SHIPSOF THE SEVEN SEASCHAPTER ITHE DEVELOPMENT OF SHIPS
SHIPSOF THE SEVEN SEAS
Imaginethe world without ships. Mighty empires that now exist and have existed in the past would never have developed. Every continent—every island—would be a world alone. Europe, Asia, and Africa could have known each other, it is true, in time. North and South America might ultimately have become acquainted by means of the narrow isthmus that joins them. But without ships, Australia and all the islands of all the seas would still remain unknown to others, each supporting peoples whose limited opportunities for development would have prevented advanced civilization. Without ships the world at large would still be a backward, savage place, brightened here and there with tiny civilizations, perhaps, but limited in knowledge, limited in development and in opportunity. Without ships white men could never have found America. Without ships the British Empire could never have existed. Holland, Spain, Rome, Carthage, Greece, Phœnicia—none of them could ever have filled their places in world history without ships. Without ships the Bosphorus would still be impassable and the threat of Xerxes to Western civilization would never have been known. Greater still—far greater—without ships the Christian religion would have been limited toPalestine or would have worked its way slowly across the deserts and mountains to the South and East, to impress with its teachings the Arabs, the Assyrians, the Hindoos, and the Chinese.
Ships have made the modern world—ships have given the white man world supremacy, and ships, again, have made the English-speaking peoples the colonizers and the merchants whose manufactures are known in every land, whose flags are respected all around the globe, and whose citizens are now the most fortunate of all the people of the earth.
All of this we owe to ships.
Far back before the beginnings of history lived the first sailor. Who he was we do not know. Where he first found himself water-borne we cannot even guess. Probably in a thousand different places at a thousand different times a thousand different savage men found that by sitting astride floating logs they could ride on the surface of the water.
In time they learned to bind together logs or reeds and to make crude rafts on which they could carry themselves and some of their belongings. They learned to propel these rafts by thrusting poles to the bottoms of the lakes or rivers on which they floated. They learned, in time, how to make and how to use paddles, and as prehistoric ages gave way to later ages groping savages learned to construct rafts more easily propelled, on which platforms were built, to keep their belongings up above the wash of the waves that foamed about the logs.
And ultimately some long-forgotten genius hollowed out a log with fire, perhaps, and crude stone tools, and made himself a heavy, unwieldy canoe, which, heavy as it was and awkward, could still be handled much more readilythan could the rafts that had served his forbears for perhaps a hundred centuries.
And with this early step forward in the art of ship-building came a little of the light that heralded the approaching dawn of civilization.
AN EGYPTIAN BOAT OF 6000 B. C.This drawing was made from what is probably the most ancient known record of a ship. The high bow and stern seem somewhat overdone, and it is likely that they were less elevated than this picture shows them. The carving from which this was taken, however, exaggerates them still more.
AN EGYPTIAN BOAT OF 6000 B. C.This drawing was made from what is probably the most ancient known record of a ship. The high bow and stern seem somewhat overdone, and it is likely that they were less elevated than this picture shows them. The carving from which this was taken, however, exaggerates them still more.
AN EGYPTIAN BOAT OF 6000 B. C.
This drawing was made from what is probably the most ancient known record of a ship. The high bow and stern seem somewhat overdone, and it is likely that they were less elevated than this picture shows them. The carving from which this was taken, however, exaggerates them still more.
The very first pages of recorded history tell us of ships, and we know that many prehistoric men were adept at building such boats as dugout canoes. In Switzerland many signs have been found of a people who dwelt there in the Stone Age, and among the simple belongings of this people of great antiquity have been found canoes hollowed from single logs. In the bogs of Ireland, and in England and Scotland similar dugouts have been occasionally found, which had been buried in the course of time far below the surface of the ground.
By the time the Stone Age came the dugout was perfected, and still later other types of boats appeared. Perhaps the hollowed log suggested the use of the curved bark of the tree as a canoe, and ultimately a framework of wood was developed to hold the weight of the occupant while a covering of bark kept out the water. The framework was necessary for two reasons—first, to give the structure the necessary strength to keep its shape; and second, to bear the weight of the builder and his belongings. Other coverings, such as skins and woven fabrics covered with pitch, came into use in parts of the world where suitable bark was scarce.
The next step in the building of boats was a method of fastening pieces of wood together in suitable form. This probably came from a desire for boats of larger size, which required greater strength, for man early became a trader and wished to transport goods. Bark could not support a heavy hull, and dugouts are necessarily limited in size, being constructed of the trunks of single trees, although dugouts fifty or sixty feet in length, or even longer, are not unknown. Probably the earliest boats of this new type were tied together by thongs or cords. Even to-day the natives of Madras, in India, build boats by this method, and similar types are to be found on the Strait of Magellan, on Lake Victoria Nyanza in Central Africa, and in the East Indies. Many of these have been very highly developed until now they are built of heavy hand-hewn boards fitted together with ridges on their inner sides, through which holes are bored for the thongs that lash them together. The boards are fastened together first, and later a frame is attached to the interior. This construction makes a very “elastic” boat which bends and twists in a seaway, but which, because of this “elasticity,” is able to navigate waters that would prove fatal to the more rigid types of crudely constructedboats. The Hindoos often use them in the heavy surf that drives in upon the beaches from the Bay of Bengal.
A LARGE EGYPTIAN SHIP OF THE 18TH DYNASTYThe overhanging bow and stern were common on most early Egyptian ships, and the heavy cable, stretched from one end of the hull to the other and supported on two crutches, was used to strengthen these overhanging ends.
A LARGE EGYPTIAN SHIP OF THE 18TH DYNASTYThe overhanging bow and stern were common on most early Egyptian ships, and the heavy cable, stretched from one end of the hull to the other and supported on two crutches, was used to strengthen these overhanging ends.
A LARGE EGYPTIAN SHIP OF THE 18TH DYNASTY
The overhanging bow and stern were common on most early Egyptian ships, and the heavy cable, stretched from one end of the hull to the other and supported on two crutches, was used to strengthen these overhanging ends.
The introduction of this construction made boats of considerable size possible, and for the first time boats larger than anything that could possibly be called a canoe were successfully floated.
From this form a further step was ultimately made in which the various parts were fastened together by the use of wooden pegs, and this was the most advanced type long centuries after the dawn of history. The Nile was navigated by such boats at the height of Egypt’s civilization, and Homer describes this type of boat as the one in which Ulysses wandered on his long and wearisome journey home.
While the art of boat-building had been travelling this long, slow way, the art of propulsion had not been idle.Long since, the simple pole of the early savage had lost its usefulness, for men soon learned to navigate waters too deep for poles. The paddle followed, and was perfected to a very high point, as its use in all parts of the world still testifies.
But further means were still to come, and by the time Ulysses started on his journey from the fallen city of Troy, both the sail and the oar, which for three thousand years were to be supreme as propelling forces, had come into use.
In Ulysses’s boat, therefore, we see for the first time a combination of structural features and propelling agents that compare, remotely though it may be, with ships as they are to-day. A built-up structure with a framework, propelled by sails—it was an early counterpart of the ships of the present time.
Naturally enough this development did not take place simultaneously in all parts of the world. The most advanced civilizations such as those of Phœnicia, Greece, and China developed the most advanced ship-building methods, just as they developed the most advanced arts and sciences and thought and religion.
For instance, when Columbus discovered America a vital factor in the development of ships was entirely unknown to the natives that he found. No Indian tribe with which he or later explorers came in contact had learned the use of sails to propel the canoes they almost universally used. Civilizations of surprising worth, with art and architecture in high stages of advancement, had existed and had practically disappeared in Yucatan and Central America, and other civilizations of genuine attainment were later found, by Cortes and Pizarro, in Mexico and Peru, yet none of them knew the uses of the sail.
On the other hand, the Egyptians and the Phœnicians used the sail, and twenty-five centuries before the discovery of America the Phœnicians are thought to have sailed theirships around the continent of Africa from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.
But while the art of ship-building progressed more rapidly after the development of the use of wooden pegs for fastenings, and the use of sails and oars made possible more extended sea journeys, still the development was slow, and until the discovery of the power of steam in the latter part of the 18th Century no revolutionary changes in ships took place.
Just when the method originated of first constructing the frame of the ship and of covering this frame with planks, we do not know, but the transition from the method in use at the time of Homer was simple and the change was probably gradual.
A PERUVIAN BALSAThese “boats” are really rafts made of reeds.
A PERUVIAN BALSAThese “boats” are really rafts made of reeds.
A PERUVIAN BALSA
These “boats” are really rafts made of reeds.
It seems possible that the built-up boat may have had itsorigin in the attempt of some savage to raise the sides of his dugout canoe by the addition of boards in order to keep the water from harming his goods.
But all of the history of boats up to the time of written history is necessarily mostly surmise.
It is interesting to note, however, that every one of these basic types is still to be found in use. In Australia, for instance, are to be found savages whose boats are nothing but floating logs, sharpened at the ends, astride of which the owner sits. Rafts, of course, are common everywhere. Dugout canoes are to be found in many lands, among which are the islands of the Pacific and the western coast of Canada and Alaska. The birch-bark canoe is still common among the Indians of America—particularly of Canada; the skin-covered boat is still used commonly by the Eskimos, two types, the kayak, or decked canoe, and the umiak, or open boat being the most common. I have seen the latter type used also by the Indians who live on Great Bear Lake in northern Canada.
Boats fastened together with thongs or lashings are numerous in parts of India and elsewhere, the Madras surfboats being, perhaps, the best examples.
Boats built up of planks fastened together by pegs are to be found in many parts of the world. I learned to sail in a boat of this type, but very much modernized, on Chesapeake Bay. The other methods, very much perfected, are still in everyday use among boat- and ship-builders.
Thus it will be seen that some knowledge of all these various types may still serve some useful purpose, for one may find in everyday use all the fundamental types of construction that have ever existed.
AN AFRICAN DUGOUTIn this boat the builders have hollowed out the log but have not otherwise changed it. It is a present-day counterpart of boats known and used long before the dawn of history.
AN AFRICAN DUGOUTIn this boat the builders have hollowed out the log but have not otherwise changed it. It is a present-day counterpart of boats known and used long before the dawn of history.
AN AFRICAN DUGOUT
In this boat the builders have hollowed out the log but have not otherwise changed it. It is a present-day counterpart of boats known and used long before the dawn of history.
One type of boat I have not mentioned, yet it is of time-honoured ancestry and is still in daily use among thousands of people. This is the outrigger canoe. In different partsof the world it has different names. In the Philippines, for instance, it is called, in two of its forms,vintaandprau. These boats have one thing in common, and that is an outrigger. An outrigger is a pole made of bamboo or some other light wood, floating in the water at a distance of a few feet from the boat itself. It is held rigid and parallel to the hull by two or more cross bars. Sometimes there is an outrigger on each side but often there is only one. On the smaller boats the outrigger consists of a single pole. On larger boats, or those which are inclined to be particularly topheavy because of the load they are intended to carry, the size of the sail, or for some other cause, several poles may make up each outrigger. The use of this addition is to secure stability, forthe boats to which they are attached are usually extremely narrow and alone could not remain upright in the water, or at best could not carry sail in a seaway, where the combination of wind and wave would quickly capsize them. These outrigger canoes—and some of them are capable of carrying forty or fifty passengers—are extremely seaworthy, and the native sailors do not hesitate to take them for hundreds of miles across seas often given to heavy storms. In the development of ships, however, they play no part, for their only unique characteristic has never been incorporated into ships of higher design.
It is interesting that while all the cruder types of boats are still to be found in daily use in various parts of the world, the more highly developed designs, up to those of the 17th Century, have disappeared. Many of them, it is true, have influenced later designs, but most of the marks they left can be traced only with great difficulty.
The earliest boats of which we have definite records are those that were in use in Egypt about 3000 B. C. Some of these were of considerable size, for carvings on tombs and temples show them carrying cargoes of cattle and other goods, and show, too, on one side, as many as twenty-one or twenty-two, and in one case twenty-six, oars, besides several used for steering. Many of these boats were fitted with a strange sort of double mast, made, apparently, of two poles fastened together at the top and spread apart at the bottom. These masts could be lowered and laid on high supports when they were not needed to carry sail.
The boats themselves seem to have been straight-sided affairs with both ends highly raised, ending, sometimes, in a point and sometimes being carried up into highly decorated designs that at the bow occasionally curved backward and then forward like a swan’s neck. The end of this was often a carved head of some beast or bird or Egyptian god. Onthe boats intended for use as war galleys the bow was often armed with a heavy metal ram.
AN ESKIMO UMIAKThis boat is structurally similar to the kayak except that it has no deck. It is a larger boat, and will carry heavy loads and perhaps as many as a dozen people. It is made by covering a frame with skins.
AN ESKIMO UMIAKThis boat is structurally similar to the kayak except that it has no deck. It is a larger boat, and will carry heavy loads and perhaps as many as a dozen people. It is made by covering a frame with skins.
AN ESKIMO UMIAK
This boat is structurally similar to the kayak except that it has no deck. It is a larger boat, and will carry heavy loads and perhaps as many as a dozen people. It is made by covering a frame with skins.
These ships—for they had by this time grown to such size that they are more than canoes or boats—often extended far out over the water both forward and aft, and any concentration of weight on these overhanging extremities had a tendency to strain the hull amidships. This was offset, as it sometimes is to-day on shallow draft river boats, by running cables from bow to stern over crutches set amidships.
While the Egyptians were the first to picture their ships, it is not certain that they were the first to have ships of real size and sea-going ability, for the very temples and tombs on the walls of which are shown the ships that I have described have also the records of naval victories over raiders from other lands who must have made the voyage to theEgyptian coast in order to plunder the wealth of that old centre of civilization.
The Egyptians, however, were never a sea-going people in the sense that the Phœnicians were. But strange as it may be, the Phœnicians, despite the fact that they probably invented the alphabet, did not make the first record, or, as a matter of fact, any very important records, of their great development in the ship-building art. The earliest picture of which we know of Phœnician ships is on the wall of an Assyrian palace and dates back only to about 700 B. C. which was after the Assyrians had conquered the Phœnicians and had for the first time (for the Assyrians were an inland people) come in contact with sea-going ships.
By this time the Phœnicians had had many years of experience on the sea, and the Assyrian representation shows a ship of more advanced design than the Egyptians had had.
There are few records, however, from which we can gain much knowledge of Phœnician ships, although we know they ventured out of the Mediterranean and were familiar with the coasts of Spain, Portugal, France, and even England, where they went to secure tin. And as I mentioned earlier, they may even have circumnavigated Africa, and it seems likely that they invented the bireme and the trireme, thus solving the question of more power for propulsion.
A bireme is a boat propelled by oars which has the rowers so arranged that the oars overlap and form two banks or rows, one above the other. A trireme is similar except that there are three banks. With this arrangement a boat may have twice or three times as many rowers (in these old boats there was never more than one man to an oar) without lengthening the hull.
To the Greeks we owe the first detailed accounts of the art of ship-building and of ship construction. In early Greek history the vessels were small and were usually withoutdecks, although some of them had decks that extended for part of their length. They carried crews that ranged up to a hundred or more, and, in the democratic fashion of the early Greeks, they all took part in the rowing of the ship, with the possible exception of the commander. At this early period great seaworthiness had not been developed, and there are many accounts of the loss of ships in storms and of the difficulty of navigating past headlands and along rocky coasts. Later, Greek ships cruised the Mediterranean almost at will, but ship design and construction had first to develop and the development took centuries.
Even in those days there was a marked difference between the ships intended for commerce and those intended for war. The war vessels—and the pirate vessels, which of course were ships of war—were narrow and swift, while the ships of commerce were broad and slow: broad because of the merchant’s desire to carry large cargoes, and slow because the great beam and the heavy burdens prevented speed.
AN ESKIMO KAYAKThese small canoes are made of a light frame covered with skins.
AN ESKIMO KAYAKThese small canoes are made of a light frame covered with skins.
AN ESKIMO KAYAK
These small canoes are made of a light frame covered with skins.
During the period at which Athens reached her prime the trireme, or three-banked ship, was the most popular. As a matter of fact, its popularity was so great that its name was often given to all ships of the same general type whether they were designed with two, three, four, five, or even more banks of oars.
These many-oared ships reached a very high state of perfection during the supremacy of Greece, and the most careful calculations were made in order to utilize every available inch by packing the rowers as closely together as was possible without preventing them from properly performing their tasks.
The rowers, as I have suggested, sat in tiers, those on each side usually being all in the same vertical plane, and the benches they used ran from the inner side of the hull to upright timbers which were erected between decks, slanting toward the stern. That is, in a ship with three banks of oars, three seats were attached to each of these slanting timbers and the footrests of the rower occupying the topmost seat were on either side of the man who occupied the second seat in the next group of three. The vertical distance between these seats was two feet. The horizontal distance was one foot. The distance between seats in the same bank was three feet.
I have gone into some detail in describing this arrangement, for rowers—and from the later days of Greece on they were generally slave rowers—were the motive power of ships for three thousand years or more, and for more than a thousand years the many-banked ship was supreme.
A BIRCH-BARK CANOEIn many parts of the world savage people have learned to build light frames over which they have stretched the best material available to them. The Indians of North America commonly utilize birch bark.
A BIRCH-BARK CANOEIn many parts of the world savage people have learned to build light frames over which they have stretched the best material available to them. The Indians of North America commonly utilize birch bark.
A BIRCH-BARK CANOE
In many parts of the world savage people have learned to build light frames over which they have stretched the best material available to them. The Indians of North America commonly utilize birch bark.
Imagine these toiling galley slaves, chained in hundreds to the crowded rowing benches, straining at the heavy oars. Tossed by the seas, they labour unceasingly, stroke on stroke, to the sound of a mallet falling in never-changing cadence on a block of wood. Hour on hour they strain, heartenedoccasionally by a few minutes’ rest. Their eyes are all but blinded by the sweat from their grimy brows. Their hands are calloused, their bodies misshapen from long toil on the rowers’ benches. Above them, on the wind-swept deck, they hear the clank of armed men, the slap of sandalled feet. A lookout calls to the officer in command—hurried steps—momentary silence—shouts and the sound of feet. A messenger appears in the stifling space below. The sharp clap of the mallet on the block increases its cadence. Faster and faster swing the oars. Furious and more furious is the pace. A whip in the hands of a brutal guard falls here and there on the naked backs of the helpless, straining forms. Their strength is waning, their breath is coming fast. A mancollapses from the strain and pitches from his elevated seat, half suspended by the chain around his leg, his oar trailing and useless. From beyond their wooden walls they hear the muffled clank of the oars of the approaching enemy.
Cries from on deck, and suddenly a crash. Broken oars are driven here and there. Screams and oaths and orders and a great upheaval. Water enters in a score of places. More screams—more oaths—cries for help to a score of pagan gods—the water covers all. A great last sigh and one more ship is gone: it is just a tiny incident in the history of ships.
As I have said, the Greeks developed marine architecture to a very high point, and the bireme and trireme with which they began were the first of a long series of developments until ultimately ships of five, of eight, of even sixteen banks of oars are said to have been in use, and there is a story, which probably was a figment of someone’s imagination, of a vessel of forty banks! Such a ship may possibly have been suggested—may conceivably have been built—but it seems certain that she could never have been successful or practical.
Carthage, that great enemy of Rome, was a city of traders—a city that depended on the sea for its wealth and, to a large extent, even for its sustenance. Rome, on the other hand, grew to considerable size without venturing on the sea. When she did first turn her attention to the water, as her continued expansion forced her to do, she found that Carthage crossed her course whichever way she turned. The result was war.
But war between two cities separated by the width of the Mediterranean had to be fought largely on the sea, and Rome, inexperienced as a sea-going nation, was put to a severe test.
By chance, however, a Carthaginian quinquireme—that is, a five-banked ship—battered by storm and abandonedby her crew, drifted ashore on the sunny coast of Italy, and the Romans, quick to see the importance of the happening, hauled her high and dry, measured her, and learned from her battered hull the lessons they needed to know of ship construction.
AN OUTRIGGER CANOESometimes these canoes have an outrigger on each side, and sometimes they carry sails.
AN OUTRIGGER CANOESometimes these canoes have an outrigger on each side, and sometimes they carry sails.
AN OUTRIGGER CANOE
Sometimes these canoes have an outrigger on each side, and sometimes they carry sails.
They built on dry land sets of rowers’ seats, and while they taught rowers to pull their oars in unison in these unique training benches, they set to work with the energy that marked Rome out for great success. Sixty days after they had felled the trees, they had a fleet of quinquiremes afloat and manned.
Promptly they turned the prows of this new fleet toward the Carthaginians—and were defeated.
But with the indomitable will that characterized the Romans for two thousand years, they went to work again, and built a new fleet and a more powerful one. This timesome inventive Roman devised a kind of hinged gangplank, which could be dropped upon the deck of an enemy ship, maintaining its hold by a heavy metal barb which would penetrate the decks. Across this bridge the Roman soldiers could rush, and by this means could turn a naval battle into what was very nearly the same to these land-trained soldiers as a battle on dry land, where hard blows with sword and spear determined the result.
With this new apparatus the Romans, under Duilius, in 260 B. C., gained a victory at Mylæ, off the coast of Sicily, and after three wars, covering, with intervals between, 118 years, drove the Carthaginians from the sea and razed their beautiful city to the ground.
It is not my purpose, in this chapter, to go into great detail in telling of the development of ships from this time on, for the designs were infinitely great, the variations numerous, and there were, until the 19th Century, but two vital improvements—the compass and a considerable improvement in the ability of sailing ships to make headway against the wind.
Rome, during most of the centuries of her supremacy, controlled every sea within her reach. The Mediterranean was entirely hers, and her galleys and her soldiers ventured into the Atlantic and visited parts of the world that seemed to stay-at-home Romans to be the very fringes of the earth. The ships they built grew in size: the corn-ships, which brought food to the capital from Egypt, are thought to have been as much as 200 feet long, 45 feet broad, and 43 feet deep. When St. Paul was shipwrecked he was in company with 276 others, and the ship they were on carried a cargo besides. These ships carried three masts, each having huge square sails, and on one mast was spread a square topsail as well.
Roman ships that voyaged to Britain probably gave to the wild men of the North—including those who later becamethe Vikings—the idea of the sail, and probably all the people of northern Europe learned the use of sails, directly or indirectly, from the Romans.
Ultimately Rome fell beneath the onslaughts of the Barbarians, and the Mediterranean seat of power (although still called the Roman Empire) moved to Byzantium, now called Constantinople.
Here Western civilization resisted for centuries the attacks of the Mohammedans, until the great city on the Bosphorus fell before the armies of Mohammed in 1453.
A PHŒNICIAN BIREMEDespite the fact that the Phœnicians did more with ships than any other ancient peoples before the Greeks and Romans, little is known of Phœnician ships. They developed the bireme, an oar- and sail-driven ship with two “banks” of oars, and circumnavigated Africa.
A PHŒNICIAN BIREMEDespite the fact that the Phœnicians did more with ships than any other ancient peoples before the Greeks and Romans, little is known of Phœnician ships. They developed the bireme, an oar- and sail-driven ship with two “banks” of oars, and circumnavigated Africa.
A PHŒNICIAN BIREME
Despite the fact that the Phœnicians did more with ships than any other ancient peoples before the Greeks and Romans, little is known of Phœnician ships. They developed the bireme, an oar- and sail-driven ship with two “banks” of oars, and circumnavigated Africa.
Despite the fact that the Phœnicians did more with ships than any other ancient peoples before the Greeks and Romans, little is known of Phœnician ships. They developed the bireme, an oar- and sail-driven ship with two “banks” of oars, and circumnavigated Africa.
During all of the centuries that Constantinople had been holding out against the growing power of the Mohammedans, the west and north of Europe were being remade. For atime Western civilization seemed doomed, for the Moorish Empire in North Africa had pushed across the Strait of Gibraltar, had subjugated Spain, and had crossed the Pyrenees into France, where, fortunately, their great army was put to rout at the battle of Tours in 732. But although they were driven from France they maintained their hold upon Spain, and not until the Granada Moors were defeated by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 was Spain again free of them. They controlled North Africa from Suez to Gibraltar and introduced many Eastern ideas. It is probable that the lateen sail, which originated in Egypt and is still in common use in the Mediterranean, owes at least some credit to the Moors for its introduction to western Europe.
In addition to the influx of Mohammedans, civilized Europe had to contend with the hordes of barbarians that descended from the wild country to the north of the Alps, for the most of Europe except its Mediterranean fringe was a dark and barbarous land. But the centuries that we call the Middle Ages saw a growth of culture, a growth of learning, a growth of nationalism that were to make the modern world. In all of this ships played a vital part.
The Vikings, with their open boats, propelled by oars and sometimes aided by great square sails, terrorized Britain and northern Europe for a time, even driving their boats up the Seine to the walls of the city of Paris, which was then built on a tiny island in the river. But at last the Saxons, under Alfred the Great, with the first ships of the long series of ships that were built to protect England, drove the wild sailor warriors away, and a new epoch had begun.
During this time Venice and Genoa had developed, and the ships that sailed from those two cities were for a time the proudest of the world.
But their development was so largely commercial that it was only with difficulty that they could maintain naviescapable of protecting their vast fleets, which were attacked by pirates, by the ships of other cities, and by each other so constantly that sea-going was a hazardous occupation, and ships perforce sailed always in convoys, or at least in the company of other ships, for protection. Then in the north William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel, defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and the foundations for the present British Empire were laid. If the Saxons had developed a navy with which they could have met and defeated the Norman conqueror on the sea, think of the enormous difference it would have made in the history of Britain.
A GREEK TRIREMEThese warships were about 120 feet in length, and the sails and spars were taken down and sent ashore if battle was expected. The oars were operated by slaves.
A GREEK TRIREMEThese warships were about 120 feet in length, and the sails and spars were taken down and sent ashore if battle was expected. The oars were operated by slaves.
A GREEK TRIREME
These warships were about 120 feet in length, and the sails and spars were taken down and sent ashore if battle was expected. The oars were operated by slaves.
During the Middle Ages following the conquest of Britain, an association of northern European cities, called the Hanseatic League, was formed in order to protect their trade, and for a time proved to be a very important factor in the maritime development of the north of Europe. Had Venice and Genoa formed such a coöperative association instead of frittering away their strength, bickering and fighting, another story would have been written in the Mediterranean.
During all this time ships had been changing gradually in design. Oars still drove the fastest ships of war in the Mediterranean, but sails had taken a more important place, and now whole voyages were made by means of sails alone.
The 15th Century came, and with it the fall of Constantinople; and with it, too, in Genoa, that nautical city of Italy, the birth of a child named Christopher Columbus. He grew to manhood and became a sailor, and sailed on voyages here and there, and was wrecked finally on the coast of Portugal. But here was no ordinary man. Thousands of other sailors had had his opportunities, but none of them took so seriously the idea that the world was round. The idea, of course, was not Columbus’s own. It had received some attention for centuries among a few great minds. But Columbus, not content with accepting the shape of the world as a theory, wanted to make the voyage that would prove it. Already, in the previous century, a great stride had been made in seamanship by the introduction of the compass. This appeared mysteriously in Mediterranean waters, from no definitely known direction, but it seems probable that it came, by a very indirect route, from China, where it had been known and used for many years. Probably this introduction of the compass to the Western world was made by the Mohammedans, for they traded as far east as the Persian Gulf—perhaps farther—and natives ofIndia, with whom the Chinese came into occasional contact, often made the voyage from India to Muscat, so that it seems likely that the compass came to Europe by this route.
But to return to Columbus. He took his idea to the King of Portugal, and was turned away. From Portugal the penniless sailor turned to Spain, and many times was refused by the monarchs of that country, for they were busy at the time with the final expulsion of the Moors. After several years of unsuccessful petitioning at the Spanish Court, Columbus gave up and started on his weary way to France. But Queen Isabella sent a messenger after him, and he was recalled and told that he could make the attempt to discover the westward route to India with the aid and under the flag of Spain.
On August 3, 1492, he sailed from Palos in command of three little ships—three ships that are now more famous than any others that ever sailed the seas; and with these ships—theSanta Maria, theNiña, and thePinta—he discovered a new world and opened new seas that now are crossed and recrossed constantly by such a fleet of ships as Columbus could never have imagined.
By the end of the 15th Century, as I have suggested, ships had gone through a series of developments that had made them more seaworthy and more reliable, but still, from the viewpoint of to-day, they were crude and inefficient craft in which the modern sailor would hesitate to venture on the smoothest of summer seas. The ships of war, so far as the Mediterranean was concerned, still favoured the oar, and still used sails as auxiliary power, although England and France, and the other newer nations of the north of Europe, were developing sturdy ships that depended almost solely upon sails, although they often carried great overgrown oars called sweeps, with which the ships could be moved slowly in the absence of the wind.
The galleys of the Mediterranean were no longer the many-banked ships of Greece and Rome, but were, instead, low, narrow vessels with huge oars from thirty to fifty feet long, to each of which several men were assigned, thus securing the man power that the many-banked ships had utilized with more numerous oars. In order to manage these ungainly oars a framework was built out from each side of the ship, and attached to this framework were the oarlocks. This arrangement has its present-day counterpart in racing shells which, being barely wide enough for the rowers, cannot balance its oars in locks attached directly to its sides. Therefore a framework of steel rods is built opposite each seat in order that the oarlock may be at such a distance from the rower that he may get the necessary leverage to make each stroke effective.
The Crusades, which began in the 12th Century, had acquainted western Europe with many luxuries of the East hitherto unknown to the rougher people of the West, and as a result, trade increased greatly, necessitating the building of many ships, and as is always the case, progress was made because new minds were put to work. In this case ships improved. Metal nails, expensive as they were, for they were made, of course, by hand, had come into use, and new designs took the place of old.
The ship that, at the time of Columbus, was the most popular was the caravel. To our eyes she was ungainly, crude, and unseaworthy, yet these clumsy vessels, with their high sterns and overhanging bows, made most of the early voyages of discovery—voyages that for romance, for adventure, for danger, and for importance, rank higher than any others that were ever made.
Two of Columbus’s three ships were caravels. TheNiña, however, was but a tiny cockleshell, only partially decked, that proved, by chance, the most valuable of the three, forin her Columbus was forced by circumstances to return to Spain after theSanta Mariahad been wrecked by a careless helmsman on a far-off island in the world that she had found, and thePintahad wandered away, the Discoverer knew not where, in the hands of men tempted to be unfaithful to their great commander.
SEATING ARRANGEMENT OF ROWERS IN A GREEK TRIREMEWhile there were other arrangements that were sometimes used, this seems to have been much the most common. The slaves who operated the oars were chained in place, and in case of shipwreck or disaster were usually left to their fate.
SEATING ARRANGEMENT OF ROWERS IN A GREEK TRIREMEWhile there were other arrangements that were sometimes used, this seems to have been much the most common. The slaves who operated the oars were chained in place, and in case of shipwreck or disaster were usually left to their fate.
SEATING ARRANGEMENT OF ROWERS IN A GREEK TRIREME
While there were other arrangements that were sometimes used, this seems to have been much the most common. The slaves who operated the oars were chained in place, and in case of shipwreck or disaster were usually left to their fate.
So important was the work done by theSanta Mariaand the other caravels of her day that were sailed by Vasco da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope, by Americus Vespucius to the South American mainland, by the Cabots to Nova Scotia and New England, and by other great discoverers on other great voyages, that they warrant closer attention than has been given to other passing types. With a fleet of caravels Magellan sailed from Spain, crossed the Atlantic, skirted the South American coast, discovered the land wenow call Argentina, where he found a people he named the “Patagonians” because they had big feet. In subsequent accounts by a member of his crew these people were said to be giants, although they are merely men of good height and strength. From Patagonia, Magellan sailed south and entered a channel on each side of which lay mighty mountains rising precipitately from the water. The land to the south he named Tierra del Fuego—the Land of Fire—either because of the glow of now extinct volcanic fires that he saw, or of distant camp-fires of the natives which he sighted as he made the passage, and this land for many years was supposed to be a great continent that stretched from the Strait of Magellan, as the passage Magellan found was later called, to the south polar regions.
From the western end of the Strait, Magellan steered to the north and west, diagonally across the greatest expanse of water on the globe—an ocean discovered only a few years earlier by Balboa when he crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and named by him the Great South Sea, but renamed by Magellan, because of the gentle weather he encountered, the Pacific. In all the voyage across the Pacific he discovered but two islands, although he sailed through the section occupied by the numerous archipelagoes that we call the South Sea Islands.
AN EARLY 16TH-CENTURY SHIPThis ship, while similar in many respects to Columbus’sSanta Maria,has made some advances over that famous vessel. The foremast is fitted to carry a topsail in addition to the large foresail shown set in this picture. On ships somewhat later than this one a small spar was sometimes erected perpendicularly at the end of the bowsprit, and a sprit topsail was set above the spritsail which is shown below the bowsprit here.
AN EARLY 16TH-CENTURY SHIPThis ship, while similar in many respects to Columbus’sSanta Maria,has made some advances over that famous vessel. The foremast is fitted to carry a topsail in addition to the large foresail shown set in this picture. On ships somewhat later than this one a small spar was sometimes erected perpendicularly at the end of the bowsprit, and a sprit topsail was set above the spritsail which is shown below the bowsprit here.
AN EARLY 16TH-CENTURY SHIP
This ship, while similar in many respects to Columbus’sSanta Maria,has made some advances over that famous vessel. The foremast is fitted to carry a topsail in addition to the large foresail shown set in this picture. On ships somewhat later than this one a small spar was sometimes erected perpendicularly at the end of the bowsprit, and a sprit topsail was set above the spritsail which is shown below the bowsprit here.
This ship, while similar in many respects to Columbus’sSanta Maria,has made some advances over that famous vessel. The foremast is fitted to carry a topsail in addition to the large foresail shown set in this picture. On ships somewhat later than this one a small spar was sometimes erected perpendicularly at the end of the bowsprit, and a sprit topsail was set above the spritsail which is shown below the bowsprit here.
After terrible suffering from scurvy, from lack of water, almost from starvation, the little fleet of four ships (one had deserted just after the Pacific was reached) finally reached the Philippines. Already Magellan had sailed under the Portuguese flag around the Cape of Good Hope to a point in the East Indies farther east than the Philippines, so he was, actually, the first man ever to circumnavigate the globe. In the Philippines, however, he was inveigled into an alliance with a perfidious chief named Cebu, who, after witnessing Magellan’s death at the hands of the natives of a neighbouringisland (he was pierced in the back by a spear), captured and murdered two of Magellan’s chief officers, after which the dwindling band of adventurers burned one of their ships, for they were short-handed, and sailed to the south and west with the remaining three. Two more ships were lost ere the Atlantic was again reached, and at last theVittoria, the only ship remaining of the original five, reached the Canaries, where thirteen men out of the forty-four who still remained were thrown into prison by the Portuguese governor, and only thirty-one of the original two hundred andeighty returned to Spain to tell their wondering countrymen the story of their travels. That voyage, saving only the first voyage made by Columbus, was the greatest in the history of men upon the sea.
These voyages, as I have said, were mostly made in caravels. None of the ships was large, and Columbus’s flagship, theSanta Maria, was below rather than above the average. Vasco da Gama’s ships were larger, as were many others. But no other ship in history is so widely known as that little vessel of Columbus’s, and a description of her, being a description of caravels in general, is of double interest.
From bow to stern she measured but ninety feet, and she displaced about one hundred tons. But more than that is needed to give one an adequate idea of her limitations. The bow was high and awkwardly overhung the water by twelve feet, not being carried gradually out as are the bows of sailing ships to-day, but jutting ponderously forward from an almost vertical stem. Amidships the deck was low, dropping down abruptly about one fourth of the way aft. This midship deck (it was called the waist) was unbroken for another fourth of the vessel’s length, and then another deck was built at about the level of the forward deck, behind which a high sterncastle reared itself aloft until it surpassed the altitude of the forward deck, but fortunately did not jut out over the water aft as the bow did forward.
These two raised sections at the opposite ends of the ship were originally built with the idea of defense in mind. Ships for many centuries had had raised platforms fore and aft, on which the men who defended them could congregate in order to rain their arrows upon the decks of enemy ships. So useful were these “castles” that often enemy boarders were able to penetrate to the waist only to be driven off by the rain of missiles on their heads. When gunpowder came into general use tiny cannon were mounted in swivelsattached to the bulwarks of these “castles,” but old ideas were not easily got rid of, and for a long time ships continued to be built with raised bows and sterns.
So it was that theSanta Mariahad her forecastle and her sterncastle. The former term is still in use on ships, and signifies the quarters of the crew, which still are often placed in the bows of ships. The sterncastle has no present-day counterpart, and the name, too, has long since disappeared from ships.
The cabin of the great Admiral was aft, in the topmost section of the sterncastle and was, from our point of view, not exactly palatial. It had a bed, which looked more like a chest except that it had highly raised head and foot boards of carved wood. There was a table, and there was little else. A door opened on to the high narrow deck, and windows (ports such as ships now use were not then thought of) opened in the narrow stern high above the water.
The crews’ quarters were almost non-existent. Generally they slept on deck, although there was room between decks for some of them. This space, however, was not ventilated (that, of course, had little effect on a 15th-Century Spaniard. Even the Spaniards of the lower classes to-day seem somewhat averse to ventilation) and was devoted to cargo and supplies. Below this space was the “bilge” which was filled with stone for ballast. The raised forward deck was in reality just a platform that incidentally formed a roof over the forward section of the main deck—the deck, that is, that formed the waist—and beneath this forecastle deck were protected spots where the crew could secure some shelter from the weather. They cooked, when they cooked at all, on a box of small stones that sat on the main deck just under the edge of the raised forecastle. This crude fireplace was decorated by a large square plate of zinc that stood upright, attached to one side of the box, to serve as a windbreak.
Below, swishing around among the stone that formed the ballast, was the ever-present bilge water that was always a serious problem in these ill-built hulls. It was a never-ending annoyance, even in fair weather, and had constantly to be pumped out or bailed out. And when these ungainly craft met with heavy weather their situation was serious, for the strains caused by the waves opened seams here and there, and often allowed so much water to enter that foundering resulted. Even when Spain, ninety years after Columbus, sent her vast Armada to threaten England, only to have it defeated by Drake and his companions, and scattered by the North Atlantic storms after it had rounded Scotland in its attempt to return to Spain, ship after ship, tossed by the boisterous seas, twisted and groaned and opened her seams, and sank in the cold black water or drove head on to the rocky coast of Ireland. The great storm they encountered sank twenty times as many ships as did the fleet that so ably defended England.
And in such ships as these the hardy men of bygone times searched out the unknown lands of earth, braved the storms of great uncharted seas, braved, too, the unknown dangers which, exaggerated by their imaginations, grew to such size as might have made the bravest quail. And when their ships were dashed to wreckage on some uncharted rock, or filled with water when their seams were spread, those who saved their lives and managed to return to port, shipped again and faced the same threatening dangers.
In the adventurous days that followed Columbus, ship design and ship construction developed rapidly. The desire to carry heavy guns led to placing them on the main deck where they fired over the low bulwarks or wales which since then have been called gunwales. Then the desire to carry more guns led to placing them between decks where ports were cut in the sides of the ship for them to fire through.The British and the French led in both design and construction, the British having built ships of 1,000 tons as early as the reign of Henry V in 1413. But so far as size was concerned, other nations followed suit, and when Medina Sedonia came driving up the English Channel with the 132 ships of the Spanish Armada stretched in its vast crescent, at least one ship was of 1,300 tons.