Ships & Ways of Other Days

by E. Keble Chatterton

No consideration of the relation of Rome to the sea can be complete without taking into consideration those important and daring adventures which Julius Cæsar attempted. Adventures they certainly were, for here was a land general trying experiments which belonged rightly to sailormen; and, as was the inevitable result, he made terrible mistakes as he blundered through towards victory. His expedition against the Veneti, “the stoutest and the most skilful seamen in Gaul,” taught him much: taught him that he was matched to play a game whose tricks he did not understand. But the praise belongs to him, a landsman, for his ingenuity and resource in toiling with such signal success against very heavy odds. He recognised quickly that the ships of the Veneti and their allies were so heavy that no Roman galley with its cruel rams could have any appreciable effect on them. They were too high out of the water, too, to enable the legionaries to hurl their missiles with any telling effect. It has been suggested that the design of these powerful Biscayan craft had originally been borrowed from the great Carthaginian merchantmen, “whose commerce in British waters they had inherited, and their prosperity depended upon the carrying trade with Britain, of which they possessed the monopoly.”[15]

It was Cæsar’s opportunity to rise to the occasion, and he availed himself of the chance. Sending instructions to his officers to have a fleet built in the ports at the mouth of the Loire, he also raised oarsmen from the province and collected as many local pilots and seamen as possible. Thus, when the time came, the Roman fleet included ships impressed from the maritime tribes between the Loire and Garonne. The Roman engineers also came to the rescue, and, taking long poles, they armed them at one end with sharp-edged hooks. There was just one feature in which the galleys surpassed the stout ships of the enemy: they were far more mobile. So, when the rival fleets approached, two or more galleys ran alongside the Biscayan craft, thrust out the sharp hooks, caught the halyards, rowed hard away, with the result that the ropes snapped, the yard and sail came tumbling down on to the deck below and enveloped the crew. Springing smartly from the galleys on to this confused crowd, the enemy was soon slaughtered and the ship captured. In principle, though not in detail, the tactic was similar to that used in comparatively modern times when sailing men-of-war aimed to blow away the enemy’s rigging, leaving him so much out of control that complete annihilation was a matter only of time.

But far more interesting than his expedition against the Veneti was Cæsar’s invasion of England. Regarded merely as a naval exploit, it is deserving of great attention; but to those who have had any experience of winds, waves, and tides it is most instructive. Picture Cæsar, therefore, in the summer of 55 B.C. at Gesoriacum, better known to the reader under its modern name of Boulogne. Here was a port that was important in even those early days. From this spot the merchants of Gaul were wont to embark their cargoes and carry them across the Channel to the shores of Kent, and later on it was destined to become one of the naval stations for the Classis Britannica. Think of it in the year we are speaking of as a busy place, lined with shipyards along its banks and many craft in its haven. From the forest above could be hewn and floated down the trees for the making of ships. Every mariner to-day knows that when the heavy north-east gales make it impossible for the cross-Channel packet-steamers to enter Calais, Boulogne can be entered with safety by even sailing craft.

Chart to illustrate Cæsar’s crossing the English Channel.

But inasmuch as the prevailing wind along the English Channel is from the south-west, the reader will observe on consulting a chart that the position of Boulogne for the Gallic traders bound for Dover or the Thames was singularly well placed, inasmuch as it gave the mariner a fair wind outward-bound on most occasions. That fact was doubtless appreciated by Cæsar when he elected to use this port as his starting-place for Britain. He therefore gave orders that his fleet was here to be got in readiness, and then sent forth Volusenus in a galley to reconnoitre the British coast. The ship was a Roman galley manned by oarsmen who had been trained by years of work for the task, and with such a craft as this Volusenus could be independent of wind and accomplish his task with the utmost dispatch. He was away cruising about the English Channel for a period of three days, during which time he had doubtless been able to locate a suitable place where his master’s troops could be disembarked. He had had the opportunity of taking soundings, and—perhaps most important of all to one accustomed almost exclusively to the Mediterranean—of noticing both the range of tide and the force and direction of the strong tidal streams. Similarly, he was able to make a note of the cliffs of Dover and other landmarks. With this knowledge he returned to place himself at Cæsar’s disposal.

On August 25, then, the transports came out from Boulogne. The time was midnight, it wanted five days to full moon, and high water that evening was at 6 p.m., so that the tides were neaps, or at their weakest. We can be quite sure that, acting on the experience of Volusenus in the Channel, it was deliberately intended to avoid spring tides. (It is high water at Boulogne at new and full moon at 11.28.) The transports thus came out of the haven with the last drain of the ebb. But in the offing the tide that night did not make to the eastward till 4 a.m., so there would be the Channel ebb to contend against for some time.

So far all had been splendidly arranged, so that by the time the flood or east-going tide had begun the fleet would all have got clear of the harbour and the oarsmen have been getting into their stride for the passage. Gris Nez and the French cliffs were left behind as the hulls ploughed their way through the heaving sea and sped onwards. But it was not to be a quick passage. The tide, of course, turned against them before they were across, and those transports would not easily be impelled through the waves; but at nine the next morning the oar-propelled galleys which had got ahead during the night approached the cliffs of Dover. Far behind followed the sail-driven transports, so Cæsar let go anchor in Dover Bay, summoned a council of his generals and tribunes, gave them instructions as to the landing-place, told them how to handle both ships and men in disembarking, and then between three and four o’clock that same afternoon the bulky transports wallowed up to join the galleys. Between four and five p.m. the Channel stream off Dover turned to the eastward, and as the wind was favourable Cæsar gave the signal to weigh anchor. Presently the galleys, transports, and the smaller craft were stretched out running past the Foreland with wind and tide to help them. It did not take them long to skirt past St. Margaret’s Bay, and at some point between Walmer and Deal the transports were beached and the journey accomplished. Thus, with careful foresight, Cæsar had got safely across the Channel with his troops and fleet.

These transports had carried his infantry; now the cavalry were starting not from Boulogne, but from Ambleteuse, which is about midway between Boulogne and Cape Gris Nez, and slightly nearer to Dover. Not till August 30 were these descried approaching the British coast. A gale from the north-east sprang up and prevented them from keeping their course, so that some were carried back to Ambleteuse, while others were swept to the westward down Channel. Some anchored for a time, but the north-east wind gave them a lee shore, and they had to put out to sea and make for the Continent. Some scudded past the gale beyond the South Foreland and the high cliffs of Dover, risking disaster every minute. Those which had hauled with the wind abeam over to the Gallic coast managed to heave-to on the port tack, and drifting past Cape Gris Nez, were in fairly sheltered water, so that they could carry on and make port. This they did, and re-entered Ambleteuse without the loss of either a ship or a man. Such a fact proves at once that Cæsar had been able to get together from somewhere a number of men who were not novices, but very fine seamen. We must concede that the Gallic sailors knew their business, at any rate.

Cæsar and his men had already landed near Deal. They had left their galleys and the infantry transports, and gone inland before this had happened. The galleys, as was the Mediterranean custom for centuries, had been hauled up above the mark for ordinary high water; the transports, because of their weight and size, had been left at anchor. Now Cæsar, in spite of what he had gathered regarding tides, had evidently omitted to bear in mind the fact that at full moon or new moon—“springs”—the rise of the tide is greater than at neaps. Neither he nor his officers knew the connection between tides and moon, and there is a difference of several feet on that coast between high-water springs and high-water neaps. It was full moon, and every seafaring man knows that when a gale does occur at that time it is worse than when the moon is not at full or change. High water was somewhere about 11 p.m. Wind and tide rose in great strength on to this lee shore, so that the galleys which had been hauled up were dashed to pieces, while transports broke from their anchors and drove on to the beach.