“It appears (continues our author) that the principal difficulty to be surmounted in antient voyages, arose from the impracticability of storing the ships with provisions adequate to the vast length of time required for their navigation, when the rate of sailing was so remarkably slow. They were ill adapted to distant voyages, which indeed they seldom, it appears, undertook, but did very well in situations where they could land and command provisions almost at pleasure; or, at any rate, by compulsion, when they sailed in fleets. But, on the other hand, they were better adapted to those coasting voyages which constituted almost the whole of their navigation. The flatness of their bottoms required much less depth of water than modern vessels of the same tonnage: whence arose an incredible advantage over ours in finding shelter more frequently; and indeed almost everywhere, except on a steep or rocky shore—since, in default of shelter afloat, they drew their large ships upon the beach, as our fishermen do their large boats. And we may certainly conclude, that vessels of a construction and size best adapted to the service of discovery and long voyages were chosen on occasions like the present.”
In addition to the instances selected by Major Rennell, as proofs of the slow rate of sailing of the vessels of the ancients, we here submit a few examples of a contrary tendency; and from these it will appear (if the numbers of Pliny may be relied upon), that navigation under the Romans had made rapid strides, and that voyages undertaken by the vessels of the empire must have been performed under other disadvantages than those resulting from a slow rate of sailing, when they are found to be so bad as those which we have instanced above.
The Præfect Galerius is stated by Pliny (lib. xix, Proemium) to have employed no more than seven days in the voyage from Sicily to Alexandria; and Babilius is said, immediately afterwards, to have made the same voyage in six.
We cannot reckon less than one thousand Roman miles for the distance between the Faro of Messina and Alexandria; which performed in the space of seven days (as first mentioned), would give a rate of one hundred and forty-three M. P. per day; and being reckoned at six (as in the latter instance), a rate of one hundred and fifty such miles.
In the same place we find that Valerius Marianus accomplished the voyage from Puteoli to Alexandria in the space of nine days (lenissimo flatu), under the disadvantage of extremely light winds. This may be reckoned at two hundred and fifty M. P. more than the voyage above stated, or one thousand two hundred and fifty Roman miles; and from it will be found to result a distance of nearly one hundred and forty M. P. per day—differing very little from the instance first mentioned, and much less from the latter than might reasonably be expected, from the circumstances under which it was performed.
We also find, from what follows, in the passage alluded to, that the voyage from the Straits of Gibraltar to Ostia was accomplished in the course of a week; and as it cannot be reckoned at less than one thousand three hundred Roman miles (supposing it to have been a coasting voyage), or at less than one thousand two hundred and twenty-five M. P., in straight course to the southward of Sardinia, we must conclude that the vessel in which it was performed actually sailed at the rate of more than one hundred and eighty-five M. P. in the first instance, and one hundred and seventy-five in the latter.
Other examples follow, of the coasting voyage just mentioned in detail—viz. from Ostia to the Provincia Narbonensis (say, the south-east point of the Gulf of Lyons), the Gallicus Sinus of the Romans, a distance of four hundred and fifty M. P., performed in the space of three days; this gives a rate of one hundred and fifty miles per day.
From Ostia to the coast of Spain (Hispania Citerior), say the south-western point of the same Gulf, which is the nearest that can be taken, is four days; this would give a rate of more than one hundred and sixty M. P. per day.
Again, from the same port (Ostia) to the coast of Africa, in two days; which, taken at the nearest points, Carthage, or Utica, on the extremity of the Hermæum Promontorium, could not be less than three hundred and fifty Roman miles in straight course. This will afford us a rate of one hundred and seventy-five M. P. per day, the exact rate of the sailing from Ostia to Gibraltar, in the straight course imagined above.
It does not appear that there is any mistake in the numbers here mentioned by Pliny; for the instances are all of them consistent Allow current 2½ miles per hour.with each other; one only being a little below one hundred and forty M. P. per day, and another one hundred and forty-three; two examples afford one hundred and fifty, one hundred and sixty, two one hundred and seventy-five, and one one hundred and eighty-five. The lowest of these rates of sailing may be reckoned at between six and seven M. P. per hour, and the highest at something less than eight; giving a mean of seven M. P. per hour, which would be reckoned a good one for ships of the present day.