There is some indication in the Georgics of the manner in which the ancient seamen made use of stars and weatherology. “As carefully must the star of Arcturus, and the days of the Kids, and the bright Dragon be observed by us on land, as by those who, homewards bound across the stormy seas, venture to the Euxine and the straits of oyster-breeding Abydos.” ... “Hence we can learn coming changes of weather in the dubious sky, hence the days of harvest and the season of sowing, and when ’tis meet with oars to cut the faithless sea, when to launch our rigged fleets, and when at the proper time to fell the pine tree in the woods: nor will you be disappointed, if you watch the setting and rising of the heavenly signs, and observe the year fairly divided by four distinct seasons.” ... “Straightway, when winds arise, either the straits of the sea begin to swell with agitation, and a dry crash is heard on the high hills, or far in the distance the shores are filled with confused echoes, and the murmur of the woods thickens on the ear. The wave can but ill forbear to do a mischief to the crooked keels, even when gulls fly swiftly back from the high sea, sending their screams before them.... Oft too, when wind impends, you will see stars shoot headlong from the sky.... But when it lightens from the quarter of grim Boreas, and when the home of Eurus and Zephyrus thunders, then are the dykes filled and all the country is flooded, and every mariner out at sea furls his dripping sails.... The sun also, both when rising and when he hides himself beneath the waves, will give you signs; infallible signs attend the sun ... a blue colour announces rain, or fiery winds; but if the spots begin to be mixed with glowing red, then you will see all nature rage with wind and stormy rain together. On such a night let no one advise me to venture on the deep, or pluck my cable from its mooring on the shore.”
CHAPTER VI
THE VIKING MARINERS
War has always been a great incentive to shipbuilding. But this statement requires modification by excluding both civil war and the merchant ship. Of the former, no better instance could be found than the disastrous Wars of the Roses. Of the latter, the manner in which the Romans and others developed the war-galley at the neglect of the merchant ship is a clear example.
The Vikings, too, were great warriors; hence the wonderful development of their ships was for hostile purposes. But, unlike the Romans, they were equally distinguished as maritime explorers. And it is with their methods on the sea that we are now about to deal. They were so vigorous in their activities, so dauntless and daring, such genuinely strenuous shipmen that they were bound to do great things, or fail where none could have succeeded. “They had neither compass nor astronomical instruments,” as Dr. Nansen reminds us, “nor any of the appliances of our time for finding their position at sea; they could only sail by the sun, moon, and stars, and it seems incomprehensible how for days and weeks, when these were invisible, they were able to find their course through fog and bad weather. But they found it, and the open craft of the Norwegian Vikings, with their square sails, fared north and west over the whole ocean, from Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen to Greenland, Baffin’s Bay, Newfoundland, and North America, and over these lands and seas the Norsemen extended their dominion. It was not till five hundred years later that the ships of other nations were to make their way to the same regions.”[18]
That being so, how did these men succeed in making such long passages? The lodestone or compass did not reach Norway until the thirteenth century. I think that before we attempt a more definite answer we should make a great allowance for that sea-sense which is partly inborn and partly obtained by the experience of long years. I remember once asking a man who had been skipper of a coaster, whose family had lived their lives on the sea or by it, whose brothers had gone down with their ships to the port whence there is no returning—how the captains of such craft managed. Had they any real knowledge of navigation? “No, sir,” my friend answered, “they’re all mostly self-reliant.” In other words, they have a rough knowledge of the problems, and the rest is instinct. Only the other day I was talking to yet another plain, seafaring man. I asked him how he and his mates managed to find their way in by night through a certain very tricky and unlighted channel that was full of dangers and scoured by a strong tide. It was the same answer. “They managed as best they could,” relied on their instinct, sometimes made mistakes and got picked up, but on the whole succeeded in getting through.
I suppose it was much the same with the Vikings. But with this exception: that, being unfettered by book-learning, they possessed the instinctive faculty more thoroughly. They knew the Scandinavian coast-line thoroughly well; and long coasting voyages had taught them the configuration of other nations’ shores. The rising and setting of the sun would assist them in clear weather, and the Pole-star at night. They were wont to carry in their ships a number of ravens, and when they were expecting soon to make a landfall and it was useless to climb the mast, they released these birds, which, flying high, spotted the distant shore and flew towards it. The Viking mariner could thus set his course to follow their direction of flight.
Of course, with such rough-and-ready methods they made egregious mistakes and sometimes found themselves sailing in exactly the opposite direction to that desired, like some amateur yachtsmen who have sailed through the night by the wind and not known that the wind had veered several points. Dr. Nansen gives as an instance of a Viking’s mistake that of Thorstein Ericson, who in starting from Greenland arrived off Iceland instead of America. And, be it added, there are plenty of well-found ships to-day, both sail and steam, which, in spite of all their sextants, their patent logs, and deep-sea sounding leads, have made landfalls miles off their course.
Their sense of time, too, was another instinct which few of us possess to-day. “Several accounts show,” says the same Scandinavian authority, “that on land the Scandinavians knew how to observe the sun accurately, in what quarter and at what time it set, how long the day or the night lasted at the summer or winter solstice, etc. From this they formed an idea of their northern latitude.” It is just possible that they may even have understood how to take primitive measurements of the sun’s altitude at noon with a species of quadrant. But it is not likely that during those long, early voyages they could have been able to take observations of this kind from their ships. Nor can they have understood how to reckon the latitude from such measurements except at the equinoxes and solstices.