Seal of Demizel, master of the barque Sainte Catherine de Cayeux, 1340
(From Histoire de la Marine Française, by kind permission of the author, Monsieur C. de la Ronière.)
An example of the impossible ship. Note how the engraver has made the keel exactly parallel to the circumference of the seal. It makes a handsome and effective seal, but can hardly be accepted as a picture of a ship of 1340.
The reason of this quaint method of representing ships and their crews or passengers is not far to seek. Who has not seen a child's first attempts to draw the human face in profile? He outlines the forehead, the nose, and chin, and puts in the back of the head easily and to his own satisfaction. Then he pauses and deliberates. The eyes are what he is puzzling over. He knows that, though everybody has one nose, one forehead, and one chin, he has two eyes. What about them? He may think that one eye looks most suitable, but still he doesn't like to leave the other one out. So, as often as not, he puts in a couple, one about the right place and the other somewhere towards the back of the head.
Wreck of the White Ship, 1120
Another example of the impossible-ship picture. There were said to be 300 souls on board! Observe the rudder, which proves the date of the original drawing to be much later than 1120—probably 100 or 150 years.
The tonsured artist argued very much on the same lines. If he painted a ship it was not a picture of a special ship. What he wanted to portray was the saint or hero of his manuscript—very often Alexander the Great—on a voyage or crossing a river. If he drew him on the same scale as his vessel he would be a mere dot or blob of paint. He wanted to show his face, his armour, robes, crown, halo, or what-not. So, though he could not help knowing that it was inaccurate, he drew him—and, generally speaking, his companions—on a scale about 500 per cent larger than that of the ship in which he was depicted as performing a most cramped and uncomfortable voyage.
We must not therefore accept these brilliantly coloured works of art as corroborative of the accuracy of the figures of ships appearing on the seals of Dover, Yarmouth, Poole, and other English and foreign ports, and in the fifteenth century of various noblemen who held the appointment of Admiral of England or France. But there are, nevertheless, a great many useful details to be learned from these sources of information. From seals we can trace the gradual evolution of the poop and forecastle from the early platforms or fighting-stages, the supersession of the steering-oar or "steer-board" by the rudder, the beginning of cabins, the progress of fighting-tops and action aloft. We see, too, the mode of wearing banners, streamers, and flags, and gain some idea of the gradual growth of sail-power, which culminated, we may say, in the sailing battleship of Trafalgar days.
If we consider the question of mediæval shipbuilding as a whole, we shall find it difficult to believe that the scientific methods of construction which distinguished the Viking ships, and the improvements on them which were made by Alfred the Great, had all been forgotten and thrown on one side, and that these fine specimens of the shipbuilder's art had been replaced by anything like the ridiculous little "cocked hats" that are supposed to represent the shipping of the British and other Northern nations between 1066 and 1450.