Ships & Ways of Other Days

by E. Keble Chatterton

It is more than likely that this ship was built at Boulogne on one of the Roman shipyards there, and formed originally a unit in the Classis Britannica. There is a votive tablet preserved in the Boulogne Museum, and found in that neighbourhood, depicting two triremes with the stern steering oar, the beak at the bows, and the banks of oars, which shows how similar these Romano-British ships were to the Mediterranean model. The votive offering in question had been made by the crew of a trireme named the Radians. Possibly the Westminster ship was the flagship of Carausius.

Her timbers were found to have been cut with the grain, and every other one ran to the gunwale. A rubbing strake ran along outside the hull which took the thwart ends, the recesses for the same being still visible. It would appear as if the frames above turned outwards and formed a support for that gangway along which the soldiers were wont to fight. Some think there is evidence to show that the ship had a false keel, and that she carried a mast. As to the dimensions of the vessel, one authority, judging by the run of the stringer, suggests that when she was whole she measured about 90 feet long by 18 feet beam. The material was oak; the treenails, which were perfectly made and fitted, measured 1¼ inches in diameter.[17]

Details of Roman Ship found at Westminster.

The two vessels buried at the bottom of Lake Nemi—from the fragments which have been brought to the surface—belong to the time of Caligula (A.D. 37), and equally demonstrate the first-class workmanship of the Romans. Of these two pleasure craft one measured 208 feet long by 65 feet beam, whilst the other was 227 feet by 80 feet. The planking was of white fir, and the frames were probably of oak. All the metal fastenings below the water-line were of bronze, but above water they were iron. The nail heads were cemented over and the planking canvased, and finally a lead sheathing was laid on with copper nails. It has been ascertained that the builders had been careful to cut out any faulty timber, and to fill up the space with sound material. The metal fastenings connecting the timbers and planking were put through, the points being laid over and turned back into the wood. The planking in the first of the Nemi wrecks was of two thicknesses of 1½-inch stuff. In the larger of the two, three thicknesses of planking were found to exist, the beams for the decks being found to be attached to the gunwale as in the method seen on the Westminster ship.

Even if we allow a great deal for the knowledge in shipbuilding which the Romans acquired from the Veneti and from Gallic shipbuilders, yet everything points to the fact that Italy knew how to build and how to fight ships to such perfection that we cannot but feel for them the keenest admiration. If they were not great explorers such as the Phœnicians, they accomplished a great deal in other spheres of the maritime art, and sometimes in the teeth of great obstacles.

Details of Roman Ship found at Westminster.

Here and there Virgil gives us delightful little sea-cameos which show how keenly the ancients exulted in their ships, and raced them against each other past rock and cliff, through wind and spume. What, for example, could be more interesting than the account of the race of the four galleys in the fifth book of the Æneid? He gives you the names of the swift Pristis, the huge Chimæra, which with her triple arrangement of oars was so big that she seemed like a floating town, the Centaur, and the dark blue Scylla. He draws for you the picture of the captains standing at the sterns, the crew taking their seats at the oars and waiting in eager breathlessness for the trumpet to start them on their race. Almost you can see the strong arms being drawn up to the breast and thrust smartly away again. The blue Scylla wins, but it is a splendid struggle. The little touches of the ship which was “swifter than wind or flying arrow speeds towards land,” and of the disabled galley which moves slowly (like to a snake which has been run over), yet hoists her canvas and enters the harbour’s mouth “with full sails,” are pencilled in by a man who must have often watched a galley doing her work. He speaks of the lofty sterns which these galleys possessed, of Palinurus the pilot bidding his men to reef the sails at the gathering of a “dark storm of rain, bringing with it gloom and foul weather,” and gives orders to “labour at their strong oars, and sidewards turn the sails to meet the wind.” Evidently with the squall came a shift of wind, so that instead of being able to run with the breeze free, under sail power alone, they were now compelled to come on a wind, shorten canvas, and get out oars to prevent such shallow-draught vessels from drifting to leeward.

And in a later passage Æneas, after the sea has calmed down, “bids all the masts quickly to be raised, and on the sailyards the sails to be stretched. All at once veered the sheet, and loosened the bellying canvas to right, to left; at once they all turn up and down the tall ends of the sailyards; favouring breezes bear the fleet along. Foremost before them all, Palinurus led the close line; with an eye to him the rest were bid to direct their course. And now damp night had just reached the centre of its course in the heavens; the sailors, stretched on their hard seats beneath the oars, had relaxed their limbs in quiet repose.”