Sailing ships

by E. Keble Chatterton

The vessel shown in Fig. 17 is a terra-cotta model of a merchant ship. The socket for the mast will easily be seen. The high stern aft must not be supposed to have been raised to such an altitude solely for the convenience of the steersman. The greatest foe that the merchantman had to contend with was the pirate who swept down and robbed him of his cargo. Therefore, to obtain some protection, these traders were usually fitted with turrets of great height, by means of which missiles could be hurled down on to the enemy below. It is possible that the side “castles” shown were also used as some protection for the steersmen, one standing in each with the protection of a roof over him. Probably, too, on these occasions the score of oars would be brought out in order to manœuvre quickly. A merchant ship sometimes carried as many as eight of these turrets (two in the bows, two in the stern and four amidships). They were easily movable and were known to have reached to a height of twenty feet. The model here shown belongs to the sixth century B.C. It will be noticed that she has a very flat bottom, but this would be a convenience whenever she had to be beached, for there were only two sailing seasons—in the spring, and in the months between midsummer and autumn. After the setting of the Pleiads, the ship was beached and a stone fence built around her to keep off wind and weather. This custom, then, would somewhat modify her lines below the waterline. It was, further, the custom to pull the plug out when laying up for the winter, so that the water should not rot the bottom. Tackle and sail and steering oars were carefully stored at home until the fair weather returned once more. These were the customs as far back as 700 B.C.

The model we have just alluded to was found in Cyprus, and is now in the British Museum. Many others similar to this have also been found. There is an amusing legend that Kinyras, king of Cyprus, having promised to send fifty ships to help the Greeks against Troy, sent only one, but she carried forty-nine others of terra-cotta manned by terra-cotta figures.

Although the Phœnicians probably must be credited with the honour of having invented the trireme, a ship with a triple arrangement of oars, yet the Greeks were responsible for having developed the use of this to a considerable extent, especially after the fifth century B.C. Eventually the word “trireme” denoted not necessarily that she had this triple arrangement, but became a generic expression for warships. We have in later history similar instances of the same designation remaining to a ship even when she has entirely altered the right to her previous definition. Thus the galleass, which was essentially a rowing vessel, frequently bore the same name during the Middle Ages, even when she was a sailing ship proper. A similar instance may be found in the different meanings which the words “barge,” “wherry,” “yawl,” “cutter,” and “barque” denote at different times.

Triremes had two kinds of sails and two kinds of masts, but before battle the larger sail and the larger mast were always put ashore. Such enormous yards and masts would be very much in the way on boats of this kind. Regarding the arrangement of the oars of the trireme much controversy has been raised. The theories of thirty or more banks of oars have now been pretty well dismissed. The amount of freeboard that this would have given to a ship must necessarily have been colossal, and militated against the very object they had in view, viz., handiness. It is highly probable that the crew consisted of two hundred rowers, sixty-two on the highest tier, fifty-four on the middle and fifty-four on the lowest, in addition to thirty fighting men stationed on the highest deck. The upper oars would thus pass over what we now call the gunwale, the second and third rows being through port holes. Even when very large numbers of oarsmen are mentioned, we must not suppose that there were so many lines of rowers as that; several men were needed to each oar. Considering their weight and the size of later ships, this would seem to be very necessary.

Before we pass from the subject of the trireme, it is not without interest to mention that in the year 1861 Napoleon III. had constructed a trireme 39 metres in length and 5½ metres in beam. She carried 130 oarsmen, who were placed two by two. Of these forty-four were on the first row, the same number on the second, and forty-two on the top. Like her ancestors she had a three-fold spur, a rostrum, and two steering oars. But to us a far more important piece of information lies in the fact that she was actually experimented with on the sea at Cherbourg in good weather. It was found that she bore out all that had ever been written by the ancient historians concerning her: for she was both very fast and could be manœuvred with great ease.[14] According to the ancients, a trireme could average as much as seven and a half knots an hour, covering one hundred and ten during a day. The merchant ship was going at a good pace when she reeled off her five knots an hour. Her average was about sixty knots in a day: but during a whole day and night, with a favourable wind, she was capable of doing as much as a hundred and thirty. Comparing this speed with the craft of to-day, it may be worth noting that the average day’s run of a moderate-sized coaster would work out at a hundred or hundred and twenty knots. The speed of the ships of the Mediterranean was not slow, then, though they would appear ridiculous if compared with some of the marvellous passages made by the famous old clippers of the second half of the nineteenth century of our era.

The navigation employed by the Greeks was that of coasting from port to port, from one headland across a bay to another. There was no such thing, of course, as being able to lay a compass course from one point to another out of sight. The system of buoyage was also non-existent, but there were lighthouses, as we know from designs on ancient pottery and reliefs. On certain points of the land the Greeks erected high towers, the most ancient of these being at the entrance to the Ægean Sea—about 800 B.C. Later, about the period of 300 B.C., a tower was raised on the island of Pharos, near Alexandria. At its summit two wooden fires were kept burning constantly, so that the flame by night and the smoke by day might aid the primitive navigators. In the fourth century B.C., however, Pytheas, by means of an instrument called the gnomon, which indicated the height of the sun by the direction of the shadow cast on a flat surface, determined the day of the summer solstice, to which the greatest height of the sun corresponds. He thus succeeded in fixing the latitude of Marseilles.

Fig. 18. A Coin of Apollonia, showing Shape of Anchor.

We have already mentioned that when a galley was cleared for action she sent her big spars and sails ashore. One set of double halyards of course served for these, the larger sails and spars being no doubt for fair weather when near the shelter of the land. Mr. Torr in his excellent little book,[15] which is a mine of information, the result of considerable classical research, gives the name of akation to the smaller gear—mast, sail and yard included. He mentions the very interesting fact that the expression “hoisting the akation” became synonymous with “running away” from the enemy. Aristophanes made use of the phrase in a play produced in 411 B.C.

The names dolon in 201 B.C. and artemon found mentioned about 100 B.C., were also used to indicate the smaller masts and sails. We shall refer to this latter again presently. Anchors are supposed to have been among the inventions of Anacharsis. In the earliest times they were, as one would expect, merely a heavy weight of stone. Then they were made of iron, and later on of lead. Fig. 18 shows that the shape was a cross between a modern “mushroom” anchor and the ordinary one in everyday use. The triangular space at the crown was used for bending on a tripping line. The illustration is of a coin found in Apollonia (in Thrace), and now in the British Museum. The date is about 420 B.C. Two anchors were carried by galleys, and three or four by merchantmen. Even in those days the mariners understood the usefulness of marking the position of their anchors with cork floats. The cables were of chain and of rope. Flags and lights were used on the admiral’s ship, three being allowed for the latter and one for galleys.