Ships & Ways of Other Days

by E. Keble Chatterton

In the year 1415 the furthest south reached was Cape Nun, which is at the south-west extremity of Morocco. Three years later, thanks to the secret which Henry possessed of Macham’s early voyage, two of the Prince’s courtiers were able to rediscover Madeira. In 1433 Cape Bojador, which is on the west coast of the Sahara to the south-east of the Canaries, was doubled by Gillianez. Thus these voyagers were gradually getting nearer to the Equator. The doubling of the last-mentioned headland made such an impression on Pope Martin V that His Holiness bestowed on the King of Portugal all that might thereafter be discovered in Africa and India. This concession led to international disputes in later years.

A Fifteenth-Century Ship.

In the year 1441 still more southing was achieved when Gonzales and Tristan reached Cape Blanco on the same West African coast. Three years later and the River Gambia was discovered, and in 1446 the Cape Verde Islands were visited. All this shows the considerable amount of activity which went on during those years when the Prince was at the head of his naval school. We can see, by referring to a map, how steady and persistent was the advance along the west coast of this unknown continent. But then there comes Henry’s death, and there follows a gap in this chain of discoveries. Still, before long this series of southerly voyages was resumed. The aim was ever in the same direction, but the cause of failure is unknown; whether they feared to go too far, whether their provisions ran out, whether their crews were diminished by sickness and death, whether they were not too sure of the condition of their ships one cannot say. Their intention seems to have been to proceed with caution, and possibly they aimed at a more detailed exploration than some of their successors. Perhaps this was owing to the instructions of the Prince.

At any rate, with the invaluable data which they brought back, each expedition made it easier for the next, so that by the year 1470 the Portuguese were able to reach as far south as almost to the Equator, and fourteen years later the Congo River was attained. But, with so much successfully accomplished, the impetus to do very much more became strong, and in 1486 the King of Portugal sent forth two expeditions, having for their object the discovery of an eastern route to India, and also to find if possible the whereabouts of a mysterious personality, Prester John. The latter was not discovered. One of these two expeditions proceeded through Egypt, then down the Red Sea, and so across the Arabian Sea. Its members encountered many a hardship, but they did succeed in making Calicut in the south-west of India. The other expedition was under the leadership of Bartholomew Diaz. It was of no great size, consisting merely of a couple of caravels and one store-ship. This little squadron did not reach India, but made a wonderful advance on all those previous voyages which had never got further south than the Equator and the Congo. Diaz sailed south beyond the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, and doubled it without knowing it. He coasted for a thousand miles along African shores which had never been seen by European sailors hitherto. And although he was not lucky enough to reach across to India, yet, when he returned, he had the great happiness of realising that he had passed at last that cape which is the southern African extremity. Probably you know the story: how that Diaz, mindful of the bad weather for which this region is famous, had called it the Cape of Torments, and how that the Portuguese king would not suffer this to be the name, but rather that it should be called the Cape of Good Hope, since the discovery was so promising.

And then we come to that ever memorable year of 1497, when all these preliminary voyages sink into insignificance before that of Vasco da Gama, who doubled the cape on November 20, then sailed to the northward, discovered Mozambique, Sofala, and Melinda; and finally, with the help of an Indian pilot, crossed the ocean from Melinda to Calicut in twenty-three days, so that this Vasco da Gama had the supreme honour of being the first seaman in the world’s history, so far as any record has been preserved to us, to make the entire lengthy voyage from Western Europe to the land of the Indian treasure.

With the seamanship and navigation of Columbus we shall proceed to deal presently. Although he comes within the fifteenth century, and his famous voyage was really concerned with a desire to find India, yet it will be more convenient to be able to watch his methods with greater detail in the following chapter. He is the connecting link between the fifteenth-century Henry the Navigator and that wonderful epoch of sixteenth-century seamen. It would not be inaccurate to describe him as the last of the medieval sailors and the first of the moderns. But our present aim is, now that we have seen the wonderful improvement in navigation which had set in, to obtain some idea of the contemporary seamanship in the Middle Ages.

From the coming of the Viking type of craft to the universal adoption of the caravel class of vessel there was but little variation in the kind of seamanship. In the Mediterranean the lateen sail involved a knowledge of fore-and-aft seamanship, but while this was used chiefly on the smaller craft, yet the bigger ships carried a squaresail forward and the lateen aft. This was the beginning of the caravel, which was to develop into a three- and even four-masted ship, with always a lateen at the stern. But in Northern Europe, where the single (square) sail type of ship and the Viking-like hull had continued without intermission and with only slight alterations such as the addition of stern- and fore-castles, the seamanship was practically identical with that of the Norsemen.

In what did this seamanship consist? It was exceedingly simple, and may be summed up briefly thus: The ships were made fast by big anchors and thick cables. This is evident from the pictures of the Bayeux tapestry. They quanted themselves off into deep water by pushing from the stern with a pole. The men then rowed with their oars, and as soon as clear of the shallows up went the mast and sail, the latter with its yard being fixed permanently to the former. A number of the crew would haul on to the backstays aft as the mast and sail were brought into position, the mast being inserted in its step and tabernacle. Apparently there were no braces, but the sail was controlled with a sheet from each clew. Similarly when making land and about to bring up or beach the vessel, sail and mast were bodily lowered and allowed to come forward, part of the crew remaining aft to steady the mast and sail as they came down to the deck. The steering was done by a single paddle or side-rudder placed on the starboard side. As a protection for the oarsmen a line of shields—doubtless those which they actually wore in battle—ran round the gunwale overlapping each other. A small jolly-boat was sometimes towed astern for landing from the bigger type of craft, while for greater convenience a look-out man was sent to the top of the mast. This is distinctly shown in the Bayeux tapestry.

It is more than likely that North European seamanship had not reached a very high stage of perfection, excepting among the Norsemen, at this time. Otherwise William the Conqueror would probably not have lost part of his fleet in a summer’s gale off the French coast when preparing for his invasion of England. Nor, some years later, would the Blanche Nef have been handled so negligently among the rocks round Cape Barfleur as to founder. It is pretty clear that there were too much drink and frivolity on board; but a careful skipper would scarcely have allowed such a dereliction of duty if he realised fully what sort of a task it was to take a ship through such tricky waters as the Race of Catteville. But the finest and, in fact, the only way to make good seamen is to take them for long voyages. And so, in spite of the fact that less than a century and a half later the type of ships had scarcely changed, yet there is an evident improvement in the seaman’s skill. For everyone must concede that to take a fleet of over a hundred twelfth-century ships on such a long voyage as from Dartmouth to the Holy Land was in itself a very fine feat of endurance and skill. Considering the nature of these craft, the absence of navigational facilities, the crowded condition of their hulls, the bad weather they had to encounter, the sufferings of their crews, and a host of minor difficulties which had to be borne, one can only wonder that they ever reached their destination and returned to their native country. Richard I was certainly a seaman. You will remember that on that terrible night of Easter Eve, April 13, 1190, his fleet were in the Mediterranean and caught in a heavy gale. His mariners were prostrate with sea-sickness, some of his ships were ungovernable, the horses in the holds of others would be causing the crews endless anxiety in addition to the troubles of the wind and wave. But not a ship was lost. They all came through the ordeal. All night long Richard kept a light burning at his masthead and hove-to, waiting for his chickens to gather round the mother hen.