LINE OF BATTLE.
HOSTILE FRIGATES GRAPPLING.
NAVAL BATTLE, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
To return to the Egyptians. Sesostris had immense fleets 1437 years before Christ, and navigated not only the Mediterranean, but the Red Sea. The Egyptians had invaded, by means of veritable fleets, the country of the Pelasgi. Some of these ancient Egyptian ships were very large. Diodorus mentions one of cedar, built by Sesostris, which was 280 cubits (420 to 478 feet) long.
One built by Ptolemy was 478 feet long, and carried 400 sailors, 4000 rowers, and 3000 soldiers. Many other huge vessels are mentioned. A bas-relief at Thebes represents a naval victory gained by the Egyptians over some Indian nation, in the Red Sea, or the Persian Gulf, probably 1400 years before Christ.
The Egyptian fleet is in a crescent, and seems to be endeavoring to surround the Indian fleet, which, with oars boarded and sails furled, is calmly awaiting the approach of its antagonist. A lion’s head, of some metal, at the prow of each Egyptian galley, shows that ramming was then resorted to. These Egyptian men-of-war were manned by soldiers in helmets, and armed as those of the land forces.
The length of these vessels is conjectured to have been about 120 feet, and the breadth 16 feet. They had high raised poops and forecastles, filled with archers and slingers, while the rest of the fighting men were armed with pikes, javelins, and pole-axes, of most murderous appearance, to be used in boarding. Wooden bulwarks, rising considerably above the main-deck, protected the rowers. Some of the combatants had bronze coats of mail, in addition to helmets of the same, and some carried huge shields, covered, apparently, with tough bull’s hide. These vessels had masts, with a large yard, and a huge square sail. They are said to have been built of acacia, so durable a wood that vessels built of it have lasted a century or more. They appear to have had but one rank of oars; although two or three tiers soon became common. None of the ancient Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek or Roman monuments represent galleys with more than two tiers of oars, except one Roman painting that gives one with three. Yet quinqueremes are spoken of as very common. It is not probable that more than three tiers were used; as seamen have never been able to explain how the greater number of tiers could have been worked; and they have come to the conclusion that scholars have been mistaken, and that the term quinquereme, or five ranks of oars, as translated, meant the arrangement of the oars, or of the men at them, and not the ranks, one above another, as usually understood.
Much learning and controversy has been expended upon this subject, and many essays written, and models and diagrams made, to clear up the matter, without satisfying practical seamen.
The Roman galleys with three rows of oars had the row ports in tiers. These ports were either round or oval, and were called columbaria, from their resemblance to the arrangement of a dove-cote. The lower oars could be taken in, in bad weather, and the ports closed.