62. The number of American vessels now employed in pursuit of the spermaceti cachalot and the mystecetus, amounts to about four hundred, and the number of men to about ten thousand. The inhabitants of the island of Nantucket, and of the town of New-Bedford, are more extensively engaged in these fisheries than the people of any other part of the United States.
THE SHIPWRIGHT.
1. The earliest notice we have of the construction of a building to float on water, is that which relates to Noah's Ark. This was the largest vessel that has ever been built, and the circumstance proves that the arts, at that early period, had been brought to considerable perfection; yet, as several centuries had elapsed, after the flood, before the descendants of Noah had much occasion for floating vessels, the art of constructing them seems to have been measurably lost.
2. Early records, which perhaps are worthy of credit, state that the Egyptians first traversed the river Nile upon rafts, then in the canoe; and that, to these succeeded the boat, built with joist, fastened together with wooden pins, and rendered water-tight by interposing the leaves of the papyrus. To this boat was, at length, added a mast of acanthus, and a sail of papyrus; but, being prejudiced against the sea because it swallowed up their sacred river, which they worshipped as a god, they never attempted to construct vessels adapted to marine navigation.
3. The Phœnicians, a nation nearly as ancient as the Egyptian, being situated directly on the sea, without the advantages of a noble river, were compelled to provide means for sailing on a wider expanse of water. It is said, however, that they first traversed the Mediterranean, and even visited distant islands, with no better means of conveyance than a raft of timber. This is rendered somewhat probable, from the fact, that the Peruvians, even at the present time, venture upon the Pacific Ocean on their balza, a raft made from a spongy tree of that name.
4. The vessels first constructed by the Phœnicians, were used for commercial purposes. They were flat-bottomed, broad, and of a small draught; and those of the Carthaginians and Greeks were similar in shape. The ships of war, in early times, were generally mere row-boats, in which the combatants rushed upon each other, and decided the combat by valor and physical strength.