Ships & Ways of Other Days

by E. Keble Chatterton

But inasmuch as the ship is at the mercy of the sea, and since the sea is a continually undulating entity, a compass which does not have a corresponding adaptability is inadequate. This fact, as one might naturally suppose, was appreciated by the early navigators. Ford[43] quotes Bailak Kibdjaki, an Arabian writer of A.D. 1242, and shows that at least a crude kind of liquid compass was in use by the Oriental navigators. “The captains navigating the Syrian Sea,” says Kibdjaki, “when the night is so dark as to conceal from view the stars, which might direct their course according to the position of the four cardinal points, take a basin full of water; they then drive a needle into a wooden peg or cornstick, so as to form the shape of a cross, and throw it into the basin of water, on the surface of which it floats. They afterwards take a loadstone of sufficient size to fill the palm of the hand, or even smaller, bring it to the surface of the water, give the hand a rotary motion towards the right, so that the needle turns on the water’s surface. They then suddenly and quickly withdraw the hand, when the two points of the needle face north and south. They have given me ocular demonstration of this process during our sea voyage from Syria to Alexandria in the year 640 of the Hegira.”

By the thirteenth century the people dwelling along the Mediterranean littoral had long since become skilled seamen if not consummate navigators. There is in the British Museum a volume by Francesco da Barberino, entitled “Documenti d’Amore.” The author was born in 1264, and in the ninth lection of this volume has so much to say about nautical service that this forms what is really the first work on seamanship that was ever written. Space will not allow more than a cursory reference to this, but it contains evidence of the system into which the Mediterranean sea-service had developed. The old custom which was in vogue during classical times of limiting the sailing season to certain months was retained. Thus Barberino remarks that the time for navigation was from April to the end of September. Furthermore it was not custom merely, but actual law. For maritime legislation had originated during the twelfth century, and was continued in the “Loi de Trani,” the “Code Navale des Rhodiens,” the “Code de la Mer,” and the famous Laws of Oleron. In fact only the lawless, avaricious merchant captains ventured to put to sea in the other six months of the year; none but these cared to venture forth sailing through the long dark nights, and the fogs, storms, and snow.

Before the Iberian peninsula became so intimate with the problems of navigation, Venice was, of course, the great medieval home of the southern sailor, and those in authority saw that the marine affairs were properly looked after. The captains of all commercial ships sailing under the Venetian flag were, in 1569, forbidden to leave Alexandria, Syria, or Constantinople any time between November 15 and January 12. Such was the motherly care displayed for the State’s shipping; but it is only fair to add that before very long such restrictions on navigation were removed.

Very interesting, too, is the advice which Barberino gives to pilots. Remember, if you please, that the Mediterranean was the happy hunting ground of professional pirates, and never a merchant ship put to sea on a long voyage but she ran the risk of encountering these corsairs. Therefore all pilots of trading craft were advised to make their ships as little visible as possible. It is well for them to lower the white sail when clear of the land and to hoist a small black one. Especially at break of day is it unsafe to lower sail until out of sight of the shore. “Then,” suggests Barberino, “send the top-man aloft to see if an enemy be in sight.” Many another useful “wrinkle” is given, as, for instance, how to act when the rudders carry away. Apparently the old classical custom of a rudder affixed to each quarter, and both a small and large mast and sail, was still retained. That smaller black sail just mentioned was known among the Venetian seamen by the nickname of “wolf,” from its colour and cunning. The mainmast being carried away, then the smaller one, usually employed for the “wolf,” was stepped and used. And if, in turn, that also went by the board, then the lateen yard was to be used until dawn returned. There are directions, also, to make a jury-rudder by towing a spar astern.

During the night, as these ships sailed along over the heaving Mediterranean and Adriatic with a great belly of canvas reaching down from the massive lateen yard, strict silence was maintained on board. After dark not even the boatswain was allowed to use his whistle, nor were bells to be sounded—not an avoidable noise of any kind was to be suffered lest the presence of the richly laden trading ship should be suddenly revealed to some pirate hovering in the vicinity. The earliest Venetian statutes affecting ships belong to the year 1172, and these, after being considerably amplified in the thirteenth century, were again added to in the fifteenth, after the conquest of Constantinople. Every possible detail seems to have been regulated in connection with these merchant ships. The general supervision was attended to with the most meticulous care. The construction of these merchant ships themselves, the quantity and quality of their cargo, the number of their crew, their anchors, ropes, and gear generally, all came under this control.

Additional to the crew there were carried a couple of scribes on each of these trading ships, for the purpose of keeping an exact account of the freights. The skipper, or padrone, was compelled to be on board his ship by the hour of departure, and was not allowed to quit his ship till she reached her port. The accommodation for passengers and crew was probably but primitive, and they apparently catered for themselves; for each man, whether one of the crew or the passengers, was suggestively permitted to bring with him a mattress and cushion, a trunk for his belongings, a flask of wine, a flask of water, together with flour and biscuit. Even in the early seventeenth century the men on the Spanish warships used to cook each for himself, in contradistinction to the English seamen, who had their meals prepared by the ship’s cook. Though the Venetian ships up till the fifteenth century did not dare to venture out into the “Green Sea of Darkness,” as the Arabs termed the Atlantic, yet we cannot afford to despise ships and men who regularly traded between the Adriatic and the Levant. Even a modern sailing ship would have some difficulty in beating the passage which one of these craft made in the year 1408, when she sailed from Venice to Jaffa in thirty-three days, calling at various ports on the way.

Venice might have continued to hold the supreme position on the sea had not Portugal and Spain taken to the ocean, and studied the problems of navigation on a much grander and more scientific scale. The discovery of America, and the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, the opening up of a sea route to India, all combined to take away from Venice her commercial prestige, at any rate afloat. Relying partly on the newly adopted magnetised needle, partly on their crude astronomical instruments and tables of the movements of sun and moon; trusting also to the most careful observations of weather, colour of the sea, seaweed, tree branches and other objects found floating on the surface of the ocean; noting carefully by night, as mariners for centuries before them had been careful to notice, the north star and other stellar bodies; but at the same time lacking reliable knowledge of ocean currents and trade winds—the Portuguese discoverers were able to keep the sea for months, independent of and out of sight of land, an achievement which had not been brought about since the days when the Phœnicians circumnavigated Africa. Venice had had her day; just as Egypt, Phœnicia, Greece, and Rome before her, just as Spain, England, Holland, and France later on were to become great maritime Powers.

And so we come to that prince of navigators, that consummate seaman, that greatest of all maritime discoverers, Columbus, and we shall proceed to learn from contemporary accounts the kind of seamanship and navigation which he employed on his memorable voyages, the life which he and his companions lived in those historic cruises into the unknown. Happily Columbus’s log is still preserved to us. Even though it is somewhat mutilated, yet it is full of illuminating information, and must be regarded as “the most important document in the whole range of the history of geographical discovery.” The methods, the instruments, even the ships employed by Columbus were merely typical of the best which then were used. Emphatically they were not otherwise. Therefore if we note carefully the ways of the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and Nina, we are really focussing the most expert seamanship and navigation of the fifteenth century. There were certainly ships afloat as good as, if not better than the Santa Maria; but what is to be remembered is that those illustrious explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were really expert navigators, and not merely daring seamen, astute traders, or courageous soldiers. Columbus, Drake, Davis, and so on were, according to their times, really scientific men. I wish to emphasise this because the world is wont to admire their valour and enterprise while forgetting their mental abilities and achievements. As we shall see presently, Columbus’s navigation was always better than that of the skippers of the Nina and Pinta. Drake was an excellent navigator, especially in regard to astronomical navigation. Davis, as anyone who cares to read his works may see for himself, was most learned in the theory of finding one’s way across the trackless sea.

In the light of modern knowledge, modern practice, and modern nautical instruments, some of the errors in navigation of those days may seem to us ridiculous, until we recollect that these men were really fumbling in the darkness with nothing to guide them except moderate knowledge, inefficient aids, and their own natural instincts. Long before Christopher Columbus set out to the westward he had studied cosmography and astrology at the University of Pavia. He had also visited Lisbon, whither the fame of the achievements of Prince Henry the Navigator’s illustrious captains had attracted other capable seamen, among whom were such men as Da Gama, and his own elder brother Bartolomeo. At this time Lisbon was still the centre of all nautical and geographical enterprise. Here Bartolomeo was working as the head of a school of cartography, and here Christopher had every opportunity for studying the charts and logs of the greatest living sea captains after Bartolomeo had returned home. He had the dual advantage of learning all that both Genoa and Lisbon could teach him. Furthermore, he was a practical seaman, and had already sailed as far to the north as Iceland.

We need not stop to inquire whether Columbus was aware that already many years before his time the Vikings had discovered North America. It is at least most improbable that he was aware of this fact. What is certain is that, fortified with all the nautical lore obtainable from the greatest living Peninsular sea captains, he set out with a firm conviction that the world was a sphere, and he was hoping to prove that conviction. Himself a gifted cartographer, he would make his charts as he went along. From Palos, then the most flourishing port of Andalusia, a village that contained little else among its inhabitants than some of the finest seamen-explorers in the world, he set sail with a fair wind on August 3—a Friday—1492, in the Santa Maria. Accompanying her were the two smaller craft Nina and Pinta. “Carabela” was not then applied to a particular species of ship, but only to certain vessels of medium tonnage suitable for the diverse purposes of fishing, coasting, and exploring.[44] In the Columbine Library at Seville there is a map of Española drawn with a pen. In two places are seen outline sketches of three sailing craft. Competent critics affirm that these sketches were made by Columbus, and depict his squadron of three during his first voyage to the West in 1492. If this opinion be correct, then it is certain that the first ship was three-masted, so was the second—doubtless the Santa Maria, the biggest of the three—but the third ship is only two-masted. The first and second ships have a small square foresail on the foremast; square mainsail and topsail on the main, with a lateen on the mizzen. But the third ship has a lateen on both masts.