Sailing ships

by E. Keble Chatterton

It is the models of sailing ships that demand our attention. These were placed in the tombs with the intention of providing the deceased with the means of sailing about on the streams of the underworld. Very touching is the care of the ancients that man’s most beautiful creation—his ship—should not be separated from him even in death. (We shall see, later on, a similar devotion expressed in the burial of the Vikings.) Models of houses and of granaries, with curious little men working away, so that the departed should not be lacking for food while he sailed about the underworld, are also found. Some of these models of ships, granaries and soul-houses are to be seen in the British Museum and the South Kensington Collection. The reader who is interested in the subject will find additional information in the fascinating book by Professor Flinders Petrie.[1] Each boat was provided with masts and sails and elaborately decorated steering oars. Dr. Budge, in his guide to the Third and Fourth Egyptian Rooms of the British Museum, points out that another religious idea was connected with these boats, namely, the conception of the boat of the Sun-god, called the “Boat of the Million of Years,” in which the souls of the beatified were believed to travel nightly in the train of the Sun-god as he passed through the underworld from West to East.

The Egyptians thought that by a use of words of magical power, the models placed in the tombs, whether of boats or houses or granaries, could be transformed into ghostly representations of their originals on earth. “The boat,” adds Dr. Budge, “was considered to be such a necessary adjunct to the comfort of the deceased in the next world, that special chapters of the Book of the Dead were compiled for the purpose of supplying him with the words of power necessary to enable him to obtain it. Thus, ‘Tell us our name,’ say the oar-rests: and the deceased answers, ‘Pillars of the Underworld is your name.’ ‘Tell me my name,’ saith the Hold: ‘Aker’ is thy name. ‘Tell me my name,’ saith the Sail: ‘Nut,’ (i.e., heaven) is thy name,” &c.[2]

But let us make a survey of the development of the Egyptian ship from the time prior to the Dynasties until the third or fourth century before the Christian era. Ancient Egyptian history has been divided by scholars into three periods—the Old Kingdom, the Intermediate, and the New Kingdom. These again have been subdivided into Dynasties, of which the First to the Tenth are covered by the Old Kingdom, the Eleventh to the Seventeenth, by the Intermediate, and the Eighteenth to the Twentieth, by the New Kingdom. Afterwards the various Foreign Dynasties of Mercenaries formed the Twenty-second to the Twenty-fifth. The Twenty-sixth was the time of the Restoration, the Twenty-seventh to the Thirty-first represented the time of the Persians. This will assist us in following the changes that came about in the ships with the progress of time.

We have already drawn attention to the illustration of a ship, or rather sailing boat, in Fig. 3, belonging to that remote period anterior to the Dynasties. There can be no possible doubt as to her being intended by the artist, who painted this design on the amphora, for a sailing vessel of some kind, though the mast and square-sail are set much further forward than is found later in Egyptian ships. There is a figurehead on the extreme point of the stempost. Below is a small platform, possibly for the look-out man whom we see later in Egyptian ships armed with a pole for taking soundings. Right aft is a small cabin for the owner or distinguished traveller. Probably she was a decked ship and steered by one or more oars from the quarter. The reader will notice a great similarity between the stern of this vessel and that of the Bœotian sailing boat shown in Fig. 11.

From the earliest times up to about the year 3000 B.C., the Egyptian craft are less ships than boats. The sailing boats of the third dynasty are decked and fitted with a lowering mast, which when not in use is lifted bodily out of its sockets and rests on the roof of the after cabin. The boat was then propelled by paddles, with a look-out man forward, the steersmen aft, and the commander amidships armed with a thong-stick to urge the rowers on. The sailing boats of the fourth and fifth dynasties become gradually bigger and more seaworthy, but the mast and rigging show only slight advance. The former, from the third dynasty to the eleventh, is in the shape of the letter A. It fits into grooves either in the deck or the side of the ship, and at first has no backstays or shrouds. Being a double mast these are not necessary. The sail at this period is deep and narrow, reaching from the top of the mast down to the deck, being fitted with both yard and boom. Braces are attached to the ends of the yards but no sheets are shown. During the fourth and fifth dynasties, while the A-shaped mast remains, backstays are added, sometimes numbering as many as nine or ten (see Fig. 4). These would become essential as the ship grew larger and her gear heavier. These backstays lead from roughly three-quarters of the way up the mast down to the spot about a quarter of the ship’s length forward of the stern. An additional stay from the top of the mast to the extremity of the stern is also frequently shown. Two or three men are seen steering with paddles, standing on the overhanging counter. On big ships the steersmen number as many as five, and the paddlers with their faces turned in the direction in which the ship was proceeding are shown to be twenty-two or twenty-three on each side. The fact that only one man is shown sitting aft holding a brace in each hand, must be an additional proof of the gentleness of the northerly wind on the Nile and the absence of squalls. No cleats are shown, and in anything much above a zephyr his weight and strength must have been sorely tried. The forestay, the enormous overhang both at bow and stern, the look-out man forward with his pole for taking soundings of the Nile, and possibly for tilting the ship’s head off whenever she got aground—an experience that is far from rare on the Nile even to-day—the presence of the commander with his thong-stick, are still shown in the ships of the fourth and fifth dynasties.

Fig. 4. Egyptian Ship of the Fifth Dynasty.

As showing the wonderful influence which Egyptian ships of this period exercised on the rig of the Far East, and even of the Far North-East, let me be permitted to call attention to the Burmese Junk in Fig. 1. I will ask the reader to note very carefully her A-shaped mast, her squaresail, her steering paddle at the side, and most important of all the general sweep of the lines of her hull, coming right up from the overhanging bow to the raised overhanging poop. This is the Burmese junk of to-day, which, like the Egyptian ships of old, finds the prevailing wind favourable for sailing up against the river Irawadi, and when returning down the stream, lowers her sail and rows down with the current. Between the Chinese and Burmese junks of to-day and the Egyptian ships of about six thousand years ago there are so many points of similarity that we are not surprised when we remember that the Chinese, like the Egyptians, derived their earliest culture from Babylonia, and that India—using the name in its widest geographical sense to include Burma—is mainly, as to its culture at least, an offshoot from the Chinese. Until quite recently, China remained in the same state of development for four thousand years. If that was so with her arts and life generally, it has been especially so in the case of her sailing craft. I am not contending that the Chinese junk is identical with the ancient Egyptian ship, but I submit that between the two there is such close similarity as to show a common influence and a remarkable persistence in type.

But whilst engaged in this present work, I became interested in a half-civilised tribe called the Koryak, dwelling around the sea of Okhotsk, in the North-West Pacific. Here, in this remote corner of undeveloped Siberia, they have remained practically forgotten by the rest of the world, except for a few occasional visits from the land side by the Cossacks, and from the shore side by the American whalers. Recently, thanks to the Russians, a few have begun to embrace Christianity, but for the most part, they remain in their primitive state with habits too repulsive to mention. Naturally, since (as we have already pointed out) a nation exhibits its state of progress in its art, its literature and its ships, we are not surprised to find that the Koryak craft have, at any rate in respect of rigging, several highly important similarities to the Egyptian ship of the fourth and fifth dynasties. Thus, besides copying the ancients in steering with an oar, the fore-end of the prow of their sailing boats terminates in a fork through which the harpoon-line is passed, this fork being sometimes carved with a human face which they believe will serve as a protector of the boat. Instead of rowlocks they have, like the early Egyptians, thong-loops, through which the oar or paddle is inserted. Their sail, too, is a rectangular shape of dressed, reindeer skins sewed together. But it is their mast that is especially like the Egyptians and Burmese. The following description, written by a member of the Jesup Expedition which recently visited the Koryaks, is notable:

“Instead of a mast, they employ a more primitive contrivance. Three long poles are tied together at one end with a thong which passes through drill-holes, and are set up in the manner of a tripod. On one side, the whole length of the sail is sewed to a yard, the middle of which is slung from the top of the tripod by means of a stout thong. The tripod is set up in the middle of the boat by tying both ends of one of the poles to the ribs on one side of the boat, while the third pole is fastened on the other side of the boat. The sail can revolve around the top of the tripod, and is set in the direction required by the wind, by means of braces and sheets made of thong, which are fastened to the rails.”[3]