Sailing ships

by E. Keble Chatterton

Although eventually the Phœnicians were driven out of the Ægean, yet their effect on the inhabitants of Greece was a lasting one. As Greece had received from the Phœnicians her first culture, so she had adopted their religion and their species of ships. We shall see, presently, how very similar the ships of the Greeks and Phœnicians were. But before proceeding thus far, let us remember that, though the Phœnicians were developing while the Egyptians were declining, yet, indubitably, they owed a vast amount to the civilisation of the latter. Why the Phœnicians, more than any other people, were influenced by the Egyptians is not hard to understand if we realise that they alone were allowed to trade to the mouths of the Nile. The Egyptians guarded their kingdom inviolate against all other merchants of the Mediterranean, although Achaian pirates from the North at times swept down to the Nile Delta. Not until the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, when Egypt was reunited, and again made a strong kingdom, were the Milesian and other Greek traders allowed to begin commercial operations with the land of the Pharaohs.

Broadly speaking, the Phœnician ships were identical with those of about the time of Ramases III. (1200 B.C.). The fixed yard, the absence of boom, the brails suspending from the yard, the sweep of the lines aft to the overhanging stern, the double steering oar—these characteristics, which in the last chapter we left with the Egyptians, are all seen in the ships of the Phœnicians. The chief noticeable difference is that the latter have altered the bow so that she has a ram. It was the Phœnicians, too, who invented the bireme and trireme in order that speed might be obtained through increasing the height without adding to the length of the ship. The ships become somewhat larger than those of the Egyptians, for the reason that they have to voyage much further afield. Consequently the sail is sometimes found bigger, too, and instead of four brails, six is the usual number seen. The Phœnician bireme had as many as eleven or twelve rowers each side, sails being only used in a fair wind, but never at all in battle. In addition to its crew of seamen, a Phœnician trireme often carried thirty marines, sometimes of a nation different from the Phœnicians.

Right to the end, even when decline had at last taken the place of a rise, the Phœnicians remained good sailormen. Whenever a superior foe overcame them, they were used by their new master with deadly effect against his next enemy. We have an instance of this in the fifth century B.C., when, Phœnicia and Cyprus having been defeated by Cambyses, the latter utilised the strong Phœnician fleet against Amasis, the Egyptian king. And again, in the following century, when Xerxes had enforced the most rigorous conscription, and every maritime people in his dominions had been compelled to put forth its full strength, we find it recorded that the most trustworthy portion of the fleet, far superior to the Egyptians, was composed of ships of the Phœnician cities, the kings of Tyre and Sidon appearing in person, each at the head of his own contingent. Other things being equal, that side was usually victorious which had the Phœnicians with them. For the Phœnicians had the instinct of sailormen; they knew how to build and design their ships to withstand a fight; they had the ships, they had the men, and, what was more important still, they knew how to use both.

But the Phœnicians were more than mere traders or fighters: they were the world’s greatest explorers—until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of our era. It was they who voyaged out of the Mediterranean across the turbulent Bay of Biscay to Cornwall and perhaps Ireland. I am of the firm opinion that they also continued their travels further eastward across the North Sea: we will deal with that, however, in the next chapter. At any rate about the beginning of the sixth century B.C. they circumnavigated Africa, obeying the orders of Neco, an Egyptian king, “who”—to continue in Hakluyt’s Elizabethan English—“(for trial’s sake) sent a fleet of Phœnicians downe the Red sea: who setting forth in the Autumne and sailing Southward till they had the Sunne at noone-tide upon their sterbourd (that is to say, having crossed the Æquinoctial and the Southerne tropique) after a long Navigation, directed their course to the North, and in the space of 3. yeeres environed all Africk, passing home through the Gaditan streites, and arriving in Egypt.”[11]

It was the Phœnicians, too, who with the Israelites in the time of Solomon sailed down the Red Sea to Eastern Africa, Persia, and Beluchistan. Some, indeed, have thought that the Phœnicians sailed out of the Mediterranean and keeping their course to the westward were the first to discover America. Whether this is true or not is a matter for dispute, but it is quite possible. I have seen a little seven-ton cutter yacht that came across on her own bottom, and she is not half the size of the old Phœnician ships. Nor had she a few dozen galley slaves on board to pull at the oars: still less the room wherein to stow them.[12] There is, then, nothing at all improbable in the Phœnicians having gone so far afield. They were not pressed for time, and could afford to wait till the weather suited them. Given a fair wind they could not have had better shaped canvas for the voyage than theirs. Every sailor will tell you that there is nothing to beat the squaresail for ocean passages, and those who have tried the fore-and-aft rig for deep-sea sailing have lived to wish they had had a rectangular sail set across the mast, so as to avoid the fear of gybing as in a fore-and-after. Lord Brassey, when, in the famous race across the Atlantic in 1905, he commanded his own yacht the Sunbeam, afterwards endorsed these opinions about the respective merits of the square-sail and of the fore-and-aft rig.

Moreover, the Phœnicians had ample brails for reefing. True, the ship would roll considerably with so shallow a keel, but her length would be of some assistance, and no doubt the skipper would see to it that the crew steadied her with their oars.

Either from the Egyptians or the Phœnicians—but almost certainly from the latter—the people down the east coast of Africa learnt the art of navigation pretty thoroughly, for we know from Hakluyt that when, at the end of the fifteenth century of our era, Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and called at the East African ports, he found that the arts of navigation were as well understood by the Eastern seamen as by himself. This would seem to imply that these Africans had years ago reached the state of advancement in sailing a ship already possessed by the more civilised parts of the world.

Our evidence as to the actual shape and rig of the Phœnician craft is of two kinds. Firstly, thanks to the discoveries of the late Sir Austin Layard and his successors, we have one or two representations of ships. One of these is a rowing boat pure and simple, very tubby, and obviously never intended to be used with a sail. Secondly, we have the evidence of coins of the towns of Phœnicia. I have been so fortunate as to be able to reproduce two of the latter, both being of Sidon.

With regard to the first class, these date back to a period of about 700 B.C. On a relief belonging to the Palace of Sennacherib found near Nineveh, and now in the British Museum, and also on a relief of the Palace of Khorsabad, built by King Sargon, there are depicted ancient Phœnician ships. This latter is now in the Louvre. But these reliefs do not tell us very much, though they are of assistance if read in conjunction with the coins. The upper deck of the ship from the Sennacherib Palace was reserved for the combatants while fighting, and for persons of quality when making a passage. We see the latter reclining in the sunshine, and the look-out man in the bows. A mast with forestay, braces and sail furled to the yard, would be also on the top deck, but these would be of no considerable size. A row of shields ran round as a protection against the enemy’s darts, and the stem ended in a powerful ram. At least seventeen oarsmen in two banks on each side worked the ship, while a couple of steering oars, after the manner of the Egyptians, kept her on her course. This was a bireme for war purposes.