Sailing ships

by E. Keble Chatterton

Fig. 8. An Egyptian Nugger.

Before we close this chapter one must refer to the vexed question as to when the ancients discovered that wonderful art of sailing against the wind—tacking. In the absence of any definite knowledge, I hold the opinion that this first came into practice on the Nile about the time the nugger, or dhow was introduced as the rig for sailing boats. My reasons for this supposition are: firstly, the squaresail being more suitable for the open sea and making passages of some length, it would be a country having a navigable river that would be likely to discover such a rig as would enable them to sail with the stream against the prevailing northerly wind; secondly, arguing on the theory (which has many adherents) that the dhow came in about the time of the death of Alexander the Great who revolutionised at least one corner of Egypt, leaving behind his name to the port of Alexandria as an eternal memorial, I hold that the invention of this dhow rig made the ship to come very close to the wind—far closer than the old-fashioned squaresail of the earlier Egyptians. Realising, when coming down with the stream, that they could go so near to the wind when approaching the right bank, why—surely it must have occurred to such highly developed minds—could they not do the same when zigzagging across to the left shore? At first, no doubt, they pulled her head round with their oars, until, perhaps, on one occasion, she carried so much way from the last shore that she came round of her own accord—shook herself for a moment, as she hung for a short time in stays—and then paid off on the other tack. After that, the whole art of going to windward was revealed. My third reason is based on the fact that the Saxons, who settled around the mouth of the Elbe and subjugated the Thuringians after the death of Alexander the Great, did possess this knowledge of tacking.

Unless it were with the intention of tacking, it is difficult to see why the dhow, or nugger rig should have prevailed. But we do know that this form of sail was extant about the time of Alexander; therefore, tacking must be at least as old as the death of Alexander in the fourth century B.C. A squaresail-ship whether ancient or modern will go no nearer the wind than seven points, whereas the fore-and-after will sail as close as five. This, as soon as the fact was fully realised on the Nile, would hasten that day when tacking was first found out.

Egypt, after flourishing so mightily for so many hundreds of years, had its decline not less than its rise. Just as the earlier Egyptian sculptures are superior to the later ones in sincerity and fidelity, becoming subsequently more stiff and formal, so her shipping eventually deteriorated, and the mastery of the seas passed into the hands of the Phœnicians.

CHAPTER III.
ANCIENT SHIPS OF PHŒNICIA, GREECE, AND ROME.[10]

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the potent influence exercised by the Phœnicians, as successors of the Egyptians, in being the maritime nation of the world. Happy in their origin by the Persian Gulf, fortunate, too, in having had the Egyptians before them, and so benefiting by the knowledge and experience of the latter, they had developed and prospered through the centuries parallel with the Dynastic peoples. Much that we should wish to know about the Phœnicians is wanting, but we have more than adequate material for the means of realising something of the range and intensity of their sway.

Migrating, like the first Egyptians, westward, they had settled around the Levant, to the north of Palestine. Already, in prehistoric days, they had expanded still further westward into Greece, founding Thebes in Bœotia, and teaching the barbarian inhabitants of that country the elements of civilisation. Everywhere in the ancient world, from remote ages until a century or two before the Incarnation, Phœnician ships were as numerous in the waters of the Mediterranean, as British vessels in all parts of the world are to-day. Possessing a genius for trade, a keen love for the sea and for travel, they had the complete mastery of the commerce and fisheries of the Ægean Sea, until as late as the eighth century B.C. They dragged up from the waters its shell fish to make purple dies; they burrowed into the earth to extract silver; they opened up commerce wherever it was possible, exchanging such products of the East as woven fabrics and highly-wrought metal work. They built factories on islands and promontories, and gave to the towns along the coast-line—especially of the eastern side of Greece—Phœnician names. Troubling but little about inland situations, they made their strong settlements to be their island homes.