Sailing ships

by E. Keble Chatterton

The development of the ship, then, is parallel to the development of the State. In the rude ages she is a rough creature, remaining more like the tree out of which she is made than a thing of being. In the hands of a nation that has reached a high degree of civilisation, though she is still made of oak from the forest, yet she has lost all resemblance to the tree-trunk. Instead, she has acquired a most wonderful personality of her own. The wood of the tree has become merely the means of expressing the most admirable combination of delicacy and strength, of slender lines and powerful masses.

Thus we must go to the East, the birthplace of civilisation, to trace the beginnings of our subject. We shall for this reason start from Egypt and Phœnicia, and, tracing the development through Greek and Roman times, advance to Northern and Western Europe and further west still to America. And in covering a period of roughly 8000 years, in spite of the enormous difference in time, in nations, in geographical and other conditions, we shall find that no feature is more amazing than the extraordinary spirit of conservatism which has spread itself universally over both ships and their sailors. So remarkable are the examples of this, even under widely opposed conditions, that I have thought it worth while here to submit some of the more important ones as being worthy of special consideration.

First, let us take the shape of the Egyptian ship, from which the Greeks and Romans eventually obtained their shipbuilding ideas. The high poop and the rockered bow with its bold sweep aft have, it is not too much to assert, influenced the whole world’s shipping ever since. True, the ancient galleys of the Greeks and Romans possess a straighter keel and a pointed bow. But this was done for a purpose. These galleys were fighting ships; and as the ram had to be placed forward in such a manner that keel, stempost, and strut-frames centred their combined force at the extreme point, the shape of the bow could not follow that of the Egyptians. The keel, too, was flat and straight, because it was the custom of the Greeks and Romans to haul their galleys ashore nearly every night. Again, we must bear in mind that the Roman or Greek war vessel was primarily a rowing boat and not a sailing ship, and that mast and sail were always lowered before going into battle. Yet, for all that, the Greek vases bearing pictures of war galleys still show the Egyptian stern. But when we come to consider the Greek and Roman merchant ships, we find the Egyptian stern and a modified Egyptian bow unmistakably present. And we must remember that the merchant ships were primarily sailing ships and only used their oars as auxiliaries.

Throughout the ages many of these general lines of the Egyptian ships have been followed. We see them appearing in the prehistoric ships of Norway, in the Viking ships of old, and in the ships of the Baltic to-day. We see this conservatism in the ships of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, in the caravels and caracks and galleons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We see it down to about the time of the Royal George in 1746; and even since then, when the great sweep from bow up to the extreme height of the poop-deck was modified until it practically disappeared, yet we find traces of it in the forecastle and raised quarter-deck of the modern sailing ship. And to continue the argument one step further, I suppose if you could by sending a current of electricity through one of the Egyptian naval architects, now lying as a mummy in one of our museums, bring him to life, so that you might take him to see the yachts racing during Cowes Week, he would not hesitate to say that such ships as White Heather II. and the newest Shamrock were based on the designs he had made for his masters under the Twelfth Dynasty. If the reader will take the trouble of comparing the Rifeh model (Figs. 5 and 6) with the lines of the latest British yachts now being built under the new universal rule, and then recollect how many years have passed in the interim, he will not cease to wonder that the same “overhang” at bow and stern is as prevalent on the Solent as it was on the Nile. Whatever else these facts may prove, they certainly show what a high state of civilisation the Egyptian had attained; more, perhaps, than we realise at present. The naval architects of that time must indeed have lacked as little that we could teach them in design nowadays as—we know from subsequent excavations—the shipbuilders of Viking times could learn from our shipbuilders of to-day.

An additional proof of the wisdom and knowledge of the ancients is to be found in the rig of their ships. The squaresail of the Egyptians was very like that used subsequently by the Greeks and Romans, and afterwards by the Vikings and many of the Norwegian and Russian ships to-day. It survived, moreover, beyond the Middle Ages, the only important difference being that three and sometimes two additional masts were provided with squaresails, with a lateen sail on the mizzen and a spritsail and sprit topsail forward. Thus, though the headsails of a modern full-rigged ocean ship have been altered during the last hundred and fifty years, yet the arrangement of her lower courses is practically that of the single sail of the Egyptians, omitting for the present certain details which do not alter the method of harnessing the wind as a means of propulsion. They had in these early times learned the value of stretching a sail on yards. They had, besides, understood where to place backstays and a forestay to support the mast, and they had adopted the use of braces to the yards as well as of topping lifts.

The eyes painted on the ships of the Greeks and Romans still survive to-day in the hawse holes on either side of a ship’s bow. And this belief of the ancients that by means of these eyes the vessel could see her way was but one article in the general creed still shared by every sailor, amateur and professional alike, that a ship, of all the creations of man, is indeed a living thing. Mr. F. T. Bullen, in a delightful little essay, has demonstrated the varying ways in which a ship will manifest her personality. In “The Way of the Ship” Mr. Bullen also remarks: “Kipling has done more, perhaps, than any other living writer to point out how certain fabrics of man’s construction become invested with individuality of an unmistakable kind, and of course so acute an observer cannot fail to notice how pre-eminently is this the case with ships.”

Though you may build two ships on the same yard from the same plans by the same builder, yet their personalities are different. The yachtsmen who elect to have a one-design class know very well that though you may raffle as to the ownership of each ship, yet there will always be one or two of the fleet that will be superior to the rest. But the ancients were before the yachtsmen in discovering that a mere contrivance of wood and metal should have a distinct character of its own.

The decoration of the bow and stern of the ship has existed for many hundreds of years; and though the figurehead was especially prominent during the Middle Ages, it is now fast disappearing both from sailing ships of commerce and from yachts also. On steamers it is hardly ever seen except on the steam yacht. The decorated stern, too, so prevalent up to the eighteenth century, has now vanished; although the final traces of this may be noticed in the old-fashioned architecture to which the modern Royal steam yachts of this country still cling, and in the gold beading which frequently ornaments the name of a steamship under her stern.

In Northern latitudes we find the most extraordinary cases of historical obstinacy; the rig and hull of the Scandinavians have remained practically unaltered for some two or three thousand years. The very word “snekkja,” applied to the ancient longships of the Scandinavians, is still used to-day. Moreover, the “bonnet,” which was attached to the foot of the sail to give additional area—unlaced, of course, in dirty weather—was used by the Vikings; was adopted from them by the ships of mediæval England; and is still used to-day by the ships of Scandinavia, and in England by the Lowestoft “drifters” that go forth to fish in the North Sea, as well as by the pleasure and trading wherries that sail up and down the Norfolk Broads. Fig. 2 shows a Norwegian “jaegt,” with bonnet and bowlines.