

The English war navy, also at the commencement of the reign of Henry II., appears to have been in a very efficient condition. Matthew Paris gives a description of a great naval fight off the South Foreland, in the year 1217, between a Cinque Ports Fleet under the famous Hubert de Burgh, who was at the time Governor of Dover Castle, and a large French fleet under a monk of the name of Eustace, who was one of the most skilful naval commanders of his day. The English fleet consisted of forty vessels, of which only sixteen were large and manned with trained sailors. The French fleet, which was endeavouring to carry a strong invading army to England, was made up of eighty large vessels, besides numerous galleys and smaller craft. The account of the battle is most interesting, because it throws a flood of light upon the naval tactics and the weapons of offence of the day. The English commander manœuvred for the wind, and having got it, he bore down on the French fleet, and attacked their rear ships with flights of arrows carrying phials of unslaked lime, which being scattered and carried by the wind, blinded the Frenchmen; boarding was then attempted with perfect success, the rigging and halyards of the French ships were cut away, causing the sails to fall upon their crews. A hand-to-hand combat then took place, which resulted in fearful slaughter of the would-be invaders: several of the French ships were rammed and sunk by the English galleys, and in the end the whole of the hostile fleet, with the exception of fifteen vessels, was taken or sunk. This was one of the most momentous naval battles in English history, and is memorable as having furnished the first recorded instance of a battle having been preceded by manœvres to obtain the weather-gauge.

Fig. 28. Sandwich seal. 1238.

Fig. 29.—Dover seal. 1284.

We have, unfortunately, very few illustrations of the thirteenth-century ships, and those which we do possess are taken from the corporate seals of some of the Cinque Ports and other southern seaport towns. Fig. [28] is a representation of the seal of Sandwich, and dates from the year 1238. The circular form of a seal is not very favourable for the representation of a masted ship, but we can at least make out that the vessel in question is of the Scandinavian type used by William I. and his successors. It also appears to have been an open boat, and contains the germs of the castellated structures fore and aft, which, as we shall see afterwards, attained to the most exaggerated dimensions. In the case of the Sandwich ship these castles were not incorporated with the structure of the vessel; they were merely elevated positions for the use of the archers and men-at-arms, and were mounted on columns, and were probably removable. We can also learn from the engraving that the practice of furling sails aloft was practised at that time. Fig. [29] is the seal of Dover, and dates from the reign of Edward I. (1284 a.d.). It does not show much progress over the Sandwich boat of nearly fifty years earlier, but we may notice that the castles are more developed and of a more permanent character. This vessel also possesses a bowsprit.

It was about the middle of this century that cabins appear to have been introduced into English ships. The first mention of them occurs in 1242, when orders were given that "decent chambers" were to be constructed in a ship in which the king and queen were to voyage to Gascony.

There are records in existence of the dimensions of some vessels which were built for Louis IX. of France in the year 1268 a.d. at Venice and Genoa. They are published in Jal's "Archéologie Navale." The Venetian ship which was named the Roccafortis appears to have been the largest. Her dimensions are given as follows: length of keel, 70 ft.; length over all, 110 ft.; width at prow and poop, 40 ft. This latter dimension is hardly credible. The Roccafortis had two covered decks, and a castle or "bellatorium" at each end, and also several cabins. The crew numbered 110.

The Genoese ships were smaller. Two of them were of identical dimensions, viz. length of keel, 49½ ft.; length over all, 75 ft.; beam, 10 ft. The figure given for the beam appears to be too small in this case, if the dimensions of the mast, 70½ ft., are correct, for such a long mast could hardly have been carried in so narrow a boat. These vessels had two decks, and are said to have had stabling for fifty horses each; but this latter statement cannot be true if the dimensions are accurately given.

We have very little information about the ships of the end of the thirteenth and commencement of the fourteenth centuries. There is a list in existence of Cinque Ports ships which were fitted out in 1299 to take part in the war against Scotland. They were thirty in number. More than half of them had complements of two constables and thirty-nine mariners, and the smallest had one constable and nineteen mariners. There is also a statement of the tonnage and complements of ships intended for an expedition to Guienne in the year 1324, which throws some light on the size of the vessels employed in the Scottish expedition. From it we learn that a ship of 240 tons had 60 mariners and officers; one of 200 tons, 50; vessels between 160 and 180 tons, 40; of 140 tons, 35; of 120 tons, 28; of 100 tons, 26; of 80 tons, 24; and of 60 tons, 21. From the above we may infer that the largest vessels in the Cinque Ports' squadron of 1,299 were from 160 to 180 tons. The measure of a ton in those early days was probably the cubic space occupied by a tun of wine of 252 gallons in the hold of a ship.

We possess one representation of an English ship of the date of this expedition to Guienne. It was engraved on the seal of the Port of Poole in the year 1325 (Fig. [30]). It is remarkable as the earliest known instance of an English ship fitted with a rudder at the stern instead of the side-rudder, or paddle, which had been in use from the very earliest times. We also notice in this ship a further development of the stern and forecastles, which, however, were not as yet fully incorporated with the structure of the hull.

The reign of Edward III., which commenced in 1327, was, in consequence of the wars with Scotland and France, one of great naval activity. After some years of desultory naval warfare in the Channel, a famous sea fight took place at Sluys, in Dutch Flanders, about ten miles north-east of Blankenberghe, in the year 1340. The English fleet consisted of about 200 ships under the personal command of Edward III. The allied French and Genoese fleet numbered, according to the English king, 190, and was composed of ships, galleys, and barges, while some of the chroniclers have put its numbers at as many as 400 sail, but this would probably include many small craft. The battle resulted in the capture, or destruction, of nearly the whole French fleet. The English are said to have lost 4,000 men killed, and the French 25,000. In one vessel, named the Jeanne de Dieppe, captured by the Earl of Huntingdon, no fewer than 400 dead bodies were found. The latter figure shows that some very large vessels were used at this battle.

Fig. 30.—Poole seal. 1325.

Edward III. caused a gold noble to be struck in 1344 bearing the representation of a ship almost precisely similar to the vessel on the seal of Poole, of about twenty years earlier (Fig. [30]). It is fitted with a rudder at the stern, and we may therefore conclude that at this period the side-rudder, or clavus, had disappeared from all important vessels. The fore and stern castles were, in most cases, temporary additions to merchant ships, to adapt them for purposes of warfare. In fact, nearly all the sailing-ships used in naval warfare down to, and even after the fourteenth century, appear to have been employed as merchant vessels in time of peace; and this remark applies even to the king's ships. It was, no doubt, the introduction of artillery that first caused the sailing warship to be differentiated from the merchantman. Although gunpowder for military purposes is said to have been used on land as early as 1326, and although iron and brass cannon are mentioned amongst the stores of three of the king's ships in 1338, nevertheless, the battle of Sluys and the subsequent naval engagements in the reign of Edward III. appear to have been fought without artillery. It was not till the last quarter of the fourteenth century that guns became at all common on board ship.

In the year 1345 Edward III. invaded France, and was accompanied by a fleet of from 1,000 to 1,100 ships, besides small craft. Two hundred of these vessels were employed after the king's landing in ravaging the northern coasts of France and destroying the hostile shipping.

In the year 1347 Edward organised another great naval expedition against France, this time in order to give him the command of the sea during his siege of Calais. The fleet was drawn from all the ports of the kingdom, and small contingents came from Ireland, Flanders, Spain, and the king's own possession of Bayonne. There are two lists in existence of the numbers of ships and men contributed by each port to this expedition. They agree very closely. According to one of them, the united fleet consisted of 745 ships, and 15,895 mariners, or an average of about twenty mariners to each ship. This figure, of course, does not include the fighting men. About fifty of these vessels were fighting ships fitted with castles, and the remainder were barges, ballingers (which appear to have been a kind of large barge), and transports. The largest contingents, by far, came from Yarmouth, which contributed 43 ships and 1,950 men; Fowey sent 47 ships and 770 men; and Dartmouth supplied 32 ships and 756 men; while London, independently of the king's own vessels, sent only 25 ships manned with 662 men.

In 1350 Edward III. and the Black Prince fought a famous naval battle off Winchelsea against a fleet of forty Spanish ships. The battle is generally known by the name of L'Espagnols-sur-Mer. Edward was victorious, though he lost his own ship, through its springing a leak when colliding with one of the Spanish vessels. The tactics of the English consisted chiefly of boarding, while the Spaniards, whose vessels were much the higher, attacked with cross-bows and heavy stones; the latter they hurled from their fighting-tops into their adversaries' ships.

From the foregoing, we can infer that the naval resources of England in the first half of the reign of Edward III. were very great. During the latter half of his reign he neglected his navy, and the French and Spaniards, in spite of all their previous losses, rapidly gained the upper hand at sea, and ravaged the English coasts. In 1372 the Spanish fleet assisting the French inflicted a severe defeat upon an inferior English squadron which had been sent to the relief of La Rochelle. This battle is memorable because it was, probably, the first sea-fight in which artillery was employed, the Spanish ships having been partly armed with the new weapon. The Venetians are usually credited with having been the first people to employ naval guns; but we do not find them using artillery against the Genoese till the year 1377.

The introduction of cannon as the armament of ships of war was the cause of several modifications in the construction of their hulls. Most of the early vessels fitted with cannon were of the galley type, the guns being mounted on the upper deck, and fired over the bulwarks, en barbette. Afterwards portholes were cut through the bulwarks. Fig. [31] represents a Venetian galley of the fourteenth century, as given by Charnock, with a single gun mounted in the bow.

Fig. 31.—Venetian galley. Fourteenth century.

The new form of armament of ships involved a considerable raising of the height of side, and in order to counteract the effect of the high topside, carrying the weight of guns aloft, the beam of the vessel relatively to its length had to be much increased. The Venetians were, however, afraid to make the transverse section wide throughout, lest the weight of the guns near the sides of the vessel should cause the connection of the sides with the beams to strain; hence they gave the sides considerable "tumble home," or fall inboard, as represented by Fig. [32], which shows the cross-section of a Venetian galleon. It will be noticed that the width of the upper deck is only about half that of the greatest beam. This practice was afterwards carried to an absurd extent by the Venetians and their imitators, even in cases where guns were not carried aloft, as may be seen from the sketch of a galleon given in Fig. [33]. Hence it is evident that the introduction of ordnance on board ship accounted for a complete revolution in the proportions of hulls hitherto in vogue. The rig of ships also underwent a considerable development about this period. The old single mast of the galley was supplemented by two and in some cases by three others. The sails were still square sails carried on spars, and the practice of reefing the sails to the spars aloft, instead of lowering spars and sails together on deck, had now become common.

Fig. 32.—Cross-section of a Venetian galleon.

Two years after the action off La Rochelle we find the French commencing the construction of a Royal Navy at Rouen. This step was taken in consequence of the strong opinion held by Jean de Vienne, who was appointed Admiral of France in 1373, that vessels built specially for the purposes of war would have a great advantage over the hired merchantmen which had to be adapted for fighting each time they were impressed.

It is highly probable that the latter half of the fourteenth century witnessed many improvements in ships built in the Mediterranean. This was no doubt due, in part, to the intense commercial rivalry that existed at that time between Venice and the other Italian Republics. Fig. [34] is taken from a MS. Virgil in the Riccardi Library, reproduced in M. Jal's[14] work. It represents an Italian two-masted sailing-ship of this period. This is one of the earliest illustrations of a ship with a permanent forecastle forming part of the structure of the vessel. The stern castle also appears to have a permanent, though not a structural character. Ships of somewhat similar type were used in England in the reign of Richard II. at the end of the fourteenth century. Fig. [35] represents one of them, the original being in an illustrated manuscript in the Harleian Library. It was written by a Frenchman of the name of Francis de la Marque in Richard's reign. There are illustrations in manuscripts still in existence written about this period, which confirm the fact that this type of ship was then prevalent.

Fig. 33.—Venetian galleon. 1564.

The reign of Henry V. (1413 to 1422) was one of great naval development. The king himself took a most ardent interest in the Royal Navy, and frequently inspected the ships during their construction. Under his auspices some very large vessels were built for the fleet. Lists of this king's ships are still in existence. They are classified under the names Great Ships, Cogs, Carracks, Ships, Barges, and Ballingers. The largest of the great ships was the Jesus, of 1,000 tons; the Holigost, of 760; the Trinity Royal, of 540; and the Christopher Spayne, of 600; the last-mentioned was a prize captured by the Earl of Huntingdon. The majority of the ships were, however, from 420 to 120 tons. The carracks were apparently not English-built ships, as all those in the king's navy were prizes captured in 1416 and 1417. The three largest were of 600, 550, and 500 tons respectively. The barges are given as of 100 tons, and the ballingers ranged from 120 to 80 tons. The total strength of the Royal Navy about the year 1420, as given in the list compiled by W. M. Oppenheim from the accounts of the keepers of the king's ships, is 38; of these 17 were ships, 7 carracks, 2 barges, and 12 ballingers. It is worthy of notice that there were no galleys included in the list.

Henry invaded France in 1415 with a fleet of 1,400 vessels, which had been raised by impressing every British ship of 20 tons and upwards. The home supply not being sufficient for his purpose, Henry sent commissioners to Holland and Zealand to hire additional vessels. In all 1,500 ships were collected and 1,400 utilised. These figures give us a fair idea of the resources of this country in shipping at that time.

This was the invasion which resulted in the victory of Agincourt and the capture of Harfleur. In the year following (1416) France was again invaded and the fleet was stated by some to have numbered 300, and by others 400 ships. A naval battle was fought off Harfleur. It resulted in a complete victory for Henry. The old tactics and the old weapons seem to have been used. Although, as we have seen, guns had been used in sea-fights nearly forty years previously, there is no mention of their having been employed on either side at this battle.

In 1417 the king again collected 1,500 vessels at Southampton for a fresh invasion of France. Having first obtained the command of the sea by a naval victory over the French and Genoese, a landing was duly effected near Harfleur. Several vessels, including four large carracks, were captured in the sea-fight, and were added to the king's navy.

During the reign of Henry V. the Mercantile Marine of England made no progress. Commerce was checked in consequence of the state of war which prevailed, and the improvements in shipbuilding seem to have been confined to the Royal Navy. It seems probable, however, that the experience gained in the construction and navigation of the very large ships which the king added to the navy had its effect, ultimately, in improving the type of merchant-vessels.

Fig. 36.—English ship. Time of Henry VI.

During the forty years of the reign of Henry VI. England was so greatly exhausted and impoverished by war with France and by internal dissensions at home, that commerce and shipbuilding made little progress. We possess a sketch of a ship of the early part of the reign of Henry VI. It is contained in a manuscript in the Harleian Library of the date, probably, of 1430 to 1435. It is reproduced in Fig. [36], and differs from the ship of the reign of Richard II. shown in Fig. [35], chiefly in having the poop and forecastle more strongly developed.

While England was steadily declining in power from the time of the death of Henry V., a new maritime nation was arising in South-Western Europe, whose discoveries were destined to have a most marked effect on the seaborne commerce, and consequently on the shipbuilding of the world. In the year 1417 the Portuguese, under the guidance of Prince Henry the Navigator, commenced their exploration of the west coast of Africa, and they continued it with persistency during the century. In 1418 they discovered, or rather re-discovered, the island of Madeira, for it is extremely probable that it was first visited by an Englishman of the name of Machin.

The Portuguese prince firmly believed that a route could be opened round Africa to the Indies. To reach these regions by sea seems to have been the goal of the great explorers of the fifteenth century, and the Portuguese were stimulated in their endeavours by a grant from Pope Martin V. of all territories which might thenceforward be discovered between Cape Bojador and the East Indies. In 1446 an expedition consisting of six caravels was fitted out, and made a voyage to Guinea; it resulted in the discovery of the Cape Verde Islands. The caravel was a type of ship much used by the countries of Southern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A description of a Spanish vessel of this type is given on pages 87 to 89. In 1449 the Azores were discovered. In 1481 a lucrative trade was opened up between Portugal and the natives of Guinea. Six years afterwards the Cape of Good Hope was reached by Bartholomew Diaz, and in 1497 it was doubled by Vasco da Gama.

During a great part of the period in which the Portuguese were thus occupied in extending their commerce and in paving the way for great discoveries, the condition of England, owing to the French war and to the subsequent Wars of the Roses, was passing from bad to worse. Nevertheless, the spirit of commercial enterprise was not wholly extinguished. A few merchants seem to have made fortunes in the shipping trade, and among them may be mentioned the famous William Canynge of Bristol, who was probably the greatest private shipowner in England at the end of the reign of Henry VI. and during the time of Edward IV. (1461 to 1483). Canynge traded to Iceland, Finland, and the Mediterranean. He is said to have possessed ships as large as 900 tons, and it is recorded on his monument, in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, in Bristol, that he at one time lent ships, to the extent of 2,670 tons, to Edward IV. It is also related of him that he owned ten ships and employed 800 sailors and 100 artisans.