Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

CHAPTER I

FROM ANCIENT EGYPT TO THE INTRODUCTION OF ARTILLERY

When did man first entrust himself afloat for purposes of war? and what was the type of vessel he employed? are questions which take us back almost to the earliest stages of historical human progress, concerning which all the knowledge of the antiquaries is but conjectural, a stage so remote that scientists have not yet determined how many thousands of years ago it existed. The earliest vessels thus employed must have been transports, and nothing else; but if employed as aids to aggression when the kings of the earth took counsel together and, impelled by avarice or a desire to assist in one another’s turbulent love affairs, or, for their own safety, convinced of the necessity of finding an outlet for the energies of their restless subjects, invaded the territories of their neighbours, the ships, whatever their nature, will have been of a size sufficient to receive any spoil or any prisoners worth the trouble of carrying back again.

So far, however, as research has disclosed in those parts of the Near East where civilisation was cradled, there is no indication that man fought afloat—boat against boat, or fleet against fleet—until after a comparatively high stage of civilisation had been attained and shipbuilding had made enormous advances.

Evelyn remarks: “Concerning men of war, fleets, and armadas for battel, that Minos was reported to be the author, which shows that manner of desperate combat on the waters to be neer as antient as men themselves, since the deluge.” Minos, he adds, disputed the empire of the seas with Neptune, but “these particulars may be uncertain.”[1]

Among the legendary expeditions, those of Ulysses and Jason are the best known. Possibly they took place, but the adventurers never did or saw half the wonders narrated of them. Herodotus, describing the type of ship attributed to Ulysses by Homer, states that such ships were made of acacia, of “planks about two cubits in length,” joined together like bricks, and built in the following manner: “They fasten the planks round stout and long ties: when they have thus built the hulls they lay benches across them. They make no use of ribs, but caulk the seams inside with byblus. They make only one rudder, and that is driven through the keel. They use a mast of acacia and sails of byblus. These vessels are unable to sail up the stream, but are towed from the shore.”[2] Book II. of the Iliad mentions, in the famous catalogue, hollow ships, well-benched ships, swift ships, and dark ships, and that Ulysses had twelve red ships, but Homer, being a poet and a landsman, did not describe their differences.

Recent excavations and discoveries in Egypt have revealed the existence of boats of considerable size, so remote in history that their period is only guessed at, though they are estimated to date from about 5000 to 6000 years B.C. If the interpretation of the designs on the pottery recording these old ships be correct, they were propelled by over a hundred oars or paddles, were steered by three paddles at the stern, and had two cabins amidships. They were, moreover, very high out of the water at the ends, having very long, overhanging bows and counters, and were shallow and flat-bottomed.

Even at this period the art of shipbuilding was in a comparatively advanced stage; vessels such as those depicted would be quite as capable of use in war for carrying warriors or stores, or both, as in commerce for conveying merchandise. Egypt has many historical secrets yet to reveal, and, judging by the constant reassignment of dates in all matters connected with Ancient Egypt which exploration has entailed, it is not too much to expect that the dates quoted, assigned approximately by Egyptologists, may be revised and events placed more remotely still.

Another hieroglyph, discovered in a tomb, ascribed to the year 4800 B.C., shows enormous progress in shipbuilding and also in the art of representing a ship pictorially.

During the Sixth Dynasty, a certain Un’e, who was a person of note under three kings, sent, while the second, Pepi I., was on the throne, an expedition to the quarries of Syene or Assouan, to fetch stone for his master’s pyramid.

Another expedition, on behalf of Pepi’s successor, merits attention, as the fact is emphasised on the inscription on the tomb as most remarkable, and as never having occurred before “under any king whatever,” that Un’e had to employ twelve ships for freight and but one warship.[3] The flotilla consisted of “six broad vessels, three tow boats, three rafts, and one ship manned with warriors.”[4]

The Egyptians evidently had experience of some sort of fighting afloat, for there has been discovered at Gebel Abu Faida a tomb with a painting showing a boat with a triangular mast, and a stem extending forward below the surface of the water and presumably intended to be used to damage an enemy’s boat by ramming it.[5]

The first sea-fight of which a pictorial representation is known to exist was fought off Migdol, at the mouth of the Nile, in the time of Rameses III., first king of the Twentieth Dynasty, which began about 1180 B.C., and lasted to about 1050 B.C. Egypt was invaded from the East by “warships and foot soldiers,” and the Egyptian monarch mustered a fleet and attacked them.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WARSHIP.

“The ships on both sides,” says the historian[6]—“we can recognise the Egyptian by the lion heads in the bows—have reefed their sails in order not to interfere with the men who are fighting; the bracket at the mast head has been removed to make room for the slinger. The Egyptians understood how to pull round the ships of the enemy with their grappling irons, so as to bring them to close quarters; in fighting also they have the better of their opponents, for they all carry bows, whilst the barbarians with their short swords can only fight in a hand-to-hand medley. This battle is almost the only naval engagement in Egyptian history, for though in the wars with the Hyksos we certainly hear of fighting on the water, yet in the latter case the Nile was the scene of action.... The ships had their individual names, such as Battle Animal, or Glorious in Memphis. The Ship of Pharaoh was also called Beloved of Amon.”

A remarkable difference between the ships of the Egyptians and those of the Asiatics is that the latter had no rowers, if the bas-relief is accurate. Possibly the Asiatics, Phoenicians probably, had discovered how to manage the sails of their warships and dispense with rowers.

The example set by the Asiatic fleet does not seem to have been followed, for as the need of greater ships became manifest the problem of their propulsion was met by placing one bank or tier of oarsmen above another. Then, as now, the propelling power was vital to the efficiency of the ship, and means had to be devised for the preservation, or at least protection, of the oarsmen. The single-banked ships had planks placed round the gunwales, forming a parodus, or gangway, which served also to guard the rowers from missiles. Later, the upper tier was in an open superstructure, and still later, planks were carried which could be adjusted for the protection of the oarsmen when necessary.

The ram, employed by the Egyptians—who seem to have retained for their sea-going craft the long, overhanging stem and stern so suitable to their river vessels—was a metal head, which added a finishing touch to the projecting bows, and was high above the sea level. At the time of the battle of Migdol, and possibly also of the sea-fights in the reign of the preceding Rameses, who is known to have conducted a naval war, though of this campaign no illustrations have yet been discovered, the captain of the warship was placed in a sort of crow’s nest on top of the double or ⋀-shaped mast.

Then comes a long gap in the history of Egyptian shipping. The Phœnicians became the leading maritime people of the world, but the little that is known of them is derived, not from discoveries in their own cities of Tyre and Sidon, but from the records preserved at Nineveh. Sennacherib’s conquest of Phœnicia was commemorated by mural tablets, on which are the only known records of Phœnician war galleys. The Phœnicians are stated to have invented biremes, or vessels carrying two banks of oars on each side. Perhaps for lightness, and in order to reduce the top weight as much as possible, these galleys had the upper bank of oarsmen unprotected. The prow, differing from that of the earlier Egyptian ships, curved forward at a point slightly above the water line, and continued to do so under the water, thus forming a formidable snout or ram which could inflict considerable damage to the most vulnerable parts. The beaks were generally carved to represent the head of some animal. The vessels also had a parodus placed outside the vessel and extending the whole length of the sides above the oars. The contrivance was probably copied from the Egyptians, who introduced it to enable the warriors to fight at close quarters when drawing alongside an enemy, or to run to either end of the ship as occasion might require without impeding, or being impeded by, the rowers.

GREEK BIREME.

From a Vase in the British Museum, found at Vulci.

GREEK WAR GALLEYS.

From a Vase in the British Museum found at Vulci.

Cancelli, or shields of basket work, were placed along the sides of the ships at such a height that the heads of those on board are just visible. The cancelli bore a striking resemblance to the circular basket-work boats still to be found on the upper Euphrates; this supports the supposition that the cancelli may have been used for other purposes, particularly if they were made comparatively watertight, as the function of a shield was not only to protect a warrior in battle, but to help to keep him dry when on shipboard by being disposed along the sides to prevent the spray from entering the ships. A forecastle was constructed upon these ships, and upon each forecastle a look-out man was stationed; and when these structures came to be built of larger dimensions they served to accommodate a number of fighting men who, from their superior position, could throw their missiles with greater effect. The forecastle had the further advantage of serving as a stronghold in the event of an attempt being made to capture the ship by boarding it.

Following the Phœnicians, the Greeks are thought to have begun to build their own warships about 700 B.C., perhaps earlier, but it was about that time that the first three-banked warship was launched at Corinth. The three-banked ships were for many years the largest in existence. During the fourth century B.C. shipbuilding was practised extensively, four-banked ships being built at Chalcedon, five-banked at Salamis, and six-banked ships at Syracuse. Ships of ten banks, according to Pliny, were ordered by Alexander the Great, and about 300 B.C. ships having twelve banks are said to have been built for Ptolemy, and fifteen-banked ships for Demetrios, for a battle near Cyprus.

Ptolemy Philopater, who ruled in Egypt from 222 to 204 B.C., is alleged to have had a forty-banked ship of a length of 280 cubits or, reckoning the cubit at 18 inches, of 420 feet, and a beam of 57 feet.

While increasing the size and number of oars, it would, nevertheless, be impossible to augment to any appreciable extent the speed at which these ships could be rowed, and the more unwieldy would they become, and the more difficult would it be to keep steering way upon them. Again, the assertions of the historians are so contradictory that it is a thankless task to attempt to reconcile all their stories, especially as they depended much upon hearsay for their information. For that reason, therefore, a great deal that has been recorded as to the early ships and their numerous banks of oars is not to be accepted without careful inquiry and verification.

It has never been established beyond question what is meant by banks of oars, or whether the Greek text has been interpreted correctly when it is taken to express forty superimposed banks of oars. From constructional reasons it may be assumed that a ship having forty superimposed banks of oars never existed, and it is very doubtful whether ships having more than a fourth of that number of banks passed beyond the imaginations of their inventors. In any case they were soon dispensed with, and in course of time it was found that the best results were obtained with galleys having two or three banks of oars.

It is not definitely known how the rowers were disposed in the ships of anything over seven or eight banks. If any vessels had forty banks of oars, the upper rows must have been of an absolutely unwieldy length. Assuming the oars to have been weighted with lead so that the inborne and outborne portions were equally balanced, they must nevertheless have been exceedingly difficult to row even by a number of men, and it was impossible for any rowers to have moved these great oars at the same speed as the men at the lower banks moved their lighter and shorter ones. That some such difficulty was experienced, even in biremes and triremes, is shown by the arrangement of the oars, whereby all in a bank were not of equal length, but were graded so that those nearer the ends of the banks were longer in order that all the blades might enter the water in a straight line. Each row above must have had its own line in the water a little farther away from the side of the ship than the row beneath it, or the blades would have interfered with each other and the rowers thrown into hopeless confusion. The tremendous amount of lead that would have to be carried to counterbalance the outborne portions of several hundred oars would add materially to the dead weight to be propelled, and, much of it being placed high above the water, the stability of the vessel would be lessened.

The Athenians used leather or skin aprons or covers over the oar holes to prevent the water entering, the oar passing through a hole in the leather, and the apron was bound to the oar in such a way as to be watertight. This contrivance was widely adopted later. The oar ports were constructed between the ribs, but the oars instead of being rowed against the ribs were pulled against thongs fastened to the next rib, thus minimising the strain upon the ship’s structure and preventing the oars being lost overboard. One man one oar was apparently the general rule at that time.

In his most painstaking study of “Ancient Ships” Mr. Cecil Torr has gone very closely into the subject of the oar equipment of the galleys. An Athenian three-banked ship would carry two hundred oars, of which thirty were worked from the upper decking, sixty-two on the upper bank, and fifty-four to each of the lower. The earliest two-banked ships had eighteen rowers. An Athenian four-banked ship might carry two hundred and sixty-six oars. The Roman and Carthaginian five-banked ships in use about 256 B.C. had three hundred rowers besides the combatants. The statement is made by an early historian that in 280 B.C. the Heraclean fleet on the Black Sea included an eight-banked ship with a hundred rowers on each file, or one thousand six hundred rowers in all. As usually the fighting men carried exceeded the rowers in number, the ship must have had close upon three thousand five hundred men aboard.

Warships of all the early Eastern nations were strengthened by cables passed longitudinally round them in order to keep the timbers in place and prevent them from being started under the strain occasioned by the shock of ramming. Egyptian ships of about 1200 B.C. had cables stretched from stem to stern and passing over the top of the mast and other posts, but this contrivance was to prevent the vessel from drooping at the ends, a weakness known as “hogging.” The shock to the ramming vessel was scarcely less severe than that to the vessel receiving the blow. To take up the strain and add to the power of the blow the bows were strengthened by means of waling pieces which supported the ram proper. The Greek ships were built with the keel, the stempost, and the lower pair of waling pieces converging to hold the ram, while higher up the stem was a smaller ram which in its turn was buttressed by another pair of waling planks. The catheads, or beams projecting from the bows on either side by which the anchors were raised, were so placed on a level with the gangway and gunwale that they would sweep the upper works of an enemy’s ship and smash its gangway and hurl into the sea or the hold all the fighting men upon it. Ships of more than three banks are believed to have carried another ram level with the catheads, and to have had a ram for every pair of additional waling beams. The ram heads were generally of bronze and weighed 170 lb. or more.

“AN ANCIENT BIREME, FROM BASIUS, HAVING ONE TIER OF OARS ONLY.”

“ONE OF THE ANCIENT LIBURNI, OR GALLEYS, HAVING A SINGLE TIER
OF OARS, ACCORDING TO BASIUS.”

AN ANCIENT TRIREME, ACCORDING TO BASIUS.

From Charnock’s “History of the Marine Architecture of all Nations.”

The later rams varied considerably in shape. The triple ram was sometimes made with the teeth pointing slightly downward, while others had an upward tilt. The lowest ram often extended farther forward than those above, the idea being that it would inflict severe injury about or below the water line, and that the upper rams, besides causing damage, would push the stricken vessel off the lower ram and let her sink without the assailant being dragged down by the head with her.

The build of the ships rendered it necessary that an engagement should be fought on a calm sea, and daylight was preferred in order that the combatants could see what they were doing. As the fleets approached one another the commanders of the different vessels decided upon their individual opponents. Much skilful manœuvring ensued to ram the enemy or avoid a blow. The slaves strained at the oars while their taskmasters ran between the files of rowers and, with unmerciful blows from heavy sticks and whips, stimulated them to still greater exertions if possible.

Poor slaves, mostly prisoners of war, their prospects were gloomy in the extreme! If their ship were rammed some of them were sure to be injured, and if she sank they went down with her, fastened to their places and having no chance of escape. If the oars were disabled in the collision between the ships the rowers were bound to receive violent blows from the inboard end of the oars, or to be cruelly pierced by splinters of wreckage. Showers of missiles from the opposing ship fell upon the helpless wretches. In later years, when the terrible Greek fire was added to the means of attack and defence, it contributed the prospect of being burnt alive to the other horrors of their situation. Victory meant no rejoicings for them. The wounded were of little account and could be dispensed with when slaves were to be had for the capturing, and it was easy to put them overboard to die the more quickly. Those who survived the battle unhurt or not too severely injured to recover rapidly, were retained. If their ship were vanquished they might look forward to greater cruelties as a punishment for their share of the defeat. If they belonged to the victors, they had only more battles, the torturing whips of their drivers, and insufficient food as their portion in life. Death came as a welcome relief to the slaves of victor and vanquished; in it lay their only hope of peace.

When the Roman navy was at its best the ships were painted a colour which matched the waves, and the hulls were made as watertight as possible with tar. Occasionally in the later Roman ships layers of tarred cloth were placed outside the outer planking, and the hull was then lead-sheathed. Bronze nails and wooden pegs were used in fastening the timbers together, and some ships were so built that they could be taken to pieces and transported overland if necessary. Ships of three, four and five banks were even conveyed from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates.

The facility with which the Liburnians handled the two-banked ships in their Adriatic campaign induced the Romans to adopt these vessels as models for their own two-banked ships, and in course of time they adopted the name of liburna for all war-vessels of from one to five banks.

If some of the historians may be believed, anything that could be piled upon the ancient ship and did not capsize it was permissible. One is said to have had a tower at the stern and another at the prow. Another bore “a large tower of masonry with a great gate. Here appear some vases, probably filled with combustibles.” Another libernus has a mast or yard, suspended perpendicularly by the side of the forward tower, and having at each end a crossbeam. Yet another libernus, besides carrying a protector for the helm at the stern, is said to have had six round towers; the largest, of embattled masonry, was at the prow, two others, also of masonry, surmounted by domes, and connected by a bridge, were near the stern, and the other three were nearer the fore part of the ship, were roofed, and two of them had windows.

Shipping in the Mediterranean extended with extraordinary rapidity in the recovery after the stagnation caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and the relapse into semi-barbarism which followed the successful invasion of Italy by the wild tribesmen of the North. The advent and rise of the Moslem power caused a series of struggles in which every state was in a more or less constant condition of warfare against its neighbour, and the Crusades served but to add fuel to the fire of internecine and religious conflict. Some immense ships are stated to have been employed up to and at the fall of Constantinople. The early centuries of the Christian era saw the evolution of a flat, shallow vessel, fitted with one or two masts carrying sails, from which the lateen rig developed, equipped with a long ram above the water line, with two or at most three banks of oars. It appears from illustrations that some of these boats carried a superstructure extending beyond the beam on either side. War vessels of this type became common throughout the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, and remained in use long after the introduction of firearms.

Before the discovery of Greek fire, flaring missiles of some kind had been devised. Frontinus mentions fire-ships, or hulls carrying combustibles and allowed to drift with wind and tide upon the enemy’s ships: stinkpots, to nauseate the enemy, though how the others escaped the smells except by keeping to windward does not appear; and Evelyn adds, “Nay, snake pots, and false colours.” The Greek fire, however, was the most terrible of the weapons employed at that time. By some means by which a fair amount of power was exerted, the liquid was squirted—or vomited, to use one historian’s phrase—through copper pipes upon an enemy’s ship, and as the liquid had the peculiar property of igniting upon exposure to the air and was inextinguishable by water, it was a most formidable engine of destruction. Small vases filled with the liquid and sealed airtight were used as hand grenades and flung at opposing ships and, breaking, set them on fire. Heavy arrows carrying balls of flax soaked in the liquid were used both in land and sea warfare, as also were hand-flung javelins similarly equipped, and the flights of these masses of inextinguishable flames must have been equally demoralising to the combatants against whom they were directed and destructive to the ships and inflammable buildings upon which they fell. This composition is thought to have been invented in the seventh century; the first occasion on which it was employed on an extensive scale was in the great battle between the fleets of Constantine and the Saracens, when the latter, through its agency, lost practically their whole fleet and thirty thousand men killed. After that both sides used Greek fire whenever possible.

Up to the introduction of gunpowder and artillery the methods of fighting varied but little. The sea-fights of the Crusades were conducted on the lines which had been recognised as the best for a couple of thousand years or more, viz., ram the enemy and board him. Greek fire added this rule: Burn him also if you can.

The countries along the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean had attained a high degree of civilisation when the inhabitants of Western Europe and the British Islands were still more or less savage. What may be regarded as circumstantial evidence in support of the contention that the Phœnicians voyaged to Cornwall and Ireland is the similarity which exists in shape between the wicker shields, such as the Phœnicians are known to have used, and the wicker coracles which the Britons employed at the time of the invasion by Julius Cæsar. There must have been considerable intercourse between the Phœnicians and the dwellers in the valley of the Euphrates before the latter conquered the former; but whether the dwellers in Nineveh, or those by the sea, invented wicker boats, or whether both derived their knowledge of wicker boats from other sources, are points of no immediate importance. But what is of interest is that the British wicker coracles were covered with hides to make them watertight, that they had keels and gunwales, and that they were small enough to be used as shields if necessary, their dimensions being rather over 4 feet in length, with a breadth of about 3 feet, and a depth of a trifle over 12 inches. They were big enough to carry one man of average size. There are on the Euphrates to this day boats or rafts of proportionate dimensions, up to a maximum length of 40 or 50 feet over all, which are constructed with a light framework of wicker and timber, over which skins are stretched to keep them watertight. These boats, when laden, drift down the river with the current, and, on reaching their destination, their cargo and skins are sold and the framework is made up into a package and returned upon the back of an ass to the port of departure. These cargo boats have been humorously referred to at a meeting of the Institute of Marine Engineers as of “one ass-power.”

So far as Britain is concerned, the shipping of each coast seems to have developed under the influence of the foreign shipping with which it mostly came in contact. The east coast was largely concerned with the Danes, and the south coast with its neighbours across the Channel. The Danes and Vikings developed a type of vessel peculiarly their own. The best specimen yet brought to light is that known as the Gokstad ship.

AN ANGLO-SAXON SHIP OF ABOUT THE
NINTH CENTURY.

(From Strutt.)

The Viking ships must have walked the waters almost with the grace of motion of a modern yacht, and when the great square sail was hoisted, bearing the escutcheon of some dread sea-rover, they must have been fascinating emblems of human skill and power no less than of the noblest and the basest passions of mankind.

The large rowing and sailing galleys of the Mediterranean were fine-weather ships, it being the custom to suspend merchant voyages, naval expeditions, and piracy in that sea during the winter months. Obviously, such vessels were wholly unsuited to the Atlantic coasts of Western Europe. The western coasts of Spain, France and Portugal produced a ship, short and broad, and strong enough to be beached even when a moderate sea was running. This model was seemingly copied by the English of the south coast, and vessels of this type, built in the eighth century, were planked and carried high, erect stemposts and sternposts. The vessels were single-masted and fitted with a yard and square sail, and the steering was effected by a large oar at the stern. They were not unlike the Viking ships in some respects, but they were of less average length and broader in proportion, having bluffer bows, a less fine entry, and a long flat floor extending farther aft than did that of the northern ships. Some also had a ram.

VIKING SHIP FOUND AT GOKSTAD, SOUTH NORWAY.

Photograph: O. Vaering, Christiania.

What may be regarded as the first great national step in British shipbuilding was inaugurated in the latter part of the ninth century, when King Alfred saw that in order to beat the Danes he must meet them with ships superior in size and strength to their own. His war galleys were virtually double the size of those of the invaders, and in some instances almost double their length. The Gokstad ship, by no means one of the largest of its type, had sixteen oars a side. If Alfred’s boats had thirty oars or more a side, as is stated, and were double-banked—that is, two men to each oar—like those of his foes, the fighting strength of the individual ships of his navy must have been very great.

By the eleventh century the Norsemen had taken to painting their vessels externally, besides making them larger and giving them decks. The stempost and sternpost were more ornately decorated, gilded copper being the material used for this purpose. Svend Forkbeard’s own ship, the Great Dragon, is said to have been in the form of this legendary beast, but what the historian most likely meant is that the stern decoration or the design on the sail may have shown a fantastic representation of the fearsome animal; the Vikings were too good seamen to have built the ship in any form likely to be inferior to the shape they had learned to appreciate so highly. The Long Serpent, which appeared in that century, is said to have been 117 feet in length, and decked, and to have carried six hundred men. This is the first war vessel in the Western seas known to have been decked throughout,[7] and in which cabin accommodation was provided for the principal fighting men. Beneath the deck the hull was divided into five cabins or compartments; the foremost was the lokit, in which, in a royal vessel, the king’s standard bearers were quartered; next, the sax or storeroom; then the kraproom, where sails and tackle were kept; the foreroom, containing the arms chest, and forming the living room of the warriors; and astern of all was the lofting, or great cabin, devoted to the commander. For the comfort of the rank and file of the fighting men at night in port an awning was spread, supported by a ridge pole on pillars. At other times they would seem to have had to put up with sleeping on deck and making the best of it; they would certainly be no worse off than in the old days of the open ships, and being somewhat higher above the water would be less exposed to the spray. At the end of the twelfth century King Sverre Sigurdsson had some merchant ships cut across amidships and lengthened, and then used them as war ships.

FLEET ATTACKING A FORTIFIED TOWN.

MS. Harl. 326.

William the Conqueror’s fleet in the eleventh century is estimated at anything between six hundred and ninety-six vessels and three thousand; a manuscript in the Bodleian Library gives the number as one thousand. Most of the vessels were small, if the illustrations on the Bayeux tapestry are to be accepted. The type of ship is no doubt represented with a fair amount of accuracy, but in certain other respects the efforts of the weavers of the tapestry are only less grotesque than the so-called ships which appear on some of the medals of the ports, but which nevertheless have been accepted as correct representations of the ships of the times, whereas they should be regarded as indicating approximately the type of vessel then in vogue. With the exception that a few ships were built of rather greater dimensions—the largest in the invading fleet can hardly have been more than 80 tons burthen—shipbuilding shows but little development on the Atlantic coast until after the introduction of artillery.

WARSHIPS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

(After Harleian MS.—1319. fol. 18.)

A battle between a Cinque Ports fleet under Hubert de Burgh and a French fleet under Eustace is chiefly remarkable by reason of the English manœuvring to secure the windward position, this being the first occasion on which this manœuvre is recorded, and the attack on the French rear ended in a signal English victory. The fame of the English archers was great, and they added to their laurels by playing no small part in the battle. From their positions in the tops and on the forecastles they kept up a steady flight of arrows upon the French. The arrows carried flasks of unslaked lime which broke on striking the French ships, and the lime dust, borne on the wind, entered the eyes of the enemy and blinded them, the defeat of the French following. The ships of that period were provided with platforms, elevated on wooden pillars, at the bow and stern. The erections were the forerunners of the immense structures which were added in later years and did so much to render ships unstable.

A Venetian ship constructed for Louis IX. of France in 1298, and named the Roccafortis, was 70 feet long on the keel and 110 feet over all, with a width at prow and poop of 40 feet. She is stated to have had two decks and a fighting castle at each end. Possibly the weight of the bellatorium, as the castle was called, may have necessitated such an extraordinary beam near the bows and stern, but she could never have been built with such dimensions to be other than a floating fortress.

In the Mediterranean, however, great activity prevailed. The Crusades gave a tremendous impetus to the shipping of the Middle Sea. Christians and Saracens vied with each other in the production of ships of war. The larger “busses” sent to the Levant in the fleet of Richard Cœur de Lion carried, according to Richard of Devizes, a captain and fifteen seamen, and forty knights with their horses, forty footmen, fourteen servants, and twelve months’ provision for all. Some vessels are said to have carried double this complement and cargo. A Saracen ship, of which little is known, was encountered off the Syrian coast, of so great a size that it could not be subdued until the Christian galleys charged in line abreast and smashed in her side so that she went down with nearly all of her one thousand five hundred men.

A GALLEY OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA.

From the Model in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

MEDITERRANEAN GALLEY.

From a Model in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution.