Ships & Ways of Other Days

by E. Keble Chatterton

CHAPTER IV
MEDITERRANEAN PROGRESS

But before we proceed further, it is essential that we look carefully into the building, administration, and handling of those fleets of vessels which made history as they scudded across the blue waters of the south of Europe. We want to know, also, something of the composition of their crews, their officers, and the divisions of control, of the tactics employed in naval warfare, of the limitations in manœuvring, the methods of working the oars, of rigging the ships, of steering, and so on.

Greece had accepted the ship as it had evolved in the hands of the Phœnicians with certain modifications. We are no longer anxious to trace that development, but rather to see, in the first place, how the Greeks availed themselves of their inheritance. In the building of their ships the Greeks gave neither sternpost nor stempost. The timbers of the ships were held together by means of wooden pegs (or treenails, as we should call them), and also by metal nails, bronze being chosen in preference to iron nails for the most obvious of reasons. But in those days, as any student of Greek history is aware, not infrequently craft had to be transported. Therefore the fastenings were so placed as to allow of the ship being divided into sections for carrying across land to some distant water. The outer framework of the hull was found in the keel and ribs. The ship’s planking, which varied from the somewhat ample 2¼ inches to 5¼ inches thick, was fastened through the ribs to the beams.

The warships had most necessarily to be built of the utmost strength to sustain the terrible shocks in ramming. To prevent the damage incurred being disastrous, cables—called hypozomata—undergirded the ship. The Greek word signifies the diaphragm or midriff in anatomy, but in the plural it is used to designate the braces which were passed either underneath or horizontally around the ship’s hull. The reader may remember that in “Sailing Ships and their Story” I called attention to the Egyptian ships, which used to be strengthened by stretching similar cables not girth-wise, but direct from stem to stern across the deck over wooden forks amidships. Primarily, then, these braces on the Greek ships were to counteract the effects of ramming; incidentally they kept the ship’s hull from “working” when she pounded in heavy seas.

And then when the shipwright had finished his construction of the ship she was coloured with a composition consisting of paint and wax, the latter serving to give these speedy ships the minimum of skin-friction. The colours chosen were purple, two whites, violet, yellow, and blue. Green, for the sake of invisibility, was used for scouts and pirates. The primitive Grecian ships had only patches of colour at the bows, the rest of the hull being covered black with tar. Occasionally neither wax nor tar was employed, but the hull was sheathed with lead outside the planking, layers of tarred sailcloth being placed in between the two materials. They made their sails either of linen, or, sometimes, of papyrus fibre or flax, and there were two kinds of sailcloth which the Athenian Navy utilised. The bolt-ropes of the sails were of hide, the skins of the hyena and seal being especially employed. The ropes used for the different purposes of the ship were of two kinds. Some were of strips of hide; more frequently they were from the fibre of papyrus or from flax or hemp. The sails were often coloured—black for mourning, purple or vermilion for an admiral or monarch. Topsails were sometimes coloured, the lower sail remaining uncoloured. The green-hulled scouts also had their sails and ropes dyed to match the colour of the Mediterranean. And sometimes the interesting sight would be seen of sails with inscriptions and devices woven in golden thread into the fabric.

There is a Greek word askos, which signifies a leathern bag or wine-skin, from which the word askoma is derived. The latter was the word given to a leathern bag which was attached to the oar so as to prevent the water from penetrating through into the ship, and yet allowed, with only slight friction, the oar to be brought backward and forward. There is something slightly similar to-day in the leather flap which is found on the Bristol Channel pilot cutters, covering the discharge from the watertight cockpits, the motion of the ship through the water causing the flap to be pressed tightly against the hull, and thus preventing any water from entering. But in the instance of the Grecian craft the flap was much bigger. There were no rowlocks, but the oar was fastened by a leathern loop to a thole-pin against which the rower pulled his oar.

Bear in mind that, whereas the Greek merchant-ship mostly relied on sails, the warship was essentially oar-propelled. And because she must needs carry a large number of rowers they needed supervision. Hence a gangway was placed on either side of the ship, both for that purpose and also for the placing of the fighting men. Illustrations on ancient Greek vases clearly show that some warships were fitted with a hurricane-deck above, and this extended down the length of the ship, but not from one side to the other. This hurricane-deck, if we are to give any credence to contemporary illustrations, was a fairly light affair raised on vertical supports of sufficient strength. In addition to the human ballast of the oarsmen, gravel, sand, and stone were used for trimming the ship. For instance, it might be necessary to get the bows deeper into the water so that the ram came into operation; or, after ramming and receiving damage, it might be found advisable to trim the ship by the stern so as to get the bows well out of water. To what extent these craft leaked one cannot say; but one can reasonably suppose that as they were built of unseasoned wood, as the shocks from ramming were very injurious, and as they had to suffer a good deal of wear and tear through frequent beaching, they made a fair amount of water. At any rate, it is certain that they provided against this in arranging an Archimedean screw, worked by a treadmill, or buckets for getting rid of the bilge-water. It is probable, also, that the drinking-water in cisterns or skins would be deposited as low in the hull as possible.

The Greeks, in addition to their technical ability, had inherited a similar sea-instinct to that of the Phœnicians, and this keenness is by no means absent from Greek literature. What, for instance, could be more enthusiastic than the following exquisitely poetic extract from Antipater of Sidon:—

“Now is the season for a ship to run through the gurgling water, and no longer does the sea gloom, fretted with gusty squalls; and now the swallow plasters her globed houses under the rafters, and the soft leafage laughs in the meadows. Therefore wind up your soaked cables, O sailors, and weigh your sunken anchors from the harbours, and stretch the forestays to carry your well-woven sails. This I, the son of Bromius, bid you, Priapus of the anchorage.”[3]